Artificial Intelligencce – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

The Death Of The Internet? Some Think So.

Nothing lasts forever. But what follows?

Some savvy folks are donning mourning clothes as they proclaim the death of the Internet, while simultaneously getting all dolled up, hoping for something new to rise from its digital ashes. And some wish it would just go away. I’d argue that whatever phase of life the Internet is in it is certainly safe to say it is a sickly one.

I’ve seen what I’m linking to here pass through my feeds this week and last, some via RSS, some via social media, some via an email subscription. All while I’m online fighting Medicare with the assistance of one of my doctors over some changes to prescription drug charges. No one takes a phone call these days. It’s online or bust. So I think that while the Internet might need some intervention or reinvention, I doubt seriously most of the real world is ready for that. But then again, the real world wasn’t ready for the Internet in the first place.

In my opinion, how you view the possible end of the Internet largely depends on what you put in and what you take out. Strangely enough, just like life.

I think Dave Winer is more accurate in calling it the web rather than the Internet. I mean we fight shooting wars using “the Internet” these days. Winer points to a fascinating article from Ben Thompson called The End of The Internet, that provides not only Thompson’s thesis but also excellent context on the entire discussion. Winer also points to Marco Arment’s search for Community that I referenced earlier in a previous post. I encourage you to read all mentioned above.

Communication, Connection, and Commerce

The three “C’s” in that subhead are, to me, what the Internet boils down to. They coexist, they collide, they sometimes cradle each other and can also cause each other to crash and burn. The Internet is like any other human invention or innovation. Once whatever is created becomes about the cost of sustaining that creation, conflicting tensions boil up. Just ask any major church or organized religion, local farming co-op, computer company, or small local chorale. Capitalism takes over and history proves nothing ever created by humankind is immune to the compromises that come with it.

Winer, Thompson, and Arment haven’t quite given up the ghost just yet. All three see potential for something new. That’s not quite the case with Miles Klee, whose piece also caught my eye this morning. In Please Let The Internet Die. Klee highlights a book by John West called The Internet Will Die, and So Will You: On Learning To Live In Our Digital Age. This quote caught my eye:

If the internet is much smaller and less solid than imagined, West’s book suggests, then it’s crucial to recognize the forces that determine how those deaths unfold, or which pieces are preserved while others crumble. Because the market has falsely sold us the web as a comprehensive library of accumulated wisdom, each transient phase of this global network comes to define the present, for better and worse.

And this:

These shifting sands are a far cry from the flawless, collective, permanent memory that internet users originally believed they were building. “‘Forever’ is such a strong word, and it’s the wrong word,” West says. Online spaces are memento mori, the same as individuals who self-promote across them.

I was also intrigued by this quote from Thompson:

This is where I come back to de Tocqueville: the Internet is an American invention, and has long been defined by American mores; the individuals who thrive on the Internet, no matter their nationality, come across as very American in their iconoclasm and cringe.

I think Thompson’s thought is not only accurate but also uncannily diagnostic. It is timely context coming at a time America itself, with the rest of the world looking and moving on, is questioning its own existence 250 years in.

Omnia praetereunt.

(Image from AnnaStills on Shutterstock)

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Personal hells, trick, treats, and that thing about writing

Writing a blog is an interesting experience. So is reading them. The best blogs are the ones where the person behind the keyboard shines through. You can say it takes courage to put yourself and your opinions out there. You would be correct. A lot of that got diminished when social media took over because of its hit and run nature. But blogs and the writers behind them are still there and surface now and again. Today’s Sunday Morning Reading features a few along with a few other tricks and treats. Hope you check them and the rest of the links out.

Good writing stands out. Even on the Internet where it comes in small waves and ripples, subsequently washed away by more of the same, or often overwhelmed by the slop running alongside threatening to take it over. David Todd McCarty’s A Stream Has No Memory isn’t about that necessarily, and yet it is. All things flow.

As I mentioned, personal blogging took a hit when the age of social media dawned. Yet, those that still exist, though not always as prolific, still provide insight when a writer allows you to peek into deeper waters. In many ways putting yourself out there, regardless of where, can easily become a personal hell. There’s been quite a controversy eddying about in tech circles about some who loudly condemned what was formerly Twitter reversing course and just as publicly announcing that they are returning. To each their own personal hell, I guess. I’ve stated my feelings about that here and here. Noted developer Marco Arment took to his blog with a post simply and aptly titled Community. It isn’t about what X marks the spot, it’s about what I believe deep down we all search for when we choose to share ourselves in our writing and our creative work. It can be lonely even with a magnitude of followers in whatever personal hell you choose to put yourself into.

Jason Snell links to an excellent post by Cory Doctorow called Critique And Writing. Yes, it’s about AI and folks using it to generate editorial feedback, but it’s about so much more. We develop critical thinking by critiquing the work of others who work in the same field, whether it be writing or other disciplines. I had an acting professor once tell the class that the way we responded to the work of others told him more about how we were developing (or not) as actors as the work we ourselves did onstage.

In the category of things we all share but wish we didn’t Neil Steinberg takes on scams and their persistent and constantly replicating existence in I Look Forward To Reviewing Your Proposal And Learning About The Quest For Pie.

Natasha MH takes a look at perhaps the year’s most controversial film, Digger, in Hail The Conquering Heroes. That film is becoming a personal measuring stick for me as to who sees the world we live in as I do and who doesn’t.

Halloween is upon us. With grandkids that’s quite a treat. But it can also be tricky. I’m headed there next weekend because my grandson has convinced us that we have to go trick-or-treating with him and his sister. He’s chosen for me to be costumed as a T-Rex. (Wearing costumes is my own personal hell.) Regardless of my escapades, I marvel at all of the decorations that abound and proliferate in yards up and down every block of every town rendering them all somewhat meaningless. Rex Huppke takes on the topic in America Has An Addiction To Giant Halloween Skeletons.

And if Halloween spirits swirling amongst all of the evil things going on in the real world aren’t enough to scare the beejeebus out of you give a read to Max Seddon’s piece The Putin Whisperers about three men who worked to stop Putin from unleashing nuclear Armageddon. Some things are just damn scary.

All things flow.

(Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash.)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Apple’s Coming Attractions

Will Apple deliver beyond the hype?

We’ve seen the trailers. We’re in the swirl of they hype storm. What the real story wil be is yet to unfold. Even so, some are declaring success before the first reel even kicks off.

It’s not hard to see the excitement around the iPhone Duo, Apple’s folding iPhone, and the Homeview gadget meant to be used in your home by you and all of your very loud family members. Even so, Time Magazine’s cover story about The Best Inventions of 2026, featuring new Apple CEO John Ternus feels a bit premature.

I’m not poo-pooing what these new Apple devices may offer. No one knows. And that’s the point. I’ve got questions about both I want to see answered once the devices are in real users’ hands and how that all fits in with Apple’s philosophy about making the iPhone the center of your universe.

I especially have questions about the Homeview after seeing Apple’s video trailer for the device. That’s based on the fact that nothing I’ve seen so far in any OS with a 27 at the tail end of it works as fast as that bit of video makes you want to believe. Much less fast user switching. Siri AI may be improved, but it’s still feels slower than the non-AI version of a year ago. Perhaps an OS update will fix that at some point in the future. But these devices roll out sooner than that.

I’d love to see these new gadgets be winners and live up to the hype and the promises. That may indeed happen. I actually hope it does.

My hesitancy and skepticism is that I’ve yet to see Apple’s software come close to living up to that hype, much less the speed or efficiency I believe everyone wants. In fact, given that much of this is somehow connected via Apple’s flavor of AI, Apple Intelligence, I’ve yet to see any chatbot of any stripe deliver on that kind of promise consistently. And consistency is the key. Or at least should be.

But then again, all the world’s a beta these days.

Don’t Tune Out. Pay Attention

Watching the world whiz by

It usually begins with “I don’t follow politics” or “I’m nor political.” But the topic can be interchangeable. Tech, sports, etc… It’s a choice. Even not choosing is a choice. One can argue, (I frequently do) that when you tune out or become tired or uninterested in a topic, then you’ve essentially surrendered. Whatever the other side is, you’ve let them win by removing yourself from the board.

Zoe vandewater oMpoyoO01Tg unsplash. Life can be tiresome. Increasingly it feels more so. Certianly in the wake of so much merciilessly bad news that it’s difficult to see how giving your attention might have an impact, much less worth your time and energy. I’ll be the first to admit trying to keep up is enough to drive anyone to just walk away.

It’s also makes it appealing to just to focus on the many good things that you enjoy in life.

Call me crazy (most do) but that’s how the forces who do pay attention on their quest to achieve whatever their aims are want you to feel how they want you to act. Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed to the point of tuning out, turning away or rolling over.

If you’ve tuned out, gotten pissed off, or just become no longer curious, the game is still afoot, and you’re not playing. You might think you’re canceling someone. But the only one you’re canceling is you.

By the time big changes come around that actually have a direct impact on your life, the game has moved on. And if you’re trying to get on board at that point, you’re late to the party and only there to pick up the pieces.

I’ve lived through enough moments in life when those who paid attention could see the direction the path ahead was revealing, and just enough tuned out to give those forging the path all the runway they needed.

Look, no one can keep up with everything. That’s just a reality. If there’s one good thing that has come out of the age of social media is that we can at least remain peripherally aware of the debates and arguments in ways we couldn’t before social media.

Even a peripheral awareness is better than a self-imposed lack of awareness, whatever the reason for shutting down.

Pay attention. Stay in the game.

(Image from Zoe VandeWater on Unsplash)

John Gruber Thinks I’ve Lost My Mind

Looking for a world of like, yet lost minds

There’s a weird and depressing continuation of folks moving back to X, formerly Twitter, currently still a cesspool.

The weirdness and my depression started when Federico Viticci and John Voorhees of MacStories fame headed back to stuffing Elon Musk’s back pocket. They’ve recently been followed by others in the tech-o-sphere, lured primarily because that’s apparently where the action is when it comes to talking about AI. Or talking to bots. I’m nor sure it matters. I expect them to all start calling it super intelligence any day now. Why not go all in?

The latest, and the most puzzling return is John Gruber. In a lengthy post he explains why. He also throws Musk-like insults at those who of us who don’t see his point by saying we’ve lost our minds.

If you have stayed away, or even just mostly away, from X for years and then come back, people just say things like “Hey, glad you’re back!” On the other networks, especially Mastodon, they tell you you’re “feeding Nazis” — by going to the platform where Tim Cook posts Pikachu videos. These people have either lost their minds or refuse to check their prior assumptions. (Most of the ones who chime in about it publicly are the lost-their-minds types.)

Perhaps I have lost my mind, John. I don’t think so, but perhaps I have. My grandson accuses me of that now and then, typically when I’m reminding him about what’s right and what’s wrong, given that he’s young enough not to know better.

Where my mind may have been misplaced, if it has, is a simpler location. That’s a place where I choose not to give money or participate in Elon Musk’s empire of depravity, where he thinks and spends money defending the so-called free speech right to create non-consensual pornography of pictures that are on his social network or wherever he can grab them Including those of children. To be clear, he’s done much more certainly and I’m not in favor of any of that either.

To be clearer, whether you pay for X or just lurk and scroll, you’re giving Musk money to do what he does. It’s out of your bank account into funding his depravity dumping on the world.

That’s my personal line in the sand that doesn’t shift. I will say the same things I say to relatives who still support MAGAts and Trump. If you condone sexual abuse of children because you think there’s a greater good somewhere being served by the perpetrators of that sexual abuse, you need to reframe how you think about the greater good. You may not have lost your mind, but you’re on your way to losing someting greater. And that’s not good.

Look, I miss Twitter. But that social network no longer exists. Gruber comes so close to swearing that what followed it once Musk took over has changed and is now a kinder, gentler place. So much so that on a quick first read I thought his post was a parody. Sadly, it’s not. X may have indeed changed somewhat. I don’t care enough to find out. Yes, big brands, celebrities, and sports reporters still rely on Twitter for reasons that are beyond me. Again, that’s their choice. For better or worse, whatever wisdom or lack thereof eventually filters out into the world eventually, so it really doesn’t matter.

Gruber, like the others who seem to be meandering back to Musk-land, are entititled to their opinions and to particiapte with any social network they choose. The fact that they need to justify their choices by smearing those who think differently, and dare I say how they themselves once were so outspoken with their thinking, to some extent proves just how much Musk and the MAGAt crowd have perverted and damaged the world we live in and the world online. Smearing others is like breathing in that world. I’ll admit I wouldn’t mind seeing them choke on it one day.

At least Gruber made his choice clear, unlike the MacStories duo. I have no doubt they’ll be calling Artifical Intelligence by its new Trump anointed and Musk approved branding soon.

Super.

(Image by Lutz Stalknecht on Unsplash)

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

More knowledge generally diffused

It’s a Sunday. Leaves are beginning to fall as Autumn closes in. It’s a good morning to do some reading, even if it’s just “more knowledge generally diffused.” So, settle in for some Sunday Morning Reading.

I too often fall into the trap of thinking one thing or the other might be inevitable. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m off base. When it comes to AI, what it might or might not be is still anybody’s guess. Matteo Wong thinks Nothing About This Was Inevitable. I agree when it comes to the technology. I strongly disagree when it comes to how humans inevitably do what humans inevitably do when they think they found the golden ticket.

In theatre rehearsals I often refer to “the little theatre in my mind” when giving direction to actors. It’s a place where the conscious and subconscious do battle when I’m directing a show. Mathew Ingram wonders What Makes Our Minds Different And Where Does It Come From? The mind may be an unchanging observer of whatever we do as Descartes says. But who pops the popcorn?

In a throwback post (so glad he does this), Neil Steinberg takes on James Boswell’s take on Samuel Johnson in Musings Of An 18th Century Giant Still Relevant Today. “It must be considered, that we have now more knowledge generally diffused.”

Kim Zetter explores The Secrets Of A US Spyware King The damn thing is there are no secrets really. Just pervasiveness.

A fascinating beginning to a series at The Intellectualist on The Great Fragmentation. Part II or How The Old Gatekeepers Made Themselves Easy To Kill Off is especially worth your while.

I often maintain we’re still fighting the American Civil War. I’ll go to my grave defending that position, primarily because it began long before 1861 in an era we do our best to ignore for fear of coming face to face with ourselves. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz delves into a bit of that ignored history with The True Story Of The Actual First Shot Fired In The Civil War.

On an Internet site called sheets.works there’s a fascinating piece, portrayed both visually and to a degree in text called The People Holding Up The Internet.

Chicago lost a legend this week with the passing of football legend Mike Ditka. Few of us pass without becoming synonymous with an era, a city, or a time. For better, or worse, Ditka defined this toddlin’ yet often troubled town of Chicago as much as the original Mayor Daley ever did. Brad Biggs pens a nice obituary that focuses on Ditka’s football career. Ditka had his critics, some of whom made their criticism known after his passing. In our world of more and more knowledge generally diffused, and thus I dare say confused, it’s frustrating how challenging it can be when all the parts of a life are summed up, beyond the moments and achievements which gives meaning to multitudes.

(Photo by Pramod Tiwari on Unsplash

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

To Deny Full Disk Permissions Or Not?

That is the question

If you think Hamlet twisted and turned too much trying to make a decision, the Apple technorati are tying themselves into knots over the latest AI brouhaha visited upon us by Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots like the ghost of the young Dane’s father.

Muse ai meta.jpg.

The issue at hand initially came to light via a post by Jason Aten that I linked to last week. Aten claimed he caught Meta’s Muse agent apparently delving into his Messages even though he says he did not permit such access. Apple, presumably in response to Aten’s post, issued a statement saying it was going to put in additional controls for permission to grant Full Disk Access. Apple calls that access “extraordinary” and claims this is a forward looking move given what most assume will be more agents with more capabilities proliferating. Here’s a quote:

Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history—without users’ full knowledge and understanding. For communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the people users are communicating with.

Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action. Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.

On the one hand it’s easy to see that some sort of additional controls would be a good thing for the vast majority of users who probably still don’t know what an agent that might be requesting Full Disk Access is. On the other, there are some well trusted developers with apps that actually require that access to function. If there was a third hand, it would be the largely more tech-literate tech press who are seeing the challenge before Apple and concerned developers. The apprehension is that this might further lock down Mac computing and make it look more like iOS/iPadOS computing. Nick Heer has a good piece on the matter here.

Whether Aten’s claims are true or not, I think the writing is on the wall in bold strokes that most who pay attention to these matters have trouble trusting any and all of the participants in the race now running in what often feels like the beginning of a wild west stampede. Remember Apple has a dog in this hunt also, even though it may be bringing up the rear.

As someone who supports a number of Mac users, many of them blissfully unaware of potential threats, the thought of talking to them about what Full Disk Access might or might not mean is a bit daunting. At this point no one knows what Apple’s plans entail or to what degree. I would safely bet that Apple has the less tech-savvy category of users firmly in mind however those plans turn out. My guess is the thinking is that If they’re smart enough to see and understand the problem, one would assume they’re smart enough to work through and beyond it.

In a way, we’ve been here before with aggressive popups requesting permissions on both Macs and Windows. Reactions and overreactions begat more reactions and overreactions. In my mind, as serious as those past episodes seemed, what we’re now facing feels more fraught with potential peril. Especially for those who don’t have the time or inclination to pay attention in a fast moving tech era that has leaders stating that “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”

And keep in mind, those of us old enough to remember those past reactions and overreactions aren’t the targets the Metas and OpenAIs are aiming at. All you have to do is see the cute little Muse’s and Dots to understand a long game that might not take that much longer to unveil itself further.

Quell The Outrage Over Apple Intelligence Taking Up Storage

Why the surprise?

I apologize in advance for being derisive in this post. But Lordy, do folks deserve a shake now and again.

Hands of an older person counting out coins. Landsmann zxKlxvN5ZSg unsplash.

Not a day goes by that I don’t see complaints about Apple Intelligence taking up storage space on iPhones, Macs, or iPads. Some of it from so-called leading Apple blogs and websites. It begs the question, were people just not paying attention?

Apple’s entire pitch for Apple Intelligence is that most of it happens on your device, and is thus supposedly more secure than relying on other AI chatbots and the like that send every request to some data-slurping cloud or the other. At what point in that pitch did you not assume the index of your data wasn’t going to end up on your device and consume storage?

Granted one might be surprised by the amount of storage Apple Intelligence is taking up, but if you use your devices constantly, don’t purge older data like Messages and emails occasionally, the size of the index Apple is going to create, apparently every time the folks in Cupertino update the OS, is going to only grow.

I get the problem. I don’t get the outrage over it. Especially from websites that should know better and should have prepared their readers better. The reason I get it is that many users, especially in this age of spiraling costs, go for the least expensively configured device. Settling for 256GB of storage might have been a solid purchase decision two years ago. That’s no longer the case. I also get the surprise and the outrage from those who weren’t preparing to upgrade hardware in this or any immediate future cycles. That said, this writing has been on the wall for some time now.

The same is true with memory. Everyone was pleased when memory configs jumped to 16GB for the base of most of Apple’s computers. 16GB these days is what 8GB was just a short while ago. It’s the bare minimum you need to run Apple Intelligence effectively, especially if it’s only paired 256gb of storage that’s crammed with other data.

When Apple first started promoting its on-device Apple Intelligence approach quite a few were excited, thinking they might be able to reduce some of those $20 a month subscriptions they paid for other AI services. That may prove true for many, but in the end, it’s really just a transfer of costs.

Artificial Intelligence, regardless of flavor, is changing all aspects relating to purchasing decisions as rapidly as the technology itself is changing. If you think it’s hard for consumers to keep up, here’s a hint: the companies can’t keep up with it either. We would all be well served to think ahead given the unpredictability.

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t buy into what I consider to be way too optimistic predictions that memory and storage costs are going to settle back in the next couple of years. And if we’ve learned anything at all about any kind of digital services, it’s that prices inevitably go up on that front. The money to pay for all the debt service on that financing for data centers has to come from somewhere.

In this day and age, 256GB of storage and 16gb of memory may be the minimum with a price point that makes it easier to get you in the door. But it’s as cramped and curmudgeonly as the free 5GB of iCloud storage that still comes with new iPhones.

Update: A number of folks reached out to comment that their issue was that they didn’t want to use Apple Intelligence features and thus their frustration with the loss of disk space for a feature they weren’t interested in. I can understand that point of view.

That said, at the moment the reality is that Apple’s path is to inject Apple Intelligence deeply into the operating systems, offering on-device access to some of those features along with its Private Cloud Compute and access to other Internet based options. That’s a part of Apple’s security and privacy approach to just about everything it does. I don’t see that direction changing in the near future, which turns this into a broader discussion than just reclaiming storage space.

Even so, those looking to reclaim that storage space are exploring ways to do so and there’s even an open source tool that apparently lets you do just that.

(Image from – Landsman on Unsplash.)

The Golden Age Of Shit. Super Intelligence Style

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. -Walter Scott

The farce that unfolded in Washington DC yesterday regarding Artificial Intelligence wasn’t comedy. Yet it was super hilarious. At some point you have to understand that the wool is being pulled over all of our eyes, including those of the president. And you have to laugh.

Us president donald trump attends national design studio launch event for america gov a new ai powered government website at t.jpg.

In an election year that sees American’s distaste for anything approaching the topic of AI growing like kudzu, the folks running the AI show keep rapidly alternating back and forth between requests that the government step in and stop them from destroying humanity and telling us that their products will create a new golden age of abundance.

If there’s a joke in the circle jerk of a game they’re playing, it’s that the president croaks that he got the assembled AI oligarchy to sign on to a “morally binding” agreement to self-police. You read that right. “Morally binding.” There’s lots of laughing about a group of technologists who built empires on stealing the work of others, who never met a law or a moral they wouldn’t spit on, signing such a document put forward by one of the most outrageous criminals the world has ever known. But that’s just the set up.

The joke is that these conmen are playing the decaying before our eyes president for all they can while he’s still breathing. He no longer understands what’s put before him. He doesn’t have a competent staff. A fact made abundantly clear by the misspelling of the United States under the president’s signature and the fact that his administration’s AI fueled new website spent the day disproving all the lies he’s foisted upon a population with an average reading age of a sixth grader. You’d think his flunkies would use AI to do some basic proofreading and fact-checking. But that’s above a sixth grader’s skill set. Apparently they’ve already “corrected” the website to spit out the lies again.

These tech bros are openly yanking the president’s chain, taking advantage of his infirmity, our divisiveness, our curiosity, and the greed of the markets. The rest of the world is doing it. Given their desires to run the planet, into the ground or elsewhere, they might as well get in on the act before the curtain comes down.

Couple all of that with the supposed name change in the order, rebranding Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence. On the one hand it’s good to know that if the technology kills us all there will be no shortage of superlatives to describe the end of times in the summaries all the robots, Muses, and Dots will spam each other with after we’re gone. It beats being wiped out by something branded as artificial, I guess. On the other, the name change is just super silly. Call me when OpenAI changes its name. I’m just surprised he didn’t name it American Intelligence. Or Trump Intelligence.

If there’s drama ahead in any of this, it’s that at some point it’s going to all go to shit. Mostly it has already. Those who dismiss every warning as merely marketing remind me of early climate change deniers. Those who take the warnings seriously remind me of every bandwagon jumper that’s ever leaped to a conclusion. As in most things, what truth that exists probably lies somewhere in the muddy middle, which is exactly where those who will profit over either their success or failure want it to stay.

Not a MUSE ing

The bad guys won

And here we are. Right where the tech bro oligarchy wanted us. Giving in to the onslaught, mindlessly turning over all of our data to be chopped up and sold to the highest bidder. Any bidder actually.

If you’ve spent half a millisecond online in the last few weeks you’ve been exposed to the relentless onslaught from Mark Zuckerberg about Muse, the latest incantation dreamed up from the demon spawns of hell that is Meta. Yes, it’s another way to grab your data and use it for their purposes (making money). Yes, it’s AI. Yes, it’s got cute little avatars to attract your children, and those with childlike brains willing to try whatever is new. It’s got all of those things and then some. And, like it not, it’s got the world by the short hairs.

The product is bad enough in and of itself by most accounts. The PR is worse. But I’m here to tell you that Zuckerberg has struck while the iron is either hot or the general public has just accepted wearing wrinkled clothing.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Muse from the folks I support since the hype kicked into overdrive. Most of them use Facebook, Instagram and Facebook’s Messenger, so of course they’ve felt the push. I’ve encouraged them not to install the app or use the service, but as they point out, in admissions of wrinkled surrender, they’ve got all of our data anyway.

That’s sadly, the battle, and probably also the war that was lost long ago. When general everyday users just don’t care anymore then the doors are wide open.

When I point out examples of problems I’ve seen and heard about, like this article from Amber Neely that references Jason Aten’s experiences about Meta ignoring users’ permissions, they spit back this closing quote from Neely’s article: “That’s it, dear reader. You don’t get to opt out anymore.”

We’ve gotten past the willing suspension of disbelief and moved into a numbingly suspended state of apathy.

The bad guys won.