This is the first edition of Sunday Morning Reading in the New Year, 2025. A new year certainly has meaning astronomically. From a human perspective it is a way of looking back in remembrance, even as we continue to evolve and move forward. Often these days, the evolving part seems more and more in question, even as humans make strides and advances in their various fields of endeavors. Some improve our lives, even as it appears so many of us remain stuck in the habits of the past and feel good about celebrating that choice to turn the clock back.
This week’s edition, in a way, marks that always thin dividing line between one year and the next, when what was old carries over into the new.
Natasha MH kicks things off with a lovely remembrance of her grandfather, It Begins With A Grain Of Salt. There’s a lovely quote:
Human intuition is not always reliable. Our perceptions can be distorted by biases and the limitations of our senses, which capture only a small fraction of the world’s phenomena.”
Christopher Luu offers a terrific look at one who made choices in ‘She Believed You Have To Take Sides’: How Audrey Hepburn Became A Secret Spy During World War Two.
Om Malik has a lovely piece about his “re-birthday” after surviving a heart attack in The Story of The Stent.
James Thomson, the developer of PCalc and other Apple software, looks back on the last 25 years in I Live My Life A Quarter Century At A Time.
The Next Big Idea Club shares some insights from Greg Epstein’s new book Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation, in The Weird Worship of Tech That Demands Serious Questioning. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplin at Harvard and at MIT, where he advises students, faculty and staff on ethical and existential concerns from a humanist perspective.
One thing is certain as we head into the new year, Artificial Intelligence will continue to dominate discourse. Jennifer Ouellette examines what happened at the Journal of Human Evolution when all but one member of the editorial board resigned. Some of the issues predate the current AI moment, but that seems to have been a breaking point as she explains in Evolution Journal Editors Resign En Masse.
Simon Willison takes a look at Things We Learned About LLMs in 2024. It’s an excellent look back and worth hanging onto as we plunge ahead, willingly or no.
Edward Zitron believes that generative AI has no killer apps, nor can it justify its valuations. Here’s him quoting himself from March 2024:
What if what we’re seeing today isn’t a glimpse of the future, but the new terms of the present? What if artificial intelligence isn’t actually capable of doing much more than what we’re seeing today, and what if there’s no clear timeline when it’ll be able to do more? What if this entire hype cycle has been built, goosed by a compliant media ready and willing to take career-embellishers at their word?
Strip out the reference to AI and apply it anywhere along the timeline of human evolution and innovation and the questions resonant in a very Beckett-like way. Check out his piece Godot Isn’t Making It.
Judges in the U.S. Sixth Circuit drove a stake through the heart of Net Neutrality as the new year dawned. Brian Barrett says it’s crushing blow not just for how we live our lives on the Internet but consumer protections in general in The Death Of Net Neutrality Is A Bad Omen. He’s correct.
And finally this week, an incredible piece of reporting from Joshua Kaplan at ProPublica. The Militia And The Mole is at once terrifying and also confirming when it comes to the fears those paying attention harbor heading into whatever this next year is going to bring.
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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 