Six years ago today, after 19 years with Boing Boing, during which time I wrote tens of thousands of blog posts, I started a new, solo blog, with the semi-ironic name "Pluralistic."
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Refusing to use a technology because the people who developed it were indefensible creeps is a self-owning dead-end. You know what's better than refusing to use a technology because you hate its creators? Seizing that technology and making it your own. Don't like the fact that a convicted monopolist has a death-grip on networking? Steal its protocol, release a free software version of it, and leave it in your dust:
SAMBA versus SMB: Adversarial Interoperability is Judo for Network Effects
Before there was Big Tech, there was "adversarial interoperability": when someone decides to compete with a dominant company by creating a product or service that "interoperates" (works with) its offerings.In tech, "network effects" can be a powerful force to maintain market dominance: if everyone...
Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org)
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@pluralistic
You make a very good point about using a personal LLM that runs on your own iron.Regarding using stuff originally developed by odious creeps:
The wonderful chorus I used to sing with pre-pandemic once did a song that was cheery, upbeat, and also happened to have been written by an ardent Nazi. After much discussion among the Jewish and Gentile chorus members (and the Jewish director), we all decided we were comfortable singing the piece anyway in the spirit of peace, unity, and making that Nazi bastard spin in his grave.
We repurposed that piece for good.
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Six years ago today, after 19 years with Boing Boing, during which time I wrote tens of thousands of blog posts, I started a new, solo blog, with the semi-ironic name "Pluralistic."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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@pluralistic rotfl that illustration image. 6 years, i see what you're doing there.
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Dear Cory,
You are a true inspiration. One of the great thinkers I found when I joined Mastodon. The experience of being on this platform with its tech community among others is a constant delight in a truly bleak moment in human history. Keep up the great work.
CC
@jawarajabbi @pluralistic Yeah, defending his use of fashtech is very inspirational. Like how he also promotes Kagi, a crypto bro scheme.
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@n8chz It's one of those jokes that made me laugh enough that I ran with it, even though it's totally obscure. That's "Number 6" from The Prisoner, with my face matted on.
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@pluralistic rotfl that illustration image. 6 years, i see what you're doing there.
@stf @pluralistic He's not a number! He's a free man!! -
Dear Cory,
You are a true inspiration. One of the great thinkers I found when I joined Mastodon. The experience of being on this platform with its tech community among others is a constant delight in a truly bleak moment in human history. Keep up the great work.
CC
@jawarajabbi well said. I don't always have the time or attention span to read a long thread, but when I do, I love the way @pluralistic’s meander through personal, prosaic, profound and professional territory from one post to the next.
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@jawarajabbi @pluralistic Yeah, defending his use of fashtech is very inspirational. Like how he also promotes Kagi, a crypto bro scheme.
And then there's the occasional asshole.
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Professionally speaking, these are the most successful books I've written, in a long, 30+ book career with many notable successes. Intellectually and artistically speaking, I'm incredibly satisfied with the direction my career has moved in over my six Pluralistic years.
Blogging is - and always has been - a lot of work for me, but it's work that pays off, even if I don't always know what form that payoff will take.
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@pluralistic "it's work that pays off, even if I don't always know what form that payoff will take": It sounds kinda like "basic research," and exemplifies why that's worthwhile.
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And then there's the occasional asshole.
@jawarajabbi @pluralistic Cory is not viewed kindly by many marginalized communities. Threads like this, where he advocates using fashtech are evidence of why. I would suggest if you care to actually see what dissenters say about him, as white people we need to get better about listening to communities of color about these white dude self-appointed 'saviors' who dismiss the concerns of those most impacted by these tech decisions.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Now it's AI. But those bubbles were like Enron, frauds that left nothing good behind. AI is like the dotcom bubble, awash in sin and inflicting untold misery, but it will leave something useful behind:
And when it does, I'll make sense of it on this blog.
eof/
@pluralistic I've been wanting to say quietly for a while, but haven't dared: I find LLMs useful in some ways. No they will not replace my skills as a software developer. No they will not replace artists and authors and actors and script writers. No they will not justify the valuations implied by the amount of money currently being pumped into them. But that doesn't make them useless.
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@pluralistic I've been wanting to say quietly for a while, but haven't dared: I find LLMs useful in some ways. No they will not replace my skills as a software developer. No they will not replace artists and authors and actors and script writers. No they will not justify the valuations implied by the amount of money currently being pumped into them. But that doesn't make them useless.
@pluralistic That they can make mistakes doesn't make them useless. That idiots can use them in stupid ways doesn't make them useless. That bastards can use them in evil ways doesn't make them useless.
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@pluralistic That they can make mistakes doesn't make them useless. That idiots can use them in stupid ways doesn't make them useless. That bastards can use them in evil ways doesn't make them useless.
@pluralistic I wrote this elsewhere: https://www.quora.com/Is-ChatGPT-coding-trustable/answer/Ben-Curthoys
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Doubtless some of you are affronted by my modest use of an LLM. You think that LLMs are "fruits of the poisoned tree" and must be eschewed because they are saturated with the sin of their origins. I think this is a very bad take, the kind of rathole that purity culture always ends up in.
Let's start with some context. If you don't want to use technology that was created under immoral circumstances or that sprang from an immoral mind, then *you are totally fucked.*
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@pluralistic Think it's worth me making the point - as an artist who has been in that hole until a month ago, it is very schismogenesis-coded. Whatever positive uses for LLMs in writing that exist, it's tricky to talk about them without accidentally defining yourself against people who, on any other day, would share the same politics as you.
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@stf @pluralistic He's not a number! He's a free man!!
@aj @stf @pluralistic That's not a man that's Rover
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(Phantom empty posts at the end of the thread that need to be individually selected and deleted are a common one, but not the only one.)
The old Twitter's ability to add a new thread to an existing one has been dead for at least a year, so every post after the 25th stanza has to be manually tacked on to the previous one, which is made *far* harder by the fact that Twitter no longer reliably shows you the post you just made after it publishes.
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@pluralistic why can't you just write one post ? These storms of short messages are just irritating and unreadable
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@pluralistic why can't you just write one post ? These storms of short messages are just irritating and unreadable
@multiscan A better question: why do you read an account whose bio begins, "I post long threads," and that exists entirely for the purpose of posting "storms of short messages" that you find "irritating and unreadable?" My bio has lots of ways to get my work off Mastodon if you don't like threads, but it's genuinely weird to insist that everyone else stop posting and reading threads just because you don't like them.
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Six years ago today, after 19 years with Boing Boing, during which time I wrote tens of thousands of blog posts, I started a new, solo blog, with the semi-ironic name "Pluralistic."
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
1/
@pluralistic I suddenly feel the urge to re-watch the prisoner...
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@pluralistic That they can make mistakes doesn't make them useless. That idiots can use them in stupid ways doesn't make them useless. That bastards can use them in evil ways doesn't make them useless.
@bencurthoys the problem is not their usefulness, the problem is that they are a dick move.
'AI' is a dick move, redux
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
(www.baldurbjarnason.com)
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Now it's AI. But those bubbles were like Enron, frauds that left nothing good behind. AI is like the dotcom bubble, awash in sin and inflicting untold misery, but it will leave something useful behind:
And when it does, I'll make sense of it on this blog.
eof/
@pluralistic Your writing making sense of things is exactly why I look forward eagerly to every Pluralistic installment. Thank you, Mr. Doctorow.
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@bencurthoys the problem is not their usefulness, the problem is that they are a dick move.
'AI' is a dick move, redux
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
(www.baldurbjarnason.com)
so were:
* rocketry
* the double-helix structure of DNA
* Unix
* SMB
* packet-switching
* silicon transistors
