Posts by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
(DIR) Post #Alb08rLjlrs9B3JvAu by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2024-08-30T23:12:41Z
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honestly, WHAT A DAY! after months of work, the @mediaarchaeologylab, @rose_alibi and I launched Phil Peters and David Rueter's "Barbed Wire Fence Phone II" in CASE W250 on the CU Boulder campus. we got to communicate across a barbed wire fence we installed in the most institutional room you can imagine using a phone from 1915 and one the 1980s. I was getting chills at the momentousness of the occasion - that this was a real DIY network with a (largely undocumented) 130 year long history, installed in a university setting as both a historical object AND AS ART! #OtherNetworks
(DIR) Post #Amfb7fA4iExjYSmP3Y by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2022-11-02T16:29:30Z
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most of the things I post about here are about #othernetworks - a cluster of projects about networks before and/or outside of the internet. the main project I'm working on right now is a catalog of about 150-200 of these other networks that will be published by Anthology Editions as a coffee table book in late 2024. I also like to post about anything related to media archaeology and alternative histories of technology. #introductions
(DIR) Post #Antkzkl7cySVqiR6mW by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2024-11-09T12:49:01Z
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SO GOOD. European alternatives for nearly all Amazon, Google, Microsoft products along with alts to Github, Slack, etc. now we need to create a North American version of this. thank you, @vortex! https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to
(DIR) Post #Ao9egqP8vHVGf17BEu by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2024-09-21T11:26:54Z
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@kaveinthran sadly I ran out of pages and ran out of time before I could get to BBSes etc! I did manage to talk about time-sharing networks...Kevin Driscoll's _Minitel: Welcome to the Internet_ is good and so is Howard Rheingold's _Virtual Communities_
(DIR) Post #Ao9enakXWezG8QLAci by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2024-11-18T03:37:18Z
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@tomjennings @kaveinthran yes to both and love both :)
(DIR) Post #AoDVYBRhCWRKMCwaum by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2024-11-19T18:57:49Z
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those of you who helped me advocate for the student who was wrongfully accused of using AI to write her essay might like to know that, faced with the articles you shared with me demonstrating that AI checkers are completely unreliable, the professor relented. I also wrote a long email to the department chair outlining how the professor violated university policy about uploading student data to AI...among other things. So weird we now have to be so vigilant about advocating for and protecting our students but this is the world we're living in! thank you for your help--- #ai
(DIR) Post #AsLnFd2djCiFFkskHQ by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-03-22T17:01:49Z
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it seems worth pointing out that one of the key papers that gave birth to AI, "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (from 1943), in which McCulloch and Pitts model the brain and all its functions as a digital system, is full of errors and was soon found to be a very poor model of how the brain actually works. doesn't that give you pause? #AI
(DIR) Post #AsloLRHCvBgpzQBCIC by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-03-22T17:28:31Z
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speaking my language - I'm still convinced radio is the future: "Radio is the ultimate internet circumvention tool because it is not the internet. And it can’t be tracked." #othernetworks https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentaries/why-we-need-shortwave-2-0
(DIR) Post #At05Pvmvq9SxDDBXzU by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-04-11T23:53:00Z
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finally getting into #meshtastic at the Media Archaeology Lab and dang it is just so incredibly cool and simple. end-to-end encryption for chatting using a long range, low power protocol over radio #othernetworks
(DIR) Post #Au1ubGGAVRNLGH8fia by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-05-12T20:18:48Z
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I over-use "amazing" but this? THIS is amazing. after years of trial-and-error by @rose_alibi and other MALpals, trying to get one Apple Lisa working from the parts of three non-functional ones, the @mediaarchaeologylab has finally arrived....✨ ✨✨
(DIR) Post #AvTQQqTscfKfwWFyy0 by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-06-25T00:29:09Z
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"The best evidence that artificial intelligence is displacing tech workers comes from the fact that the industry that has most thoroughly integrated AI is the one with such unusually high unemployment." https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer-science-bubble-ai/683242/
(DIR) Post #AvUyduwKwkzD8Vvq9Q by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-06-25T17:42:43Z
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check it out! it's a Rochelle salt crystal gifted to me and the MAL by Matt Parker! these wild crystals generate electricity or, when put under electric stress, they "speak": "The crystal...will emit tones in consonance with the potentials applied" (from The Electrical Experimenter Dec. 1919)
(DIR) Post #AvUye2qbXx9df3JNKK by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-06-25T17:59:46Z
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since it was a bit tedious to find, here's the whole article if anyone is curious--->
(DIR) Post #AwhMNkWWdY2qUqzsZM by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-07-31T16:47:56Z
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@tomjennings @jtk I found out the reprint will be out Nov. 21st! but also thank you for being keen on it all :)
(DIR) Post #AwhOhCJxi8ee7RWQme by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-07-30T16:56:45Z
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you wouldn't think that a book called "Cybernetics and Management" would be so revelatory but really, Stafford Beer already knew in 1959 where it was at with so-called artificial brains! "Allied with new forms of energy, cybernetics is emergent to a new vision of society. In all this, it is specifically learning from biological systems, and trying to emulate their key features. Thus the measure of the importance of cybernetics is the backwardness of society’s present outlook on control, not the imagined ability of the science to build a super-brain." #ai #cybernetics
(DIR) Post #Axsc17rZTeiU1o9M1o by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-09-04T21:37:14Z
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I am trying to say something new at an upcoming AI symposium but I think all the critiques are already there in the 1960s and weirdly we have forgotten them and think "we" (ie even the anti-AI crowd) are coming up with fresh, new, important insights!
(DIR) Post #Axsc5Bkswr6PG2xZaq by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-09-04T22:22:36Z
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@knord yes, I get a kick out of this story too! and ironic since a Wiener version of cybernetics > AI would have been SO much better...
(DIR) Post #Axsc7lufU9zryile3U by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-09-04T21:44:59Z
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oh stop it, C.P. Snow, with your charming, slightly self-deprecating critique of "computer gadgets" from 1964!
(DIR) Post #AzB05AjXddHrHS8CRc by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-10-13T17:23:12Z
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maybe just evidence of how perversely singleminded I can be: if I can manage not to have ever used Uber over the last 15 years, and so far not used AI once (to my knowledge), then we collectively can also just not use AI. nothing is inevitable. #ai
(DIR) Post #AzsCtEuS2Jln5YIztA by loriemerson@post.lurk.org
2025-11-03T15:56:41Z
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signed: "An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education" #ai https://openletter.earth/an-open-letter-from-educators-who-refuse-the-call-to-adopt-genai-in-education-cb4aee75