Your local coffee shop probably has AI brain
We can't make meaning from everything in the universe
don't read gabestein.com
Critical and independent thought about media, technology, politics, and society. My newsletter, personal blog, and archive.
Latest posts
Messaging Reform
The emerging democratic reform agenda is great to see, and lacking the critical component that could make it the start of a new American politics
Welcome to the age of industrial code
An industry of artisans tries to brute force its way into running factories
Plugging back out
Reclaiming agency in our mediatized world requires giving some up
Monday: why we need a new "media theory" for open science
Join me Monday at 12:30pm Eastern for a virtual panel on how open academic publishing can help rebuild trust in research
Your phone or your freedom?
Logging off as resistance
Substack is probably not going to solve academic publishing
But there are other ways platforms committed to rationality can help, if they’re willing to work with open science activists
I am going to try to write more (and I need your help)
Plus: new threads on "vibe productivity," trust in open science, and updating our cognitive models of bureaucracy for authoritarian times
Big tech and Trumpism share the same ideology
It's time for tech workers to opt out and build a new industry
The future of generative AI is using it less
The boring business problem at the heart of the generative AI bubble
You simply cannot trust these people (and should stop using their products)
It's scary that Facebook's latest privacy scandal has barely broken through
Has anyone actually read the generative AI productivity studies?
They really don't match the headlines
Laughing to the bank
Why it's good for us to admit that yesterday was deeply funny.
Soft(ware) power
A coup looks different in a world where software is power.
Greenland Standard Time
Wherein we oscillate between personal time zone choices, political silliness, and the lengths people went to entertain themselves when history ended.