(2023-10-19) Hon S16e16 Not Up And To The Right

Dan Hon: s16e16: Not Up and To The Right; Just Deeper, Really; Better Wording Faster; Tools for Remembering; A Centaur for Caring?; Of Course They're Art. 1.1 Not Up and To The Right

something that caught my attention when we were talking about startups and their preoccupation with scaling. I like to say that scaling is considered harmful, which is to say that there are certain types of scaling -- namely the Californian Ideology kind -- that are harmful. (Blitzscaling)

There's other scaling! I though of the phrase scaling through time, which honestly feels like a wanky way of saying persisting or trying hard for a long time. (organic growth)

Which brings to mind Deb Chachra's new book, How Infrastructure Works

1.2 Just Deeper, Really

. or perhaps scaling on another axis. Not through time, not scaling longitudinally, but scaling... through depth? Another (wanky?) way to think about this might be "extending downward/upward through the Simon Wardley Value Chain"; figuring out to what extent vertical integration might be needed for what you're trying to accomplish.

This, because of my recent exposure through my work with Rewiring America and stories about how complex the Big Greening is from just a residential point of view: local permitting and inspection regimes, distribution, installation, incentives, rebates, financing and so on

1.3 Better Wording Faster

Paul Rissen and I were talking about tools for writing. Tools for narratives, and more specifically, interactive narratives. Interactive storytelling. (interactive fiction)

Scripto, which I've written about before I'm sure, and covered by The New Yorker. Scripto, the online scriptwriting service born out of The Colbert Report, and as I understand it the New, And Better Than Final Draft thing for working together quickly.

I wonder about its correlation for writing at speed, not just collaboratively

It feels fortunate that now the WGA have figured out a deal around the use of so-called artificial intelligence (LLM), in that it's used as a tool for writers and not a substitute for writers. How might these automated text processing engines be used for and benefit writers?

As an aside, I had the idea of getting a dump of the Memory Alpha Star Trek wiki, producing embeddings based on that text and using retrieval-augmented generation plus speech-to-text and text-to-speech to essentially... create a version of computer, that would answer questions about the Star Trek universe

What if a room could remember, and you'd only be able to ask questions to the room while in the room?

1.5 Tools for Remembering

It would be interesting if ebooks came with embeddings and you were able to ask questions about them. It would be interesting if ebook readers were able to do retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) on the text of the book you bought.

continuing my conversation about how LLMs and other so-called artificial intelligences can be used by people.

There was this concept of caring and relationship management. When does a tool for maintaining a relationship become skeezy?

Dale Carnegie's techniques in How to Win Friends & Influence People can easily be described as a pattern, a recipe, and these days, as an algorithm. Carnegie has always felt skeezy to me.

Why? Why so icky?

Thinking aloud, it's about intent. And in Carnegie's case, it's about the framing: how to win friends, as if friendship is a competition

There's something here in authenticity and scaling, too.

Flynn told me a story of someone who had all these tactics about dating, one of which included "go and be interested in the things your date is interested in", which just strikes me, again, as inauthentic. Surely you want to be interested in the things you are interested in, and not force it?

We came across this because I was talking about the parts of my work that involve understanding clients better. Understanding their motivations, fears, what would make them successful

So then, the horrible idea: an Eliza for coaching you before a meeting. What is it that you want to achieve? With whom? How can you be effective in your meeting with this person or these people? What do you need to remember? Is this terrible? Is this just an aid or a crutch

Then the point became whether you could be authentic at scale

I start thinking about prosthesis for care. How might we make caring easier? But that's not the answer! Down that route there's a red alarm and a klaxon because that's the techno-solutionist approach

But I would like to think there's a difference in expecting a technology to solve a problem and instead be a tool or an aid.

I'm with Cory Doctorow in believing and being optimistic about technology as a tool for organizing and for amplifying the intent and actions of care, of responsibility.

I also, though, remember something I remember from a book that I read recently: that in many cases, intent doesn't matter. The action or the result does. (outcome)

So: tools better aimed at intent-outcome matches, better aimed at framing. Better aimed at... useful connection? Caring connections? It's here where the Dunbar number, however discredited, is something that feels like it should be right

the context collapse of those relationships

I maintain that the collapse doesn't work, that it's harmful, that sticking everyone in the same feed comes with some pretty bad effects

Like I've written before, these are different spaces. LinkedIn is the drinks at the conference. It is a space with a lot of people, networking. It is a different space. Instagram is a different space

It's here that Flynn introduced me to the concept of intimacy gradients in architecture

The porch is different than the foyer is different than the living room is different than the dining room

*what is Facebook for? Is it supposed to collect friends? Is it supposed to maintain relationships?

This is also why I keep coming back to Facebook Groups, as one of those distinct features of Facebook that actually implements different boundaries*

So what does that make the feed? Your own weird living room? A sort of new place? A new place where you kind of have control, but not really, because you've been guided toward adding as many people as possible?

What space does this map on to? Is it the living room that also has an area for mail? For spam?

the swing of the pendulum back to (slightly) smaller, more specific spaces, more context-driven spaces (social warrens)

On the one hand, I get the utility. I get that to save time, a unified inbox is useful. I get that having one place to deal with things is useful, but also the lack of interop means you don't have a choice. You can't choose the places into which you bring these relationships or this information.