"When you expand the boundary of the system to include the people building and deploying it, the case becomes much less science fiction and more like incompetence." @eryk.bsky.social mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-f...
lmsacasas.bsky.social
@lmsacasas.bsky.social
Author of The Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. theconvivialsociety.substack.com
This morning @aworkinglibrary.com shared this excerpt from Le Guin and offered a brief but bracing reflection drawing an apt parallel to our media environment. Read it here: aworkinglibrary.com/writing/hung...
The arc of AI bends toward demoralization.
Erin Kissane@kissane.myatproto.social · last mo.Anyway I think the LLMs are giving people acedia, for real
So honored by the @bulawreview.bsky.social symposium on my book 🥹 www.bu.edu/bulawreview/... Thank you to all the great participants and editors!
Spring 2026 Book Symposium – Ryan Calo’s Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach | Law Review
bu.edu
I've started to collect metaphors for how we think about AI. I'm particularly struck by @lmsacasas.bsky.social's reframing of the common "tool" metaphor: "Your AI is not a tool. It is an environment, and you are in it." theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/your-ai-is...
Your AI Is Not a Tool
The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
Inclined to agree with this! Naturally so, because much of my thinking has been shaped by post-phenomenology and media ecology (which I realize is not quite the same as ecological psychology).
Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 2mo agoThere are so many questions that an ecologico-phenomenological (phenomecological?) perspective could approach productively. What, for example, do the affordances of LLM-based AI do to human perception?
I've been starting conversations about AI by saying "AI is not one thing." More recently I've made the case that @emilymbender.bsky.social makes here. As Leo Marx said of "technology," "AI" is a "hazardous concept." It makes it impossible to get a grip on the thing you're tying to think about.
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 2mo agoSo what is the best way out of that uncomfortable, untenable space? I think one key step is disaggregating the (non-coherent) set of technologies sold as "AI". If you don't call the stuff you work with "AI", you aren't saddled with trying to defend any of the rest of it. >>
No, technology is not neutral, and calling AI and other technological contrivances “tools” obscures proper understanding of their role & impact. I encourage everyone to read @lmsacasas.bsky.social. Not just this, but everything he writes…but also THIS!
Your AI Is Not a Tool
The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5
open.substack.com
Characteristically perceptive and thought-provoking reflection from @lmsacasas.bsky.social on the problem with thinking of AI as a mere tool as opposed to an environment. open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...
Your AI Is Not a Tool
The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5
open.substack.com
One way of framing AI is as a denial-of-service attack on the human psyche.
An updated AI version of the injunction by @lmsacasas.bsky.social to not be just a "relay in a network" thefrailestthing.com/2013/06/27/d...
Matthew J Kuiper@matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 2mo ago“In a preliminary MIT Media Lab study, 83% of participants who wrote essays using ChatGPT couldn’t quote a single sentence from what they’d submitted moments earlier. “It passed from the computer screen onto the homework assignment without ever entering their brain,” So said.”
A subset of the larger myth of technological inevitability, or what I used to call a Borg complex. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...
Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage
The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
Charlie Warzel@cwarzel.bsky.social · 3mo agoFOMO isn't a revolutionary strategy but it's become so core to tech marketing and really replaced 'We made this thing and it's undeniably rad/good/new.' It's applied across product categories (crypto, metaverse, AI, pivots to video) & i'd argue it's one (of many) reasons ppl don't trust the ai hype
Enjoyed this conversation on Illich, conviviality, and more with Sam Pressler at Connective Tissue. open.substack.com/pub/connecti...
Achieving independence for the sake of mutual interdependence
A Q&A with L.M. Sacasas, author of "The Convivial Society" newsletter
open.substack.com
Manufactured Inevitability is such a fitting term from @lmsacasas.bsky.social for the push for generative AI. It could describe every Axios AM or LinkedIn influencer in my feed
Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage
The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3
open.substack.com
This is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote about "manufactured inevitability." theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...
Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage
The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 8mo agoA copilot whether you want it or not.
Joseph Weizenbaum: “The myth of technological ... inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it. But in fact there are actors.” theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...
Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage
The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
Manufactured inevitability. www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-st...
Ohio State announces every student will use AI in class
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Starting this fall, every Ohio State student will be asked to use artificial intelligence. “Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be ‘bilingual’ — fluent in both their m...
yahoo.com
@lmsacasas.bsky.social drawing on Greek mythology to describe how our tech makes us forgetful. This is true in medicine where tech and the reductionism that joins it makes us feel efficient, but draws us away from the heart of the practice. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-waters... #medsky
The Waters of Lethe Flow From Our Digital Streams
The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 2
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
This is quite the paragraph from Hannah Arendt’s acceptance speech for Denmark’s Sonning Prize in 1975.
'Vibes' are the unit of measurement for perception when you've technologically extend your nervous system beyond the body. That's McLuhan in Understanding Media 👇
Just stumbled on this 1990 Publisher's Weekly review listed on the Amazon page for the book that somehow got posted with the editor's notes for revision still tagged on to the end. Sorry to see the Dracula reference get cut!
This is pretty damn close to what I was imagining… a bunch of people recording parts of Leaves of Grass. All public domain. Just beautiful and Old Internet in the sense of vintage, in the sense of better. librivox.org/leaves-of-gr...
LibriVox
LibriVox
librivox.org
"In a time of acute loneliness, the proliferation of AI-generated content seems not unlike an act of pollution, compromising the integrity of the social ecosystem." It was kind of Meta to provide a demonstration of what I just wrote about. open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2y agowhy do we need AI-generated profiles. why
I ended up writing about that little painted cat I found and the contrast it created for me to AI-generated content. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-cat-in...
The Cat in the Tree: Why AI Content Leaves Us Cold
The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 1
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
Taking a walk with my kids today when one of them noticed this charming cat painted where a limb had been cut off an oak and all I could think was that I would take this, and the spirit that inspired it, over every AI-generated image or video I've ever seen.
