Resurfacing online to mention: my book on the history of Speech Rec, NLP, and data-driven AI is coming out in a couple of weeks! Just got my author's copy from @uchicagopress.bsky.social and it finally feels real! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Divination Engines

A revealing and surprising origin story, showing how attempts to render human speech and language computable led from the era of big data to today’s AI. Since the advent of computers, society has fant...

press.uchicago.edu

So nice to be back among the @sigcisconf.bsky.social community, especially now that I can just enjoy the panels without having to be responsible for anything. Thanks to the organizing committee for putting together a fantastic stand-alone event this year!

💾 SIGCIS Conference@sigcisconf.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Submissions for our upcoming hybrid conference, SIGCIS 2026: Known Error (June 17-18, Berkeley, CA) are due 2/16. Dwai Banerjee is our keynote speaker. See the full CFP here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

"A living visual archive on cybernetics in the expanded field. Browse and contribute images of all kinds: diagrams, schematics, photos, graphic elements, and other visual fragments."

Cybernetics Image Library

A living visual archive on cybernetics in the expanded field.

cyberneticsimagelibrary.dev

It's already well-known in CS, but for those unfamiliar in humanities/social sciences doing historical/social critique of speech processing, NLP, and AI/ML, Dan and Jim's textbook + site is an incredible (and accessible) resource for gaining a foundational understanding of key techniques.

Dan Jurafsky@jurafsky.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Now that school is starting for lots of folks, it's time for a new release of Speech and Language Processing! Jim and I added all sorts of material for the August 2025 release! With slides to match! Check it out here: web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/sl...

I am increasingly convinced that the problem is not so much that people don't seem to understand how computers work than it is that they seem to have forgotten what *language* does.

Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · last yr.

In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.

See downthread re: v. cool forthcoming special issue on algorithms+occult, but as a tangent: is there a name for visual genre of merging vaguely late-antiquity/early-modern imagery w/digital/electronic iconography? Like sacred geometry+circuit schematic vibes. If not, can I propose glitch esoterica?

Tamara Kneese@tamigraph.bsky.social · last yr.

Etsy witches = a form of occult gig work. It’s precarity all the way down, both for the young people who are using witchcraft to help them find job and for the witches who are using a platform like Etsy to sell their services

So . . . what do we think is going to happen when they eventually incorporate all that text that people have been scraping from *fanfiction archives* into these datasets?

lauren@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · last yr.

"SCPs that got hoovered up and regurgitated by chatbots end up giving tech executives schizophrenia" is perhaps fittingly a very SCP thing to happen

the curse of enjoying the early internet is having to watch all its silly little aspects get churned up and spat out in its final form as a civilization-eating demogorgon

I would say that only 95% of my writing problems are, in fact, thinking problems. The remaining 5% are the result of my doomed attempts to turn my point into a pun.

Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · last yr.

This definitely goes for writing history. “Why is this paragraph so contorted and hard to phrase?” 1 day later: “oh, it’s because I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

"to solve DoD use cases"--I've read decades-worth of documentation from NLP-related DoD projects since 1940s & seen proposed use cases from run-of-the-mill mass surveillance to "idk, we try telepathy yet?" I can't think of one for this that isn't just to watch the world burn.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · last yr.

The Department of Defense will begin using Grok, the AI chatbot built by Elon Musk’s start-up xAI, the company announced www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Me, an absolute monster, with curiosity borne from deepest void of late capitalist despair: "what kind of ads were they?"

Nick Seaver@nickseaver.website · last yr.

this is a wild set of options for printing your boarding pass from an airline website

No idea why Mariners are trending since I don't follow baseball and never have, but this 3.5+ hour documentary that @secretbase.bsky.social put out some years ago might be one of my favorite pieces of media of all time. Fully serious. It's this and vol. 3 of Proust. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIgK...

The History of the Seattle Mariners: Supercut Edition

YouTube video by Secret Base

youtube.com

Okay, while I'm here, something sound studies and media tech history folks may find of interest: the Ray Dolby papers were recently processed and are now available for research at Stanford's Silicon Valley Archives. A bunch of stuff has been digitized too: exhibits.stanford.edu/dolby

Wow, I couldn't even remember to put a link to the actual @sigcisconf.bsky.social account in my repost. It's social media amateur hour over here. (Don't worry, I'm not going to be the one actually running the SIGCIS bsky account.)

xiaochang@xiaochang.bsky.social · last yr.

I should probably be making my own "go follow the new SIGCIS account" post, but instead I'm just going to repost Laine's:

Reminder that the extended deadline for SIGCIS proposals is tomorrow 7/14! We're on our all-virtual rotation this year, which means registration will be Pay-What-You-Can and you don't have to travel to Luxembourg.

💾 SIGCIS Conference@sigcisconf.bsky.social · last yr.

Deadline EXTENDED to Mon, 7/14! SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge with keynote speaker Lily Geismer. Find more details and full CFP here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I should probably be making my own "go follow the new SIGCIS account" post, but instead I'm just going to repost Laine's:

Laine Nooney @ 🔥🗑️🔥@lainenooney.bsky.social · last yr.

also, SIGCIS (the special interest group in computing, information, and society AKA the computer history people) finally got over here on Bluesky can we give @sigcisconf.bsky.social a big welcome and an even bigger follow????

Anyway, it's our fundraising season, pls donate to ROMchip if you like our rizz donate.romchip.org

ROMCHIP FUNDRAISER

ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories is fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499).

donate.romchip.org

Laine Nooney @ 🔥🗑️🔥@lainenooney.bsky.social · 2y ago

Game librarian @philsalv.bsky.social had PowerPoint "copilot" make a ROMchip slide deck because he is trying to send me to an early grave

Yeah I need way more money than anyone ever got before. I need it because my shit is difficult right now. But it's important in ways even I haven't been able to work out. OpenAI is a serious business. Help me. Please help me please my serious company is so good. Help me www.cnbc.com/2024/12/27/o...

File under: tech company execs eventually "innovate" themselves into an slightly worse version of the very thing they sought to disrupt. This is just how a lot of long-running procedural shows on network tv worked.

Lupita Nihongo@otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 2y ago

ENOUGH 🤬🤬🤬

2024 is absolutely nailing it: "Air Canada essentially argued that 'the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions,' a court order said." Impeccable, no notes. 🙃 arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

UPDATED DEADLINE for submissions for SIGCIS Conference 2024 (July 14th in Viña del Mar, Chile) by Monday, February 12th. Please find the CfP on the SIGCIS conference website meetings.sigcis.org.

I first set up my twitter account 15 years ago, so I truly have no recollection of how I'm supposed to do this.