Notes

Collected bits and pieces I’ve noticed this month.

If you're into weird, human-created dystopias, check out this German documentary (with English subtitles) on the Kowloon Walled City.

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I've not been super bursting with excitement about the recent developments in AI be it chatbots or image generators – hot takes are not my thing. I'm also not posting this as a standalone piece, I don't think I know enough about the subject. But recent news on the Bing chatbot getting feisty, and this Daring Fireball piece have me less dismissive and more curious (and a bit more concerned as well).

People using ChatGPT to write school essays doesn't mean the bot is smart, it means the essays are easy to write for anyone who can grok the formula. The image generators, while quite fun, are likewise mostly producing results that are like cheap counterfeit goods – they look good in the lookbook, but on closer inspection, the seams are just plain bad. This AI stuff is not yet as smart as some think it is, which is another way of saying it's not as dumb anymore as some others think it is – they are not super good or clever, but maybe neither are we. Maybe we think we're more exceptional than we really are.

They are better and faster at producing mediocre work than we are, and these are the jobs it takes over first. This doesn't sound very tragic, but mediocre may be all anyone cares for and there will be less and less need for good quality and craftsmanship.

Om Malik touches on the subject in his Letter from Om newsletter and links to some good things to check out if you're so inclined.

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Cabel Sasser:

"Whatever you’re working on right now, whatever it might be, I ask: try to leave a little space for a courtyard."

(via Daring Fireball)

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Dave Karpf compiled a list of Wired articles from 1993 to 2017 – three articles per year that capture the vibe in Silicon Valley from the dotcom boom all the way to the hangover.

"If you’re curious about the way the “digital revolution” was contemporaneously portrayed over the past quarter-century, think of this as the audio-guide that you could take through a self-curated museum tour."

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Car brain – the tendency to not apply our normal values when it comes to driving-related issues and bad behavior, giving it more leeway.

“Not only do people do what the world makes easy, but because it feels easy, people conclude that it’s right,” Walker said.

I love New York and I love colorised old photos. Here's one plus the other.

Assorted bits and pieces I've noticed this month.

Lux, the makers of the excellent iPhone camera app Halide, have penned a long piece on the camera module of the iPhone 13 and where (phone) photography is headed, with lots of pictures, too. Highly recommended reading if you too are thinking about the future of cameras.
via pixel envy

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Lisa Whittington-Hill likes biographies and memoirs and, having read a bunch of them, noticed that they tend to be gender-biased – all the dirty, spicy, private details are expected from women, at the same time, men can pretty much write about whatever.

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The Wire is cool, but some of the prototypes for the detectives might have been kinda bad cops in reality.

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Back, way way back, phones, the kind that are for making calls only were the electronic service. Hacking these telecom systems, be it with the help of electronics or social engineering, or both was called phreaking. This The Verge story is about one of the best phreakers of her time who suddenly pulled the disappearing act.

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While it undoubtedly helped spread some great ideas and inspired people with stories of human tenacity, the TED talk has also been rightfully mocked for being blind to its own hubris. Oscar Schwartz for the Drift mag on the history and legacy of the conference with notable moments, both good and bad.

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Held in the notorious Silivri prison, 90 kilometers from Istanbul, for the past six years, Fevzi Yazıcı designed a unique typeface. He drew it with a pencil in his dimly lit solitary-confinement cell and named it “Firdevs,” for his wife. - "Letters from a Turkish prison"
via Jeffrey Zeldman

Jeffrey Zeldman on boring, ignorable design (and writing):

The lead client blinked, cleared his throat, and finally said, in a thick Irish brogue:
“I’m afraid it’s far too clever for our needs. It calls too much attention to itself on the page,” he explained—as if getting a distracted newspaper reader to notice his company’s message was a bad thing.
The lead client asked us to set “Ireland $399” in bold type, stick a shamrock in one of the 9s, and call it a day.
Fear of getting noticed is a terrible thing. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy.