Notices by Karsten Schmidt (toxi@mastodon.thi.ng)

Some thoughts about current state/trajectory of tech/software/ethics:

For ~30 years, I've been using, building and sharing open tools around algorithmic, generative & evolutionary design techniques, procedural generation, genetic algorithms/programming, machine learning... The incentives and potentials I saw (and still see!) in these areas/approaches are entirely orthogonal to what is called "generative AI" these days (saving that for a future post) and more importantly contrary to _how_ that tech is being used...

Like many others, I'm desperately trying to keep a positive & balanced mind (also in terms of my own practice as an indie developer/researcher & artist), but I think it says a lot (in multiple ways) about the current state of tech/software/ethics, if the people/voices most critical and outspoken about the current/recent trajectories & decisions are (yet again[1]) the actual practitioners/experts of the field, often with decades of experiences... At the very least the issues raised should give _some_ pause to people in politics/policy, academia/education, media and finance, i.e. all groups with much more direct control & responsibility, yet which are relatively silent in terms of critical voices/reflections and instead largely keep boosting and jumping on the AI hype train... I think I understand (though not agree with) many (self-serving) drivers of this "ignorance", but I've never seen this level of widespread _uncritical_ technology adoption before in my life, especially the bewildering amount of willful ignorance of people who are (or should be) more informed, their active downplaying and rationalisations of multiple glaring systematic train wrecks (aka "jackpot") coming our way (are already here!), incl. climate, water, human rights violations, disinformation, politics/democracy, surveillance, unemployment, health/healthcare etc., and on a different level, pretty important issues like loss of "personal computing", of access (and accessibility!) and individual control of computing & information resources — all of which are massively accelerated by this in(s)ane drive for AI-generated profits...

What's the point of the above named societal institutions if none of them actually want to critically engage with these developments, before their window of opportunity closes?

(Sorry in advance, just a braindump, not gonna be able to reply to comments in the next few days...)

[1] Everyone Is a Luddite Now: https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-is-a-luddite-now/

Rocky path, beautiful & rewarding.

No December colors, but taken on our last hike of the year yesterday @ Pürschling south wall...

#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Photography #Hiking #Alps #Colors

@laubblaeser Pretty bad chromatic aberration in the upper part, but not really sure why (lens is a Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 and usually only has occasional issues in the far corners). But also not a fan of editing too much, but in hindsight maybe should have... 😇

No fishing.

#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #WinterWonderland #Lake

Just donated $100 to the amazing Organic Maps project: Trackerless, fully offline, OSM based, open source mapping for Android/iOS. Great UX & routing, super fast & good coverage even of hiking paths, elevation lines & public transport layers...

From their website: "Organic Maps is one of a few applications nowadays that supports 100% of features without an active Internet connection. Install Organic Maps, download maps, throw away your SIM card (by the way, your operator constantly tracks you), and go for a weeklong trip on a single battery charge without any byte sent to the network."

https://organicmaps.app/

#OpenSource #OpenStreetMaps #Mapping #Hiking #Privacy