Notices by Robert W. Gehl (rwg@aoir.social)

Pleased to announce that my book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media, is now available online, and will be out in print in a couple weeks!
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
That site has more stuff, too -- links to related articles, some notes about how I researched it, and a contact form in case you want to talk about the fediverse with me! (I'd be happy to chat with journalists about it!)
#academicChatter #bookstodon #fediverse #mastodon

@josephcox It's an internet of plagiarists and clickbaiters anymore

can we have a new internet, please?

@skinnylatte my. god.

this is pretty damned cool!

Hey, fellow media researchers!

I'm looking for a way to search through movie scripts for particular phrases. I'm curious about when certain phrases became popular enough to appear in movies. So I'm not looking for a quote from specific movies -- rather I want to search across many scripts, ideally as far back in time as possible.

Anyone know of any databases like this?

Boosts appreciated!

#academicChatter #film #media #research

In British English, apparently it's spelled "No Tyrants."

Years ago I almost entirely cut Google out of my professional (and personal) life: https://fossacademic.tech/2021/07/03/DeGoogleSearch.html

The exception I can't get away from is Google Scholar, which has been quite useful and really has not changed much in the past few decades.

But lately I've been seeing really shitty results from it. For example, it returns items that don't have the keywords, or items that are nowhere near the date range I set.

Is Google Scholar now enshittified by AI? Something else?

#academicChatter

I talked to @404mediaco about generative AI's impact on teaching. Apparently I wasn't alone... not by a long shot. @jasonkoebler got a ton of responses about this topic and ran many of them here:

https://www.404media.co/teachers-are-not-ok-ai-chatgpt/

While it's distressing to read all of them, it's good to see I'm not alone.

#generativeAI #higherEducation #teaching #academicChatter

Wolfgang Messner, writing in @TheConversationUS on how generative AI could homogenize culture:
"The danger is not that AI will fail us, but that people will accept the mediocrity of its outputs as the norm. When everything is fast, frictionless and “good enough,” there’s the risk of losing the depth, nuance and intellectual richness that define exceptional human work."
https://theconversation.com/is-ai-sparking-a-cognitive-revolution-that-will-lead-to-mediocrity-and-conformity-256940

@liaizon @bhaugen @youronlyone I've written a bit here and there, but agreed: the history of OStatus/diaspora federated social media itself is a rich tapestry that's very hard to present.

@adrishaw IJOC is pretty old, right? First Monday?

@adrishaw Wow, I thought IJOC was older!

Good call on looking at the bibs of First Monday articles.

Please do post what you find! This is really intriguing.

@adrishaw that website is straight outta the 90s!

every time you see a slug, you gotta do a shot

oh, wait, don't do that

#monsterdon

I do believe I will Slugs-it-up tonight

#monsterdon

Will people keep using Twitter, even after Musk’s takeover – even after he changed its name to “X”? Is this time different? As of this writing, that remains an open question. One thing distinguishes the 2022 Twitter wave from previous waves of discontent, however: there is a viable alternative available in Mastodon and the fediverse....

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/move-slowly-and-build-bridges-9780197776681?cc=ca&lang=en&

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

One of my favorite genres of fedi posts is the @cwebber plaintive plea for people to explain things to her, things that she is in the top 0.001% of experts in.

Can someone explain to me why I find those posts so hilarious? 😆

Is the entire NYSE comprised of meme stocks now?

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:

It’s time, Balkan and the Small Tech Foundation argue, to degrow things like corporate social media. Degrowth is a way of thinking that counters years of capitalist fantasies of infinite growth....

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

I keep hearing people call legitimate concerns about LLMs/generative AI a "moral panic."

I really hope folks stop using that framing. This is not the same as parents getting freaked out about Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s. This is a moment when huge, for-profit interests are seeking to exploit the creativity of writers, artists, and anyone else who creates. It's completely legitimate to express concerns. It's not a moment of "Won't someone PLEASE think about the children!?!".

@cwebber yes! It's all about how Mastodon invented ActivityPub! 😆