Notices by Adam Greenfield (adamgreenfield@social.coop), page 5

@ChristineMalec That is a super-interesting question. I would say that it is *not* always obvious, which is why such images can cause such social havoc – think of deepfake pornography, or faked images of politicians doing something problematic – but that the high-fidelity ones tend to be generated by the paid, “pro” versions of the software. What we tend to see as post illustrations, on the other hand, do bear certain consistent telltales.

I am curious about the impact of so-called “AI” on the labor market for illustrators, specifically, as I think that’s a really useful canary. I can’t find anything good, though – just buzzwordy, speculative noise from content farms or LinkedIn. Can anyone point me at solid, empirical work on this?

Sunday! And that means it’s time for this week’s #Lifehouse thread. Last week we talked about the #pragma; this week I want to cover something that I see as at least as important to the idea of a functioning Lifehouse network or federation, which is the distinction between formal openness and a quality I think of as “invitationality.”

For me, the distinction arises out of my very first moments of involvement with the Occupy Sandy #mutualaid effort, in the last days of October 2012. My partner & I – wanting to volunteer to do recovery work in *some* capacity, having been outright rejected by the Red Cross, & having rocked up at the 520 Clinton distribution hub with little more than desire & energy – were immediately greeted & welcomed as we approached, in a way that would put most customer service-oriented businesses to shame.

It was made clear to us very quickly that, if we could but agree to a few basic principles of mutual respect, our efforts would be welcome in Occupy Sandy, and more than welcome. Whatever it was that we might have to offer would be put to use. We would be able to “plug in” to what was already an impressively large and sophisticated effort, but as whole human beings as much as people with an inventory of skills and capacities. It was electrifying.

But this was far from the only way this sprawling disaster relief and recovery effort made space for people as whole human beings. This quality was also, and every bit as importantly, expressed at the other end of the process, in interactions with the individuals, families and communities that had been hit hardest by the storm and were in most acute need of relief. The way Occupy Sandy approached this stood in the sharpest contrast with the way top-down relief agencies went about doing so.

I’ve never thought there was anything particularly distinctive about having spent time in Zuccotti Park during the original Occupy Wall Street encampment: there must have been 100,000 or more who did, many (and maybe this is you!) for much longer and with much greater depth of involvement than my partner and I got to. But the further downstream we get, as those who weren’t there begin to speak of it as a historical event, I’ve started to realize how amazing it is that I can speak to it directly.

@woodbark Obviously I think you have the right answer, but that’s one hell of a depressing question.

@derek PS reading in a nice warm tub and getting yr drank on while doing so is the only evidence for a merciful and benevolent god i’m willing to accept.

@maria Wait, what are you hearing?

Can we not?

@lanodan @Arcana Looks like they could use some help, too. : . ( https://presences-editions.me/

@lanodan @Arcana “Anti-“ is a bit strong. Let’s just say it makes me profoundly sad, especially when I see a couple at a restaurant looking at their phones for any sustained amount of time instead of one another.

@Arcana @lanodan For many purposes, it is a class of interactions with sufficiently common characteristics that not every instance of that class needs to be investigated on its own merits. And indeed I have been giving this matter *sustained* consideration – in four books and a quarter-century of thought.

@Arcana @lanodan (I see you’re a native French speaker – my “Radical Technologies,” in which I consider many of these questions in depth, ought to be out in French translation literally any day now, courtesy of the good folks at Présence(s) editions.)

@Arcana @lanodan I am (all too) happy to go into the reasons why, in literally pages of detail, but for the purposes of this conversation I think it’s sufficient to say that a mediating visor is not in any way a neutral artifact, and conveys a strong implicit statement that both the space itself and other human and nonhuman occupants of that space are less important and less worthwhile than whatever occupies the UI.

@lanodan @Arcana My considered belief is that it is exceedingly unlikely for a user of a mediation device like this to be respectful or considerate of other users of a shared space.

@Arcana Well, let me clarify that for me, “direct action” may mean something like asking a user to leave a restaurant, place of business or other shared space. For some, it might include physical confrontation – and though I’d never advocate that, by the same token I hesitate to say that it wouldn’t ever be justified, in cases of e.g. surreptitious image capture.

@Arcana For me the bottom line is that it obliterates the possibility of being emotionally present for the others around you, and/therefore the kind of respectful, face-to-face encounter, as rough equals, that my preferred flavor of politics is built on.

@Arcana I suggest starting with the AR/VR chapter of my 2017 “Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life,” but there are strongly relevant bits in “Against the Smart City” (2013), “Urban Computing and its Discontents” (2007) and “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing” (2006), in the latter particularly the sections on ethical development of interfaces meant to be used in public space.