iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 1h

The Black School is opening its dedicated space in New Orleans: Designed by LOT-EK, "the Schoolhouse is a contemporary adaptation of the Washington Rosenwald Schools." theblack.school/house/

theblack.networkforgood.com

Schoolhouse Grand Opening + 10 Year Anniversary

We did it, y’all. Come celebrate with us!

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 7h

Our language has been completely warped by Big Tech's algorithms, from a generation that's grown up saying "unalive", to the way everyone's censored themselves talking about the Cornell rapists. It's time to fight back against billionaire control of free speech. www.anildash.com/2026/10/06/k...

anildash.com

We are going to kill “unalive” - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 2h

"Collective Futures is a six-week, citywide project activating Philadelphia’s network of artist-run spaces, DIY venues, and community-based initiatives... The project highlights how artists come together to build shared platforms, experiment with new forms, and sustain creative communities."

collectivefutures.info

Collective Futures - Philadelphia

Philadelphia

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 4h

(Side note: let's not publish this stuff in SPRINGER journals.)

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 4h

"Participation is stratified along traditional socioeconomic lines, with older adults, women, individuals w/ lower education... less likely to engage in AI prgms... Constructively skeptical citizens harboring concrete concerns about AI demonstrate a higher propensity for active engagement."

link.springer.com

Who Participates in AI Programs at Public Libraries? Exploring Demographic and Attitudinal Factors

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 8h

Hot news for the sea lion in my comments bothering everyone about how training data is fair use www.courthousenews.com/ai-training-...

courthousenews.com

AI training of copyrighted material not fair use: Third Circuit

Using someone else's "creative spark" to start a competing business runs afoul of copyright law, the panel found.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 6h

Absolutely!! These differential/disrespectful protocols were egregious at my previous institution. Certain tiers of librarians weren’t allowed to contact faculty. They could only respond if contacted by a superior.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 6h

Thanks, Jenna :) I know this is all a part the institutional hierarchy 🙄

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 7h

It says so much about the academy — esp the parts I don’t miss! :)

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 8h

This is why I love tchg in public libraries. Of course surveillance creeps in thru security apparatae + digital vendors’ user tracking, but the proprietors of these spaces are generally committed to autonomy + privacy. They’re places of non-compulsory, intergenerational, non-extractive learning.

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

A consistently pernicious framing of student experience is that they are not in the “real world” yet, as if the debt they’re accruing and incessant punitive surveillance of their labor and speech isn’t entirely of a piece with the broader cultural moment.

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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

So much of the "quit wasting time and money on humanities programs" comes from dudes with humanities degrees from the Ivies. They get to have a broad, liberal, meaningful education, but it's narrow, lifeless career prep for the rest of y'all.

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 05/10/2026

This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead

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Dennis Hogan @dennismhogan.bsky.social · 21h

NEW ENGLAND REVIEW OF BOATS ISSUE 1 will be here before you haul your boat out of the water for the winter (probably)

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 22h

The approved 2026 Chicago Public Library (CPL) total budget request is $169,257,813, which includes an operating budget of $103,966,346. [Just thought I would leave this here]

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Max Granger @maxgranger.info · 05/10/2026

They cut down the "grandmother" tree.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 16h

....all the 60s and 70s programs: Harlem School for the Arts, Teachers & Writers, the NEA's Artists-in-Schools program

youtube.com

Constructing Black Cultural Institutions during the 60’s Civil Rights Movement

YouTube video by ArtStudentsLeagueNY

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 16h

This week in Public Study everyone's sharing a case study of an alternative school or learning group — historical or contemporary — that reflects their interests + expertise. Our public school librarian participant asked me about examples of kids' art study; it was 🤗 to pull tgthr a list incldng...

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 18h

Thank you 🙏 I’m in the clear now :)

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 19h

How cool! The whole building is a marvel.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 19h

I have an older friend who lives at the National Arts Club. It’s always such a delight to see that Donald MacDonald skylight dome ☺️

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 05/10/2026

Holy shit.

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Lula (president of Brazil) “asked the court to investigate possible support from the Rockbridge Network, a [Peter Thiel-backed] conservative U.S. donor network co-founded by…JD Vance. It said a political organizer tied to the group works at Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign headquarters...” 10/4/26 …1/

courthousenews.com

Lula seeks probe into possible US election interference

Lula’s coalition asked Brazil’s top electoral court to investigate actions benefiting Flávio Bolsonaro, while the Workers’ Party sought a Federal Police inquiry from the Supreme Court.

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Feena van @feenavan2099.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Before Stonehenge was raised, before Egypts first pyramid broke ground,before the Nazca people drew their famous lines across the Peruvian desert,someone in what is now southern Arizona shaped a 272-foot fish into the earth On April 23,2026,"a border-wall contractor drove heavy equipment across it"

gadgetreview.com

Trump's Border Wall Construction Destroys 6,500-Year-Old Arizona Geoglyph – Older Than Stonehenge

Arizona's 6,500-year-old Las Playas Intaglio, the oldest dated geoglyph in the Americas, was irreparably damaged by border wall construction in April 2026.

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 05/10/2026

It’s not just one billionaire. It’s a full-blown cult of billionaires who believe dictatorship should replace democracy—and that technology (crypto and AI) will make this inevitable. They say it loud. Some guy just wrote a book about it (That guy is me!) www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...

simonandschuster.com

The Nerd Reich

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This transfixing debut from journalist Durán investigates the antidemocratic ideologies espoused by tech billionaires ...

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Micah @rincewind.run · 05/10/2026

the reason these people need to be stripped of almost all of their money is so that they stop thinking that it gives them the right to nominate themselves for the "benevolent dictator" position

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Bilge Yesil @bilgeyesil.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

My department has a new opening in Cinema Studies! Please spread the word. cuny.jobs/staten-islan...

cuny.jobs

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Erin Okuno @thiserin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Librarians are defenders of democracy. We’re defenders of the freedom to read. We’re protectors of patron privacy. Libraries are one of the few places in this surveillance economy that are not trying to collect and sell your data." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

Forget the Shushing. Librarians Have a Whole Lot to Say. (Gift Article)

We asked dozens of them about America’s libraries — what they provide, what they need to survive. Here’s what they told us.

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dpr-barcelona @dpr-barcelona.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

We do love Library Stack, please listen to Shannon and tell your university or local library to look and suscribe. And if you like, we also have some of our titles on LS, here you can see them: 📚 www.librarystack.org/publisher/dp...

librarystack.org

PUBLISHER: DPR-BARCELONA | LIBRARYSTACK

Browse PUBLISHER: DPR-BARCELONA on LIBRARYSTACK.

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Dorothy Berry @dorothyjberry.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I'll never understand how "a lot of mostly/potentially/probably incorrect metadata is better for digital discovery than accurate but sparse metadata" became a popular idea than "we will put things online more slowly, but we will do it with accuracy"

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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Hot take: I don't think social media made people dumber. We've been dumb this whole time. It's just that you used to have to have a job that people sent their dumb letters to, to notice. This made "Engaging with fools" an occupational hazard rather than the 24/7 experience it is presently.

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Chuck Wendig @chuckwendig.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

“GOTTA LEARN AI OR BE LEFT BEHIND.” Good. Fuck off! Leave me behind! Enjoy your artbarf rapture, your janky Temu future. I’ll be back here looking at real birds and writing weird, also real, books.

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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

As I’ve asked many times now, what constituencies does a university president represent? Because too often, the answer seems to not include anyone who works or studies at the university, and that seems like a problem.

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

That this is *not* the trust that has been broken astounds me. I gave feedback earlier this year on some restoring trust projects. I mentioned Cornell's president hitting a student and alum with apparently little regret as the type of damage these projects need to care about. Elite impunity matters.

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Best part of this muddled article by one of Bloomberg's money guys is that two of the charts make a compelling case that knee-jerk opposition to AI is wholly justified because technological progress doesn't increase productivity, it just enables greater income extraction by capital. Oops!

Productivity Growth Has Been Stuck Below Its Postwar Pace for 50 Years

Workers’ Slice Shrinks, Profits’ Slice Grows

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Speaking of libraries: with ever-greater need for independent means of publishing unorthodox ideas, and for libraries to interrogate the political-economics of their vendor contracts, I hope libraries (esp academic + museum libs!) are aware of — and can partner with — small shops like LibraryStack

librarystack.org

LIBRARYSTACK

Art & Culture Digital Lending Library

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Yes, I'm lucky to work for such an institution :)

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ian says DC statehood now @wareian.com · 01/10/2026

actually one more thing. i spend a lot of time moving between the library/information & museum/art ecosystems. that's generally the divide btwn work & non-work for me. that divide has never felt bigger than the library responses to this question as compared to de rigueur art/museum world $ amounts.

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Philip Eil @phileil.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Hell yes, Cranston Public Library! 🤩 Full article: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Librarians are defenders of democracy. We’re defenders of the freedom to read. We’re protectors of patron privacy. Libraries are one of the few places in this surveillance economy that are not trying to collect and sell your data to come and use our facilities. And I find, increasingly, that librarians have to be advocates for our communities.
Ed Garcia, Cranston, R.I.
Cranston Public Library

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

👆 This thoughtful statement is of course by the brilliant @edrabinski.bsky.social

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jenna newman phd @jennanewman.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

“What do you wish people knew about the everyday running of your library?”

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"We serve everybody. Policymakers can afford to skip the library [+ don't think abt what] other ppl are doing inside: getting respite from the 🥵 or 🥶, using the 🚽, occupying their kid for a half-hr, applying for a job, resting. It’s 🌏-making work + the people that we make those worlds for matter."

nytimes.com

Forget the Shushing. Librarians Have a Whole Lot to Say.

We asked dozens of them about America’s libraries — what they provide, what they need to survive. Here’s what they told us.

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