iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Picked a great day to re-read "The Machine Stops."

lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

"When you expand the boundary of the system to include the people building and deploying it, the case becomes much less science fiction and more like incompetence." @eryk.bsky.social mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-f...

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

This morning @aworkinglibrary.com shared this excerpt from Le Guin and offered a brief but bracing reflection drawing an apt parallel to our media environment. Read it here: aworkinglibrary.com/writing/hung...

“Can you find food for us?” she asked, rather vaguely and timidly.
“Hunting takes time, and weapons.”
“I meant, with, you know, spells.”
“I can call a rabbit,” he said, poking the fire with a twisted stick of juniper. “The rabbits are coming out of their holes all around us, now. Evening’s their time. I could call one by name, and he’d come. But would you catch and skin and broil a rabbit that you’d called to you thus? Perhaps if you were starving. But it would be a breaking of trust, I think.”
“Yes. I thought, perhaps you could just…”
“Summon up a supper,” he said. “Oh, I could. On golden plates, if you like. But that’s illusion, and when you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before.”

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The arc of AI bends toward demoralization.

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Ryan Calo @rcalo.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

So honored by the @bulawreview.bsky.social symposium on my book 🥹 www.bu.edu/bulawreview/... Thank you to all the great participants and editors!

bu.edu

Spring 2026 Book Symposium – Ryan Calo’s Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach | Law Review

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Mark Sample @samplereality.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I've started to collect metaphors for how we think about AI. I'm particularly struck by @lmsacasas.bsky.social's reframing of the common "tool" metaphor: "Your AI is not a tool. It is an environment, and you are in it." theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/your-ai-is...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Your AI Is Not a Tool

The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Inclined to agree with this! Naturally so, because much of my thinking has been shaped by post-phenomenology and media ecology (which I realize is not quite the same as ecological psychology).

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I've been starting conversations about AI by saying "AI is not one thing." More recently I've made the case that @emilymbender.bsky.social makes here. As Leo Marx said of "technology," "AI" is a "hazardous concept." It makes it impossible to get a grip on the thing you're tying to think about.

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Neil Turkewitz @neilturkewitz.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

No, technology is not neutral, and calling AI and other technological contrivances “tools” obscures proper understanding of their role & impact. I encourage everyone to read @lmsacasas.bsky.social. Not just this, but everything he writes…but also THIS!

open.substack.com

Your AI Is Not a Tool

The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5

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Keith Plummer @xianmind.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Characteristically perceptive and thought-provoking reflection from @lmsacasas.bsky.social on the problem with thinking of AI as a mere tool as opposed to an environment. open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...

open.substack.com

Your AI Is Not a Tool

The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

One way of framing AI is as a denial-of-service attack on the human psyche.

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Boaz Nash @boazhsan.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

An updated AI version of the injunction by @lmsacasas.bsky.social to not be just a "relay in a network" thefrailestthing.com/2013/06/27/d...

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

A subset of the larger myth of technological inevitability, or what I used to call a Borg complex. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Latest newsletter installment on language. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/owning-our...

In thinking about the human predicament, I find myself returning to three key ideas: the importance of human judgment, responsibility, and language. These are quite evidently interrelated, and they provide, separately and together, a useful set of lenses through which to consider the impact of artificial intelligence as it takes the form of a language machine to the degree that it undermines our capacity to judge well, encourages the evasion of responsibility, and outsources the vital labor of articulation.

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Matt Browner Hamlin @mattbh.com · 22/12/2025

Manufactured Inevitability is such a fitting term from @lmsacasas.bsky.social for the push for generative AI. It could describe every Axios AM or LinkedIn influencer in my feed

open.substack.com

Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

This is the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote about "manufactured inevitability." theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Joseph Weizenbaum: “The myth of technological ... inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it. But in fact there are actors.” theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 3

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Josh Briscoe @jbriscoe.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

@lmsacasas.bsky.social drawing on Greek mythology to describe how our tech makes us forgetful. This is true in medicine where tech and the reductionism that joins it makes us feel efficient, but draws us away from the heart of the practice. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-waters... #medsky

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

The Waters of Lethe Flow From Our Digital Streams

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 2

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

This is quite the paragraph from Hannah Arendt’s acceptance speech for Denmark’s Sonning Prize in 1975.

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

'Vibes' are the unit of measurement for perception when you've technologically extend your nervous system beyond the body. That's McLuhan in Understanding Media 👇

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Just stumbled on this 1990 Publisher's Weekly review listed on the Amazon page for the book that somehow got posted with the editor's notes for revision still tagged on to the end. Sorry to see the Dracula reference get cut!

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Alexis Madrigal @alexis-madrigal.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

This is pretty damn close to what I was imagining… a bunch of people recording parts of Leaves of Grass. All public domain. Just beautiful and Old Internet in the sense of vintage, in the sense of better. librivox.org/leaves-of-gr...

librivox.org

LibriVox

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

"In a time of acute loneliness, the proliferation of AI-generated content seems not unlike an act of pollution, compromising the integrity of the social ecosystem." It was kind of Meta to provide a demonstration of what I just wrote about. open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

I ended up writing about that little painted cat I found and the contrast it created for me to AI-generated content. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-cat-in...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

The Cat in the Tree: Why AI Content Leaves Us Cold

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 1

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Taking a walk with my kids today when one of them noticed this charming cat painted where a limb had been cut off an oak and all I could think was that I would take this, and the spirit that inspired it, over every AI-generated image or video I've ever seen.

Yellow-ish cat head paint onto the place where a limb had been cut off.

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Jay 🔜 In My Julie & Julia Era @elflawyer.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

We didn't deserve Kurt Vonnegut

KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know…
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

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Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

I wrote about how AI undermines reading, particularly reading books — about summarization and “optimization culture.” And, for paid subscribers, I have a list of recommended books from those I read this year 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/mark-all-as-...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

Mark All as Read

Folks wrung their hands a lot this year about reading. "No one buys books," Elle Griffin argued this spring, although apparently Bible sales are surging, as – according to The Washington Times at leas...

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

"... researchers should certainly work on innovative education — including computer-aided education. But we ought not to use entire generations of schoolchildren as experimental subjects." Joseph Weizenbaum being eminently reasonable about computers & education in 1985. h/t @marcwatkins.bsky.social

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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

And then there’s Weizenbaum on the false comforts of deploying technology in schools instead of addressing structural social inequities.

When you ask questions like that, you come upon some very important and very tragic facts about America. One of the things you would discover is that education has a very much lower priority in the United States than do a great many other things, most particularly the military.

It is much nicer, it is much more comfortable, to have some device, say the computer, with which to flood the schools, and then to sit back and say, "You see, we are doing something about it, we are helping," than to confront ugly social realities.

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Josh Briscoe @jbriscoe.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

From @lmsacasas.bsky.social: "...with regard to the principle that life cannot be delegated, we might helpfully ask, 'What are the thresholds of delegation beyond which what we are left with is no longer life in its fullness and wholeness?'" theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/life-canno...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Life Cannot Be Delegated

The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 15

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Last installment of 2024: "Life Cannot Be Delegated." theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/life-canno...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Life Cannot Be Delegated

The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 15

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Lewis Mumford, "Authoritarian and Democratic Technics." Written 50 years ago, still relevant.

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

“The viability of technology, like democracy, depends in the end on the practice of justice and on the enforcement of limits to power.” – Ursula Franklin

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Boaz Nash @boazhsan.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

As always, excellent questions to ask about technology before blind adoption. (AI in this case.) I'm also reminded of my experience in France bumbling with the language. I did in fact spend time listening and discovering alternatives to many American assumptions I didn't even know I had.

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Julian Girdham @sccenglish.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

As measured and perceptive as anything yet written on AI.

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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 12/12/2024

A brilliant read on Illich, good intentions and AI from @lmsacasas.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...

open.substack.com

To Hell With Good Intentions, Silicon Valley Edition

The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 14

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Robin Z @firepile.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

The Convivial Society is one of maybe 3 newsletters I subscribe to and one of the 2 I actually regularly read. They're almost always bangers. Highly recommended.

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Wesley Chambers @wesleychambers.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

“When the enclosure of the psyche is complete, we lose the right to wander and roam and loaf about in thought, just as the enclosure of the commons restricted freedom of movement and disdained economically unproductive but life-affirming forms of leisure.” — @lmsacasas.bsky.social

open.substack.com

The Enclosure of the Human Psyche

The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 13

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

“... the transformation of the commons into a resource, regardless of who profited, was itself a great loss.” Resit the enclosure of the human psyche. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-enclos...

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lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

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