iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

What happens what the supposed village elders and the village they believe they should control live in two different worlds? When they hate each other. Honestly I have no idea. But the dissolution of trust will become increasingly crushing for all involved.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

11) These elders are now trying to desperately trying to introduce an innovation and nobody wants to listen to them. Nobody believes they are elders anymore. The people they are trying to get to become adopters are literally booing them off the stage.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

10) tech savvy politicians and journalists, university presidents, who were built into elders by our information infrastructure, used their position to introduce innovations that led to poor experiences. Now nobody wants to listen to them.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

9) People I believe think introduction of a lot of Internet applications (e.g., social media, uber, Amazon) was not for the good of the village, but for their own pocketbooks. People who were supposed to be the elders for technological innovation like Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

8) So if it is going to be adopted it needs to be introduced by trusted others. The big trouble is our society is really short on trusted others. People who were supposed to be the trusted elders burned pretty much all their capital with other (sometimes really stupid) innovations.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

7) So what does that have to do with AI and the watershed moment. Well AI is really no different from any other innovation when it comes to diffusion. Most people don't have time in their lives to really understand it on a concrete level. Not because they can't, they just have lives to live.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

6) So in order to introduce an innovation you need to find trusted elders, people in the community with standing, convince them of the value and then have them introduce the innovation based on trust. It is really the only way you can scale use.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Members of a social group don't really have the time or the wherewithal to analyze the value of an innovation and all things being equal they don't want to adopt them. It takes a lot of energy to introduce a new tool into everyday life.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

5) If you think diffusion on innovations is just common sense, well that is how strong it is in explaining human behavior. The basic premise is that people adopt and accept innovations into their everyday lives not because they see the value, but they recognize the value of those introducing them.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

4) The struggle is in something Everett Rogers called the diffusion of innovations. The diffusion of innovations is so well known and embedded in our activities at this point that we don't even think about it as a theory. It is one of the most accepted theories in the social sciences.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

The moments is, for lack of a better phrase (and I am sure somebody will come up with one) the struggle for innovation. The innovation is AI, but the struggle is not located in the AI is good, AI is bad argument, where people just scream at each other over the abyss.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

2) The moment is not political (which has just sort of become theater of the grotesque). And it is not really social (groups squaring off against each other). It is kind of emotional, but I think there is a better description. It is not war. It is not catastrophe (climate change).

010

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

1) I haven't written for a while and doubt anybody is listening. But I feel like human society is facing a watershed moment. I know that gets said a lot. Especially as a lot has happened over the last few decades. But this one feels like it presages real change. And...

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

But it seems like CNN is playing the role of Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, one of the most cynical characters ever to appear on screen (it was Billy Wilder after all). Destroying a family and community for a story (and maybe to deflect from Trump).

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

But I begin to wonder, doesn't Savannah Guthrie have any real friends in the new industry. Shouldn't somebody talk to her and tell he it is probably time to mourn. She will realize it later I suppose.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

I feel like I am watching that movie play out in real time on CNN. There is a 98% chance Helen Guthrie has not survived. But it is a good story (is it? Somehow I keep feeling it is being used to move away from the Trump narrative and ICE narrative).

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

It is where Kirk Douglas completely gins up a boy falling down a well for multiple days because it becomes a big story for him, even after everybody knows the boy is dead, destroying the family and community.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

And while I am here, what is going on with CNNs coverage of Savannah Guthrie's mother. Anybody ever watch the movie "Ace in the Hole" by Billy Wilder, probably his best but for some reason rarely mentioned. Hmmmm

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Or at least it shouldn't. Bari Weiss got her friends to make her version of Dark Web popular for a minute. Anybody notice how that completely disappeared?

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

And the major person he talks about is Rick Wilson, who is not even a progressive. He is a deep conservative (anybody remember the Iraq War? How did we forget that so quickly?) The he had to really dig and stretch to find an annoyed comment from AOC. Sorry Luke Winkie Dark Work is not happening.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

So a better phenomena to be labeled Dark Woke is probably the Signal community in MPLS (I think somebody should tell Cory Doctorow about this - sometimes the Internet saves us). And the people who Winkie identifies do not see themselves as "Woke." It was never a phrase progressives used very much.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

3) The reason the Dark Web is called the Dark Web is not because of Bari Weiss' idiot comment (though she did get a new network). It is called the Dark Web is because it is hidden using The Onion Router (TOR) so it is only really accessible to people who are directly invited. URLs will not work.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

First "Dark Woke" which I am sure Luke Winkie becomes his catch phrase. Maybe somebody will give him a new network it will become so big. I mean he really tries. But I think he is trying to sort of play Dark Woke off against the Dark Web, which makes absolutely no sense.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

2) It just represents so much of what is wrong with traditional journalism and why progressives need to abandon it. New forms of information development and sharing are emerging and people should go all in I think. But the article is just so banal it is painful. The banality of journalism?

010

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

So I don't write on bluesky much because I don't really like it. And not because of comments because I get very few. Mostly because it is not a style of communication I am good at (see self efficacy). But I just needed out outlet for my vitriol against Luke Winkie in Slate Dark Woke is Coming

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

But like algorithms it is just something people will start throwing around - good, bad, without argument on either side. And then somebody will raise a trillion dollars claiming to create the first machine with consciousness. And John Searle will weep.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

It is just that it is not a new idea and is not something we are going to be able to "program." The reason the Chinese room is so impactful is it raises questions beyond our grasp. It asks whether we should even ask that question.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

The idea of machine consciousness was considered the same time with John Searle's Chinese room, which there are probably a hundred articles about and I have had a thousand conversations about, probably none of them really helpful in figuring this out.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

We don't call artificial intelligence AI because we thought machines can act intelligently. We call artificial intelligence AI because John McCarthy was trying to get funding for a conference in 1955 on I believe neural networks and he used the phrase, probably because it was pithy.

010

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

So why am I writing now. Well I feel a need to scream into the void. An article in the New York Times about how Artificial Intelligence is going to achieve consciousness. And I felt it was just really silly.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

I don't believe social media is bad, as some do. I wrote earlier, it has the elements of hypertext which can really push humanity and democracy forward. But it needs to be used responsibly, the rules of argument, taking each other seriously and caring about what we say.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

There were all these accusations, implicitly saying Platner is a Nazi, over and over again. I began to question myself, was the reason I agreed with so many people simply confirmation bias? Was I a poor digital citizen until my perceptions were challenged.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

From what I could find there was no corroborating evidence to suggest Platner had Nazi sympathies. But people kept the idea alive, kept repeating it. To me this is a form of bullying. And damn if the Internet did not break my heart.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Claim, evidence and warrant that ties the claim to the evidence. Rules of argumentation suggested by Stephen Toulmin, based I would argue on the work of John Dewey (we can get into an "argument" about this). But I believe if social media is going to be productive it must be through argument.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

I admit for too many people in our society Nazi means brother. But Platner made it clear that he did not Nazism, that he did not like being called a Nazi. In Bluesky circles it is a terrible accusation. So before you make it, even implicitly, you should have evidence.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

It may not have been obvious to Platner either. I don't know. If you showed it to me before everything spilled over I would have said a biker tattoo. The thing is, calling somebody a Nazi is for a segment of our population is the worst thing you can say about somebody.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

What made me disillusioned. It had to go with Graham Platner. People really raking him over the coals because he supposedly had a Nazi tattoo. I say "supposedly" because while you can say Nazi groups used it in different ways, a Totenkopf, it had never been obvious to me that this was "Nazi."

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

So I stopped writing much like I stopped writing on all social media I start. I thought bluesky was different, and maybe in many way it is. But one of my students says the same thing every time I get disillusioned with social media or other application. The Internet will ALWAYS break your heart.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

"Mom, nobody goes on TikTok anymore!" Sell TikTok short and soon as its sold. Remember, you heard it here first.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

There are thousands of out of work coders who will come up with a decent algorithm. But I will say with much confidence that TikTok will become the new Facebook. A cyber Potemkin village which people claim has the most users in the world. But if you ask real content creators?

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

The billionaires are making a big mistake if they think they are going to keep the user base. They will leave as soon as something better that they trust comes along. Want to make a billion dollars, start a visual communication platform. Actually, probably not that expensive.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

So TikTok has an interesting, activity based algorithm which is always going to be better. But that's not the reason it is so popular. It is popular because we are in a generation that Loves visual based communication. But visual communication that is not controlled.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Silicon Valley makes A LOT of money promoting the former, but I think the latter is a much stronger argument. We don't like it much because that makes us responsible. We like to download responsibility. It is the algorithms that's making me hang out with Nazis.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

There is a second philosophical argument that it is humans that control technology as a tool. They are partners in technology driven activity with the technology as the junior partner.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Mechanized algorithms are blunt instruments and cannot really control human behavior. There is an important issue here. Humans have always wanted to download responsibility to technology. That the technology made them do things. The algorithms are controlling human behavior!!!!

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Initially I did not want to talk about Jess Singal, I wanted to talk about TikTok. There is a lot of mythology about TikTok's algorithm, as it being some incredibly powerful force which is worth - people being conned out of - billions of dollars.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

This stuff isn't easy, which is why we are struggling with the meaning of "social media."

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

It is great that bots have not really invaded Bluesky - yet. They will come. And there should probably be a discussion about how to handle them when they appear. Do you use institutional power to limit them, or can the Bluesky community figure out a method of information control?

010

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

So if you balance dangers on using institutional power to consequences of emergent ostracism when using hypertext, if you are trying to develop democratic communities the choice is obvious. The difficulty though is bots. Should you institutionally ban bots. This is a much more difficult question.

000

Michael Glassman @mjg59.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

So development of human rule systems which emerge naturally, informal social control, is an important aspect of online communities. And there are limited ethical repercussions. Unless you consider hurting egos off limits. This is why cancel culture was so ridiculous.

000