iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 1h

In this piece for @prospectmagazine.co.uk I argue that it is time we stopped letting the AI/tech industry dictate the narrative, and I attempt to dismantle the self-serving terminology and myths it has created. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno...

prospectmagazine.co.uk

We’re all going to die, but not from AI

That artificial intelligence could destroy humanity is a story imposed by the AI industry itself. It’s time to challenge it

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Nathan Cardon @ncardon.bsky.social · 3h

My new book has a cover! The folks @columbiaup.bsky.social did a fantastic job. It captures one of the book's key arguments on the relationship between an 'everyday technology' of American mobility, the US frontier, and empire. Look for it on store shelves just in time for Bike Month 2027.

A historical painting from Remington bicycles showing a cycling scout on the American frontier, rifle attached to bicycle.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 3h

As for historical people who have done this, i think the designer of, say, the Perceptron was seen as a bit of a crank. But machine intelligence being imminent; absolutely that was a thing.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 3h

I think it's quite easy to find prominent people who add "and the models will continue to improve" -- even skeptical people add it as a caveat habitually! As for the historians who are doing it, I admittedly don't want to put any one person on blast.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 23h

If you are in London on the 26th of October, consider coming to this lecture by Princeton's Emmanuel Kreike, hosted by UCL Anthropocene! It looks to be a fascinating discussion of the Great Acceleration in Africa and the use of machine learning for historical imagery. www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...

ucl.ac.uk

Time-Traveling Trees

Machine-reading the Past, Present, and Future of Climate Change Adaptation from Archival Aerial Photography - a talk by Professor Emmanuel Kreike (Princeton University)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 22h

(Maybe more helpfully, for the introductory seminar for my upper year class on the Wild West, I use Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, introduction; and White, The Republic for which It Stands, ch 16.)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 23h

ucl.ac.uk

Time-Traveling Trees

Machine-reading the Past, Present, and Future of Climate Change Adaptation from Archival Aerial Photography - a talk by Professor Emmanuel Kreike (Princeton University)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If you find a good recent historiographic summary essay let me know! I'm still hunting for one.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I suppose it depends on how you view a "boom." But you have definitely lived through an AI winter; multiple times, people were stunned by the pace of change and assumed it would lead to intelligences comparable to humans within a few years. They have been repeatedly wrong.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It really depends on the technology, but both to some degree. The last 200 years are ofc exceptional in that the overall level of consumption/development has gotten consistently higher, but individual technologies still routinely plateau/are abandoned (including, notably, previous booms of AI!).

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Historians please claim more relevance of your case studies to the present challenge

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Wild how little professional pushback there is from historians, of all people, to the assumption that AI will "assuredly get better and better." That's definitely the historical norm with technologies! /s

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I mailed my US family postcards in late June -- they are only just getting there now. I thought maybe I'd made a mistake on the mailing end but given everything...

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

OMG what a gorgeous essay! (this post is literally how I'm finding out about this!)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sure, but try to figure out if FC Limoges is real or not without looking it up...

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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Genuine AI q: do we have any good practice gudelines and/or methodologies for accuracy testing humanities projects? E.g I get gen AI to scan a load of wills & make a database of bequests/value/gender/location etc - obvs I have no idea what it made up. So how many instances “should” I manually check?

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

You could tell me basically any French city followed/preceded by "FC" was in Ligue 1 and I'd probably buy it.

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

I once told two friends of mine who aren't in academia how little money we'd need to properly fund and run a humanities department and both were stunned at how miserly public universities are

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Emily Webster, PhD, MSc @emilywebz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Would anyone fancy joining @robertsuits.bsky.social and I for a quantitative data in environmental history panel for #ESEH2027?

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

When I first saw your book cover I took a screenshot and sent it to like ten different people! Sooooooooo good!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It is a real delight to see my book mentioned alongside some all-time great cover designs -- I deserve no credit for mine whatsoever!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Jacket design by Chris Ferrante for mine! Chris also designed my own personal favorite history cover -- @joshspecht.bsky.social 's Red Meat Republic.

A photo of a book, Red Meat Republic: A Hoof to Table History of How Beef Changed America, by Joshua Specht. The book has a diagram of the cuts of meat on a steer, but the pièce de résistance is that the jacket is the color of butcher's paper (and for the hardback copy, it's also the texture of butcher's paper as well!).

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Drafting the Past @draftingthepast.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We picked some of our favorite nonfiction history book covers in recent memory. See what made our list and why, and tell us what you would add! www.draftingthepast.com/12-history-b... #booksky

draftingthepast.com

12 History Book Covers We Love

The covers of history books don't always stand out for their design, but these do.

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Ben Bowsher @benbowsher.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Opening this Sunday, things are manic but hopefully will have a peaceful yet vibrant space for people to buy books and printed goods, sit down for a coffee, and start to build coherent leftwing community. Please drop by or give this a share.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

*assuming a uniform swing across all demographics, which is unlikely. The voting population of some states is less elastic, particularly in the Deep South.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

to put this in perspective, a 14 point edge would put states like Tennessee, Utah, Louisiana, and Mississippi in play. Another way to say this is if all states swung 14 points towards the Democrats from 2024, counting independents, Dems would gain a filibuster-proof 60-40 Senate majority.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Not sure if our dissertations will have them this year or next -- I don't supervise them normally -- but in our second year research seminar we're starting them this year.

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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

anyone know academic indexers interested in work coming up imminently (it’s a multi authored handbook style publication)? self promo welcome!

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NiCHE Canada @nichecanada.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Call for Papers – A World of a Thousand Cuts: Forests, Wood, and Industrialisation Across the Globe in the 19th and 20th Centuries 6-8 July, 2027, hosted by the University of Turin Proposal Deadline: 30 November 2026 niche-canada.org/2026/09/17/c... #envhist #foresthistory #globalhistory

niche-canada.org

Call for Papers - A World of a Thousand Cuts: Forests, Wood, and Industrialisation Across the Globe in the 19th and 20th Centuries

This 2027 University of Turin conference re-examines 19th-20th-century global industrialisation by exploring how timber's ongoing role reshaped world forests.

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Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A few weekends ago I went to Miami and attended 9 open houses in extremely high-risk flood areas to see what agents are telling prospective buyers about them. Here is my journey

heated.world

The open houses at the edge of disaster

What are buyers being told about climate risk in Miami? I posed as one to find out.

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Josh Specht @joshspecht.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Publication day for my new book, Property Values! Get it while you can. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Picture of Property Values by Joshua Specht

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Robert Chapman @drrobertchapman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A pattern i've noticed since working on opening a radical bookshop: Troskyites get in touch to donate books while Stalinists get in touch to sell you books.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026

Once you understand the corporate culture of AI hyperscalers is everyone cooking their brains by locking themselves in the bathroom, holding flashlights under their chins, and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until they wet themselves in terror, things snap into focus: pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/a...

A cutaway view of a stone tower containing an elaborate water-powered medieval geared machine. Rising out of the machine is a rainbow-tinted, pixelated God with the robes, beard and all. To one side of this scene is a cluster of tiny people in Jesus-era robes, falling about themselves in religious ecstasy all over a stone staircase, atop of which stands a robed priest with his hands upraised. The background is a set of shining golden rays, emanating from pixel-God.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

British sources tell me this "isn't that unusual" which honestly is a more searing indictment than any I could write.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The UK is a strange place to live sometimes. (This is a slug, hanging out on the rubber mat where we keep our dog's water bowl. This is... nowhere near the outside world, and we don't tend to keep doors or windows open.)

A slug, speckled two shades of brown, just chilling on a gray rubber mat, in an indoor space.

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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

In Property Values, @joshspecht.bsky.social reveals why housing affordability has posed significant challenges to the nation’s politics & promise since the founding, & why the American story has always been one about land. Available Sept 15 (10 Nov UK pub). Read a free preview: buff.ly/QOksg52

Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner by Joshua Specht. A wide-ranging history of American land ownership, from westward expansion to the suburban housing crisis.

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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

ok seriously the risk isn’t superintelligent AI, it’s that the cost of seriously incapacitating hacks is decreasing on a daily basis. entire critical infrastructure is built on things we *know* to have multiple zero day exploits, single points of failure etc, and these technologies are like locusts

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Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

If you've been reading a lot about climate change and insurance and you were curious what insurance companies were up to *before* everything felt like a crisis, check out our new paper! Edoardo di Vincenzo and I trace how the American insurance industry planned for climate change starting in 2012.

osf.io

OSF

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daniela russ @ueberdruss.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

you can find me talking about this in the following places: Sep 21, CHESS, Yale University, 4-6pm Sep 23, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, 6-8pm Oct 19, IfS Frankfurt, 6-8pm Oct 21, HIS Hamburg (with Dietmar Dath), 6-8pm Nov 5-8, HM London Nov 17, KTH Anthropocene History Institute, 1-3pm

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I thought about it today, since our house is on a rail line and we had to catch one anyway. Based purely on the historical evidence, though, I would call it "inadvisable"...

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Does anyone have a piece they love that explains/explores the idea of a "historical method?" Or related matters, like "what do historians do that is distinctive to our field?" (Self-promotion welcome!) #skystorians

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

And it's both very pretty and actually quite affordable for a scholarly work!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It includes: Anarchists! Daring train-based escapades! Queer children! Hiking anecdotes! Hitchhiking anecdotes! Food poisoning! Men riding logs! Horses! Searing critiques of the fantasy of fully automating labor! And so much more!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I'm uncomfortable with self-promotion, but I'm sure some folks have missed it, so here goes: Are you interested in a history of migrants workers battling climate disasters and navigating energy transitions? Or perhaps in a gripping story of turn-of-the-20th-century America? Get my book!

press.princeton.edu

The Hobo

A panoramic history of America’s first climate migrants

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I forgot to mention -- a good source on industrial policy and tariffs in the period right before income taxes (but dry -- I probably wouldn't assign it) is Richard Bensel's The Political Economy of American Industrialization. There's probably a better book on US tax history, but it's eluding me.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

(though of course it's also excise taxes on internal goods!)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

there's actually an amazing chart on wikipedia about exactly this: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co... The answer is mostly, for most of its history, "tariffs," but it's instructive that they were selectively applied in order to juice industrialization.

upload.wikimedia.org

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