iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

When we package powerful probabilistic text-prediction engines in the social trappings of personhood, we systematically short-circuit our own critical scrutiny, delegate moral authority to ungrounded systems, and create massive organizational liabilities.

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This isn't harmless marketing; it is a profound cognitive error. Human brains are evolutionary suckers for social cues.

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Some give models human names, generate fake Slack avatars, and assign them formal roles on corporate org charts.

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The tech industry is currently obsessed with an anthropomorphic sleight of hand. Rather than selling AI tools with clear value in augmenting existing employees or as robust automated pipelines, leading AI labs and enterprise software vendors are pitching "autonomous digital coworkers"...

Stop Calling It 'Alex': The Theater of Synthetic Coworkers

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 04/09/2026

In this outing, our alchemically altered sleuths are solving a who-done-it of ecological proportions. libro.fm/audiobooks/9...

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In my free newsletter this week, we examine three papers that deconstruct how decentralized groups compute, allocate labor, and stabilize under stress without ever needing an executive meeting. Read more at academy.socos.org/the-thermody...

The Thermodynamics of the Hive: How Flocks, Herds, and Bureaucracies Compute Without Managers

Most people think coordination requires an architect. Whether managing a distributed engineering sprint, migrating a bird flock, or keeping a mammalian huddle warm in a blizzard, our default intuition...

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True systemic resilience is almost never top-down; it is an emergent thermodynamic property of local threshold variation, compensatory behavioral feedback, and mathematical monotonicity.

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But natural and formal systems have spent millions of years solving the same physics problem: centralized coordination is a massive computational bottleneck, energetically expensive, and terrifyingly fragile.

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Most think coordination requires an architect. Whether managing a distributed engineering sprint, migrating a bird flock, or keeping a mammalian huddle warm in a blizzard, our intuition is to search for the command node, a conductor waving the baton, a centralized database holding the global lock.

The Thermodynamics of the Hive: How Flocks, Herds, and Bureaucracies Compute Without Managers

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 28/08/2026

𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆: From the author of The Midnight Library comes the seemingly unrelated The Midnight Train. It was very cosy, a warm fantasy blanket somewhat in the vein of Life After Life, but with a decidedly uncomplicated attitude about what makes a good life. A literal dream about second chances.

libro.fm

The Midnight Train by Matt Haig Narrated by James Norton Audiobook on Libro.fm

When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what ...

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Reposted by Vivienne Ming

Sainsbury Library @sainsburylib.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

🤖👨‍💻 If AI can do more of our work, what should people focus on? Robot-Proof by @socos.org, featured in our @financialtimes.com Summer Books display, argues that the future belongs to those who develop the distinctly human qualities that machines can’t replace. Explore the full list: buff.ly/4kM9x26

Bright yellow book cover for Vivienne Ming's "Robot-Proof" showing three walking robots followed by a person carrying a flag and briefcase, with subtitle "When machines have all the answers, build better people," emphasizing the need to develop human skills.

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 25/08/2026

[1] Or all the event awesomeness that isn’t me :)

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 25/08/2026

Sep 8 at the super{summit} 2026: Come hear me talk about my new research of hybrid intelligence and innovating innovation (w/ Possibility Sciences). The entire amazing event runs September 8–10 at Convene in downtown San Francisco. Get tickets here: rewirecon.com Come for me; stay for the pie! [1]

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 24/08/2026

Hey #Chicago, come see me on Oct 8!

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 21/08/2026

𝑮𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝑪𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒔 delivers more of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s lessons on speculative comparative cognition in a greentech Noir wrapper. libro.fm/audiobooks/9... ps. I like raccoons.

libro.fm

Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky Narrated by John Pirhalla Audiobook on Libro.fm

Philip Marlowe meets Redwall in this superior adult noir tale, where all the characters are animals, fighting for survival in the city underneath the humans.

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 17/08/2026

You only get 11 or so lives; make them count! [3] Read about all 50 honorees: www.forbes.com/sites/maggie... There are some serious heavy hitters on that list! [1] Wrinkles notwithstanding [2] [2] What a weird word. [3] www.smbc-comics.com?id=2722

forbes.com

For The 50 Over 50 Class Of 2026, Age Is An Advantage

Well into—or beyond—their sixth decade of life, the dreamers and doers on the sixth annual Forbes 50 Over 50 list are proving that age and experience can supercharge impact.

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 17/08/2026

@forbes.com just named me to their #ForbesOver50 list, in the Innovation category. Keep doing things others are scared to do and you never grow old. [1] This was a genuine surprise, and I’m sincerely delighted. Thanks to Maggie McGrath, @mika-brzezinski.bsky.social and @knowyourvalue.bsky.social.

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The Protagonist (Adian Tchaikovsky, “Service Model”): The valet robot is absolutely certain it has no selfhood…or is that the selfhood talking.

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Latency (Charles Stross, “Accelerando”) Selfhood is a latency problem, and the things that shed it eat the things that don't.

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It’s a phase (Karl Schroeder, “Permanence”) Consciousness isn't required for toolmaking; it's just a phase species pass through and out of.

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The Machines (Stanisław Lem, “The Invincible”): A dead civilization's machines evolve for millions of years and what wins is a cloud of individually stupid micro-flies that swarms into something lethal.

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The Tines (Vernor Vinge, “A Fire Upon the Deep”): These dog-like creatures, mindless alone, become a person in packs of 4-8. Packs merge, split, get amputated. (This is the direct ancestor of the corvids in Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory, who spend the whole book insisting they aren't anybody.)

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The book suggests that self-awareness is a metabolic tax that a universe full of evolution rarely pays. “Blindsight” isn’t the only novel exploring the disconnect between intelligence and self-awareness:

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Vivienne Ming @socos.org · 13/08/2026

𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆: Intelligence With Nobody Home. Every time I watch an agentic AI churn through a task, I think about the Scramblers, 9-limbed anaerobic things in Peter Watts' “Blindsight”. They out-think humanity at every turn despite nobody doing the thinking.

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In Robot-Proof I asked why "nobody is innovating on innovation”. The #AI4Science crowd is finally publishing breakthroughs…that all look weirdly the same. Now it seems like nobody's innovating on innovation innovation. Go deeper with my free weekly research roundup: academy.socos.org/ai4science/