iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 9h

Wow!!! I THOUGHT I heard some Steve Gadd in there but he’s not credited (in Tidal at least).

Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The media discourse around this report is shocking. The report actually tries to divert attention AWAY FROM DIAGNOSIS ALTOGETHER towards policies based on suffering and need. The point about future risks of overdiagnosis is minor, reasonably framed & full of caveats. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c6...

bbc.co.uk

ADHD and autism at risk of over-diagnosis, says report, as author warns of rise in mental ill health

The government-commissioned review, chaired by Prof Peter Fonagy, found there was a risk of people being over-diagnosed with ADHD and autism.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Still flabbergasted by how bad NVivo is. It's like software from the 90s before UX existed. Convinced that NVivo and Moodle are a conspiracy to hamstring academics with shite infrastructure so they can't fight back against the contemporary attack on thought.

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Reposted by Stephen Hughes

Brigitte Nerlich @bnerlich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This issue should be of interest to everybody on Bluesky who is interested in current affairs www.tandfonline.com/toc/csac20/c...

tandfonline.com

Science as Culture

Tech Oligarchy Forum - Part 1. Volume 35, Issue 3 of Science as Culture

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Designed with the brilliant Araceli Camargo and Daniel Akinola-Odusola. Runs in Term 2 as an optional module for @stsucl.bsky.social MSc programmes in Science Communication; Science, Technology & Society; and History & Philosophy of Science - www.ucl.ac.uk/study/prospe...

ucl.ac.uk

Science, Technology and Society MSc | Study at UCL

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 10 - Knowingness, Traditional Ecological Knowledges, and Futures

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 9 - Technology Through a Relational Lore Lens

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 8 - Science, Accuracy, and Understanding

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 7 - Relational Lore, Kinship, and Resistance

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 5 - Quantification of Subjectivity

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 4 - Anxiety and Conspiracy

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 3 - Fantasy, Desire, Tech & Hype

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Week 1 - Feeling the Modern World

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We start from the provocation: Western technoscience has created a polluted, frightening, and irrational world. What does it feel like to live in it, and how might we imagine it differently? Halfway through, the course turns towards utopian hope and practice. Week by week 👇👇👇👇👇

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The aim: To explore what it feels like to live in a world dominated by science and technology and to imagine how knowledge can be used as a tool for justice, kinship, and care for the land.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Very excited to be working with the amazing @thecentriclab.com on MSc module - Emotions, Technology & Power. I’ve been a longtime fan of Centric and their radical approach to justice-oriented science. Getting to design a course with them is a dream come true. Students taking this module are lucky! 🧵

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Another Star 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

When I talk to scientists about responsible innovation I try to radicalise them by asking them to imagine what UK research would like when run by Reform.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Wow 'Boy from School' by Hot Chip really holds up. Such sophisticated harmonies. What a song.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Beautiful! Like Boards of Canada with some lovely vocals

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Can totally see football clubs idiotically relying more and more on AI-powered data analysis to the point that they align with a specific model and just become sponsored by that technology like formula 1. Liverpool sadly will be Amazon since Bezos just bought a slice.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Today's equivalent of the collected letters and correspondences of academics would be shite. Basically just "hey hope you're keeping well. is it possible to send this chapter a bit later?" and "can I ask you for a reference"

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Distinctly remember rolling my eyes so often when reading Lyotard, Baudrillard, Stiegler as an undergrad; feeling like their visions of media and technology were so dramatic and unrealistic. It’s literally just all of culture now. www.404media.co/a-digital-fl...

404media.co

A Digital Fly Brain Has Taken Over the Internet

How to make a fly play Doom, Minecraft, Beat Saber, parallel park, trade bitcoin, cut doner kebab, and more.

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Reposted by Stephen Hughes

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The @radhumslab.bsky.social are pleased to announce 'Against Automation: Resisting AI Futures in Teaching and Research,' November 20th, @ucc.ie. With Dan McQuillan, Patrick Brodie, Masoumeh Mansouri, and Jennie Stephens. Tickets at: www.eventbrite.com/e/against-au...

A poster announcing Against Automation: Resisting AI Futures in Teaching and Research, November 20th, @ucc.ie. With Dan McQuillan, Patrick Brodie, Masoumeh Mansouri, and Jennie Stephens. Cacsss seminar room, 10am - 3pm

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

What happens next depends on whether people like Amodei can tolerate that guilt. In Kleinian terms, recognising that you have damaged what you love can lead to reparation. The question is whether guilt drives genuine attempts at reparation or gets fed back into the greed and envy of the AI arms race

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

These risks are possibly real, but we also need to understand the emotional dynamics shaping how they are navigated. Fantasies of terrible harm befalling the society that has given him and his company so much can be read as guilt and anxiety about AI's destructive capacity, projected outwards.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

He is candid about what his technology, developed out of all of those resources, might do: "losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute".

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This anxiety emerges in 'We Must Pace the Frontier', the essay published yesterday by Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Envy also attacks the source of nourishment through projection - projecting what is believed to be internally bad onto the source of goodness (society).

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Envy's destructive process operates through consumption and projection. In the context of AI, this involves the greedy consumption of data, energy, water, capital, and labour, seeking to exhaust what nourishes us, emptying it out of its goodness.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is the logic driving the AI arms race - illustrated clearly by US Senator Ted Cruz when he recently said, "if there are going to be killer robots, I'd rather they be American killer robots and not Chinese killer robots".

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Envy, as Melanie Klein has shown us, is a dangerous and destructive emotion - it leads us to try to destroy the thing that we wish for so that we no longer have to feel envious of it. "If I can't have it - no one can".

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

These fantasies are driven by greed and envy - an insatiable desire for the unattainable and feelings of disappointment and envy when the limitations of AI become apparent.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Anxiety about the existential threat of AI is the affective flipside of hype. This is something I examine in my chapter on hype in my forthcoming book. AI hype consists of powerful fantasies of immortality, omnipotence, and omniscience. 🧵

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Tech companies want and need public trust but don’t trust the public’s wants and needs. www.404media.co/we-did-not-i...

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I wish this case study had existed when teaching number theory PhDs about the relevance of responsible innovation to their field.

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The wording of the letter gives away the impossibility of its own demand. “A clear framework where superintelligent AI cannot be created” implies a framework devoid of superintelligent AI- not a world devoid of AI. An unconscious admission of UK’s impotence here. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

UK lawmakers urge Burnham to block creation of artificial superintelligence after chilling warnings

Letter from 70 MPs and peers follows Anthropic employee’s claim new technology could wipe out humans

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Yes! Some super interesting organisational emotional dynamics taking place where anxieties and ethical labour are defended against by projecting them onto different people/departments/objects. The power, as you say, lies in being able to choose between being AN ENGINEER or “just” an engineer…

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

🤣 because I’ve barely been able to write anything before this year. Have a backlog of FIFTEEN papers/chapters/shite to finish!! Including our paper 🙈🙈🙈

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Stephen Hughes @stephenhues.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Absolutely. There's seemingly something extremely compelling about mapping these boundaries so they can be transcended. I did research with touchless engineers where I asked them to consider ethical aspects of their work which I've analysed psychoanalytically to understand the underlying fantasies.

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