Our digital lives are increasingly noisy, shaped by the gigabytes of information that we consume on a daily basis. The bits and bytes that make their way into our psychology via messages, articles, videos, shorts, and podcasts are algorithmically curated to latch into relevancy. Platforms that serve information to us use our attention to personalize recommendations and advertisements, leaving us in a swirling vortex of information. Within this landscape of information, our software can become truly individualized, facilitated by thoughtful design of emergent applications that center user privacy, customization, and co-constructed features.
Read moreAs our realities trend toward the algorithmic, we’re no longer just technology users — we are participants in an evolving dialogue between human intent and machine capability. We can watch from the sidelines as a new paradigm in human-computer interaction evolves or we can build it.
At the core, this is about changing how we engage with information, each other, and the world around us. AI is reshaping how computer systems are designed to process, synthesize, and navigate information.
Read moreI hold a lot of value in the ‘self’ that I express through technology. Platforms like Facebook have an ‘irrevocable use’ clause in their terms of service that allows them to do what they’d like with your data in the name of ‘improving their services’, but you technically still own your data. So, I took it upon myself to start using that information for my own benefit.
Read moreI wanted a version of Tetris that had a logarithmic board instead of a square grid. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, so I turned to AI.
Read moreMultitasking got to the best of me today when I distractedly decided to update my web host server from Ubuntu 20.04 to 24.04. At or around 11:15am EST, I brazenly went forth on my attempt to update my AWS instance. As I was running apt update I realized that I should created at least one backup of the instance, and took a snapshot. It’s a good thing I did, or I wouldn’t be here today.
Read moreTrust can be found between individuals, within organizations, and between an individual and an institution. When we consider the concept of trust, we might think about people we trust to be vulnerable around when we are going through a difficult time in our lives. We might think about the trust that we have with the institutions in our lives, such as trusting that we will be able to access medical care when it is needed. As of 2023, Generative AI was trusted more than any institution – which includes church, Congress, the military, businesses, and schools.
Read moreOn the list of “things that annoy me about AI”, trying to upsell AI features as part of a service is close to the top. I’ve recently noticed that my LinkedIn feed has been shoving an AI icon and related “coaching prompts” into my feed, and my solution of hiding every post that had the icons on them wasn’t actually filtering the system the way that I wanted. Today I spent a few minutes learning
Read moreThe “personal computing” market has dramatically shifted from the original visions evolving out of Xerox PARC and the innovation labs of the past into a multi-level mediated… mess.
Thankfully, open source operating systems are thriving, and the barrier of entry into an actually personal computing experience that is tailored to your own environment is lower than ever. With that in mind, in December, I started looking at how I could start to extend my Ubuntu desktop.
This was a really fun project to take on, and I’m itching to start doing more of this as I think through what kind of ways that I want to expand and customize my personal computing environment.
Read moreAs I’m writing this, I’m wearing a green t-shirt with a giant eyeball over my rapidly growing stomach. It’s Halloween, and I’ve decided to dress up as Mike Wazowski – it feels like I’m all stomach these days, so it felt appropriate. My partner dressed up as Boo. Halloween is an especially interesting time of year to reflect on identity and persona: it’s a holiday that encourages people to step into a different character and
Read moreBack in 2015, I bought the domain ‘livi.link’ to use as a shortlink domain. Why? It’s freaking adorable, and it meant that I could leave links around the internet that would be immediately identified as mine. I set up a bit.ly account with Twitter authentication, and used “livi links” for years. Then, I deleted my Twitter account, and forgot to detach it from my bit.ly account. Oops. Yesterday, I wanted to make a short link
Read more