everyone knows Richard Scarry's "Very Busy Surveillance State." classic.

what a great and relevant reminder for us, now, from Hans Magnus Enzensberger in 1970: "The open secret of the electronic media, the decisive political factor, which has been waiting, suppressed or crippled, for its moment to come, is their mobilizing power. newleftreview.org/issues/i64/a...

the "proliferation of AI...in library and education spaces would not be possible...without the precedent of book bans...once you have a culture in which all expertise is denigrated & considered nonessential, you create the circumstances in which AI can flourish” www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

I hesitate to post this but honest to god how else to make it clear that at the very least we should not be handing these tools over to our students...please note it contains descriptions of suicidal ideation www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u... #banAIinHigherEd

Still recruiting PhD students for our Media Studies Department! Please see link below for more info @joshshepperd.bsky.social @stevenfrost.bsky.social @cumediastudies.bsky.social

one of my favorite #othernetworks of all time

“AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics.” www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

delightful & curious watching students this morning write postcards, mostly to their parents, in which they declare their love for them, that they miss them, that they're writing these in class! and questions like "where do I put the stamp? how do I mail it? where is the post-office"? #othernetworks

Today! Register&join us for a talk by @loriemerson.net on alternative and forgotten networks and the futures they might hold. cenes.ubc.ca/events/event...

BREAKING: Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students. Follow AP for live updates.

did you guys know sometimes good things happen? wasn’t aware of this possibility. much to investigate

I know an embarrassingly large number of facts and figures about running shoes. Got a back up job after all, I guess!

signed: "An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education" #ai openletter.earth/an-open-lett...

"Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man." #arendt #totalitarianism

happy Friday! It's time to finally read the last chapters of Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism and finally I'm seeing (ha) some glimmers of good news: the paradox of totalitarianism is that its regimes have to "hold out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating 1/2

very happy and relieved to confirm: the second printing of #othernetworks will be available on the Anthology Editions website November 21st and also available to order from your favorite independent bookstore shortly after shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898...

looking forward to talking (virtually) about imaginary #othernetworks in my home town!

it has taken me until now to understand that the web of 10-15 years ago is definitively dead and that me freely sharing thoughts drafts articles chapters book excerpts on my blog is only feeding the very gen AI that I have come to despise. And so now I am going to go through as many posts/pages 1/2

Sounds familiar doesn't it? Wichita Falls Times, 1927. www.newspapers.com/article/wich...

yes this yes!

Please make more. Feel free to use our text and address it to your employer! Also openletter.earth/an-open-lett... By @melaniedusseau.bsky.social @miriamreynoldson.bsky.social ✨✨✨

be still, my beating heart!

in the course of our discussion about media history today, my students raised the issue of the aestheticization of Nazis and fascism completely without prompting from me and I am here to report that I am very fond of them---

Watching Independence Day for the architectural history

if you pay me $300/mo I'll make you work 30% slower but say you're fucking great all the time

CFP (please share!): Our digital literary heritage is rapidly being lost, from 1990s hypertext sites to 2010s digital humanities projects. _A Field Guide to Modernisms_ seeks to spread awareness, document at-risk projects, and brainstorm solutions. Abstracts by February 2: www.shawnaross.com/cfp/.

…and to be even more specific: attending a Monarca training is a great next step:

I had the chance to lend my voice to a group of really wonderful people who were interviewed by Harvard's Library Innovation Lab. the series is called "Generational Data: 14 Designs for Digital Preservation in 2025" ---> lil.law.harvard.edu/generational...

GET RID OF YOUR RING CAMERAS www.yahoo.com/news/article...

reposting just because I'm in a real mood about #ai in #highered today...

I can't quite visualize how this would work but now I'm wondering if the next time I teach an undergrad class I can do something like give each student a notebook that they handwrite in class for the rest of the semester 1/2

one could say it's funny I spent so many years getting a PhD and writing "bespoke" books to spend days grading papers written by genAI. or I guess "one" could just cry 🤷‍♀️

Dr. Manhattan meme of people who have repeatedly predicted the demise of stupid brick-and-mortar university learning because of: • Books printed cheaply, information widely available • Radio, making information widely available • MOOCs, making information widely available And so on.

if Trump wants to invoke the Insurrection Act "he's going to have to point at people in inflatable chickens and inflatable frogs and inflatable unicorns." INFLATE TO DEFLATE---> www.operationinflation.com

21 arguments against AI in education---> codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/a... #ai

Yeah, but have they considered embracing such innovations like burning coal? And eliminating science research?

"Don’t tell us another New York City is not possible — we are already winning it." - tenant organizer Dorca Reynoso

Thanks to American Campus, the podcast about the history of higher education, for featuring my book. We talk about how NPR and PBS emerged from equal access to education discourses. And how Media Studies originated as a strategy of public media activism.

maybe just evidence of how perversely singleminded I can be: if I can manage not to have ever used Uber over the last 15 years, and so far not used AI once (to my knowledge), then we collectively can also just not use AI. nothing is inevitable.

I'm sure someone out there will be happy to argue with me, split hairs, etc. but I'm just going to come out and say: given the current state of gen AI, there is no conceivable ethical reason we should be providing free licenses to students in higher education 1/2

I am curious: have there been instances where faculty at particular institutions (not as members of a professional organization) have come together to call for a complete ban on AI on their campus except for special circumstances where it is being studied or researched? #ai

I actually don't really care if AI is useful/interesting/good for some things in education actually - it is besides these things clearly a big problem already that maybe need listing yet again:

I am once again asking Canadian journalists to ask the most basic-ass question of "on whose land will these be built?" How is it that every other major industry must consider Indigenous rights but with tech it's like "meh". www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

some beautiful zingers in this new piece by Ruha Benjamin: "Worshipping one’s own intelligence, it seems, leads to a dangerous desire to bring the rest of humanity to its knees." #ai lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

Fredric Jameson #remix: It's easier to imagine that #LLM #AI is consciousness than it is to admit the fact that language can be produced without it.

it was a week spent managing difficult people, big feelings, and godawful amounts of email but quite suddenly everything became clear when I got to meet a family visiting the lab from Omaha with their queer teen daughter on a quiet mission to find a safe college for their child to be 💚

Peter Thiel on why you need to leverage The Bible to get people to oppose govt regulation of AI: "There are a lot of rational reasons why the one-world state’s a bad idea...But I think if you strip it from the biblical context, you will never find it scary enough. You will never really resist.”

Solar & wind met 109% of new electricity demand, globally, in the first half of 2025. Renewables are handling all new demand & are inexorably moving beyond, to chip away at the FF foundation.

You can PREORDER my book about the Assassin's Creed franchise NOW! Please do that. I think it is both a fun and interesting dive into what Assassin's Creed is, how it develops its ideas, and what it says about the world we live in. TOC attached, preorder at the link! bookshop.org/p/books/ever...

I announced in today's faculty meeting that "I have an AI bee in my bonnet" to which @stevenfrost.bsky.social responded with this perfect portrait if you were wondering what an #AI bee in a bonnet looks like