Join 📚 J'S Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .
When computer scientists dissect the massive rivers of traffic flowing through it, they cannot account for the source of all the bits. Every now and then a bit is transmitted incorrectly, and while most of those mutations can be attributed to identifiable causes such as hacking, machine error, or line damage, the researchers are left with a few percent that somehow changed themselves. In other words, a small fraction of what the technium communicates originates not from any of its known human-made nodes but from the system at large. The technium is whispering to itself.
What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
As an example, Campolo and Schwerzmann describe how 23andMe try to use data to “objectively” define ethnicity, an arbitrary sociopolitical concept invented by humans.
> To categorize a consumer's ancestry via DNA from a saliva sample, 23andMe relies on a group of initial testing subjects who are asked to self-identify based on what they know about their ancestors and their geographic origins. 23andMe then draws the lines around what it considers as forming a distinctive population by identifying and labeling genetic patterns discovered in the dataset.
The Blackbird Must Be Flying
Substack
Recently, the *Oxford English Dictionary* proclaimed “brain rot” the most popular word of 2024. In second place was “Romantasy,” a literary genre in which tenderness and affection (which have disappeared from real life) are only fantasy. In third place was “demure,” a synonym of “reserved,” “shy,” and perhaps “solitary.” These three words are the best psychopathological diagnosis for a generation that has learned life as fiction, or as terror.
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise