Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

August 21, 2023: Updates on past shows

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Today: Updates on past shows

• Intro: Pseu Braun on Pseu’s Thing With a Hook from Aug 17, 2023

• WeWork: See Aug 16, 2021 interview with Eliot Brown, co-author, “The Cult of We”

• WeWork’s Stock Imploded to 13 Cents Yesterday; Its Cult-Master, Adam Neumann, Cashed Out Years Ago and Is a Billionaire (Wall Street on Parade, Aug 10, 2023): “That office space company we warned our readers about so extensively in 2019, WeWork, collapsed to 13 cents a share yesterday. . . As of this morning, Forbes puts Neumann’s wealth at $2.2 billion. He made his wealth by selling shares in WeWork when it was still private.”

“The purpose of Wall Street is to be an efficient allocator of capital so that businesses with real prospects for innovation, job creation, and growth come to market to make America more prosperous and to keep it competitive on the global stage. Unfortunately, we find ourselves writing more and more about cults [like Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and others] that are trading on the New York Stock Exchange. . . . Something is deeply, deeply wrong with the structure of Wall Street and the watchdogs that are supposed to be policing it.”

• Zuck/Musk cage match: Prediction from July 24, 2023 Techtonic

• Zuckerberg Says It’s ‘Time to Move On’ From ‘Cage Fight’ With Musk (Aug 13, 2023): “In posts, Mr. Musk said the date of the fight was ‘in flux’ because he needed an M.R.I. scan of his neck and back.”

[Then, the next day...] In Latest Antics, Musk Says He’s Going To Drive To Zuckerberg’s House For Fight — Day After Zuckerberg Says He’s ‘Moved On’ (Forbes, Aug 14, 2023): “Musk [posted] that he was going to have a car take him to the Meta CEO’s house and livestream the journey to see if Zuckerberg would fight him, a stunt that Zuckerberg’s reps quickly shot down.”

• Google's Incognito mode: Context from Carissa Véliz, author of “Privacy is Power” – from the Nov 7, 2022 interview. And my note on the comments board:

“Of course in their public pronouncements (‘we care deeply about privacy’) the companies all give lip service to privacy. But in their operation - their brazenness in how they collect data, sometimes even in contrast to what’s promised by their software - the companies are habituating us to the end of privacy. . . . One easy example is the current lawsuit against Google, whose ‘Incognito Mode’ made everyone think that it was protecting their privacy but was in fact doing just the opposite. Glad to see Google get sued over this.”

• $5 billion Google lawsuit over ‘Incognito mode’ tracking moves a step closer to trial (The Verge, Aug 7, 2023): “The people suing Google say that . . . Google’s cookies, analytics, and tools in apps continued to track internet browsing activity even after users activated Incognito mode Chrome.”

• ChatGPT: excerpt from Feb 6, 2023 show (“Our AI-generated future: Mark Hurst on AI-extruded text and music”).

• Why ChatGPT Is Getting Dumber at Basic Math (Aug 4, 2023): “AI chatbots have stoked fears that they could spin out of control, but they also suffer from a type of deterioration called ‘drift’”

• Zoom: excerpt from Aug 7, 2023 Techtonic (listener questions)

• Zoom Became a Part of Daily Life. It Needs to Tell Users Exactly How It’s Using Their Data (Wired, Aug 10, 2023): “As if on cue, this week Zoom released what many read as a panicked blog post ‘clarifying’ what this change to its ToS means and highlighting the opt-in process for its AI-assisted features. Then, the company added to its terms of service that ‘notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video, or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.’”

“But these amendments didn’t assuage many of the concerns that people had raised. For one thing, the choice to opt in or out can only be set at the “customer” level—meaning that the company, corporation, university, or medical office that licenses Zoom makes that decision, not the individual users signed up through that license. (Though individuals signing up for free Zoom accounts would presumably be able to control that for themselves.) And the updated ToS still leaves open the possibility that Zoom might use the data it has collected for other purposes at some later date, should it so choose.”