1,549 days, 2,380 entries ...
Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
“Be very wary of profit-driven corporations using the AGI patina of mysticism to market centralized tech always ultimately developed in service of growth.”
“In his feud with Zuckerberg, Musk is essentially playing Ric Flair without the charisma.”
“People should know that it isn’t just Meta—at every social media firm there are workers who have been brutalized and exploited. But today I feel bold, seeing so many of us resolve to make change. The companies should listen—but if they won’t, we’ll make them.”
“What just drives me up the wall is that we appear to have decided the way AI is going to work is through a competitive dynamic between Google, Microsoft, and Meta.”
“The world is a better place with 8 billion people than it was when 50 million people were (kind of) living in caves. I am confident that the value and progress in humanity will accelerate extraordinarily after welcoming artificial beings into our community.”
“A legless Donald Trump, just wandering the empty streets of Horizon Worlds, selling commemorative coins.”
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. I call this enshittification.”
“This POV camera was a little creepy, because it didn’t notify others when it was turned on. When I revealed I was recording, people would sometimes shout, ‘she’s a fed!’ and run away.”
“What would your avatar look like with dedicated artists and several weeks of iteration?” sneers Apple engineer Dimitri Diakopoulos on Twitter, after the origin of Mark Zuckerberg’s updated Horizon Worlds avatar is revealed. According to a LinkedIn post, 3D character artist Dylan Dunbar “sculpted, modelled, lit, textured, rendered” the Zuck from scratch, after an earlier version drew widespread ricidule. “We went through probably 40 iterations before landing on something we were happy with.”
“He is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes.”
“Cities are the result of a meticulously managed infrastructure. They need a sanitation department to make sure that garbage doesn’t pile up in the streets, and transit authorities to keep the trains on time. They need bureaucrats, not visionaries.”
In a post on his blog, designer Matt Webb offers unflinching analysis of the metaverse. Hashing out a rough definition that it is immersive, multiplayer, and has an economy, he challenges some widely held assumptions about what technologies are required (e.g. VR plus crypto does not a metaverse make). Beyond the obligatory Snow Crash vs. Meta commentary, he draws on his former studio’s work during the web 2.0 era and his experience establishing London’s Silicon Roundabout tech cluster, noting how common goals create strange bedfellows. Now, Webb sees the same thing with the metaverse, observing “we have crypto-libertarians tech nerds from Web3 somehow aligned with platform monopolist VR-maximalists from Facebook. Their values couldn’t be more opposed yet they are boosters for the same trend.”
“Who else tries to invent new universes? Who dares spin grand utopian fantasies? Artists don’t anymore. It’s Silicon Valley’s Promethean founders who try—and routinely fall short.”
“Since there seems to be growing confusion on this: I have nothing to do with anything that Facebook is up to involving the Metaverse, other than the obvious fact that they’re using a term I coined in Snow Crash. There has been zero communication and no biz relationship.”
“No matter what Mark Zuckerberg calls it, it will remain Zuckerberg Inc. until he relinquishes some power and yields to functional corporate governance.”
“In the metaverse Facebook envisions you are the Neopet, and your in-game activities may affect every sphere of life that Facebook already touches: careers, relationships, politics.”
In the second of a three-post series revealing their spatial computing roadmap, Facebook Researchers reveal in-progress gestural and neural interfaces. One demo shows expressive wrist and finger control mediated by a watch-like wearable reminiscent of the Myo armband; supporting concept videos telegraph aspirations for neural keyboards and that old AR chestnut: a user manipulating GUI elements in 3D space in front of them. However far off the tech is, it’s immediately satisfying to watch one of the researchers gush about the shiny future of neural interfaces where “you and the machine are in agreement about which neurons mean left and which ones mean right” without any mention of data harvesting or his employer’s long history of malfeasance.
Daily discoveries at the nexus of art, science, technology, and culture: Get full access by becoming a HOLO Reader!
- Perspective: research, long-form analysis, and critical commentary
- Encounters: in-depth artist profiles and studio visits of pioneers and key innovators
- Stream: a timeline and news archive with 1,200+ entries and counting
- Edition: HOLO’s annual collector’s edition that captures the calendar year in print