Exhibitions, Research, Criticism, Commentary
A chronology of 3,585 references across art, science, technology, and culture
“Being better at making decisions is not the same as making better decisions. To what end are the decisions made by large language models directed? The unsettling truth is that we have no idea.”
“Microsoft’s conduct should serve as a wake-up call to other companies supplying cloud infrastructure, AI, and surveillance products to Israel.”
“Hot and arid regions like the Gulf are vulnerable. Water demand from AI could become a huge issue by 2027—AI data centres may use more water than entire countries like Denmark, and more energy than countries like France.”
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen a thousand ‘x’ increase in computational speed. Another thousand ‘x’ is projected in the next five years. Things will be very different when we do this in 2030.”
As protests against ICE raids engulf Los Angeles, software artist Kyle McDonald reactivates his ICEspy (2018) counter surveillance tool. The web app that reveals the identity of ICE employees by matching hundreds of scraped LinkedIn profiles was disabled in 2024, when Microsoft, a known ICE contractor, restricted access to its face recognition API. Now, the site is operational again, “running fully on-device,” McDonald announces on social media.
“After all, this is the sole direct clue the dismayed user gets when things go south,” writes Maya Posch of the Windows blue screen of death and other computer fatal error messages. Tracing the evolution from the AmigaOS guru meditation to Windows 8’s giant sad emoticon over decades, Posch notes how the upcoming black-screened Windows 11 crash strips away technical details entirely—marking a shift from empowering users with information toward leaving them helpless in the event of a malfunction.
“The fee I originally received for the Windows 95 chime will now go toward helping the victims of the attacks on Gaza. If a sound can signal real change then let it be this one.”
“It turns out 1989’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ harbours the resonant frequency for components within 5,400 RPM hard drives, causing the moving parts of the hard drive to vibrate in arcs that would gradually sweep wider than intended.”
“Sometimes, we’d leave Skype on all day and night, not always speaking, just being part of each other’s routines. It became a quiet but constant presence in our relationship.”
Circular shapes, central openings, radiating lines: Radek Sienkiewicz, aka VelvetShark, has an idea why AI company logos resemble buttholes. “Circles represent wholeness, completion, and infinity—concepts that align with AI’s promise. They’re also friendly and non-threatening, qualities companies desperately want to project when selling potentially job-replacing technology.” The visual conformity reveals a race for legitimacy, Sienkiewicz concludes, and ”the fear of standing out.”
“My first games involved hand assembling machine code and turning graph paper characters into hex digits. Software progress has made that work as irrelevant as chariot wheel maintenance.”
“If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians, I would not have joined Microsoft and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights.”
“If chatbots can be persuaded to change their answers by a paragraph of white text, or a secret message written in code, why would we trust them with any task, let alone ones with actual stakes?”
“Can AI improve climate modelling? Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that AI energy demands are growing disproportionally to any efficiency gains.”
“It’s more than Apple and Microsoft’s market caps combined. It’s more than than any company has raised for anything in the history of capitalism.”
“Copyright only works above a certain threshold of importance. That’s something you learn as an artist. Your voice doesn’t matter.”
“As U.S. et al. v. Google goes to trial, the echoes of the landmark federal suit against Microsoft, a quarter-century ago, are unmistakable.”
Deep demake or meta media archaeology? Thanks to programmer WebFritzi, retro gaming fans can now enjoy Windows 95 classics Solitaire, Freecell, and Minesweeper on a Commodore 64—iconic Windows 95 desktop interface and mouse support included. Recreating an authentic 1995 PC experience on an 8-bit platform from a decade prior required some assembly language wizardry. “How are the icons created? Can you make a user interface like this? I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” stunned Commodore fans wrote online.
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