I was an early user of Google and many of the tools and apps they rolled out over the years. 149 posts going back to 2002. In no particular order:
Talk, Google+, Reminders, My Activity, Glass, Picassa, Gmail, Chrome, Goggles, Voice, Docs, Buzz, Tasks, Reader, Living Stories, Wave, Maps, Earth, Spreadsheets, News
I’m about halfway through Christopher Summerfield’s These Strange News Minds (How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means). Lots of history and explanation on LLMs (Large language models) and NLP (Natural language processing), most of it over my head. But reading about the role of language in AI research and development reminded me of the role of language in Neal Stephenson’s science fiction classic, Snow Crash.
[GPT 4o] In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson explores language as a tool of power, control, and transformation, blending cyberpunk themes with linguistic theory and mythology.
1. Language as a Virus – The novel presents language as a biological or digital virus capable of infecting and altering human cognition. “Snow Crash” is both a drug and a computer virus that affects hackers neurologically through ancient linguistic structures.
2. Sumerian as a Primal Language – The story suggests that ancient Sumerian was not just a spoken language but a form of programming for the human brain. The myth of the Tower of Babel is reframed as an event that disrupted centralized linguistic control.
3. Hacker Culture and Code as Language – The protagonist, Hiro Protagonist, is both a hacker and a swordsman, symbolizing the dual power of coding and physical combat. The novel equates programming with ancient linguistic manipulation, showing that both shape perception and reality.
4. Linguistic Control and Subjugation – The antagonist, L. Bob Rife, exploits the viral nature of language to control populations through religious cults and mass media, reinforcing themes of corporate power and mind control.
5. Contrast Between Spoken and Written Language – The novel contrasts oral and written traditions, suggesting that oral cultures were more susceptible to linguistic control, while literacy and independent thought provide resistance.
Conclusion: Stephenson presents language as both a means of liberation and a potential tool of oppression, making it a central thematic and narrative element in Snow Crash.
Sounds all too familiar.
In the twenty-three years I’ve been maintaining this blog more than 800 posts wound up in the INTERNET category, making said category almost useless. And do I make SOCIAL MEDIA a tag, or a sub-category under INTERNET? To sort this out I am reviewing each of those 800+ posts. During today’s lunch break I asked GPT 4o when SOCIAL MEDIA became a thing.
While it’s impossible to pinpoint an exact starting point, social media as a component of the Internet has evolved over time. It depends on how you define it—whether as any form of online interaction or as modern profile-based networks. Here are some key milestones:
1. 1970s–1980s: Early Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Usenet
2. 1990s: The Web and Early Social Networks
3. 2000s: The Boom of Modern Social Media
Conclusion: The “beginning” of social media depends on the criteria:
I remember the modem screech that connected me to my first BBS. Posting to a Usenet group. My first CompuServe email address. And all that followed. Here on smays.com SOCIAL MEDIA started getting some ink in the mid-2000s.
Before the 8-track tape, there was a 4-track cartridge system, commonly known as the Muntz Stereo-Pak or simply the 4-track tape system. It was developed in the early 1960s by Earl “Madman” Muntz, an entrepreneur known for his work in consumer electronics and cars.Key Facts About the 4-Track System:
Though 4-track players had a brief run, the format laid the groundwork for the success of the 8-track, which dominated car audio until cassette tapes took over in the late 1970s. (GPT 4o)
“In this book Christopher Summerfield delves into the evolution of large language models (LLMs) and their profound impact on society. Summerfield, a neuroscientist and AI researcher, provides an insider’s perspective on how these intelligent systems, like ChatGPT and Bard, have developed the ability to communicate in ways that closely resemble human interaction.
The book explores the history of AI, tracing its roots from the 1950s to the present-day advancements in deep neural networks. Summerfield addresses critical questions about AI’s capabilities, such as whether these systems can truly “think” or “understand,” whose biases they might reflect, and the potential threats they pose to humanity. Continue reading
Click the three little horizontal lines at top-right to see all 40 videos in playlist.
Spending more time in Photos app and re-discovering some of the nifty features. Click the image above for a 90 second slide show.
“Suno AI is a generative artificial intelligence music creation program that allows users to generate realistic songs combining vocals and instrumentation based on text prompts. Suno has been widely available since December 20, 2023, after launching a web application and partnering with Microsoft to include Suno as a plugin in Microsoft Copilot.” (Wikipedia)
I had not heard of Suno until I received the following text from my friend David.
La Tiara, our favorite brand of taco shells, has been discontinued. I asked Claude for lyrics to a mariachi ballad in tribute, and fed them to Suno and got this.I asked for a mariachi style ballad. Was not expecting Spanish.
David and I worked together at Learfield Communications during the early days of the Internet. I was boring everyone to tears with my predictions about what a Big Deal it was going to be. Huge! Transformative! Bigger than radio! David shared my enthusiasm. To illustrate Suno’s magic…
I prompted for a song about a guy named Steve who’s trying to convince his company the internet is the next big thing, but they don’t believe him because all they know is radio.” It came up with the bizarrely accurate details on its own. [lyrics]
I posted my first video to YouTube in February, 2006. Just a year after YouTube launched in 2005. (Yes, it was lame)
Since then I have embedded or linked to YouTube videos 713 times. That’s a lot, particularly if I wanted to see videos by category. For example, all videos on the topic of CONSCIOUSNESS. Or, all videos of my Land Rover. While I have a Land Rover category, many of those posts don’t include a video. The 6,400 posts here at smays.com are organized in 41 categories with 256 tags.
While most of those 713 videos were created by someone else, I created 167 of them and 73 of them are YouTube selfies (me talking to the camera.)
Are you confused yet? It gets even more complicated. I created a category for videos not hosted on YouTube. These include .mp4, .mov, with a few Vimeo and TED Talk videos.
The goal here to make it easier to find videos by topic. Examples:
By combining categories and tags or tags and tags, I can make searches more specific.
