On the AI financial bubble, with bonus points for the subheading "Where’s the Money, Lebowski?"
https://prospect.org/power/2025-03-25-bubble-trouble-ai-threat/

"I do not think it will shock anyone to learn that big tech is aggressively pushing AI products. But the extent to which they have done so might. The sheer ubiquity of AI means that we take for ground the countless ways, many invisible, that these products and features are foisted on us—and how Silicon Valley companies have systematically designed and deployed AI products onto their existing platforms in an effort to accelerate adoption.

It also happens to be the subject of a new study by design scholars Nolwenn Maudet, Anaëlle Beignon, and Thomas Thibault, who looked at hundreds of instances of how AI has been deployed, highlighted, and advertised by Google, Meta, Adobe, SnapChat, and others, and analyzed them for a study called “Imposing AI: Deceptive design patterns against sustainability.” They also present the results in a handy guide, with illustrated examples called, aptly: “How tech companies are pushing us to use AI.” (It’s translated from the French, hence the sometimes awkward phrasings.)

The study is a stark reminder that AI has reached ubiquity not necessarily because users around the globe are demanding AI products, but for reasons often closer to the opposite."

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-big-tech-is-force-feeding-us

What is Donald Trump's plan for AI? @brianmerchant read his Action Plan and executive orders and watched his speech. Here's what he learned. "Broadly speaking, the plan is that the Trump administration will help Silicon Valley put the pedal down on AI, delivering customers, data centers and power, as long as it operates in accordance with Trump’s ideological frameworks; i.e., as long as the AI is anti-woke," Merchant writes for his Blood in the Machine newsletter. "It’s above all a blueprint for consolidated control, a vision where worker power withers, citizens become subservient to AI; to its corporate masters and federal overseers, where fossil fuels are ushered again into prominence at the height of the climate crisis, and democracy is sidelined in favor of automation technologies. It is, in summary, pretty grim!"

https://flip.it/tMtohZ

Looking forward to listening to/reading this... Great podcast, great interviews. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to buy his most famous book. A pity that nowadays everyone seems to have forgotten Howard Rheingold's book on virtual communities (1993). That's a true classic.

"Today's podcast guest is Fred Turner, a Professor of Communication at Stanford and the best historian of Silicon Valley culture over the past 100 years.

His book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, is my favorite book on the region’s history, focusing on how hippies and hackers came together from the 60s to the 90s. But he’s researched essentially every Silicon Valley subculture, from Buckminster Fuller to the maker movement to diversity posters at Facebook.

Fred is also one of the warmest, most enthusiastic storytellers I know—the kind of history teacher everyone wishes they had. You’ll leave this listen with a bunch of fun facts about the Whole Earth Catalog, Burning Man, and the Italian futurists; but more importantly, a deep appreciation for what humans and the humanities can offer."

https://jasmi.news/p/from-counterculture-to-cyberculture

#SiliconValley #MediaEcology #MediaStudies #Cyberculture #DigitalUtopianism #Counterculture.

The FA stands up for itself more than the UK Government does...

https://news.sky.com/story/fa-could-boycott-social-media-over-racism-as-it-says-platforms-have-avoided-responsibility-over-online-abuse-13401262

Are you asking this Government to stand up to the American tech Bros who are poisoning our children (presumably, as rich white men, so they can be groomed for fucking?)

I admire your moxxy lady, but I'm not going to hold my breath with these Quisling Labour fascists....

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/24/uk-should-act-to-stop-children-social-media-addiction-dopamine-loops

Is it possible to imagine a better future where we use less computation? The effects of AI hype almost demand it.

On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke with @danmcquillan so he could lay out the concept of decomputing as a different way of assessing technology.

Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/286_decomputing_for_a_better_future_w_dan_mcquillan

Some stark and painful numbers from the San Jose State University’s “Pain Index” report about #siliconValley #sfba (Santa Clara and San Mateo counties):

Out of the around 893k households in Silicon Valley…

• 0.01% (NINE HOUSEHOLDS), own 15% of the wealth here.
• 10% (89k households) own 71% of the wealth.
• The poorest 50% (446k households) own merely 1% of the wealth.
• 201k households have $5000 in assets or less.
• 110k households have ZERO ASSETS.

#inequality #injustice

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/worsening-gap-silicon-valley-wealth-study-20783168.php

Their products kill people, but they've got high on their own supply now and I'm looking at my field of fucks, and it lies barren my friends...barren....

https://futurism.com/tech-industry-ai-mental-health

"Shaun Maguire wanted New York City voters to know about the dangers ahead. On July 4, the general partner at the industry-leading Sequoia Capital posted on X that Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a secret "Islamist" who "comes from a culture of lying." Mamdani, he added, "has basically advocated for the destruction of America."

The comments were not unusual for Maguire, a self-described moderate former Hillary Clinton voter who has become a full-throated MAGA convert, defender of Israel, and one of the most provocative right-wing political commentators among an increasingly right-leaning group of venture capitalists and founders. This time, though, the social-media dam broke, bringing a flood of critical comments from startup founders and tech workers. Hundreds of Muslim founders signed an open letter asking that Sequoia apologize and discipline Maguire. At the Allen & Co. Sun Valley conference, the annual "summer camp for billionaires" in Idaho, Sequoia's managing partner Roelof Botha was hounded with questions about Maguire, The New York Times reported. Several other people I spoke to — including Maguire's friends, colleagues, and executives from a Sequoia limited partner and a Sequoia portfolio company — wondered what might happen to tech's new leading controversialist.

More broadly, the ongoing debate over Maguire's posts reflects a tech business riven by faultlines over the industry's positions on Israel's war in Gaza. Those disagreements, which have been tamped down by some Muslim tech workers' fear of losing their jobs or funding, are now exploding into the open."

https://www.businessinsider.com/shaun-maguire-silicon-valleys-most-maga-firebrand-sequoia-mamdani-2025-7

"Now, we can go into a meritocracy future where you only get things if you can compete at a very high level, according to rules created by these Silicon Valley guys. I think that a big part of the problem is who is creating this technology and who are they creating it for? I don’t necessarily buy the hype on AGI and AI, but the CEOs are pushing this idea that they’re about to massively transform and disrupt the world in a way that sounds like it’s going to maybe harm the majority of people to benefit a small number of people.

Why is that the case? Why are they designing it in that way? Why aren’t they trying to find ways to create technologies that can solve the problems we have, rather than create new, worse problems? I think a fundamental problem is that these technologies are now being designed by people in the private sector with nothing more than a profit motive. Whereas in the past, some of the biggest, most transformative technologies we have come out of government for the public good, for national security, for some other incentive, to try to solve the problem in a different way. So, I don’t know how you can fix that problem as long as we’re going to let a handful of extremely wealthy megalomaniacs guide the progress."

https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/707010/gil-duran-the-nerd-reich-tech-billionaires-authoritarianism-dictator

"Economic inequality has reached a staggering milestone in Silicon Valley: just nine households hold 15% of the region’s wealth, according to new research from San Jose State University. A mere 0.1% of residents hold 71% of the tech hub’s wealth.

The findings come from the 2025 “Silicon Valley Pain Index”, a report published by SJSU’s Human Rights Institute each year since 2020. The report aims to quantify “structured inequalities” in Silicon Valley, and measures “pain” as “both personal and community distress or suffering”.

This year’s index reports that the wealth divide has widened in Silicon Valley at double the rate of the whole United States over the past decade. The nine wealthiest households in the valley control $683.2bn – a $136bn increase over the past year.

At the same time, 110,000 households reported nearly none or no assets.

The cost of living in Silicon Valley has risen as well: renters must earn $136,532 to afford an apartment – the highest in the nation.

The report ranked San Jose No 4 in “impossibly unaffordable” cities worldwide (after Hong Kong, Sydney and Vancouver). Yet, no cities in Silicon Valley have raised the minimum wage in the past three years. The report finds that 54,582 low-income households do not have access to an affordable home in San Jose and that homelessness grew 8.2% from 2023."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/21/silicon-valley-income-wealth-gap

What are the chances of this Labour government holding the Tech Bros who are helping the fascist insurrection around to task?
They'd rather lock up people protesting against Genocide than those who want to kill Refugees, they are not on our side

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/11/online_safety_act_misinfo/

Nine households control 15% of wealth in #SiliconValley as inequality widens

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/21/silicon-valley-income-wealth-gap

Report finds wealth divide widened in Silicon Valley at double the rate of the whole #US over the past decade