Three Recs: March 21, 2024

Booing AI, meeting the Bruderhof, and thoughts on TikTok.

Hey there! Happy Thursday. I hope you’re having a great week.

I have had zero time or energy to write anything of substance lately as I recover from being sick. I finally feel like I’m on the upswing.

That’s a little bit of a lie. I have had some time. I’m a big fan of the video game MLB The Show, and its newest iteration released last weekend. So I’ve been enjoying some time playing that, which has maybe (definitely) cut into some time I could have been writing…oops.

Below are some goodies I’ve come across in the last week. However, first, a poll:

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#1: They Praised AI at SXSW—and the Audience Started Booing

This warms my heart.

If they were paying attention, they might already have a hunch how much people hate this stuff—not just farmers in Kansas or your granny in Altoona, but hip, progressive attendees at SXSW.

These people literally come to the event to learn about new things, and even they are gagging on this stuff.

It’s more than just fears about runaway AI. Prevailing attitudes about digital tech and innovation are changing rapidly in real time—and not for the better. The users feel used.

#2: Few Smartphones, Some Beer: A Christian Village Grapples With Modernity

I have been blessed to engage with a number of members of the Bruderhof community because of my writing over the years, so I was pleased to see write-up about them in the Times. I’m not a member of the community, obviously, but I thought it was a peek into the fruitfulness of community life that holds internet technologies a bit more of a distance than we do in broader culture.

Living not so far from Wall Street, the global epicenter of high finance, these Bruderhof members are part of the last fully functioning socialist societies on earth. The tight-knit settlements, where everyone is on a first-name basis, exist virtually without crime, homelessness, debt or the epidemic of loneliness that afflicts the world beyond their borders. They support themselves mainly by making furniture, and their farms produce roughly half of the food they consume. Members share sprawling multifamily homes, and many material items — cars, lawn mowers, a community credit card — are held in common.

#3: Congress Should Think Bigger Than TikTok Ban, Tech Critics Say

This is a great piece on banning TikTok. As a fan of TikTok as an app, I do think it should probably be banned. But I also agree with the sentiment below: why stop there?

Even if TikTok had a new owner, the broader dangers of online information and data sharing would remain. “If you think of the internet ecosystem as a colander with a million holes in it, I don’t know why they think plugging one of those tiny holes is going to fix these problems,” Schroeder says.

Large tech companies have said they’d prefer national standards to a patchwork of state laws on issues like privacy, but the specific provisions of any tech accountability bill are likely to be hotly contested.