“For now, many of us still approach A.I. as outsiders — nonnative users, shaped by analog habits, capable of seeing the difference between now and then. But the generation growing up with A.I. will learn to think and write in its shadow. For them, the chatbot won’t be a tool to discover — as Netscape was for me — but part of the operating system itself. And that shift, from novelty to norm, is the profound transformation we’re only beginning to grapple with.”

Opinion | I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students.

We need to reckon with what ChatGPT is doing to the classroom and to human expression.

Oh no…now Meta is automatically sharing our private messages to its AI. As far as I can tell, you can only turn it off for each message thread, one at a time (and there seems to be no option to turn it off *at all* for group threads!). Yet another privacy disaster from Facebook. I use Messenger btw for family and non-tech friends, so don’t (ahem) shoot the messenger.

One of the ways to get Mastodon more visibility across the normieverse is to add your link to @npub1t0qu...ayut. e.g. I requested that one of my Mastodon posts about the OpenAI browser news be added (I thought it added good context) and within a minute or two it was up there. It's a small way to promote the fediverse, but it helps when people see more Mastodon (or indeed indie blog) links on Techmeme. Note: the button, on the bottom-right, only displays on the desktop version of Techmeme (not mobile).

Ok, here we go with the full-on "AI browser" competition. Perplexity has announced its new browser Comet, which founder Aravind Srinivas says "powers a shift from browsing to thinking." I interviewed Srinivas in January 2024, when he told me he was Larry Page's biggest fan. Looks like he's fast-tracking the Google playbook with all that VC $$ — going from chatbot to search engine & now browser, all in the space of 18 months or so. ref:

X (formerly Twitter)

Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) on X

Comet is a web browser built for today’s internet. In the last 30 years, the internet has evolved from something we simply “browse” or “sea...

https://thenewstack.io/more-than-an-openai-wrapper-perplexity-pivots-to-open-source/

Don’t fall for this again, hundreds of millions of people.

TechCrunch

Threads is nearing X's daily app users, new data shows | TechCrunch

Threads' mobile app for iOS and Android saw 115.1 million daily active users, representing 127.8% year-over-year growth.

Since my latest Cybercultural post is about search, I checked out my website's traffic sources so far this year. "Direct" is #1, which could mean a number of sources — incl Mastodon, which unfortunately doesn't usually provide referral data (I wish it would). The only other "social" sources in top 10 are Bluesky and LinkedIn. Threads & Facebook both very low (no surprise!). I wish Flipboard was higher, tbh. ChatGPT & Perplexity do send some traffic...actually ChatGPT wasn't too bad. #YMMV

As search engines in 2025 shift from providing links to (AI) answers — and all the angst that is causing web publishers — I thought I'd take a look at what search engines were like in 1998...one year before Google became popular. At that time search was seen as just one part of the portal experience. But little did AltaVista know, it wouldn't be the center of attention on @npub1vewv...njgt's Search Engine Watch for much longer.

Cybercultural

Search Engines in 1998, Before Google Takes the Spotlight

Google makes the transition from Stanford project to company over 1998, but it is portals like Yahoo! and portal-wannabes like AltaVista that featu...

#InternetHistory #searchengines

I think we’re starting to see a breakdown of trust in some of the larger players in the open social web. Many of you didn’t trust Meta from the start about Threads; I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s 100% clear to me now that Meta is not serious about federation. Likewise we see Automattic now backtracking on its promise to federate Tumblr. Perhaps this is all a sign that we need new products and new open source leaders, to add to e.g. Mastodon & Pixelfed. And new business models!

This is the kind of stuff that finally made me quit Threads, just as I have X. Also see my recent post about the various ways Threads fails to federate at even the most basic level:

Mastodon

Richard MacManus (@ricmac@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image Threads is allegedly part of the fediverse, yet I'm nowhere near the point of being able to ask Threads users to follow my Masto...

Mastodon

Todd Alström (@toddalstrom@mastodon.social)

Odd. Noticed that when viewing @mosseri@threads.net from Mastodon his last post was on April 23, despite posting on Threads many times since and wi...

"As mainstream culture is imploding in on itself and can feel like a stitch up, new ways of being are bubbling up at the edges. It's more off-line - or at the very least in private online spaces. It's smaller, DIY in sensibility, and it's a safer space for its participants. Fundamentally it's unsurveilled."

Drowned in Sound

Why we might be witnessing a return to the spirit of Punk

Hanna Chalmers can see the re-emergence of the spirit of punk across music, climate change activists, tech, art and politics...

@npub1fdq8...4maa