Jonathan Soma, a professor at Columbia’s Journalism School, wrote a short, useful introduction to ChatGPT for educators that will offer some insight for those interested:
Source: An introduction to ChatGPT for educators (and maybe journalists)
Category Archives: Communications, Connection, Internet, Web, Media
The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
A thought provoking essay from Maggie Appleton about where we are, and where we’re headed, with Generative AI and the Internet: 
Proving you’re a human on a web flooded with generative AI content
Bring back personal blogging – The Verge
A good read about blogging to start the new year:
The personal blog built the internet, and maybe it can fix it.
50 years ago Doug Engelbart and team demoed the future
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Doug Engelbart’s groundbreaking 1968 Demo – also known as “The Mother of All Demos.”
It was there at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference that Doug and his team at SRI first presented their seminal work in personal and collaborative computing to the world – this was the debut of the mouse, windows, hypermedia, file sharing, teleconferencing, and much, much more.
So much of SRI vision has come to pass, so much has yet to be realized. I wonder what comes next, and who is working towards it?
If you have yet to see this, take the time out of your week to do so.
Help fund Metafilter
If you’ve been following the controversy around Reddit lately (Wired), you might be surprised. The reality is that the challenge of keeping an online community healthy as it grows is tremendous.
One community that has faced many of those challenges successfully over the years is Metafilter. Metafilter is of the strongest examples of online community anywhere on the Web, and has been since 1999. It’s a remarkable story that not enough are aware of, but that might be one of the secrets to its success.
Last month they published a new “State of Metafilter” update, documenting the improvements they’ve been implementing, as well as handling some monumental comings and goings of the team.
Keep Metafilter going with a donation. Better yet, make your donation a subscription, as I have, so that donations are scheduled periodically.
Related:
It’s great to see Cam blogging again
Cameron Barrett has resumed blogging on his domain that has history going back to 1997. If you are unfamiliar with his work, check it out. Better yet, subscribe to his feed.
Kathleen Vignos, Director of Engineering at Wired.com, on its new design
Read Kathleen Vignos, Director of Engineering at Wired.com, on their new design, and launch on a new Web stack. It looks like Wired.com has joined a growing, varied, and impressive list of large media sites using WordPress, including Time.com, Beyonce, Google Ventures, GM, Ted, Nasa, and Forbes. I pulled together that list recently when putting together material for the TechGirlz and Comcast class on Worpress that I participated in. It was nice reading about some of the deployment and development pipeline they are building there. Nice work Wired.com.
Blogger Meetup 2 of 2015 Starting in 2 Hours
In Philly? Get the details here! Hope to see you there.
Do you have a personal kanban that you’ve shared?
Jim Benson challenges us with the idea that your Personal Kanban board isn’t just for our own private use, but is something to be shared with your family, and with your team. How many folks would be comfortable with that level of transparency? There is real value to be uncovered by trying I think.
For more on what a Personal Kanban board is, read Personal Kanban 101 from Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry.
It’s tough to forecast the weather, but easy to spead fear
I think Dan Gillmor nailed it with this. Not that I blame CNN alone for the school closings and long lines at the grocery store. Fear spreads fast. Last night I spent a silly amount of time refreshing multiple web pages, looking for any kind of clear consensus as to what we’d wake up to, but other than it being bad today, snow totals ranged from the boring to the world shaking. There has to be a financial cost to something like that as parents stay home for their children, who are told to stay home from school. And there isn’t even a decent hill to sled on.
