Pinboard (robertogreco)
https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/
recent bookmarks from robertogrecoItaly's Radical Solution to Extreme Inequality - YouTube2026-07-05T05:51:03+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQMZR64G_eM
robertogrecoeconomics cooperatives emilia-romagna emiliaromagna reggioemilia labor work hierarchy 2025 moreperfect union inequality workers ownership power equality production italia italy verazamagni business consolidation billionaires socialism mussolini benitomussolini fascism control grassroots governance resistance corporations corporatism legcoop law legal profits history coops wealth social socialcoops socialcooperatives decisionmaking finance snupotapinassi privateequity firenze florence marcora marcoralaw francescoborgomeo struggle solidarity globalization johnrussell democracy ilariabertinelli rural farming farmers agriculture stefanocacchioli paolobarbieri cplconcordia sharing cooperation community society danielemontroni wealthhoarding manufacturing collaborationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4f8fbdffb840/Academia: The Answers We Don't Offer - by Timothy Burke2026-07-04T12:22:27+00:00
https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-the-answers-we-dont-offer
robertogrecotimothyburke covid-19 pandemic coronavirus isolation alienation remotework labor work workfromhome affordability us policy bosses precarity psychology whitecollar robertputnam bowlingalone 2020 2021 2022 2023 2025 2026 offices economics socialscience socialsciences institutions government governance maha workplace workplaces social autonomy surveillance billbishop division diversity mixing sociality interpersonal friction pluralism otherpeople others neoliberalism civics belonging rfkjr robertkennedyjr emmaharrington enataliaemanuel partisanship anomie espair adamgrant marissashandell middlemanagement management administration narcissism ego supervision power control employment direction exploration tolerance community communitieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:aa3287c1ee14/Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón - YouTube2026-07-01T08:27:07+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgPns2rB238
robertogrecodancehall raggaetón 2026 via:javierarbona music kingston jamaica sanjuan puertorico culture politics isaacjulien edrasoto albertawhittle carolinacaycedo leeperry scratchperry ricardososelló 2019 history nyc london panamá resistance joy workingclass caribbean dance sexuality social society jdnegro félixrodrríguez andrésramos djvelcro nibiapastranasantiago matthewmccarthy maxinewalters donnahope geraldlevy bogle sonjahstanleyniaah ninjaman gabreselassie danieldíaz pórodil identity gender bodies thenoise catholicchurch catholicism conservatism revoltion underground perreo censorship criminalizationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:44429a73a887/Are You an Otrovert? What to Know About the New Personality Type2026-06-27T22:40:27+00:00
https://time.com/article/2026/03/12/otrovert-new-personality-type/
robertogreco2026 otroversion introversion extroversion outsiders personality psychology otherness ramikaminski empathy cv social socializing relationships belonging notjoining nonjoiners jamiefriedlanderserrano myers-briggs enneagram colindeyoung theagallagher joining joinershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:aa93799ee5c6/(PDF) OTROVERSION: RETHINKING SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT BEYOND THE INTROVERT–EXTROVERT DICHOTOMY2026-06-27T09:25:34+00:00
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/404046247_OTROVERSION_RETHINKING_SOCIAL_ENGAGEMENT_BEYOND_THE_INTROVERT-EXTROVERT_DICHOTOMY
robertogrecootroversion introversion extroversion outsiders personality 2026 psychology otherness ramikaminski empathy cv social socializing relationships belonging notjoining nonjoiners debarshimukherjee maidulislam joining joinershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a83aaa3a8ae2/The Otherness Institute | Take the test - The Otherness Institute2026-06-27T09:22:06+00:00
https://www.othernessinstitute.com/the-otherness-scale/
robertogrecootroversion introversion extroversion outsiders personality 2026 psychology otherness ramikaminski empathy cv social socializing relationships belonging notjoining nonjoiners joining joinershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:66ea3de16b35/Otrovert - Wikipedia2026-06-27T09:21:35+00:00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otrovert
robertogrecootroversion introversion extroversion outsiders personality 2026 psychology otherness ramikaminski empathy cv social socializing relationships belonging notjoining nonjoiners joining joinershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c81b16789b35/Are You an Otrovert? What to Know About the New Personality Type | U-M LSA Department of Psychology2026-06-27T09:21:23+00:00
https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-news/are-you-an-otrovert--what-to-know-about-the-new-personality-type.html
robertogrecootroversion introversion extroversion outsiders personality 2026 psychology otherness ramikaminski empathy cv social socializing relationships belonging notjoining nonjoiners jamiefriedlanderserrano myers-briggs enneagram colindeyoung theagallagher joining joinershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5bb8b518b31e/What is an otrovert? The new personality type, explained2026-06-27T09:17:22+00:00
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2026/06/23/otrovert-personality-type-explained/90645422007/
robertogrecointroversion extroversion otroversion outsiders personality 2026 psychology otherness maryodafe ramikaminski empathy cv social socializing michellesmith relationships belonging notjoining nonjoiners saramoniuszko joining joinershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fcbdb6e3fa34/AI Can’t Fix the Student-Motivation Problem - The Atlantic2026-06-27T06:26:04+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-tutor-education-human-investment/687678/
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence jennyanderson mikegoldstein teaching howwteach edtech technology chatbots llms schools schooling motivation salkhan salmankhan khanmigo openai samaltman learning howwelearn children students khanacademy kristendicerbo laurenceholt tutoring inequality ronferguson achievementgap criticalthinking rolandfryerjr maryburns social justinreich coopeartion care caring community condusion attentionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:061d6da24c04/The hidden rules that dictate how we navigate the world | Psyche Videos2026-06-26T13:29:47+00:00
https://psyche.co/videos/the-hidden-rules-of-the-game-that-dictate-how-we-navigate-the-world
robertogrecopierrebourdieu 2026 habitus rules life society history behavior living sociology structuralism postmodernism existentialism emotions class inequality social howwelivehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7dc8333a7226/AI's Social Scene Is Shifting to Curated Offline Events, Dinner Parties - Business Insider2026-06-26T01:15:39+00:00
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-social-scene-curated-offline-events-dinner-parties-2026-6
robertogrecoHosting an intimate dinner in sf for lore builders.
Founders, narrative architects, writers, world builders. Humans at the intersection of storytelling x culture x craft x storytelling x philosophy x design.
Keeping it to <10. Who should be in the room? 🫶
— Joumana (@JoumanaElomar) June 23, 2026 [https://x.com/JoumanaElomar/status/2069509402437222482 ]
Many of these curated events follow a similar blueprint: a promo that looks like an A24 film poster and grainy, film-like photos that make it feel more like a 90s-era house party than a tech founders' event.
"I think trusted (human) curation is so important now, even more than ever," said Michelle Fang, who leads Stripe Startups, a program offering financial support and resources to early-stage, venture-backed companies, and has a weekly newsletter that rounds up in-person tech events in San Francisco.
Fang said that when she first started the newsletter in 2023, she posted an average of 20 to 30 in-person events a week. That number has now risen to 70 to 80 a week.
"There's been a noticeable shift in both the frequency and types of events happening in SF, especially over the past year," she said.
AI has accelerated this trend dramatically, she said, as the AI boom brings an influx of talent who want to establish their community in the city.
While some of the events Fang has listed are traditional building workshops and hackathons, others include Pilates classes, peptide tasting parties — the latest self-optimization craze — and "intentionally curated" dinners.
It's a vibe shift from the large happy hours and networking events that defined post-pandemic tech socializing, said Fang. These smaller events don't require a big budget or venue, and with the speed of AI growth, people want to make sense of new concepts and the changes happening in real time, she said.
[image: "Dinner table with bowls of sushi and edamame at an event hosted by coworking and tech events startup Verci's / Verci, a coworking space and events startup, hosts monthly dinners and workshops for members. Ami Yoshimura/Verci"]
'Taste is a new core skill'
The taste conversation kicked off earlier this year when Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham wrote in a post on X that, as AI democratizes building, "taste will become even more important."
Two days later, OpenAI President Greg Brockman cemented the catchphrase on X, writing that "Taste is a new core skill." Since then, it's led the tech world to hyperfocus on AI companies and founders who are winning the taste battle.
Alongside the taste discourse, being offline has become a status symbol. Having the ability to de-digitalize is seen as a luxury and a way to connect with people more authentically, with in-person events being a means to achieve this, especially for those whose working lives already revolve around AI.
peak bengaluru and bangerlore pic.twitter.com/1imEhjhCBX
— prerna (@Prerrrrna_) June 7, 2026 [https://x.com/Prerrrrna_/status/2063545613632037129 ]
An event "only for hot people and nerds" in Bangalore, which appeared to be in collaboration with the early-stage Bangalore-based consumer tech company Faff, made the rounds on X earlier this month. The vibe is artfully arranged cheese boards, trendy cocktail menus (with AI puns), and grainy photos.
Ami Yoshimura, the 23-year-old cofounder of Verci, a members club and coworking space in New York, hosts events such as rooftop parties and multi-day retreats for founders and creatives. "Relationships, aesthetics, and telling a story" have become crucial ways to stand out in the hyper-competitive AI industry, he said.
Small parties, big bucks
It's not just San Francisco that is seeing this event boom.
new york tech week highlights:1. went blind into an event hosted by @join_ef and successfully met a group of really cool people with 0 degrees of mutual connection2. met/made some really good friends from url ➡️ irl shoutout fonzi and corgi team3. ended off the week with a… pic.twitter.com/CA3h0mwmLe
— sara kong (@saraknggg) June 8, 2026 [https://x.com/saraknggg/status/2064047927702782454 *]
Katia Ameri, a partner at A16z who spearheads Tech Week in San Francisco, LA, and New York City, wrote on X last month that New York was so far the largest Tech Week in history by events and attendees. The LA and San Francisco equivalents are coming up later this year.
Eliza Wu, cofounder of Corner, a social mapping app that describes itself as "Google but social," wrote in a post on X that there were over 600 RSVPs for a panel she was hosting at New York Tech Week.
Leading AI companies are also taking note. In April, Anthropic posted a brand events lead role in San Francisco, with a salary of up to $400,000.
There are four open marketing events positions at Anthropic, while OpenAI has two open positions for events, commanding over $200,000 salaries with options to gain equity too.
Anthropic is paying up to $400,000 a year for an events role.They're looking for someone to own the execution of brand experiences that translate Anthropic's values into physical moments.This person will produce everything from intimate thought-leadership gatherings to… pic.twitter.com/SWvmSarclY
— Andrew Yeung (@andruyeung) April 26, 2026 [https://x.com/andruyeung/status/2048545188608364593 ** (archived: https://www.are.na/block/47316282 )]
Andrew Yeung, an ex-Google and Meta product lead turned event host and angel investor, wrote on X in response to the job advert that it shows Anthropic understands that "they need to create visceral, unforgettable IRL experiences that make complex technology feel accessible and human."
"The massive opportunity now is offline, analog, in-person," he said.
But while the taste that goes into hosting a party is human, we are living in an AI world — and as with your job applications, an AI screener might still be standing between you and an invitation.
Wu, the cofounder who hosted a New York Tech Week event with 600 RSVPs, said she turned to Claude to winnow down her guest list.
She said she prompted the chatbot to scan through potential attendees' social posts to identify "markers of excellence" and to suss out the "quality of their thoughts."
With the help of Claude, only 300 people made the cut."
[* full text of https://x.com/saraknggg/status/2064047927702782454:
new york tech week highlights:
1. went blind into an event hosted by @join_ef and successfully met a group of really cool people with 0 degrees of mutual connection
2. met/made some really good friends from url ➡️ irl shoutout fonzi and corgi team
3. ended off the week with a bang at vega (shoutout ben & maddie)
i think when it boils down to WHAT constitutes a good event, it varies based off what your specific persona is trying to get out of it.
for me, events with well-catered hospitality that are more intimate (without just randomly throwing people together sloppily) call out more to me because you make more solidified relationships.
likewise, it’s good to put an online face to a name because that alone can unlock so much trust and future opportunities.
see you soon nyc!
** full text of https://x.com/andruyeung/status/2048545188608364593
Anthropic is paying up to $400,000 a year for an events role.
They're looking for someone to own the execution of brand experiences that translate Anthropic's values into physical moments.
This person will produce everything from intimate thought-leadership gatherings to large-scale industry activations.
The top AI research lab in the world recognizes that to cross the chasm and reach everyday consumers, they need to lean into hospitality. They need to create visceral, unforgettable IRL experiences that make complex technology feel accessible and human.
They understand that digital channels are getting increasingly saturated. Every feed is flooded with AI content... every inbox is overflowing.
The massive opportunity now is offline, analog, in-person.
The companies that win in the next decade won't just have the best product but the most emotional in-person presence and the most compelling storytelling.
If you're in events, experiential marketing, or brand activations, this is your moment. The biggest tech companies in the world are betting on you.
[two images of the job posting]
]]]>ai artificialintelligence siliconvalley technology 2026 royashahidi small humanities liberalarts culture taste anthropic claude aislop paulgraham elizawu corner saraking amiyoshimura joumanaelomar michellefang stripestartups social events community aibubble gregbrockman openai status offline online socialmedia internet katiaameri a16z andreessenhorowitz andrewyeung google meta nytechweek sanfrancisco society analoghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7c5d13ca6f52/Wang Hui | What is equality? - YouTube2026-06-11T23:00:08+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXqOev4m3vc
robertogrecowanghui 2026 china equality religion language civilization tianzia justice interdependence nature beliefs ethnicity culture traditions sociallife social history pluralism interconnected interconnectedness nationstates future hierarchy division dependence coexistence dependencyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:862a8e0f5922/Pluralistic: Refining humanity (05 Jun 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow2026-06-07T00:57:07+00:00
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/05/defining-humanity/
robertogrecoBlackadder: Let's start at the beginning, shall we? First: 'A.' How would you define 'A'?
Prince George: Ohh…'A' (continues this in background). Oh, I love this! I love this! Quizzies! Erm, hang on, it’s coming. Ooh, crikey, erm, oh yes, I’ve got it!
B: What?
PG: Well, it doesn’t really mean anything, does it?
B: Good. So we're well on the way, then. "'A'; impersonal pronoun; doesn't really mean anything."
I mean, what does "A" mean? The Oxford English Dictionary has more than a dozen definitions, and just the first one runs to more than 1,500 words:
https://archive.org/details/the-oxford-english-dictionary-all-volumes_202208/The%20Oxford%20English%20Dictionary%20Volume%201%20-%20A%20to%20B/page/n25/mode/2up
Now, normal life involves a lot of explaining things to other people. You have to explain your problems to customer service reps, who have to explain why they can't solve those problems to you. You need to explain to your loved ones why you want to leave your toothbrush in the shower, and they have to explain why they hate having your toothbrush in the shower. These explanation-exchanges teach you as much as they teach the person you're locked in dialog with. The reasons for leaving your toothbrush in the shower may seem totally obvious to you, and your partner's inability to understand this reveals the assumptions you've never even considered.
For the past four decades, an increasing proportion of the population have spent an increasing proportion of their lives explaining things to machines that have no assumptions or shared context: computers. What we call "programming a computer" is really "breaking down a thing that seems obvious to you into increasingly simple instructions that will be followed to the letter."
Computers are like the genies of legend, bloody-minded literalists who will do exactly what you say, in the way that is perversely furthest from what you mean. To get a computer to do anything, you must first understand it to a degree that far exceeds the understanding needed to explain something to any other human, even a small child.
To take just one example: yesterday, I was on a plane, and the seatback video started cycling through its video-on-demand offerings. All of the movie titles that began with "the" were rewritten to put "the" at the end of the title (for example, "The Sting" was written as "Sting, The"). It's obvious why the system's designer had done this: we expect to find movies whose titles begin with "The" alphabetized under their second word ("The Sting" should appear between "Star Wars" and "Story of a Love Affair"; not between "The Godfather" and "The Untouchables").
I remember when I learned this from my elementary school's teacher-librarian, when I was seven and my class got a tutorial on the school library's card catalog. The librarian explained this principle to us in a matter of minutes, as part of a longer set of instructions, and still, it stuck with me forever.
But here we are, 48 years later, and we still haven't standardized a way to get computers to grasp this foundational principle of alphabetization. Many different databases handle this, to be sure, but it's so inconsistent across so many platforms that someone at the head-end of the video distribution system that feeds American Airlines' VOD system decided, "Fuck it, I'm just gonna put the 'The' at the end of these titles."
Computers are stupid, in other words, which means that the people who program them have to have smarts enough for both of them. Unfortunately for our entire species and civilization, the software industry has historically valued skill at writing efficient and reliable software over writing software that adequately reflects reality. There is an entire genre of lists that illustrate the problem with this; the "falsehoods programmers believe" lists:
https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
From "names of people" and "street addresses"; from "prices" to "time"; from "email addresses" to "phone numbers"; the "awesome falsehoods" lists are awesome because they reveal how much subtlety and complexity is lurking in these seemingly simple and intuitive concepts. This subtlety and complexity might never emerge through the process of trying to teach a person about them, but when you try to teach a computer about them, you have to confront them in all their awesome fuggliness.
That's because humans have context, agency and flexibility. Sure, the person who designs a form with a blank for "name" might never have met a Malagasy person whose first name is Randriamananjararadofabesata, but in the pre-digital world, when Madagascar Slim met a public official who had to transcribe his name onto a paper form, that official could simply draw an arrow in the margin next to the "name" blank, turn the form over, and write out all 28 characters on the reverse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Slim
Computers can't do this. If the programmer doesn't know about Malagasy first names, the computer doesn't know about them either, and the only person who can "teach" the computer about these names is a programmer with access to the code for the database, who has to manually alter the code, compile it, and distribute it to everyone who uses it.
This is partly why digitization has been accompanied by a rise in people asserting that they exist on spectrums rather than in binaries. There were always people whose names, genders, races, and other biographic "immutables" changed, or failed to fit within the blanks on the forms. When those people's realities ran up against failures in the system's abstractions, they could petition a bureaucrat to turn the paper over and write an explanatory note, or to write really small to fill in a blank:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes
Getting a human official to turn the paper over and write something that didn't fit in the blank is a personal challenge. It requires that a subject convince the person who controls the form to make an exception. This isn't always easy, but officials on the front lines necessarily deal with reality, and they can't get their jobs done unless they're capable of interpreting the necessarily incomplete procedures they operate under to fit things as they really are.
But a computer doesn't have any agency or context or flexibility. If the computer says your name isn't valid, you can't argue the computer into accepting it. The only way to get a digital world to acknowledge your existence is to campaign for systemic change. A trans person might (with great difficulty, to be sure) convince the regional registrar to white-out an old X on one "gender" box and mark a new X in the other box. But the only way to make that change in a software system that has been programmed to treat the "gender" field as immutable is to change society itself.
In this way, computers are machines for teaching us what we don't know about ourselves. They require that we interrogate and faithfully recreate our personal tacit knowledge, and they require that our societies interrogate their tacit presumptions as well. When you are forced to turn your tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, you're also forced to confront how many broken assumptions lurk inside your reasoning. At best, it's a clarifying process.
Computers don't just clarify what we know and how we organize our society: they also clarify what we are. There are lots of things that we have supposed that a computer would never do, because we believed that these things required something that only humans could do.
Take chess: there are more possible chess games than there are hydrogen atoms in the universe, so brute-forcing chess by running all possible games is a technological impossibility. The best human chess players do something we don't quite understand, mixing their recollections of previous games with rules-of-thumb about the best strategies, with "creativity" (whatever that is) that lets them spontaneously develop new strategies. We can easily get a computer to memorize all the known-good chess sequences and all the rules of thumb, but we don't know what "creativity" is, so we can't encode it as a series of instructions.
But thanks to breakthroughs in machine learning and its successor, "deep learning," we have created chess-playing software that can beat every human, partly by assaying gambits that we would term "creative" if they originated with a human player.
What we make of this new fact is controversial. For many people (myself included), this is a refinement: it tells me that behaviors that are indistinguishable from "creativity" can, at least some of the time, be created by mechanical processes, and the mere fact that a machine does something that appears "creative" doesn't mean that machines are human.
For others, the fact that a mechanical system can evince a behavior that we would call "creative" in a human doesn't mean that we defined "creativity" too broadly, it means that we defined "human" too narrowly, and now we have made a machine that is, at least partially, a person.
I think this is the wrong conclusion to draw, for reasons that Ted Chiang sets out with luminous brilliance in a recent Atlantic article entitled "No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious":
https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/
(If you're hitting the paywall on that one and you're on Firefox, you can try my favorite trick: switch to "Reader Mode" and hit "reload" – your mileage may vary.)
For all the reasons Chiang articulates, I think that drawing the "personhood" line to include machines is a technical mistake, but it's worse than that. Admitting machines to the "personhood" club is a tactical mistake, on par with the mistake we made when we admitted corporations to the personhood club. We should absolutely consider expanding personhood to incorporate living things, including animals and ecosystems, but at the same time, we must purge these dead, artificial constructs from the club:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/15/artificial-lifeforms/#moral-consideration
There is a way in which the recognition of new capabilities in machines parallels the recognition of new capabilities in animals other than ourselves. When those animals manage to do things that we once thought were the exclusive province of humans, we (should) take that as an opportunity to refine our conception of humanity. We're not "the animals that use tools" or "the animals that make plans" or "the animals that recognize themselves in mirrors," because there are other animals that do those things. We are an "animal that uses tools"; not the animal that does so.
Likewise, if we thought that some activity was unique to humans, or to living beings, and we manage to get a machine to replicate that activity, we should revise our view of the activity – not our view of the machine. Creative breakthroughs in chess are not "a thing that requires a human mind," they're "things that can be done by human minds and by machines."
Edsger Dijkstra once famously asked "can a submarine swim?"
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html
Submarines and fish and humans and dolphins all propel themselves through water by different means. But when an animal swims, it does something that is different from what a submarine does. The submarine has no intention, while (complex multicellular) animals swim to pursue goals. Building machines that propel themselves through water is very useful, but it's not the same thing as creating life. In some ways, it's better than creating life: for one thing, we owe other living things moral consideration that is not due to machines. Harnessing a machine to accomplish our own goals is more morally clear than controlling living things to achieve those goals. By the same token, creating machines that can do some of the tasks that we ask of other humans can be the superior moral course. I'd rather have a machine remove mines from a minefield than getting humans to do it.
But beyond this moral relief, creating machines is a fantastic way to learn more about ourselves – making explicit our tacit knowledge, our implicit social assumptions, and the limitations of our conception of what sets us apart from the rest of the universe.
One way in which AI is exceptional is in how it undermines this principle. Conventional software techniques struggled to produce a program that could identify objects in photographs. It turns out that defining all the visual correlates of "cat" is even harder than defining the letter "A." Deep learning techniques solved this previous insoluble problem by relieving us of the job of making explicit all the implicit factors that we deploy when distinguishing an image of a "cat" from an image of a "dog" or a "tiger" (or a "tractor").
Instead of forcing humans to engage in introspection until we'd made a list of every factor we use to identify cat pictures, we simply identified pictures of cats and fed them to a program that tried to find the commonalities among them. The more pictures we fed to that program, the better it got at identifying cats. Today, we have programs that can reliably distinguish an image of a cat from an image of a tiger cub!
This represents a major breakthrough in the power of computers to perform useful work for us, but it's also a huge regression in computers' role in forcing us to make our tacit thought processes explicit through systematic introspection. That's probably fine: we didn't create computers to make us introspect, we created them to do useful work for us. All things considered, it might be better to have genies who grant our wishes according to the spirit of our words, not their letter.
AI may not force us to render our implicit thoughts as explicit instructions, but it absolutely forces us to reconsider and narrow the realm of the numinous. Our own creativity is still delightful and important, but the fact that this squishy, amazing process can (sometimes) be replicated by procedural machines changes the definition of living things. We're "a thing that can produce creative outcomes" but not "the things that can produce creative outcomes." The machines aren't being creative (any more than a submarine is swimming) but they're outputting things that we used to only achieve by means of creativity.
An AI that does something that used to require creativity is fulfilling my favorite of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies: "Be the first person to not do something that no one else has not done before":
https://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
Just as bosses fantasize about AI bringing about a worksite without workers, and Zuckerberg is trying to build social media without socializing, and politicians want a bureaucracy without bureaucrats, we can sometimes use AI to produce creative outcomes without creativity:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/27/unnecessariat/#rubbuts-stole-my-jerb
That isn't to say that AI art is any good. AI may produce things that are aesthetically interesting, but it can't produce things that mean anything:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/02/must-we-pretend/
But art isn't the only realm that we apply creativity to. There are plenty of outcomes that we've always believed we couldn't bring about without applying creativity. AI – like all software – is making us realize that an ingredient we once deemed uniquely essential turns out to have substitutes. AI can sometimes accomplish things without us explaining how we do them. That relieves us of a useful but difficult chore – but in so doing, it forces us (yet again!) to revisit what sorts of things are needed to do the things that matter to us, and therefore, what makes us special."]]>corydoctorow 2026 humanity rowanatkinson blackladder samueljohnson explanation computers computing literalism alphabetization databases civilization software digitization systems systemsthinking binaries spectrums agency context flexibility society societies chess creativity deeplearning ai artificialintelligence consciousness redchiang personhood corporations corporatism animals tools. submarines language morality introspection brianeno peterschmidt obliquestrategeies markzuckerberg social socializing socialization art generativeai genaihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:81331b45a7d7/The Future Belongs to Those Who Resist It — The New Atlantis2026-06-06T11:13:15+00:00
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-future-belongs-to-those-who-resist-it
robertogrecocalrecoffey encyclicals popeleoxiv magnificahumanitas ai artificialintelligence slop aislop experience humanity humanexperience human humanism dehumanization oligarchy unemployment war technology catholicchurch catholicism llms chatbots marcusaurelisus sociality social discernment algorithms resistance civilization society everyday life living purpose policy claudehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:118e3e812887/Why are we addicted to standing in line for treats?2026-06-03T07:55:36+00:00
https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/why-we-stand-in-lines-for-treats
robertogrecolines generations genx generationx geny generationy millennials genz zoomers generationz queues qtbat consumptions consmuperism meaning community gatherings social pilgrimages fellowship religion churchgoing blackbirdspyplanehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d6e222cf6276/How talking to strangers can make us happier - The Washington Post2026-05-28T07:08:56+00:00
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2026/05/19/how-talking-strangers-can-make-us-happier/
robertogrecosocialconnection 2026 strangers talktostrangers conversation maggiepenman nickepley talking social socializinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:faef0794da3a/Children need stress and discomfort in order to grow up | Aeon Essays2026-05-11T20:07:13+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/children-need-stress-and-discomfort-in-order-to-grow-up
robertogrecochildren 2026 apprenticeships behavior howwelern adulthood niklasserning adolescence youth mentalhealth families parenting tinapaynebryson dansiegel shefalitsabary sarahokwell-smith experience conflict overparenting emotions self-efficacy danielkahneman authoritarianism collaboration senses sensory discomfort cathycreswell anxiety accommodation worry overprotectiveness play relationship life living melanieklein johnbowlby williamsears marthasears donaldwinnicott jeromekagan violence abuse neglect trauma coercion discipline love instruction guidance autonomy levvygotsky dianabaumrind overprotecting resilience care caring wellbeing well-being malaise emotionregulation relationships flourishing kindredsquared childhood dissent hardship depression cognitivebias deliberation howwethink thinking distress harm shortterm longterm annoyance emotionalsupport stillness practice acculturation aversion suporession self-control boredom school schooling education howwelearn learning comfort friendship challenges challenge ahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:caca3df79cca/Sara Hendren: Who Is the Built World Actually Built For? - Art of Inquiry | Podcast on Spotify2026-05-05T14:11:09+00:00
https://open.spotify.com/episode/11zlpahmklfgr8YOUrtLnY
robertogrecosarahendren 2026 architecture design disabilities disability accessibility art bodies prosthetics sofiaodeh mayaeinhorn engineering making socialpracticeart science inquiry history conflictkitchen edibleestates socialpractice online internet covid-19 pandemic coronavirus offline social slow small audiencesofone socialjustice ai artificialintelligence technology time perception politics genai generativeai activism poetry human humanism humans howwewrite writing teaching pedagogy highered highereducation culturemaking culture life living howwelive socialmedia being waysofbeing modernity method patternrecognition krzysztofwodiczko downsyndrome interrogativedesign careers purpose meaning meaningmaking children parenting arts humanities friendship relationships leisure artleisure leisurearts identity passion expression objects affect emotions embodiment awe wonder buildings senses spirituality sacredness codeswitching artifacts translation language communication howwemake fabrication ramps risd olincollege builtwohttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0a421ccc8594/Learning? Yes, of course. Education? No thanks.2026-04-26T08:05:02+00:00
https://patrickfarenga.substack.com/p/learning-yes-of-course-education
robertogrecoIn 1982, a British interviewer asked John Holt how he defined the word “education.” He responded: “It’s not a word I personally use. … The word “education” is a word much used, and different people mean different things by it. But on the whole, it seems to me what most people mean by “education” has got some ideas built into it or contains certain assumptions, and one of them is that learning is an activity which is separate from the rest of life and done best of all when we are not doing anything else and best of all in places where nothing else is done–learning places, places especially constructed for learning. Another assumption is that education is a designed process in which some people do things to other people or get other people to do things which will presumably be for their own good. Education means that some A is doing something to somebody else B. I guess that, basically, is what most people understand education to be about” The interviewer pressed John further: “Very well, but what is your definition?” John replied: “I don’t know of any definition of it that would seem to me to be acceptable. I wrote a book called Instead of Education, and what I mean by this is instead of this designed process which is carried on in specially constructed places under various kinds of bribe and threat. I don’t know what single word I’d put [in its place]. I would talk about a process in which we become more informed, intelligent, curious, competent, skillful, aware by our interaction with the world around us, because of the mainstream of life, so to speak. In other words, I learn a great deal, but I do it in the process of living, working, playing, being with friends. There is no division in my life between learning, work, play, etc. These things are all one. I don’t have a word which I could easily put in the place of “education,” unless it might be “living.”3
Children and adults have lived and learned successfully in the flow of community and family life throughout human history without compulsory schooling. We know that people who are talented or knowledgeable can share their wisdom with others in a variety of settings, not just in special places reserved for professional teaching and learning. But our laws, customs, and mind sets have been directed away from our heritage of learning towards the regime of instruction.
John Holt’s book Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better provides not just an analysis of the limits of schooling but also examples of other places, institutions, people, and experiences that exist or could be created for children and adults to learn and grow throughout their lives. What also makes this book interesting is how it ends with a call for people to take their children out of school and teach them in their homes and local communities if the schools are not helping their children. This statement led people from around the world who were already teaching their own children to contact John, and this became the impetus for him to found Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1977.
John was certainly influenced by Illich’s work and book Deschooling Society (Harper & Row, 1971) and he moved his own work from theory to practice when he founded Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1977. 49 years have passed since GWS was founded and homeschooling has grown from the 25,000 estimate John used in 1981 to an estimate of 3.5 million children taught at home in the United States in 2026.4 John hoped school, like a business seeing it’s sales decline, would alter its course and let families that want to use school on an as-needed basis to do so.
Holt wrote about children learning in their communities, in play, sports, projects, and theatrical efforts, from neighbors, friends, and family, and places like the Peckham Center in London—a combined medical research and health support program with a lively community center/cafeteria/gymnasium for working class adults and children. Rather than try to incorporate these and other ideas that expand what education can be, our government and school policymakers continue to double down on the existing structure: more tests, more instruction, and more after-school tutoring to make sure students stay focused on task.
One thing most school administrators and teachers agree upon is that children need more time in school, which became terribly clear during the pandemic. Few educators thought to provide children with social or learning opportunities outdoors during the pandemic, in a schoolyard or public park. Instead they decided to keep students glued to their computer screens while they were being marched through the school curriculum in their homes. This shows how devotion to theories of education subsume common sense about what engenders learning, self-esteem, and social activity, which are entwined.
I’m reminded about all this due to a provocative education policy paper I read in NORRAG, the Global Education Center of the Geneva Graduate Institute: Fighting Against Education: No Alternatives Within the Educated Mind. The authors are united as “Le Goliard: A collective, nomadic, de-professionalized intellectual who wanders erratically on the fringes of dominant certainties and institutions.” It is a strong polemic, as these quotes show:"]]>johnholt education learning howwelearn children society deschooling unschooling ivanillich 2026 plagiarism highered highereducation academia colleges universities schools schooling admission inequality deymoursarason change instruction pedagogy howweteach teaching bronsonalcott asneil mariamontessori rudolphsteiner aaronfalbel institutions adults life living community covid-19 coronavirus pandemic growingwithoutschooling play sports projects self-esteem social patfarenga gwshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:616aa987c7a9/Ten years of "Alaska": Maggie Rogers on going viral and singing for 200,000 protestors - YouTube2026-04-18T04:31:04+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK5y9N1kuNk
robertogrecomaggierogers 2026 music songwriting musicmaking pharrell charlieharding switchedonpop fame lyrics virality stephencolbert activism art fear protest rest creativity writing collaboration howwewrite howwework protestsongs hope artmaking courage well-being wellbeing oppression donaldtrump freespeech utopia resistance dancing community solidarity togetherness social meaning meaningmaking systems change adaptability innovation growth life living meditation slow time productivity stockandflow rejuvenation goals work divinityschool gradschool society education conviviality solitude process prince spirituality joanbaezhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:af8943c86286/Resonant Computing Manifesto2026-04-14T22:07:09+00:00
https://resonantcomputing.org/
robertogrecomanifestos computing computers software ethics technology christopheralexander privacy ai artificialintelligence ecosystems adaptability society social connection coordination collaboration sharedspaces online internet web data powerhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0cb58c6d5513/The Care Economy is the Everything Economy - with Emma Holten - YouTube2026-04-04T07:44:45+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yl6JpVZTdM
robertogrecoemmaholten unlearningeconomics feminism economics 2025 economy society gdp austerity care caring carework careeconomy health healthcare childcare gender hobbes adamsmith johnlocke illness thomashobbes reality humanism relationships social bodies embodiment politicaleconomy sickness unemployment labor work workers culture culturalhistory history quantification numbers statistics data information neoliberalism markets capital capitalism power lobbying influence socialscience socialsciences ideology sexism truth women understanding exclusion aging prices pricing efficiency simnplification methods method inequality diversity externalities coherence disabilities disability predicitons conservatism stabilization predictability equilibrium equilibriumtheory climate climatechange globalwarming change climatecrisis nurses nursing publicsector healthworkers rachelreeves essentialworkers values pandemic covid-19 coronavirus marketvalues qualitative purpose profit profits carecrisis nature environment sustainability uk ehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:55bf219e4032/Why modern life is designed to keep you anxious — and what to do about it | The Gray Area - YouTube2026-03-03T06:43:41+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRxBCd4q9Lc
robertogrecoseanilling thegrayarea 2026 samirchopra anxiety philosophy buddhism acceptance stress worry dread fear life living interdependence interconnected interconnectedness existentialism freud resignation consciousness psychology finance panic vibes time presence future human humanism curiosity control change everythingchanges modernity humans parenting thinking howwethink wonder awe terror freedom activism problemsolving uncertainty complextity inquiry emotions society affect crueloptimism affecttheory mind signalanxiety power loss relationships love hope security suffering outdoors prescribingnature death dying social embodiement boides mindfulness culture sublime present mysticism beauty selflessness objectshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4e106522c021/Instrumentalisation is making everything a means to an end | Aeon Essays2026-02-24T18:02:56+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/instrumentalisation-is-making-everything-a-means-to-an-end
robertogrecomeaning meaningmaking goodlife life livign progress modernity instrumentalization values liberation living 2026 julianbaggini gretchenrubin happiness truth longevity creativity deborahjenkins utllity philosophy purpose weatlh health success nature art friendship aristotle money augustenburroughs elizabethlindsey mentalillness mentalhealth anxiety kant nietzsche flourishing naturalworld antonchekhov value efficiency optimization capitalism enlightenment commonsense self-expression self-determination democracy consumptions consumerism reducationism economics psychology society socialbonds social joy culture davidhume relationships immanuelkant humehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8f778abe6892/Localism Against Tribalism - Front Porch Republic2026-02-18T16:29:39+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/02/localism-against-tribalism/
robertogrecolocalism adamsmith 2026 local small conflict difference urban urbanism cities dubuque iowa boston portland oregon seoul prejudice social socirty hlmencken tribalismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5eff03af2332/We cooperate to survive. But, if no one’s looking, we compete | Aeon Essays2026-02-16T00:14:08+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/we-cooperate-to-survive-but-if-no-ones-looking-we-compete
robertogrecocooperation competition jonathangoodman 2026 psychology anthropocene mutualaid charlesdarwin evolution human humans morality intelligence environment sociobiology peterkropotkin anthropology ernstfehr lamelara indonesia aché interdependence gathering culture society agriculture kenya tanzania maasai osotua connectedness kalahari pollywiessner selfishness identity individualism prisoner'sdilemma ethics jasondana opportunism social cohesion inequality exploitation freeriding nicholashumphrey fairness fairmindedness pessimism behavior elinorostrom noreenahertz greed cheating education self-knowledge temptation equality knowledge capitalism darwin hunter-gatherershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:07dd795faf38/Communities are not fungible2026-02-12T06:28:32+00:00
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/communities-are-not-fungible/
robertogrecojawestenberg 2026 community communities fediverse robertmoses siliconvalley online internet web socialmedia relationships neighborhoods janejacobs economics economists behavior discord platforms dreamwidth livejournal migration twitter optimization algorithms snapchat tiktok bluesky mastodon threads robindunbar socialgraph stevenage urbanism urbanplanning ursulaleguin ursulakleguin thedispossessed hierarchy hierarchies social society displacement distruption skepticismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:31d0599c087b/What technology takes from us – and how to take it back | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian2026-02-08T07:56:42+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/29/what-technology-takes-from-us-and-how-to-take-it-back
robertogreco2026 rebeccasolnit technology society externalities privacy attention communication ai artificialintelligence mentalhealth luddism neoluddism luddites neoluddites gathering connection disconnecting socialmedia internet web online efficiency productivity profits convenience friction slow democracy withdrawal discord human humanism karenhao love sherryturkle sociology psychology well-being wellbeing cluely meta google googleglass chatgpt openai edmondrostand cyranodebergerac relationships conviviality siliconvalley corporations corporatism tyranny embodiment social mollycrockett dalailama activism spirituality humans humanity capitalism togetherness carissavéliz ethics therapy maytaleyal loneliness consciousness deeptime scale nature dehumanization resistance eveydayhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f76dae03ff20/Opinion | What a Baby’s Laugh Actually Tells Us - The New York Times2026-02-05T04:52:17+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/opinion/baby-laugh-developmental-milestone.html
robertogrecolaughter babies communication social 2026 learning howwelearn chilren humorhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:224bd53938c9/The New Satanic Panic Is Here - YouTube2026-01-24T17:16:13+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yVJffNplJc
robertogrecotaylorlorenz 2026 socialmedia jonathanhait web internet online mentalhealth conservatism censorship inequality momochallenge smartphones moralpanic mashablackburn lgbtq policy bariweiss heritagefoundation anxiety reactionaries screentime depression teens youth research media technology change history novels comicbooks comics telephones phones television tv radio fredricwertham children childhood adolescence addiction beepers columbine videogames games gaming bans tiktok isolation fear danahboyd mobility walkability suburbia freetime leisure homework play parenting panic surveillance economics wealthdisparity work labor pandemic covid-19 coronavirus misogyny rightwing right recession economy unemployment instability capitalism publicpolicy poverty precarity guns stress mainstreammedia social connectionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:082a3d9fbf89/The Mythology Of Conscious AI2026-01-14T21:23:01+00:00
https://www.noemamag.com/the-mythology-of-conscious-ai/
robertogrecoconsciousness ai artificialintelligence computation life living anilseth 2026 blakelemoine google davidchalmers geoffreyhinton technology llms openai chatgpt anthropic claude deepmind alphafold hallucinations experience siliconvalley aibubble adambecker computers computing brain neuroscience neurobiology alanturing history algorithms software hardware walterpitts warrenmcculloch stephenkleene neuralnetworks mindware wetware biology silicon carbon autopoiesis intelligence chaitanyachintaluri timvogels generativeentrenchment neuroons alfrednorthwhitehead philosophy turingglasses antikytheramechanism cybernetics timvangelder systems systemsthinking cognition cognitivescience science mind functionalism johnsearle being self interoception emotions moods metabolism materiality simulation instantiation nickbostrom psychology social uncertainty ethics machines syntheticbiology kant mustafasuleyman microsoft yoshuabengio shannonvallor bodies embodiment stoneage descartes sherryturkle lamda immanuelkanthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9858b5102d17/Why the US can't have nice things, part 22026-01-10T20:43:30+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/why-the-us-cant-have-nice-things-a6d
robertogrecochrisarnade 2023 us europe society culture nyc subways infrastructure publictransit transit transportation trains subwaysystems mentalhealth mentalillness homeless homelessness safety cleanliness bathrooms socialtrust social uber publicspacehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b2299a126ea5/Europe is Healthier than US - Chris Arnade Walks the World2026-01-10T20:33:07+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/europe-is-healthier-than-us
robertogrecoI’ve engaged in this debate before, but anyone who doesn’t see that Europe is so much culturally richer, and healthier, than the US is missing that culture is fundamentally about communities, and the social.
When most people talk about Europe’s culture legacy, and superiority, they point to cathedrals, museums, and such.
But it’s not about the physical (although it makes the stage more dramatic), it’s about the work/life balance. About third spaces that encourage being around people, in a way that’s deeper than a brutal transactionalism.
US is about the individual, to a hyper degree. Everyone is so focused on being emancipated from everything, freed from any “outdated” obligations, that they end up in an empty loneliness.
It’s depressing to come back, after traveling. To see so many communities of one, all trying to figure out why their life feels so empty.
Yes. There is still the social and communal in the US. That’s human nature to build it. But we make it harder to do. Our culture just isn’t conducive to communities.
My first amendment is to recognize that saying Europe versus the US is far too simplified since each contains multitudes. Especially Europe, where Germany is different from France, and within France, Paris different from Valence, and within Paris, Le Marais different from Aubervilliers.
For what I’m discussing though, the most important European difference is between Paris and Valence. Or in Germany, between Frankfurt and Bochum, and in Belgium, between Brussels and Mechelen.
The most common way Americans see Europe is through its biggest cities, and yet that’s the least representative way to understand it. Especially the neighborhoods in those big cities they spend time in.
Big city Europe is in the process of being conformed, changed, and ultimately smoothed into a generic boring singular entity. A soulless Americanization that’s accelerated dramatically over the last few decades. It’s a process driven by globalization, tourism, and secular capitalism.2 What has resulted is a McEurope — a chain of big cities where chunks of each are the same. The branding of the franchises might be a tad different, the scenery a little altered, but these chunks serve up the same bland and drab experience.
The downtowns of cobble stone streets lined with the same stores selling runners, sex toys, raw paninis under glow lamps, absurdly caloric sweets, and whatever else tourists splurge on to feel special.
There is the one dirty plaza of check the box cafes which feels like EPCOT center cosplaying, with signs in English, and almost no regulars, beyond that one stubborn and ancient local, who through the force of time, has crafted their singular island of special.
There isn’t much dignity left in these “historic downtowns” most of it lost by the rush to monetize the mobs. The Hen and Stag parties flown in on Ryan Air. The pub crawls. The line of well scrubbed Americans and Asians scurrying behind a hatted scold yelling into a megaphone and holding a tiny red flag.
Some of the historic buildings, especially the Cathedrals, still have a dignity and heft, cultural buttes in a desert eroded by pagan winds, which can only last so much longer, since many have given over to being museums more than houses of worship. A check mark on tourist lists to justify a day of binge drinking. Attending mass in these churches means pushing your way through these packs of heathens who, if they stick around, watch the service with the bemused glee of a 19th-century anthropologist in Papua New Guinea. It wasn’t good then, and it’s not any better now.3
What McEurope is lacking the most, or what is hardest to see, is the communal-ism that’s central to European culture.
Thankfully though, McEurope is confined to a few neighborhoods, although they are by far the most visited ones. It’s very easy to get away from them, and once away, you will find that a healthy European culture is almost everywhere else, especially the smaller towns. In spades. That’s why my single suggestion for visiting Europe is to get out of the most visited big cities, which contain the largest number of most visited neighborhoods, and go to some random mid-sized town. Some place like Valence in France4, that also, like Paris, has a long history, an ancient and sublime Cathedral, yet hasn’t entirely succumbed to the global forces trying to flatten the world.
There you see the care Europeans still give to living. The care given to being a valued member of something larger than themselves. To being part of a group. To eating well, to relaxing well, to working with a purpose beyond making mint.
The flattening forces sloshing around the world are mostly viewed in economic terms. It’s mostly talked about as big global brands and franchises sweeping across the globe, knocking everything down around it.
There’s a truth to that, although they are symptom of a larger illness, which is ideological and also very American5.
It’s the idea of individual liberation. The idea that everyone needs to be emancipated from everything. Everyone needs to find and fly their freak flag. They need to find their true self and be it. Even if that means severing ties with family, friends, church, Nation, anything and everything that came before. Those are provincial, backwards, and holding you back.
That is the purpose of life. To be free. Yet it’s a perverse goal, a broken Telos, that can only be seen as positive if you have a abnormal sense of what it means to be human. To be human is to be social. The ancient Greeks knew it, the Medievalist knew it, and even the early Liberals knew it, but it’s us moderns who’ve somehow forgotten it.
Once you understand that, then you further understand that the American definition of freedom ends in a state of despair, and nobody should seek that. Much less entire cultures.
True freedom isn’t being so emancipated that you are isolated, it’s the opposite — being part of a group and knowing where you fit in and are valued. Be that a church, a cafe, a family, a club, or a Nation.
In that sense, Europe, outside of the overly visited but insignificant McEurope parts, is freer, and healthier than the US. Most of the rest of the world is.
The second amendment I’d make to my Note is a better explanation of the last paragraph,
Yes. There is still the social and communal in the US. That’s human nature to build it. But we make it harder to do. Our culture just isn’t conducive to communities.
Before I stared walking around the world I spent over a decade focusing on poverty, addiction, and despair in the US. My book Dignity was a result of that work.
During those years I got called the “McDonald’s guy” because I highlighted how much community exisited in them.
The salient point wasn’t that there’s something unique about McDonald’s, or America, but that humans are social animals. We need community so much that we will even build it in environments not intended for it.
Or to put it another way, if you provide humans with a landscape of banal franchises, they will form communities, and construct meaningful relationships, in them.
Think again about McDonald’s. The designed purpose was as a ruthlessly efficient way to get food, whittled down to its most transactional basic. You go in, you get calories, you leave, in as short a time as possible.
Yet, McDonald’s has evolved into community centers, where people even meet to pray, because people require and need that. To their credit, the corporation has recognized this, and changed how they approach their customers, although the higher driving goal is still efficiency.
Fast food franchises are not unique. I’ve seen that need for community in every space I’ve been. From trap houses in the Bronx, to homeless camps under bridges, to donut stores in LA. People form social groups wherever there’s more than one person. It’s one of the quarks of human existence. A cardinal building block6.
Yet in the US, and in McEurope, we view it as something to move beyond. Especially the intellectual class, who have an outsized role in policy and business decisions.7
That doesn’t mean the public doesn’t stop being social, rather it means they have to go out of their way to build connections.
America might have a broken culture, one ideologically committed to individual freedom, but we are still social, but not necessarily in the healthiest ways. Without functional communities to be members of, many, out of desperation, end up gravitating to dysfunctional ones.
Without church, they go to the drug traps; without cafes, bars; without families, politics; without sports clubs, gangs; without friends, angry online forums.
Some, a sadly growing minority, fail completely to find anything to be part of and end up in a state of complete antisocial perversion. A state of depression, confusion, emptiness, and then violence, against others and themselves.
A state that for too many ends in suicide, either quickly, or slowly one needle at a time.
That is a freedom turned into a tyranny of emptiness.
***
[Footnotes]
1 - Given that headline clashes with this essay (so far) I ask that you read it. It’s both a tongue in cheek headline, but also a different way of looking at how people see the two places.
2 - I know that reeks of buzzword thinness, but it’s true, although in less cartoonish of a way than usually thought about. It’s about an ideological mindset that sees materialism, and individual liberty, as key to human flourishing. I don’t believe that, as I hope to explain further below in the essay.
3 - I’ll never forget excitedly heading to the Cologne Cathedral, only to find a party of 20 or so British women on a Hen party weekend twerking in front of it for a Instagram post
4 - I could suggest many many others. I chose Valence only because it was where I ended my last trip. Avignon for instance, despite having one small McEurope neighborhood, is still a great place.
5 - Most of the things a lot of American tourists, especially on the left, like about Europe — health care, good public transport, walkable cities, less focus on cars, etc — are downstream of the European communal-ism. They are a result of the US focus on rugged individualism.
6 - That is also true in what I call McEurope. There is still community there, in those “soulless” downtowns, it’s just harder to find, and harder to form.
7 - I’m not suggesting the public, or normies, are also not responsible for a lot of our problems. This isn’t an elite only problem. Individualism isn’t only a belief of the intellectuals, although that’s where it originated, and that’s who is most responsible for the propagation of it. But ideas, unlike Economics, do trickle down, and at this point, a rugged, destructive, individualism is central to what the US is.
At it’s best, when tempered with organic community, it’s the American Dream. At worst, it’s constant fighting, constant blame, constant depression."]]>chrisarnade 2024 us europe comparison worklifebalance life living health loneliness france isolation social happiness community cafeculture cafes communalism individualism work food culture superiority wealth transactionalism thirdspaces thirdplaces paris valence germany frankfurt bochum belgium brussels mechelen aubervilliers lemarais dignity mceurope liberation liberalism liberals purpose existence depression confusion emptiness violence freedom tyrannyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b3090faaf5a5/Modern life is good actually2026-01-10T20:22:03+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/modern-life-is-good-actually
robertogreco"It is not the book I intended to write when I began. Preconceptions dropped off one by one as I investigated. The period was not a Golden Age or Belle Epoque except to a thin crust of the privileged class. It was not a time exclusively of confidence, innocence, comfort, stability, security and peace. All these qualities were certainly present. People were more confident of values and standards, more innocent in the sense of retaining more hope of mankind, than they are today, although they were not more peaceful nor, except for the upper few, more comfortable. Our misconception lies in assuming that doubt and fear, ferment, protest, violence and hate were not equally present. **We have been misled by the people of the time themselves who, in looking back across the gulf of the War, see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in the midst of it. Their memories and their nostalgia have conditioned our view of the pre-war era but I can offer the reader a rule based on adequate research: all statements of how lovely it was in that era made by persons contemporary with it will be found to have been made after 1914.**"
]
I especially struggle taking seriously the “modernity sucks” people who lay the blame on technology and seem to idolize the pre-industrial past. Modern technology is wonderful, and our current problems are not because of the machines, but in how we use them.
I was reminded of this with my recent health issue—when a blood test showed I had a risk of prostate cancer, and within two months I was able to walk into a clinic, have a biopsy, and then walk out two hours later, and within a week find out the growths were non-cancerous, and even had they been, my chances of survival were very high.
Modern medicine alone should be reason enough to understand how fortunate we are to be living now, surrounded by technology. At almost any other period of time, having made it to sixty in good health would be a great accomplishment, rather than the normal, and I would be nearing the end of my life, rather than having a decent chance of being here two or more decades4.
That is a lesson I learned early, from my grandmother, who grew up on a Michigan milk farm, loved going into the grocery store and getting Velveeta cheese5, loved her modern conveniences, and would laugh at the “back to nature” hippies as having no idea how hard life was then. Especially as she had lost her husband at the age of thirty-eight, who dropped dead from a blood clot that had gone to his brain, something modern medicine almost certainly would have caught before it killed him.
The problem with modern technology isn’t that it exists, but in how we use it, especially in highly individualistic societies such as the US, which is to go off on our own, into even more solitary lives, removed from community. It is an accelerator of an already existing problem. You can see that in Asian societies with a long-standing cultural emphasis on the communal, such as Vietnam, China, and Indonesia, where a thriving social life still exists, despite the phones.
Technology has enriched our lives in so many ways—extending them, lessening pain and suffering, and providing endless diversions—that having to argue that it is in fact a net good seems like an argument that shouldn’t have to be made, yet a “simpler, more rustic, less technologically advanced” lifestyle is one of those images that always has strong appeal, because we romanticize the simple, while forgetting that the simple has never been easy. The romantic appeal of pre-modern life might be about staying busy through constant toil, but actually growing your own food without machines, washing clothes without machines, and keeping your children alive without machines is not easy. Those are immensely hard, painful, and come with a lot of despair.
It’s interesting that the people most bothered by technology in the West, and most drawn to a prior lifestyle, are the highly individualistic and idiosyncratic intellectuals—not the “normies,” who when given the chance to choose overwhelmingly want the lifestyle anti-modern elites believe is so destructive.
Poor people especially understand something that anti-modernist romantics don’t, which is that every choice involves tradeoffs, and the tradeoff between our current problems and past problems isn’t close.
Show a Cambodian peasant, or a farmer in rural Indonesia, the neon lights and indoor plumbing of Phnom Penh or Jakarta, and they will drop their hoe in a second, happily throw away their low-tech supposedly idyllic life, cram onto a bus and move to be simply near them, even if that means living in a shack on the edge of town. That so many of them are drawn to the spectacle, like moths to a flame, is why these cities in the third world are swelling to the world’s largest, engorged with people seeking more glamorous lives.
The outskirts of Ulaanbaatar is another example of this. The Ger district, extensive and polluted slums that ring Mongolia’s capital, is where thirty percent of the country lives, having tripled in the last thirty years. Not by force, but because people have shown that they prefer being crammed together, next to hospitals, gaming centers, malls packed with Korean electronics, and the bright lights of the city, to the thousand year old long-standing tradition of being out in the sticks, with your Ger, horses, and a Prius6.
People, when allowed to choose, embrace modernity — because they see it as liberation from the hard, bland, boring life of poverty.
The counterargument is that they have not been allowed to choose, because of globalization, and the forces of a capitalism that’s made their past lifestyle impossible. There is truth to that. Policy crafted to maximize production without regard to communal consequences has not surprisingly resulted in more stuff but also devalued the communal7. This isn't the only reason for the rural exodus, and not, I think, the primary one, but it's certainly a large part of the story.
Economic transitions, from agricultural to industrial, and then from low tech industrial to higher tech industrial, always come with a great deal of turmoil, and displacement, that should and can be better managed, but as to whether it's “worth it”, I come down on the side of yes it is. Which I understand isn’t necessarily the most popular side in the online debate.
All of these issues, of progress versus tradition, were debated in England, during the Industrial Revolution, and occupied most of the country’s politics from 1650 to 1850s, and while that period saw a great deal of displacement, confusion, and pain, it also saw an immense increase in living standards. Today, only a few eccentrics argue that things were better before the Industrial Revolution than after, although in the grand calculation of moral right, it certainly came at a significant cost in human suffering.
Debating those questions will never end, and won’t be settled, but it is all academic because you can’t stop progress, that isn’t how humans work. You can manage it so the transition is less unsettling, and that is where the focus should be, not on denying that in totality it is the correct direction.
That modern life, especially the technology, has enabled governments to expand control of its citizens is another good argument, because as China shows, it is partly true, but as a whole package technology is the enemy of authoritarianism, not its friend, because it allows everyone to be informed. That repressive regimes limit what modern inventions the citizens can have, especially blocking the internet, should be evidence enough, that they see modern life as a threat.
That’s not to say modern life doesn’t come with new problems, and that technology can’t be used for ill, but all of that pales in comparison to what people faced in the past. It’s helpful to remember that every now and then.
We cannot ever eliminate despair, because living, while filled with the good, is also hard. There is no utopia, not here on earth at least, and the fruitless quest to try and achieve it is why humans can’t stop progressing, and why they also won’t stop believing it was better before.
The imperfection of the human condition, and our humble place in the universe, can never be eliminated. Not by more and more machines, and also not by denying the additional good they do bring, but only by an acceptance of our limitations.
In that way I suppose I side more with the nostalgics than the full-on modernists, who at least grasp most of that, but then fail to recognize that even a fallen person seeks and needs material comfort.
We might never be able to achieve perfection, but we might as well keep aiming for it, and that means continuing to try and move forward, rather than back, because humans, and living, is fundamentally good. "]]>chrisarnade 2026 modernity life living perfection barbaratuchman past history korea philippines florida us technology medicine phnompenh jakarta indonesia cambodia cities urbanism urbanization urban modernitychina community communities sociallife social society lifestyle ulaanbaatar mongolia liberation policy production globalization industrialrevolution displacement confusion pain authoritarianism humanconditionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:34f3e26c3fad/Four Years of Walking the World2026-01-10T20:03:26+00:00
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/four-years-of-walking-the-world
robertogrecochrisarnade walking travel elites culture ccp china italy italia catholicism korea japan seoul tokyo food australia vietiane dakar phoenix faith faroeislands brussels senegal belgium laos fulfillment cities nyc sydney churches cultemaking individualism freedom hanoi vietnam taskent lima perú bishkek uzbekistan kyrgyzstan infrastructure walkability lombardy dover portsmouth uk germany denmark fukuoka ceviche avignon istanbul augustine saintaugustine social belonging tradition life living dignity us west progressivism humannature humanism humanity consumption consumerism materialism personalfreedom politics socialism libertarianism sharing nations citizenship society taiwan 2025 staugustine türkiye turkeyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:06f5eb5f3ae7/The Quiet Erosion of Us - Short Stack2025-12-30T20:15:21+00:00
https://andypetro.substack.com/p/the-quiet-erosion-of-us
robertogrecoplace community 2025 local abstraction andypetro grief experience convenience amazon internet web online automation togetherness society social doordash delivery christianity neighbors neighborliness algorithms gigeconomy belonging spontaneity habits inperson humanism human humans humanity attention presence canon significance meaning meaningmaking life living interdependence capitalism commerce consumerism consumption vocation conviviality proximity memory nearness spiritualityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:db830bfa8cbc/Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life2025-12-29T20:58:50+00:00
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/thin-desires-are-eating-your-life/
robertogrecojoanwestenberge small slow desire audiencesofone motivation productivity philosophy life living 2025 minimalism fulfillment social socialconnection connection vulnerability partnership shorcuts friction addiction efficiency accomplishment effort happiness well-being wellbeing convenience inconvenience gratification delayedgratification frictionlessness meaning meaningmaking optimization communication metricshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8757648eecab/For want of a story - by Matthew Battles2025-12-24T06:40:59+00:00
https://matthewbattles.substack.com/p/for-want-of-a-story
robertogrecomatthewbattles teaching howweteach pedagogy education highered highereducation learning howwelearn christopheralexander shopfrontschools networkedlearning paulelie pilgrimage workgroups social fellowship trust patterns apatternlanguage 2025 saraishikawa murraysilverstein presence process sharedstory story shelter intimacy uncertainty vulnerabilityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:69ff66758f08/Racconta Ismaele - Trailer - YouTube2025-12-08T01:49:22+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvnLTvwcfY
robertogrecowhales cetaceans podcasts 2025 choramedia hermanmelville mobydick history literature myth myths art simonepierannni leonardomazzeo tommasodelorenzis whaling philosophy science economics social human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships morethanhuman multispecies legends belief film biology cesarepavese conflict research exhibitions music moby-dick beauty arthistoryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e5e012c991fd/What Was ChatGPT?2025-12-01T20:02:10+00:00
https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-was-chatgpt/
robertogreco“A clinical psychologist near Union Square, reflecting on the transition to remote therapy, says: ‘I miss seeing the shadows that my patients cast onto the floor of my office. ...And I miss kind of having some sense of where they were by the smells that come in the door.’ He goes on, ‘I just feel like there’s so much information that’s missing.’ A contact tracer explains, ‘I was honestly surprised with how many people are just happy to get to talk on the phone’ — even to someone calling to alert them that they might have a deadly disease.”
COVID-19 was a mass traumatic event that increased symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder across the world. In Spain, a survey found that “a quarter of the participants have reported symptoms of depression (27.5%), anxiety (26.9%) and stress (26.5%), and as the time spent in lockdown has progressed, psychological symptoms have risen.” Nearly a third of US adults showed evidence of “elevated depression” in 2022, an increase over the previous year, especially concentrated in the least wealthy.
It's possible that the chatbot is one of the lasting transformations of our social life from the pandemic. The pivot to frame Large Language Models as intelligent may just blind us to how most users really see them: as social.
Chatbots as Social Media Substitute
Increased social media and forum posting is understood as a compensatory behavior among those who feel lonely or depressed. Other studies have confirmed that talking to chatbots makes us feel better, albeit temporarily, about negative emotions: they can provide “virtual social interactions” and simulate “a level of empathetic responsiveness” which, through a lower risk of rejection and judgment, can feel safer than taking risks with real people.
A recent survey has shown that nine percent of LLM users reported using them for “casual conversation and companionship,” while 25% said their chatbot “cheers them up” and 22% say the models seems to express empathy. A Washington Post review of leaked ChatGPT chats found that “10 percent of the chats appear to show people talking to the chatbot about their emotions,” though the data they analyzed was limited to publicly shared conversations. If these statistics held up, however, that would mean 72 million people use ChatGPT for social interaction and 200 million for emotional comfort (“cheering up”).
This matters, because the design of Large Language Models operates as a feedback loop with the user base. Every word a commercial LLM selects is influenced by a calibration process, where responses are tuned to human feedback. Because of the scale of use cases and the interconnected nature of these models, tuning responses to fit one kind of conversation style ("helpful assistant") has ripple effects throughout the model.
But what are we tuning to? Models become optimized to better perform at what people already use them for. Interactions its users desire and engage in become more desirable, causing users to engage more, creating more interactions from which to optimize.
What if ChatGPT came just six years before, into a different social context? Would it be optimized to different use cases? We shouldn't overstate the pandemic as the sole factor of how AI has come to be defined, but we shouldn't ignore it, either. ChatGPT may have changed the world, but the world had already changed. Companies took what we needed most at that historic moment and optimized machines to give it to us, kicking off a feedback loop that continues to define it.
It seems people want to talk to someone, and yet, to be alone. Here's a recent ad for Amazon's Alexa, revealing how these machines are optimized, and sold, for social distance.
What Was ChatGPT?
What was ChatGPT? Perhaps it was a side effect of the coronavirus: a technology that emerged against an ongoing denial of collective trauma, adapted to a historic moment in ways that persist beyond it. ChatGPT came into a world where proximity to others was correlated with the risk of death, as online connection was besieged by hostile political polarization, when everything was unmoored in ways no language could capture. It emerged at a time when loneliness felt essential to survival.
What captured our imaginations during that time, in response to the failure of language to describe our experiences, was ChatGPT. With no inner life, ChatGPT could relentlessly pave over the failure of words to describe our own anxieties. Its bursts of conversational text matched the limits of anxious attention spans. It shifted when we got bored, and we owed it no apologies. It agreed with any position we took. In our lapses of executive function, it could create a plausible bare minimum checklist for us to get through the day.
With the rising volume of slop — or buttons to conjure it — painted over every digital surface, I'm reminded of my own pandemic coping strategy: blasting music to drown out the silence. ChatGPT is a stereo turned to the max of language: full of distortion, but clarity is not the point. The point is to create a little space where we don't need to think."]]>eryksalvaggio chatgpt openai socialmedia chatbots covid-19 pandemic coronavirus 2020 algorithms anxiety loneliness social survival alexa amazon socialdistancing llms emotions depression chat spacex delianasparouhov agi artificialgeneralintelligence kevinroose hype sundarpichai deepmind googlebrain alphabet geoffreyhinton superintelligence markzuckerberg efficiency blakelamoine karenhao ilyasutskever emilybender lamdahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a359eea1648a/The Moral Authority Of Animals - NOEMA2025-11-25T16:49:51+00:00
https://www.noemamag.com/the-moral-authority-of-animals/
robertogreco2025 jaygriffiths philosophy ethics multispecies morethanhuman animals social society culture fransdewaal sarahbrosnan marcbekoff coyotes dogs honesty justice fairness morality behavior chimpanzees indigeneity indigenous templegrandin biomimicry wolves ojibwe anishinaabe firstnations skybear cree chisasibicree caribou petermiles politics rolemodels democracy thomasseeley birds anthropomorphism babboons mongooses kinship human humans modernity wildness wildlife conscience humor language friendship spirituality art mother-love home capitalism genocide ecocide worldview enlightenment socialmedicine paulzak goodness cats mentalhealth morals health canids primates groominghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8d1dae1b299b/Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen | PNAS2025-11-17T19:11:49+00:00
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1404212111
robertogrecoanthropology light fire 2014 pollywiessner african firelight behavior humans sotrytelling imagination creativity evolution gossip culture trust anatomy social hunter-gatherers societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:443e0b13dfea/AI Grief Observed2025-11-13T04:53:10+00:00
https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-grief-observed/
robertogreco There is no good way to say this — when the police arrive, they inevitably preface the bad news with that sentence, as though their presence had not been ominous enough. The first time I heard the line, I knew already what was about to be conveyed. Nevertheless, I paid attention to how the news was delivered: the detective insisted that I take a seat first. I sat down at the dinner table, and he moved another chair to the right distance and sat down himself. No doubt he was following protocol, and yet the sentence — there is no good way to say this — struck me as both accurate and effective. It must be a sentence that, though nearly a cliché, is not often used in daily conversation; its precision has stayed with me.
> The second time, having guessed the news about to be delivered, I did not give the sentence a moment’s thought. I did not wait for the detective to ask me to sit down, either. I indicated a chair where my husband should sit and took the other chair in the living room. My heart already began to feel that sensation for which there is no name. Call it aching, call it wrenching, call it shattering, but they are all wrong words, useless in their familiarity. This time, the four policemen all stood.”
"There is no good way to say this." There is no easy way to talk about this. There are acceptable words, I suppose, but they are never "good," never remotely satisfying or comforting -- not to say, not to hear.
By "this," I mean death obviously. By "this," I also mean other traumas, other endings. By "this," I mean what might feel like or look like the end of education – an end not spoken about with the solemnity of the policemen but rather with a real jubilation from technologists and venture capitalists, who gloat about disruption.
I want to start here – by “here,” I mean the recognition that there is no good way to talk about death, no good way to talk about grief, even though I am going to try very hard to do so: to talk about grief – mine, yours, students’, teachers' – and tie it to “artificial intelligence.” I want to talk about grief and “the end." I want to talk about the end of the world – I don't, really; I want to talk about what feels like the end of the world and what might be, should we continue to build data centers, invest in this rapacious technology, and ignore climate change, literally the end of the world; I want to talk about the destruction of the future (our own, our children's), about the end of democracy, the end of education.
I want to talk about loss. A loss that is, perhaps, an abandonment. Perhaps an abdication. An absence. An erasure. A trauma. Death, mass death -- literal and metaphorical.
“There is no good way to say this.” I have read a lot of memoirs about dying and about grieving. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, of course. Geraldine Brooks’ Memorial Days. C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (a phrase I’ve borrowed for the title of this talk). Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart. Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk. I could go on and list so many wonderful, painful books. And yet, despite some of the greatest writers having tried, “there is no good way to say this” -- I know this. I know this intimately. Yet I still search for some good words to have been said, to have been written. Words to comfort. Words to find meaning. Words to make sense. Words to not feel so utterly alone, at the abyss abyssmal, because those we love most have left us, and the future we thought we would share is gone too.
“There is no good way to say this," the police told Yiyun Li. I don’t think that the coroner said those exact words to me, although he might have, when, in May 2020, I received the phone call that my own son had died. I do not remember the words, but I remember the feeling. Everything tilting and spinning and spiraling down. The blood drains, your stomach sinks. All words and feelings of such profound, indescribable, unspeakable loss.
May 2020 was, if you’ll recall, the early days, the early weeks of the COVID lockdown. I was in Oakland, California; Isaiah was in Seattle, Washington. He died alone in his apartment of an opioid overdose.
A few weeks later, OpenAI released GPT-3.
Our tools are cultural not merely technological, so while many people want to frame the emergence of generative AI as simply the latest development in the long history of computers, of artificial intelligence -- transformers, neural networks, tokens, and so on -- we have to remember that what emerges is not just a matter of engineering. It's a matter of markets and politics and ideology and culture.
I think it matters that GPT was released during the COVID pandemic (and ChatGPT shortly "after"), when many of us were stuck at home, isolated and interacting with one another almost entirely through screens.
I think it matters that all this talk about the potential for "AI" to do our jobs comes after labor made some important (albeit tentative) gains during this period: the whole notion of "essential worker"; the successful push for unionization in some sectors; the astonishment from many parents after trying to facilitate their own children's schooling -- all those “teachers should be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year” posts on social media; demands during and after the pandemic to continue to work from home, to have more control over space and place and time. AI is a backlash. AI is anti-worker.
I always feel the need to remind people that neither robots nor AI are coming for our jobs. But management probably is.
I think it matters that this latest AI push, with generative AI's penchant for “bullshit,” follows on the heels of growing mis- and disinformation campaigns online. This was precisely the realization many people had come to after Donald Trump's first election as President and during his first term in office. And this was precisely what LLMs have been trained upon.
I think it matters that the technology industry relies on deception and obfuscation and markets its new bullshit machines right as the leaders of this country have openly embraced being liars, cheats, and frauds, have openly rejected knowledge and expertise.
I think it matters that as we have lost faith in institutions over the course of the past few decades -- in the church, in the media, in schools, in science, in medicine (particularly in public health and in vaccines) -- that we are now promised an oracle that can deliver instant and easy answers.
I think it matters that AI -- so utterly opaque in its algorithmic predictions and decision-making -- is the ultimate unaccountability machine.
We expect more from technology than we do from each other, the psychologist Sherry Turkle wrote in her book Alone Together in 2011. I think it matters that trust and solidarity have been eroded for a while now (if they ever really existed or were encouraged in this country).
I think it matters that economic inequality has in the last few decades exploded, that the promises to students in particular – get good grades and you'll get into a good school, graduate from a good school and you'll get a good job – feel pretty empty.
AI is a "normal technology," the artificial intelligence professors Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor (authors of AI Snake Oil) have argued. But what we have come to see as "normal" is, in fact, utterly abhorrent, abysmal. Yiyun Li writes a lot in her book on learning to inhabit the abyss of grief. What does it mean to normalize the abyss?
AI is the symptom of a broken world. AI is the symptom; and AI is the disease.
Generative AI emerged during a global pandemic -- a global trauma of mass death (1.2 million people in the US died of COVID, and about 7 million globally -- these are, no doubt, figures that undercount how many actually died of the disease, let alone those like my son who died during that time period of other causes -- overdoses, suicide, murder, and deaths related and unrelated to the pandemic).
Mass trauma, mass death and, as such, mass grieving. But it was, at the time and still to this day, a grief interrupted, a grief buried, a grief denied, a grief (contrary to C. S. Lewis's phrasing) unobserved. We were often not able to bury our dead, not able to hold funerals, not able to have wakes, not able to observe the rituals of death, not able to gather, to bring food, to hold and comfort one another.
And when we were told the pandemic was over -- it hasn't really ended; the World Health Organization says there were around 150,000 cases of COVID reported in the last month -- we didn't deal with our trauma. We didn't deal with our grief. We were supposed to bury our feelings; we were supposed to forget. It was back-to-school, back to work, back to "normal."
Or some “new normal,” now with AI – a technology that we didn't want, that we didn't ask for, and that we're told we cannot refuse.
Of course, that's not quite right. We can refuse.
One more correction: there was, in fact, a massive demonstration of grief – an outpouring of grieving in public – during COVID; and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests that occurred in cities throughout the country particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This grief was not private or hidden; it was collective. This grief was not just personal, expressed by those impacted directly by racism and police violence; it demanded from protestors and onlookers, empathy, solidarity. This grief was expressive – even as we are always told with protest, as with grief, that that is not the “good way” to say it. The grief of Floyd’s death – and all the deaths – was not sufficient. It was not simply a marker or memorial of death; but it was an act of life, an act of repair. It was a demonstration of love and loss and fury; it was a commitment to the future.
And again, technology is cultural, ideological not simply technological.
It matters that generative AI emerged with or alongside -- you can decide the preposition you prefer -- a politics that is openly hostile to Black Lives Matter, that opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion. It matters that Silicon Valley companies were among the first to backtrack on their DEI initiatives, were happy to stand with Donald Trump when he proclaimed that AI needed to be purged of "ideological biases," purged of "woke."
Generative AI is, with or without Trump's executive orders, a backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a reinscription of the words and images of white supremacist, heteronormative, Western, English-speaking capitalist patriarchy. That is the corpus that large language models have been trained on -- "the canon" (with all the copyright violations that that has entailed) as well as "the Internet" (thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of YouTube videos and YouTube comments and Reddit posts and -- with apologies to anyone this might include here this evening -- lots of very mediocre freshmen essays on the theme of family in Romeo & Juliet or the role of "states' rights" in the US Civil War).
In response to a radical outpouring of love, loss, life, grief -- expressed together, embodied, on the streets -- we were presented with, forced to use in so many cases, a technology that severs us from creative expression, dignity, and truth. There is no choice, we're told. "Get over it." "Move on."
One of the problems with grief, as Yiyun Li argues in her memoir, is that it's been described as a set of stages one moves through, as something that has a beginning and, significantly, an end. You will eventually, people try to tell you, "get over it." This is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's famous formulation: grief as a series of emotions that move from denial to anger, then bargaining, then depression, and finally acceptance. And even if we might've revised this progression somewhat since she published her book On Death and Dying in 1969, society still gives mourners (and not just as workers) a very limited amount of time "to deal with it" before they're expected to "move on."
“There is no rush,” Yi writes, “as I will have every single day, for the rest of my life, to think about Vincent and James, outside time, outside the many activities of everyday life.”
> And this, among other reasons, is why I am against the word “grief,” which in contemporary culture seems to indicate a process that has an end point: the sooner you get there, the sooner you prove yourself to be a good sport at living, and the less awkward people around you will feel. Sometimes people ask me where I am in the grieving process, and I wonder whether they understand anything at all about losing someone. How lonely the dead would feel, if the living were to stand up from death’s shadow, clap their hands, dust their pants, and say to themselves and to the world, I am done with my grieving; from this point on it’s life as usual, business as usual.
> I don’t want an end point to my sorrow. The death of a child is not a heat wave or a snowstorm, nor an obstacle race to rush through and win, nor an acute or chronic illness to recover from. What is grief but a word, a shortcut, a simplification of something much larger than that word?
Of course, we like thinking of things in stages. We like the order, we like to frame our world, our understanding of time this way -- in hours and days and seasons. We ritualize these -- indeed, that is one of the reasons why our inability to conduct the traditional practices associated with death and dying made our grief during COVID even more unbearable. Without rites and rituals, you cannot “move on.” You cannot grow or shift or change. You are stuck in the past. You are stuck.
The anthropologist Victor Turner used the term “liminality” to describe the one of the key phases of rites of passage, those rituals that mark transition – not just transition into the “afterlife,” for example, but transition into adulthood or into marriage or into society. This liminal phase, as he called it, was “betwixt and between” – a period where you are in the process of becoming something new, but you’re not that new person yet, nor are you the person you were any longer. Liminality, Turner argued, was a sort of limbo – but in that limbo, something really transformational happens – something radical even in the most conservative and traditional ritual practices. Liminality is a time – and to be fair, this can be a very very very brief moment, depending on the rite of passage – of solidarity and equality and unity. Protests, for example, are liminal spaces.
Education, I’d argue, also has elements of this liminality. It is a rite of passage, a ritual of becoming – you enter a child, a “fresh man” and you leave an adult. We have retained some older parts of these rituals – the cap and gown obviously, moving the tassel from one side of your head to the other. But there's more to it than just these practices. You have to believe, I’d argue, in that transformation to be able to commit yourself to the time, to the work. (Socially, culturally, politically, we have to believe it is worthwhile to send children to school, to send them to college.)
But much to the detriment of learning, let alone to the survival of educational institutions, we have seen education redefined as something else -- as a product, not a process. As certification, not transformation. The liminality has been shattered; instead of ritual, society has demanded “outcomes” and “optimization.”
I don’t say any of this out of nostalgia for a once-upon-a-time when college was good. Educational institutions -- whether at the K-12 or the university level -- have always always been deeply flawed, highly exclusionary, full of all sorts of machineries of bullshit. These are, as Michel Foucault reminded us, sites of discipline -- disciplining bodies and minds.
But by dismantling educational institutions -- and AI is really just the latest act in a long long history of dismantling -- we are also dismantling that space for shared practice and purpose, for shared understanding -- “communitas,” Turner called it.
The technology industry -- indeed, capitalism -- prefers “individualization” and “immediacy.” Certainly, it pays lip service to "community" -- Mark Zuckerberg's blah blah blah about Facebook connecting the world. When Google says it wants to organize the world's information and make it "useful," this is a very different mission than the university's. The tech industry's allegiance is to surveillance capitalism, to profit and power, not to knowledge and certainly not to people.
What we are experiencing now -- with AI, with the defunding of public education and public research, with deportations and surveillance -- is more trauma, more loss, more grief. There is no silver lining here, as Yiyun Li reminds us, as much as that's offered as some tepid consolation.
Grief, to reiterate, involves a loss of identity, a loss of the future -- how we imagined things would be, who we imagined we'd become. And there is no good way to say this: it will get worse. And grief doesn't get any easier -- not with the passage of time, not with the number of times one experiences it.
There is no good way to say this. And yet we must always try.
I can only say this, and it's not good, it's not sufficient. It's not really a satisfying way to wrap up this talk. But here we go...
Grief is an expression of love. We grieve because we love, and that love does not end with death. I grieve for my son. I will grieve forever. I grieve for the future we will not share.
When I talk to teachers and students alike, I hear such grief as well: grief about what AI threatens to do education, what it's already done to the work of teaching and the work of learning, the work of research and reading and writing.
We grieve because we love. We grieve because we care. We grieve because we know that the machines do not, and that the community we try to foster -- on campus, in the classroom, in our scholarly works -- is threatened with erasure. We grieve because we fear forgetting; we worry that people will forget what is beautiful and what is difficult and what is joyous and what is horrible about education. We worry that, if we do not grieve, we give up the struggle to go on, to persevere, to live.
But we do not, we should not grieve alone. We should not be made to feel alone, feel crazed by our grief, feel crazed for grieving. We can, we should grieve together, grieve in public, grieve in protest. Such is comfort – "com" + "fort," a word that means "with" + "strength."
Technologies are often wielded in ways meant to imply that humans are weak, messy, slow, stupid, replaceable.
We are strong, messy, awkward, flawed, irreplaceable. All of us.
Our strength comes, in part, from this vulnerability, from our humanity. Together in the flesh. Not isolated, individualized thru some algorithm. We cannot allow systems and practices and machinery to foreclose this humanity, to automate the decisions, the expressions, the explorations that we turn to and that we struggle with in education, in this imperfect but liminal space of learning.
"There is no good way to say this" but to say this: AI is the antithesis of education. It is the antithesis of the future. As such, it is a kind of epistemological death, and I recognize -- thanks to capitalism and neoliberalism and imperialism and racism -- we have long been surrounded by such efforts; we are grieving already. And yet, we go on.
One final note that I think I'd be remiss not to state, even though there is no good way, or rather no polite way to say this:
Some men (and I do mean mostly men) would rather spend trillions of dollars on an idea that is financially, technologically, morally, and environmentally unsustainable, they’d rather destroy democracy and destroy education and destroy the planet than just get therapy.
Thank you."]]>audreywatters 2025 ai artificialintelligence grief education institutions schools schooling highered highereducation colleges universities academia edtech llms death geraldinebrooks joandidion cslewis michellezaunder helemacdonald covid-19 coronavirus pandemic screens online chatgpt opeanai donaldtrump maga trumpism robots chatbots church churches media science medicine faith trust knowledge expertise liars cheats cheating frauds fraud corruption algorithms decisionmaking snakoil arvindnatayanan sayashkapoor technology generativeai us who worldhealthorganization blacklivesmatter geogrgefloyd empathy solidarity idology siliconvalley dei diversity equity inclusion inclusivity capitalism patriarchy hereronormativity whitesupremacy creativity expression dignity truth life living loss yiyunli elizabethkubler-ross emotions 1969 2020 victorturner liminality adterlife between betweenness betwixt protest protests society social learning howwelearn teaching howweteach outcomes optimization efficiency discipline bodieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:25ac1b950024/On the Meaning and Value of Public Spaces - JSTOR Daily2025-11-12T06:23:41+00:00
https://daily.jstor.org/on-the-meaning-and-value-of-public-spaces/
robertogrecopublicspace 2025 saraivry sethalow libraries streets public plazas parks urbanplanning urban cities latinamerica california nyc costarica culture annabarker atmosphere environment social socialinteraction interaction us architecture hostilearchitecture centralpark privatization gowanuscanal brooklyn grandcentralstation baltimore losangeles washingtondc sanjosé benches pops capitalism ownership hudsonyards covid-19 coronavirus pandemic sanjosehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2945f80eab54/AI Is Not Your Friend - The Atlantic2025-11-11T06:13:13+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2025/12/ai-companionship-anti-social-media/684596/
robertogrecosocialmedia damonberes 2025 internet web online ai artificialintelligence chatbots meta markzuckerberg dehumanization social society friendship socializationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fbb039a9a491/Extralibrary Loan: Making the Civic Infrastructure We Need2025-11-02T20:52:41+00:00
https://placesjournal.org/article/extralibrary-loan-making-civic-infrastructure/
robertogrecoshannonmattern 2025 libraries journalism place infrastructure civics creativity knowledge publicknowledge kellyjensen bookriot lukesutherland susanorlean heatherchaplin us jousrnalism whatsapp information social terryparrisjr maga ala librarians hannawiemer donaldtrump socialarchitecture everylibrary wisdom resources politics media newdeal forums johnstudebaker wpa makewith kateharlow mediaecosystems hanifabdurraqib engagement privacy integrity sustainability surveillance extraction distraction monetization collections ai artificialintelligence inevitability solidarity bannedbooks newsrooms mediacommons commons katherinevictoriacoffield seattle sandiego nyc brooklyn ballard missoula montana museums nypl undercommons collectives mutualaid resistance refusal trustshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:dba7ad9f651c/Americans Are Abandoning the Communal Meal2025-10-30T19:49:57+00:00
https://jacobin.com/2025/10/solo-dining-communal-meals-us
robertogreco2025 meaganday meals social tradition civilization society isolation us conviviality davidriesman bowlingalone robertputnam bryceevans uk breakingbread silviorodríguez antonemartinho-truswellhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d5d3573a64f0/[2510.01395] Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence2025-10-26T22:07:09+00:00
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01395
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence sycophancy behavior myracheng cinoolee pranavkhadpe suunyyu dyllanhan danjurafsky society flattery manipulation deception harm relationships socialhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bca066241017/High-Agency Individuals | James Vincent2025-10-21T04:02:43+00:00
https://thebaffler.com/latest/high-agency-individuals-vincent
robertogrecojamesvincent 2025 ageny buzzwords optimization efficiency business ai artificialintelligence employment government governance elonmusk technology bigtech statistics anthonybourdain agenct luigimangione culture society hype ralphwaldoemerson michelfoucault foucault epictetus entrepreneurship entrepreneurialism individualism work workers labor ianhacking siliconvalley maxread techright rightwing farrright nerdreich reactionaries neoreactionaries dictatorship nvidia amd us china danwang neoliberalism empathy social morality dostoevskyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ea698eac0920/“THE DEATH OF THE COOL” - by Chris Marino2025-10-19T22:14:14+00:00
https://chrismarino.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-cool
robertogrecochrismarino 2025 digital identity digitalidentity culture sociallife social seantatol mattgasda deathofthecool art arts cool coolness self baudelaire artwork artworks dimessquare 2020s nyc 1980s karlmarx privacy online internethttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:07c9312180a5/Primordial Place - Beautiful Eccentrics2025-10-18T06:38:17+00:00
https://pablohelguera.substack.com/p/primordial-place
robertogrecopablohelguera thirdplaces thirdspaces place 1989 rayoldenburg sanctuary social 2025 workspace workspaces virginiawoolf donaldwinnicott environment generativity reflection marcusaurelius clarity zoominginandout equanimity zen buddhism zenbuddhism meditation relfectionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:14c58f0e923a/Partita for Ghost Ladder and Insect Eyes2025-10-18T05:48:48+00:00
https://pablohelguera.substack.com/p/partita-for-ghost-ladder-and-insect
robertogrecoart javiertoscano danielawolf lourdesmorales gabriellagómez-mont fronteracorozal chiapas mexico guatemala lacandon border borders marjorieperloff witrgenstein compasses language poetry scaffolding experience thought action aníballópez bubunegrón miguelventura documentary understanding comprehension labor museums markets intentions process production product lygiaclark taniabruguera happenings artmaking permanence impermanenece via:laure arteútil utility objects relationalobjects acts pedagogy value authorship existence work howwework artleisure leisurearts interpretation ladders inquiry artifact ownership inventory economics social mediation audience activation conversation learning howwelearn sense sensemaking jamesjoyce fugue absence manners impalpability instruction pablohelguera allankaprow compass makingsensehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d3a908173685/Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town2025-10-18T02:53:32+00:00
https://www.tokyoweekender.com/entertainment/middle-aged-man-trading-cards-go-viral-in-japan/
robertogrecocards carddecks tradingcards 2025 ynessarahfilleul everyday games play gaming japan culture social rural fukuoka baseballcardshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a81bead828e5/He earns $200K at Microsoft. Why does he live in an SRO in Chinatown?2025-10-17T20:50:57+00:00
https://sfstandard.com/2025/10/17/chinatown-housing-tech-worker/
robertogrecosanfrancisco chinatown 2025 community social society sros immigrants inequality isolation connection technology foodhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d47c4ff207fa/The Politics of Ghosting: Dominic Pettman on Absence, Intimacy, and Digital Life - YouTube2025-09-30T05:26:13+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akFY7iUR8pY
robertogrecoacidhorizon ghosting 2025 dominicpettman relationships communication disappearance culture society mourning morality mediaecology dating friendship intimacy accountability closure narrative pscyhology absence abandonment spectralpresence presence philosophy finality resolution politics culturalstudies media death digital internet online web self vulnerability melancholia crueloptimism laurenberlant grief desire rejection smartphones zombies quietquitting emotions attachment gaslighting atomization isolation nicoledular patriarchy manosphere onlinedating modernity ghosts spirits hauntings whiteflight blocking twitter economics capitalism ghostkitchens social inequality withdrawal rapture socialresponsibility time markfisher latecapitalism collapse y2k siliconvalley dunbarnumber luddites luddism neoluddites neoluddism socialmedia resistance hangingout marshallmcluhan massinformation informationage giorgioagamben spectacle gender latestagecapitalismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a59a1c534640/32 notes on AI & writing - by Jasmine Sun - @jasmi.news2025-09-26T05:17:29+00:00
https://jasmi.news/p/32-notes-on-ai-and-writing
robertogreco2025 ai artificialintelligence writing jasminesun howwewrite creativity hallucinations alphago leesedol llms writersblock reading howweread collaboration social human humans art imagination davidhockney prediction mercor robertcaro thepowerbroker culture criticism demishassabis memory neuroscience optimization excesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:879c25c1eb65/The Rise and Fall of Urbit | Compact2025-09-24T17:35:48+00:00
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-rise-and-fall-of-urbit/
robertogrecourbit tlon technofeudalism libertarianism politics curtisyarvin darkenlightenment 2025 adinaglickstein web3 crypto cryptocurrencies blockchain computing computers internet web online platforms decentralization networks rominamalta centralization hierarchy hierarchies vitalikbuterin johnperrybarlow cyberspace networkeffects galenwolfe-pauly ethereum peterthiel feudalism christopheralexander honorlevy speculation monetization ponzischemes 2020 2013 1996 2010s tescreal 2016 2021 2019 2022 reactionaries joshlehmann self-publishing nickland hypersition technology corydoctorow bigtech enshittification megacorp privacy security 2023 christophercolby conservatism delusion urbitfoundation transparency governance francistseng philosophy monarchism corporatism data sovereignty social nerdreich singularity singularitarianism extropianism rationalism cosmism longtermism transhumanism extroprianism effectivealtruism menciusmoldbug capitalism fascism technofascismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:65c8c618e20f/Gabriel Salazar explica la crisis del pueblo chileno | Chile en Voz Alta: un cuarto de siglo - YouTube2025-09-20T18:19:41+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mA1P7I8nw
robertogrecogabrielsalazar 2025 chile history politics left democracy isabelplant work workers labor neoliberalism capitalism credit creditcards idenitity precarity economics policy inequality constitution tyranny dictatorship indigenous indigeneity mestizo mestizos culture memory colonialism colonization race racism immigration sovereignty alienation individualism community solidarity assembly belonging society social housing xenophobia trust fraternity consumerism consumption mentalhealth momios poverty class crisis meaning meaningmaking salvadorallende pinochet materialism debt depression psychology escape emmigration freedom liberation españa spain latinamerica cabildo birthrate 1960shttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:871649953dd8/Are You Experiencing Posting Ennui? | The New Yorker2025-09-11T17:57:36+00:00
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/are-you-experiencing-posting-ennui
robertogreco2025 kylechayka socialmedia internet online social webhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b786d39c8d42/Why the "Coffee Pod" is the Dumbest Product Ever Made... - YouTube2025-09-03T19:11:40+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zhn746AV-A
robertogrecoidguy coffee 2025 history waste economics society socialimpact coffeehouses social culture latinamerica ethiopia industry cafes coffeeshopshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:02bb4e7f8e52/Is a city alive? - by Sam Holden2025-09-03T04:01:30+00:00
https://www.samholden.jp/p/is-a-city-alive
robertogrecosamholden 2025 cities urban urbanism citiesasorganisms robertmacfarlane morethanhuman commons analog social sociality henrilefebvre righttothecity davidharvey canonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:421185978fc0/The sovereign individual and the paradox of the digital age | Aeon Essays2025-08-21T21:13:32+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/the-sovereign-individual-and-the-paradox-of-the-digital-age
robertogrecoThe downside is that ordination refers to a religious ceremony [to ordain]; but the two fields of meaning (religion and computing) are so distant and the ordination ceremony known, I believe, to so few people that the inconvenience is perhaps minor. Besides, your machine would be ordinateur (and not ordination).
Professor Perret was more correct than he knew. In the 70 years since he baptised it, the descendants of the Model 650 have indeed taken on quasi-religious functions in modern society. Computers authenticate our souls and find our innermost truths. They shape our search for meaning in a disorienting and fragmented world. They foster new forms of political communion and sectarian schism. Above it all, stands the sovereign individual – the embodiment of modern selfdom, served by the ordinateur’s ruthless logic and its power, while it lasts, to manufacture gold out of bits."]]>data digital marionfourcade kieranhealy history ibm jacquesperret 1950s language llms ai artificialintelligence computers computation computing society social socialbonds change creativity entrepreneurship friedrichhayek tyranny individualism difference human humanism humans us government governance china socialmedia surveillance connection angèlechristin online internet web identity authenticity donaldtrump generativeai sovereignty 2025 knowledge disintermediation media chatbots facts search democracy democraticideal facebook instagram meta twitter openweb johndewey google authority authoritarianism hannajarendt truth qanon algorithms filterbubbles balkanization peterforberg m5s cambridgeanalytica politics fivestarmovement pepegrillo gianrobertocasaleggio elonmusk feedbackloops howwethink thinking reality ordination progress modernity disorientation serfdom power skepticism self giulianodaempoli friedrichvonhayek genaihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c27394e1edac/Whales and Dolphins Interact More Often Than Scientists Thought, Engaging in Mutual Play, Study Suggests2025-08-21T02:14:36+00:00
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/whales-and-dolphins-interact-more-often-than-scientists-thought-engaging-in-mutual-play-study-suggets-180987198/
robertogrecowhales cetaceans 2025 multispecies morethanhuman play social sarahashemihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4c870dd4c353/No One Left to Talk To: Loneliness in the Age of Algorithmic Capitalism | by Jesse MacKinnon | Aug, 2025 | Medium2025-08-20T18:09:51+00:00
https://medium.com/@mackinnon.jesse/no-one-left-to-talk-to-loneliness-in-the-age-of-algorithmic-capitalism-e33e10946bc2
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence automation technology intermediation human humanism community solitude loneliness 2025 society patriarchy friendship leisure childhood algorithms capitalism vulnerability markets civics schools education neighborhoods labor work civiclife neoliberalism economics economy talkradio cablenews solidarity isolation monetization competition connection politics policy culture fear crime relationships engagement understanding online internet web chatbots neighborliness gender time money families childcare liberation exhaustion commuting commutes social sociallife pleasure artleisure leisurearts captivity digital privatization safety freedom children affection facebook meta scarcity recognition attention companionship intimacy environment platforms church churches belonging austerity alienation information grievance manhood masculinity joerogan andrewtate tiktok soundbites spectacle identity mentorship mentors resilience stubbornness unions workers embodiement disembodiment growth consumptionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:66ec2a3b8f00/Our Golden Age of Reading (Online) - Public Books2025-08-20T00:50:54+00:00
https://www.publicbooks.org/our-golden-age-of-reading-online/
robertogrecoangelinaeimannsberger 2025 internet web online reading howweread digital federicopianzola digitalsocialreading social socialreading sarahbrouillette zakiyadalilaharris rfkuang emilyhenry tessmcnulty fiction safiyaumojanoble safiyanoble simonemurray goodreads wattpadd ao3 archiveofourown technology genz generationz plato gutenbergparenthesis hyperparatextuality affinity fanfiction affect aestheticjudgement aesthetics startrek genre pierrebourdieu johnguillory powerrelations platforms platformcapitalism capitalism cognition hope culture society zoomershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c8046c24e1d2/The Social Lives of Free-Ranging Cats - PMC2025-08-10T15:03:09+00:00
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8749887/
robertogrecocats kristynvitale 2022 pets animals morethanhuman multispecies social feral companionspecies human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships domesticationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2e6955e76ee7/One Way Parents Can Fight the Phone-Based Childhood - The Atlantic2025-08-08T18:28:13+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smartphones-play-freedom/683742/
robertogrecoThis is my fist let it gow project. I went shoping by myself. I handle it wheel but the ceckout was a lit hard but it was fun to do. I leand that I am brave and can go shop by myself. I loved my porject.
Other hopeful signs are emerging. The New Jersey–based Balance Project is helping 50 communities reduce screen time and restore free play for kids, employing the “four new norms” that Jon lays out in The Anxious Generation. This summer, Newburyport, Massachusetts, is handing out prizes each week to kids who try something new on their own. (Let Grow has a tool kit for other communities that want to do the same.) The Boy Scouts—now rebranded as Scouting America, and open to all young people—is finally growing again. We could go on.
What we see in the data and from the stories parents send us is both simple and poignant: Kids being raised on screens long for real freedom. It’s like they’re homesick for a world they’ve never known.
Granting them more freedom may feel uncomfortable at first. But if parents want their kids to put down their phones, they need to open the front door. Nearly three-quarters of the children in our survey agreed with the statement “I would spend less time online if there were more friends in my neighborhood to play with in person.”
If nothing changes, Silicon Valley will keep supplying kids with ever more sophisticated AI “friends” that are always available and will cater to a child’s every whim. But AI will never fulfill children’s deepest desires. Even this generation of digital natives still longs for what most of their parents had: time with friends, in person, without adults.
Today’s kids want to spend their childhood in the real world. Let’s give it back to them."]]>lenoreskenazy zachrausch jonathanhaidt 2025 children parenting freedom unschooling deschooling safety online web socialmedia roblox play autonomy parents supervision us warwickcairns digital offline screens screentime social socialization neighborhoods helicopterparents helicopterparenting snowplowparents fearhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ef3b0d76e8ca/The Art of Walking / My cerebrum is mind and my toe is mind: Thyrza Goodeve Walks with Ernesto Pujol – ASAP/Review2025-08-04T20:28:33+00:00
https://asapjournal.com/node/the-art-of-walking-my-cerebrum-is-mind-and-my-toe-is-mind-thyrza-goodeve-walks-with-ernesto-pujol/
robertogrecoernestopujol walking thydrzagoodeve 2025 via:javierarbona morethanhuman multispecies perspective notiving presence observation monks puertorico nyc urban trees animals experience love mind teaching howweteach pedagogy nonhuman being waysofbeing selflessness listening body boides vulnerability place interpretation socialpracticeart art memory goolishness reality psychology awareness filters social monasteries catholicworker dorothyday catholicism petermaurin ethnography biodiversity landscape place-based silence stillness movementhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9f9afa946912/Across Cultures, One Key to Happiness Stands Out | The MIT Press Reader2025-07-31T20:00:07+00:00
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/across-cultures-one-key-to-happiness-stands-out/
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