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The 600th Posting

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Another milestone reached! Looking back at the last year of postings it would be hard to ignore the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Politics. Almost every few posts features something related to, or impacted by, AI. This even includes the ways in which I’ve been experiencing it, first in the imaginary realm before IRL (that’s “in real life”). Though I have yet to use AI to create one of my blog posts. Somehow, I can’t make that leap yet.

The continuing technombie saga features Hanna unwinding with a swim in her Endless Pool. Her Augmented Reality goggles transport her to Ketchitan, Alaska. Though my own experience wearing Form 1 swim goggles was not quite as cool as projecting the Alaskan underwater scene in my gym’s pool, I was impressed.

As for politics, it would be hard to ignore the women’s rights issues plaguing the United States. The court case decision to allow a couple to claim damages to “children” when a clinic accidentally destroyed their fertilized eggs opens up all kinds of challenges. The post called “Operation ER” imagines a future where these “children” must be cared for. Couples wanting children must first do an egg retrieval and implant before attempting to get pregnant without clinic assistance.

In other issues, there were the strange happenings with the 2024 presidential election. No amount of technology could save that one! And of course, the alliance of the tech moguls with the new president, and rejecting all their obligations to manage their own social media outlets responsibly.

Even with all the fancy technology, shiny apps, and allure of AI, there’s something nice about an old-fashioned list. Though I’ve tried many apps to organize tasks, I sometimes resort to paper. And it usually does the trick! Easy, effective, reliable. Best of all, it’s simple to delete when I’ve finished everything on it.

In conclusion, here are a few favorites from the Human Archives series. Almost a year ago, we experienced a total solar eclipse, including a plate of “eclipse cookies” to munch on during the event. In the summer I went through a second bout with covid, one that temporarily took away my sense of smell. Luckily it came back, but I can tell it’s still not 100%. And finally, with all this cold winter weather and snowfall, it’s nice to recognize “The Comfort of Warmth.”

Digital Dilemma

The Intrusion of AI

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Lately, I’ve noticed AI (Artificial Intelligence) turning up in all kinds of places unannounced. For example, sometimes as I’m going about my day, my phone’s AI will randomly start answering something. Or looking something up. It’s called Gemini and I still haven’t figured out how to delete it. I feel like that’s not even possible. Gemini, it seems, is here to stay.

Every time I do an internet search, some AI-generated “overview” is the first thing to show up. I sometimes find this even more dubious and suspect than scrolling through regular results. First of all, I have no idea where the “overview” pulled the content. It could have been from random reddit-chats, poorly constructed web pages, rampant bot-generated disinformation, and something legit. There’s no way to know. At least scrolling through results provides me with the option to see the source. Or to review the information in its original context. The AI-overview likely mixes little bits of information from lots of different places.

What feels crummy about the whole situation is I didn’t ask for the “convenience” of AI to help me on my phone or with searching. It was just there one day. When Gemini appeared on my phone, it was automatically the new default. I use Google-assist when I’m driving and need to do something hands-free. However, I never use it during other times. I thought it was shut off. Then one day, while having a conversation, Gemini started looking up some stuff related to what I was saying. It felt creepy, intrusive, and not helpful at all. In fact, I had to spend a lot of time searching for non-AI generated responses to find out how to disable the feature. Even now, it will still occasionally show up, despite my efforts to turn it off in settings.

When I think of all the amazing ways that AI can be helpful, it’s not in these overt and unwanted ways. Rather, I imagine AI taking care of mundane, time consuming, and repetitive tasks. Or using it’s huge power to do useful things such as blur my image from photos that others take and may post publicly. Mostly, I think about having a choice about whether or not I want to use AI on my personal devices. Making it the default automatic option feels intrusive to me.

As you can see, my finished plate was definitely “Worth the Wait.”

Digital Dilemma

Relying on Car Tech

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Towards the end of 2023 I swapped my gas car for a hybrid right before winter started. I did feel a nervous wondering how the car would react to the cold weather. The 2023-2024 winter was extremely mild and the car was absolutely fine. This winter, however, is a different story and I’ve had a number of weird things happen.

My car couldn’t handle the frigid, polar-vortex temperatures one morning, around -18 degrees Celsius. I blogged about this before in “Such a Thing as Too Much Technology.” Naturally, it was a morning I had to commute to the office. Despite warming the car for several minutes many warnings flashed on the dashboard. The car is still pretty new, so I thought this was odd. It was rotating through 4-5 different warning messages about things that may have been wrong. I had a hunch it was related to the cold weather. As the car warmed up, the warnings gradually disappeared except for one that the brakes may not be working properly. They seemed to be working fine so I drove to the office. I left early that day in case my car wouldn’t start, however, by that time the message had mysteriously disappeared.

Last Friday I drove home from the office in a snow storm. It was windy and snow was blowing directly at my car. Somehow this impacted some of the sensors. I had a visibility warning on my dashboard and some of the side signals that let me know if another car is in my blind spot also weren’t working. Rather, they worked intermittently, which almost felt scarier because I couldn’t trust it. Luckily, I learned how to drive without any of these things. I also retain some “old-school” driving habits like turning my head to physically look if anybody is in my blind spot, despite the side mirror sensors.

I feel good that I learned how to drive when a car was still just a car. They didn’t have computers or fancy features displayed on large screens. While I do enjoy many of the conveniences, esp. the GPS, ability to play podcasts, and dictate messages, none of things matter as much as my safety and my passengers. It’s scary to experience the many strange ways that car technology fails as soon as the weather gets bad.

Human Archives

Worth the Wait

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This weekend I went with some friends and family to one of those “paint your own pottery” places. I wasn’t sure what to expect. We had a gift card to use and it seemed like a fun weekend activity.

The pottery place was bright and airy. Inside were lots of white tables surrounded by chairs. Each table contained big buckets of multi-sized brushes and two trays of glaze, one plain and one “fleckled.” A handy fired tiled with the name and color of each glaze provided guidance. Along the perimeter shelving stretched from floor to ceiling filled with different pottery pieces available to paint. There were houseware type items such as places, cups, mugs, and shark-themed sponge holders. Other shelves held tiles, heart-shaped ornaments, or piggy banks in the shape of a penguin, dragon, car, or princess. Picking the piece to glaze was more challenging than figuring out the colors!

Armed with a piece of pottery, we headed to the table and started glazing. We had a 90-minute time limit, which seemed ample. But it went fast waiting for the glaze to dry for double and triple layers. We left the pieces at the shop to be glazed and eventually fired in the kiln at 1600 degrees (!) before they’ll be ready for pick up. After all that fun, now the hard part is waiting.

This evening I thought again about the cupcake-shaped snack plate I decorated. It won’t be ready for at least a week and I’m eager to see how it turned out. With so many things instantly available and readily customized, I have to confess waiting for something feels a bit nostalgic.

Growing up, waiting was part of the experience. We had to wait for everything. Photos took time to develop, or cost a lot to get them faster. Letters, aka snail mail, took time to handwrite and send. Even television shows only came on once a week. We had to wait a whole week and be available at a certain time to see the next episode. The only thing we could “binge” on was reruns, or sometimes if the network ran a marathon. But sometimes the waiting and anticipation was worth it, almost as though I got to experience the joy twice.

I’m excited to see if my pottery piece was worth the wait. Stay tuned for updates!

Digital Dilemma, Facebook, Social Media

The Tech Mogul Cop Out

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Lately I’ve been reading articles about Meta changing some of its policies. One that really stood out to me was that they no longer want to monitor and fact check on Facebook. According to their about page providing a summary, they claim the restrictions on the platform went too far. They went too far to the other extreme and ending up restricting the “free expression” they set out to enable in the first place.

Social media hasn’t been around that long, but its far reach and speed make it something that needs careful consideration. Less than 10 years ago, content published on Meta (formerly Facebook) was found to have an impact on the outcome of the US Presidential election. There are numerous articles and research on the effects of social, political, and otherwise harmful content posted on Facebook, and others. However challenging these issues are to address, it’s their responsibility. Claiming “free expression” and backing off is an abnegation of their burden.

Some years ago, the argument used to justify any and all content posted was similar to that of a news stand. The argument, as I understand it, was in defense of the news stand. The news stand is only displaying content for sale, but not directly creating the content themselves. This line of thought extended itself to the social media companies. After all, they were only providing a platform for others to express themselves. However, in my mind, the big difference is that news stands display published content. This means someone reviewed and edited the content before publication. Whereas social media companies let anyone and everyone post whatever they feel like. This can be far ranging from silly things, such as funny animal videos, all the way to other extreme. Social media is a hodge podge of political content, medical advice, instruction, cooking shows, tours of people’s refrigerators and everything in between. The content has no direction or limit. All in the name of “free expression.” But how can we call it “free expression,” when some content can be so harmful to others, or illegal?

This new direction of Meta, and other social media companies, is going to lead to other problems. In many instances, these same companies are the leaders of Artificial Intelligence. Now, these AI models are going to be trained by harmful, inaccurate, and damaging content available.

Digital Dilemma, Productivity

The Human Error in Automation

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Whenever I go to the grocery store, I always face a dilemma at checkout. Do I opt for a more error-free experience, but longer wait for the cashier? Or do I use self-checkout, a potentially faster, but maybe more frustrating experience?

I like the idea of self-checkout, in theory. As a teenager, I had a cashier job at a local grocery store. The work was tedious and thankless. During peak times customers could be irate and surly. This made an already boring job feel even less meaningful. When self-checkouts came along, I silently cheered thinking of how many RSI (repetitive strain injuries) could be prevented. I thought they would offer a quick, seamless process to purchase items. Sadly, I found this is only the case if I’m buying a small amount of items without any sales, weighing, or discounts. Due to this, I usually end up waiting for the cashier, convinced it takes less time because of the reduced errors.

Recently, I went grocery shopping for a few items at a busy time. I probably could have gone through the express line, but the lines were long and I opted for self-checkout. Reflecting on the experience, and the half dozen times the attendant came over, I couldn’t figure out why it was so miserable. It was a combination of user error, poor design, and lack of instruction.

After scanning the first item, I realized I forgot to put my grocery bag on the little shelf. I selected the option to “add my own bag,” but somehow it stalled the system. The attendant came over to reset it. Then again, when the first bag was full, the system stalled when I put a new bag on the shelf. At this point in the process I would definitely say it was a combination of poor design and bad instructions.

First of all, the shelf to bag groceries is tiny! It can only support one bag. Secondly, the attendant explained I had to wait 30 seconds before removing the first bag and adding the second. This vital piece of information was missing. The checkout screen certainly never mentioned this. Thirty seconds can feel like a long time to be hanging around to remove a bag. There were several other, less clear, mishaps and stalls.

Eventually I managed to pay for my two bags of groceries, having wasted much time at the self-checkout.