The future of this substack (meta)
Some housekeeping
Housekeeping
Dear readers: I had a walk with some friends, and we had a discussion about this substack, which got me thinking. I have decided that subsequent posts will largely fit into two buckets:
Opinion pieces about the effect of technology on society These pieces will be on the topic that I think most about: the continued development of technology and the impact it is having on us, both as individuals and as a society. I will try to explain how we could approach technological development and deployment differently. I will also try to do original journalistic research into technological / social developments in my own country, New Zealand / Aotearoa
Technical explanations of topics in technology, mostly AI. This will expect a decent background in computer science, math and statistics and will not be aimed at a general audience. These articles will be based on reputable existing resources like textbooks or research papers. In them I will try to distill disparate resources about this topic into a single monolithic article that explains the topic as clearly as possible.
Accordingly, posts in the first bucket will be tagged (social) in the title, and posts in the second bucket will be tagged (technical). If I have something to say about the substack itself, i will tag it (meta) in the title, like in this post.
Here are my reasons for writing posts of both types, and why I think people should read them.
Social
To bring attention to ways in which technology is impacting people and society, more specifically in my home country, New Zealand / Aotearoa
To give specific recommendations about ways to avoid the negative effects of this at a personal level, based on my understanding of technology
To give broader political / philosophical arguments about how to manage this at a societal level, based on my understanding of politics and technology
I think people should read these posts because I think there is a lack of good writing about the impact of information technology on society from a view informed by both humanities and STEM, especially in the specific context of my home country, NZ.
Technical
To solidify my understanding of a specific technical topic
To give myself more motivation to do independent learning
To practice my communication skills
I think people should read these posts because I have a good combination of skill in technical matters and effective communication
However I understand if people think there are better resources on these topics, in the end I am mostly posting these technical articles for self development purposes, and there are many great resources online explaining topics in AI or tech. So ignore these posts, or don’t, either is fine with me.
Examples of some ideas for articles I am developing that fall into these two categories:
Social
Practical tips to resisting the attention economy
The amish approach to technological adoption
Would explainable AI be a cure all?
A history of Luddite communities in New Zealand / Aotearoa
The implications of the section 230 supreme court hearing on the NZ internet
Technical
The basic theory of neural networks
Computer Vision: Convolutional Neural Networks and YOLO
Large language models explained (parts 2/3 and 3/3)
Thanks for reading.
Kia Kaha
Ben