There is a particular kind of anxiety that doesn’t announce itself as fear. It arrives as a vague sense that everyone else has sorted something out and you haven’t. I’ve seen it when the subject of using AI comes up in discussions with colleagues like researchers, educators, actors. These are all people with decades of
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There are two conversations happening about artificial intelligence and creative work, and I find both of them exhausting. The first is the anxiety spiral: AI is going to replace writers, researchers, educators, artists. The work we’ve spent careers developing is being automated out of existence. The second is the dismissive shrug: it’s just autocomplete, serious
Continue reading ...I found myself explaining the purpose of hashtags this morning on my Facebook page. I’d posted to my news feed about a livestreaming event happening later in the day, with a reminder that hashtagging it would enable the conversation to be tracked. Someone asked what a hashtag was. Oh, how easily we forget that not
Continue reading ...Image via CrunchBase You know the old saying, ‘It never rains, but it pours’? Well, I’ve had one of those weeks … nice and slow for ages and suddenly, a bloggy downpour. At times during the week I found myself flipping backwards and forwards from one blog to another whilst fielding emails, telephone, and Skype
Continue reading ...Image by sniggy via Flickr Today, October 15 is Blog Action Day around the blogosphere. Those thousands of bloggers who have signed up to write about this year’s theme Climate Change, are sitting down and tapping out individual responses. The idea is simply to spread the word. Maybe it’s preaching to the converted, or singing
Continue reading ...When I was a primary (elementary) school teacher, one of the jobs I hated most was playground duty. It meant losing your precious lunch or break ‘downtime’ to wander an always hot and dusty playground, often trailed by kids who liked nothing more than to tell tales on one another. You had to keep an
Continue reading ...I must say I’m missing my northern-summer travels this year. Perhaps it’s the cold westerly wind blowing outside as I sit here writing, while my thoughts turn to long, hot July days in the Mediterranean. This picture is where I was one year ago – Knidos in Turkey. For a few years now I have
Continue reading ...If you’re a regular visitor to Groundling, you may have noticed that the last few days’ posts have been little compendiums of my online reading for the day. I haven’t posted any original material, but have chosen instead to share my day’s discoveries with my readers. Lazy blogger? Mmm … well I don’t believe in
Continue reading ...I followed a reasonably heated Friend Feed debate-thread some days ago. It was initiated by someone complaining about Twitter ‘crap’ appearing in the Friend Feed Home feed and supposedly diverting or undermining ‘meaningful’ threaded conversation; it was clearly a gate-keeper post by someone who felt Friend Feed’s real strength was being diluted by these disembodied
Continue reading ...Well, the pussycat’s among the pigeons as of this morning with news that Facebook has acquired Friendfeed. The interwebs are aflutter. What will it mean? Has the jock got the good-girl (as Louis Gray wittily notes)? What will it mean for us dedicated Friendfeeders? Only time will tell. Let’s hope the feel of Friendfeed with
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