July 05, 2023 at 07:48AM

OUR OWN TRUTH. In the absence of trustworthy institutions, society has retreated into self-validating rubrics of meaning-making. We now attempt to posit anti-conspiratorial truth in a vacuum of credibility.

https://www.documentjournal.com/2022/12/raw-eggs-pink-pills-and-embodied-identity-online-communities-create-their-own-proof-in-a-vacuum-of-truth/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 06, 2023 at 11:31AM

PROPHETS & PROFITS: An exploration of entanglements between technology, capital, and spirituality, with particular emphasis on the reshaping of maps & territories by would-be empires and their self-appointed messiahs ------------------- Welcome to Folklore's first externally commissioned essay. We are joined today by Wassim, a brilliant researcher looking at online cultures. In this article, Wassim explores the depths of Bitcoin and crypto cultures, asking the hard questions around the role of evangelism and the consequences of BELIEF in the development of our new charter cities and network states. -------------- Please support Folklore by collecting this article. Funds are split equally between Wassim and Folklore to support further commissions.

https://folklore.mirror.xyz/nQ30ZabiOnn4BEtvGf1jPAjMYMCtMoFALDeo8wh4yQM

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 07, 2023 at 03:47PM

READING WITH RECIPROCITY: Getting meta on this Friday with a read unpacks how we might shift our reading mindset from one of extraction to one of reciprocity. "Reciprocity of thinking requires us to pay attention to who else is speaking alongside us. It also positions us, first and foremost, as citizens embedded in dynamic legal orders and systems of relations that require us to work constantly and thoughtfully across the myriad systems of thinking, acting, and governance within which we find ourselves enmeshed"

https://civiclaboratory.nl/2021/01/03/collabrary-a-methodological-experiment-for-reading-with-reciprocity/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 08, 2023 at 02:55PM

Most research on digital divides and inequalities has focused on social differences within nations, such as divides between socioeconomic groups. This chapter takes a global perspective, focusing on how the production of content is distributed around the world and setting out to comprehensively uncover: (1) where Internet content is being created; (2) whether the amount of content created in different places is changing over time; and (3) the ways in which landscapes of content are structured and formed. Mapping the geographic diversity and concentration of a broad variety of sources of online content is ultimately crucial to developing more informed strategies to combat digital divides and ultimately benefit those who are left out of flows of information.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1104698788830003301/1119001038406561852/internet_geographies.pdf

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 09, 2023 at 09:00AM

TWITTER's END - Eugene outlines in detail how Twitter has reached the end of its days. In a compelling and emotional essay, we learn about the lifecycle of Twitter. We explore how they stumbled upon (then destroyed) the interest-graph, its key innovation, moat, and differentiator in the hyper-competitive world of social media.

https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2023/7/6/how-to-blow-up-a-timeline

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 10, 2023 at 02:39PM

This essay explores the history and implications of images and their relationship with humans, delving into the philosophical perspectives of Aristotle and Kant regarding the mimetic nature of images and their emotional impact on viewers. It also discusses the cultural aversion to images, iconoclasm, and how certain religions and early Christians discouraged their use. The author then explores a future where AI-generated images dominate, questioning the authorship and authenticity of images as machines become creators in their own right. The conclusion is fascinating, and much of this conversation is relevant to the curation and publishing work we're doing at Folklore.

https://outland.art/generative-ai-and-technical-images/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 11, 2023 at 07:42AM

Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: In this prescient paper from 1996 we learn about the different types of human organizations, their characteristics, and how they interact with each other.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P7967.pdf

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 12, 2023 at 12:18PM

OUR INTERFACE SHAPES OUR ACTIONS: In this 1980 video called "Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" William H. Whyte and their team explore how urban design, like seating, shade and trees, influence the behaviors of crowds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOFNJzp1yng

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 13, 2023 at 09:26AM

SUBCOMPACT PUBLISHING: “One of the great benefits of being part of the emergent publishing world is that you don’t have multiple mediums to publish across. You can and probably should focus squarely on digital. Perhaps later — contingent on market demand and content quality — you can consider publishing a print anthology to give your publication a stronger literal edge. So what are these so called ‘indigenous’ qualities of digital?”

https://craigmod.com/journal/subcompact_publishing/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 14, 2023 at 05:26PM

PERSONAL MACHINES & PORTABLE WORLDS: In this essay, Christopher Butler explores the world of personal devices — and the very different feel they gave than internet-connected devices of today, which, despite their efforts to feel hyper-personal, often feel anything but. On this older era of devices, he writes: "To be personal it has to be a certain kind of device — the kind that balances access to another world with the kinds of limits and boundaries that make a thing private....The most magical of personal devices are those which offer access to the experience of infinitude without measuring it for you. The unknown is the stuff of imagination." This one's worth pairing with the NotBoring essay from a few months back, 'The Happiness Hypothesis' https://www.notboring.co/p/the-happiness-hypothesis. If, as Packy writes, "the purpose of technology is to increase the potential for happiness, but most people don’t feel like technology makes them much happier" — maybe getting back to personal portals that unlock imagination is the key.

https://www.chrbutler.com/personal-machines-and-portable-worlds

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 15, 2023 at 02:29PM

The designers of complex adaptive systems are not strictly designing systems themselves. They are hinting those systems towards anticipated outcomes, from an array of existing interrelated systems. These are designers that do not understand themselves to be in the center of the system. Rather, they understand themselves to be participants, shaping the systems that interact with other forces, ideas, events and other designers. This essay is an exploration of what it means to participate.

https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/design-as-participation/release/1

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 16, 2023 at 05:56PM

HEIRLOOM MARKETING: You can't buy into class but people will try anyway, so the watch gets the nouveaux and nouveauxing rich as close to this lifestyle as they will ever get. Not only is it a visible symbol of their success but it broadcasts (as per the ad) that they are the kind of person that reflectively considers the next generation, what they will pass on to them, their legacy.

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/11/luxury_branding_the_future_lea.html

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 18, 2023 at 12:56PM

"Walking through Dickinson’s real-yet-reconstituted house, I trailed my fingers over the shiny sofas. The psychedelically patterned floral wallpaper looked new and garish, like something onscreen. The house began to feel less like the home of a real dead woman than a hallucination produced by a TV show, or a palimpsest of dying media forms"

https://spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/discourse-emily-dickinson-apple-computer-house

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 19, 2023 at 08:45PM

WHAT SCREENS WANT: We need to work as a community to develop a language of transformation so we can talk to one another. And we probably need to steal these words from places like animation, theater, puppetry, dance, and choreography. Words matter. They are abstractions, too—an interface to thought and understanding by communication. The words we use mold our perception of our work and the world around us. They become a frame, just like the interfaces we design.

https://frankchimero.com/blog/2013/what-screens-want/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 21, 2023 at 08:40AM

JAPANESE ANCESTORS: “ The young users of 2Chan were simultaneously obsessive consumers of media and animated by a deep animosity toward the press. The Japanese cynical romanticists loathed the media, yet were incapable of shutting up about it.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/japans-cynical-romantics

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 21, 2023 at 10:41PM

ON DAYDREAMING WITH TECHNOLOGY: Returning to the theme of technology's impact on our collective imagination (and increasing lack thereof), an old favorite from Astra Mag on the state of daydreaming. Much in the same way that Christopher Butler's piece from last week (on Personal Machines and Portable Worlds) explored the way modern personal devices remove the magic of exploring the unknown, this essay unpacks the ways today's internet has changed the terms of our daydreaming. Granting our daydreams fodder, but also taking away their breathing room. It fills in too many gaps. What does tech look like that makes space for imagined alternatives?

https://archive.ph/ouiRi

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 22, 2023 at 01:26PM

THE GENESIS OF SCHISM: Schismogenesis literally means "creation of division". The term derives from the Greek words σχίσμα skhisma "cleft" (borrowed into English as schism, "division into opposing factions"), and γένεσις genesis "generation, creation" (deriving in turn from gignesthai "be born or produced, creation, a coming into being"). Gregory Bateson, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind describes the two forms of schismogenesis (complementary and symmetrical) and proposes that both forms are self-destructive to the parties involved. He goes on to suggest that researchers look into methods that one or both parties may employ to stop a schismogenesis before it reaches its destructive stage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 24, 2023 at 08:56PM

Art can speak to the soul. Reading this in the context of explorations around the role of media, this piece provokes thought around the ways that art (and media broadly) provokes beauty and shapes our understanding of values in a given community or society. Media having its own "silent theology" has been the idea keeping me up at night.

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-silent-theology-of-islamic-art

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 25, 2023 at 01:44PM

LORE OF THE WELL: "A large part of the attraction was that The Well offered the freedom of projecting whatever personality you wished, along with the intriguing possibility of highlighting subtle variations of your character. Users adhered to Brand's true-names rule, but at the same time most people created an electronic persona that was, to use MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle's term, "coextensive" with their physically embodied one."

https://archive.is/zlIVp#selection-2827.0-2827.416

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 26, 2023 at 02:47PM

META-MARIO: Social Seriality, Metagamming, and Community in our Digital World. “Videogames operate as an ideal medium for expressing as well as critiquing the serial structures that define both the digital repetitions of software and the quotidian repetitions that conduct the rhythm of daily life. In the twenty-first century, the figure of the man in a gray flannel suit, holding a newspaper while waiting for the bus or train, has been at least partially replaced by the contemporary commuter fiddling with a laptop, smartphone, e-reader, or handheld videogame console.”

https://manifold.umn.edu/read/metagaming/section/212ed2b3-a2f0-4696-8949-f176553c5bcb

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 28, 2023 at 05:16PM

WORLD OF ANONS: What is "a-culture"? "More significantly, A-culture offers a place for discussion of A-culture. Because the community is so autonomous from the real world, there is great opportunity to continually redefine one’s role in it and even redefine the nature of the community itself. A-culture is a space for playing with unrestricted notions of identity and affiliation and for the establishment of a private set of in-jokes and references that come to constitute a collective memory."

https://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/anonymity_as_culture__treatise

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 28, 2023 at 09:51PM

A HUMANIST RENAISSANCE?: This piece in The Atlantic explores the question of what a philosophical and cultural counter-movement to AI might look like and how it might take shape. One answer among countless, it raises a host of interesting questions and makes one stop to consider what role they have to play in the unsettled shape of the future: "We would be wise to rectify the errors of the recent past, but also to anticipate—and proactively shape—what the far more radical technology now emerging will mean for our lives, and how it will come to remake our civilization."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/generative-ai-human-culture-philosophy/674165/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 29, 2023 at 03:32PM

A NEW MYTHOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY: In an era of high-tech and climate extremes, we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. Enter Lo—TEK, a design movement building on indigenous philosophy and vernacular infrastructure to generate sustainable, resilient, nature-based technology. Extending the grounds of typical design, Lo—TEK is a movement that investigates lesser-known local technologies, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), indigenous cultural practices, and mythologies passed down as songs or stories. In contrast to the homogeneity of the modern world, indigeneity is reframed as an evolutionary extension of life in symbiosis with nature. Lo—TEK orients us towards a different mythology of technology. One that evolves humanism with radical indigenism.

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/02/11/lo-tek-design-radical-indigenism-julia-watson-indigenous-technologies/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

July 31, 2023 at 10:00PM

SPIRIT IN THE TECHNOPOLIS: This essay offers an exploration of the emergence of the Technopolis, where technology and reason become absolutes, dominating our lives. It vividly compares the airport, a microcosm of this Technopolis, to our future technological civilization. The author's insights into the potential consequences of this trajectory are thought-provoking, urging us to consider the balance between Reason, Religion, and Technology in shaping our future. By delving into the essence of humanity and advocating for disruptive spiritual practices rooted in sacrificial love, the essay encourages us to ponder our role in shaping a better alignment for the world.

https://pilgrimsinthemachine.substack.com/p/spirit-in-the-technopolis?utm_medium=ios

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 01, 2023 at 05:47PM

PROTOCOLS, NOT PLATFORMS: “ Moving to protocols, not platforms, is an approach for free speech in the twenty-first century. Rather than relying on a “marketplace of ideas” within an individual platform—which can be hijacked by those with malicious intent—protocols could lead to a marketplace of ideals, where competition occurs to provide better services that minimize the impact of those with malicious intent, without cutting off their ability to speak entirely.”

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 03, 2023 at 12:40AM

PROSOCIAL DESIGN: “Multiplayer games can help build a player’s social support network. What would game design look like if our goals included reducing loneliness, decreasing toxicity and boosting a player’s positive connections with others? This paper looks at how we might use economics, an often dehumanizing and antisocial discipline, to support prosocial design goals.”

https://www.projecthorseshoe.com/reports/featured/ph19r7.htm

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 03, 2023 at 05:59PM

ADS DONT WORK THAT WAY: "Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product."

https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 04, 2023 at 10:58PM

WEB2'S SELF-LOATHING ERA: X is just the latest in a long line of bewildering rebrands among web2 companies. So what gives? Here, Ted Gioia identifies rebranding as a signifier of shame and self-loathing; a decidedly different energy from the optimism, excitement, and promise we typically associate with Internet Companies. There's a chicken & the egg situation — is the self-loathing driven by waning consumer interest and excitement? Or is increasing consumer distrust and distaste for the same platforms driven by the lack of direction, clarity, and frankly fun, inherent in the trajectory of these rebrands? And no matter the answer, what does it all say about what comes next?

https://archive.ph/R7vqP

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 05, 2023 at 04:27PM

CONTEXT IS QUEEN: Borrowed that phrase from Metalabel, but this piece about exploring new forms of information from Nora Bateson, Gregory Bateson’s daughter. “To address our socio-economic and ecological crisis now requires a level of contextual comprehension, wiggly though it may be to grok the inconsistencies and paradoxes of interrelational process. Far from solving these dilemmas or resolving the conflicting patterns, Warm Data utilizes these characteristics as its most important resources of inquiry.”

https://hackernoon.com/warm-data-9f0fcd2a828c

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 09, 2023 at 11:15AM

RUMORS, GOSSIP, URBAN LEGENDS: "Classic rumor differs from gossip and urban legend, though these differences often blur. Gossip is evaluative idle talk about individuals – usually not present – often shared for amusement, to communicate social mores, and to exclude someone from a social group... when we object 'That’s a rumor!' we mean that it is unverified... Rumor is a morsel of food in an information famine; gossip is a tasty juicy treat at a cocktail party... Urban legends are narratives
– they have a story-like structure – of unusual, humorous, or horrible events that contain modern themes and moral implications."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q0Nn62sm401JV49eX0VFYVbs0vmqCBUE/view?usp=drive_link

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 10, 2023 at 10:08AM

NEXT-GEN ORGS: "Teams will often swarm around problems, leadership is transient in nature and leaders will arise to fit the problem... Outcome not output matters... To train people, the company used scenarios and gameplay, usually online. The idea of Eve online being a training tool is not an alien concept."

https://swardley.medium.com/how-organisations-are-changing-cf80f3e2300

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 10, 2023 at 10:14AM

SEASON 2 is OPEN: Thank you everyone for such an exciting year. We're well on our way to creating a calm and meaningful space of learning and exploration. As of yesterday, Folklore has opened 150 membership spots for the upcoming year(ish). Funds will be used to commission writing, build our own 'situated software' and (hopefully) host a few meetups! Membership passes are available in this link, alongside a community update. If you have a mid-season pass, you do not need to purchase a new membership. Season 1 access to the Forum will be removed in September.

https://folklore.mirror.xyz/Kaj9PzlkPxSg3fMd1BL4Nx3GWKHtBkHQzLq5QHw-aj8

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 12, 2023 at 12:23AM

OUR METABOLIC ERA: Is this subconsciously why we're all obsessed with rotting right now? On considering nonhuman metaphors for radical breakdown in an age of toxic growth. "As Boots Riley put it in a recent interview, “Culture is what we do to make our survival normal.” ... What might it look like to embrace our role as part of a massive and massively weird ecological and metabolic system, and to experiment with the creative and expressive potential of digestion?"

https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-is-toxic-welcome-to-the-metabolic-era/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 12, 2023 at 03:07PM

THE PARADOX OF SLACK: “In the esoteric teachings, total competition is called Moloch, and total absence of competition is called Slack. Slack gets short shrift. If you think of it as “some people try to win competitions, other people don’t care about winning competitions and slack off and go to the beach”, you’re misunderstanding it. Think of slack as a paradox – the Taoist art of winning competitions by not trying too hard at them. Moloch and Slack are opposites and complements, like yin and yang. Neither is stronger than the other, but their interplay creates the ten thousand things.” (Note to any fellow slackers: this isn’t a tldr, but my favorite section was IV example 7 thru conclusion, if ya want to jump ahead and maybe rewind later)

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/12/studies-on-slack/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 15, 2023 at 08:29PM

MICROPAYMENT DISCOURSE: "If an outlet wanted to try to start itself up on a pay-per-article model, it might work—but the price point would likely be much higher than the handful of cents we generally discuss. That gets trickier, Haile says, because information is fundamentally different from other arenas... Gaming is perhaps the greatest triumph of micropayments. But in games, you know what you’re buying in advance—three extra lives, a hundred coins, whatever. For a journalistic article, you’ll only know whether you enjoyed it after you’ve finished it."

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/micropayments-subscription-pay-by-article.php

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 16, 2023 at 10:48AM

NETWORKED PUBLICS: "Networked publics are publics that are restructured by networked technologies. As such, they are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people,
technology, and practice."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_7trBzF5ba3EllBMIj_hZOLqgrrNQRDu/view?usp=sharing

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 17, 2023 at 07:30AM

COLLECTIVE INTENTIONALITY: “ Another way of putting this is to say that collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality (though this is generally accepted only insofar as individual intentionality is narrowly understood). It is only in virtue of its irreducibility that the intentional state in question can be attributed to the participants as a group.”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collective-intentionality/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 19, 2023 at 12:49AM

WHAT IS LIFESTYLE? In which Daisy Alioto explores the past and present of lifestyle as a sociological and economic concept

https://dirt.fyi/article/2023/08/introducing-lifestyle

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 19, 2023 at 02:42PM

RADICLE CIVICS: Civics starts with the most elemental of our social relationships: our mutual interdependencies from which forms of social organisation emerge. What would our civic infrastructure look like if we shifted our view from objects to agents, from externalities to entanglements, and from public-private to commoning? Consider these proofs of possibilities.

https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/radicle-civics-building-proofs-of-possibilities-for-a-civic-economy-and-society-ee28baeeec70

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 21, 2023 at 03:59PM

TRANSHUMANISM IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD: "Game engines as transhumanist sandboxes blur human-machine lines. This article explores their role as gateways to a new existence."

https://flatjournal.com/work/the-game-engine-as-transhumanist-sandbox/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 21, 2023 at 04:52PM

WORLD GENERATION: Building on Folklore conversation from the last week, this piece breaks down "worldbuilding" into three different eras, each leading to where we are today. "We are entering an age where the audience, again, can transform the underlying structures and narrative logics of the worlds they inhabit. Real-time rendering engines have offered a first glance into these worlds; onchain autonomy will slam their gates open."

https://aw.network/posts/three-eras-of-world-generation

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 24, 2023 at 03:25PM

SACRED: “Humans have long treated some especially important things in a distinctive special “sacred” way. For example, the following are widely seen as at least somewhat sacred: family, love, charity, courage, honesty, liberty, school, art, music, dance, fiction, innovation, epiphanies, inquiry, religion, spirits, sky, space, nature, sport, talk, friendship, health, medicine, children, democracy, law, sex, death, war, royalty, and nation. While we see wide variation in who treats what as how sacred, almost all of us treat some of these in a similar substantially-sacred way. Yes, we have many good reasons to value such things, but why value them in this special “sacred” way?”

https://files.theseedsofscience.org/2023/We_See_The_Sacred_From_Afar__To_See_It_The_Same.pdf

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 25, 2023 at 10:01PM

THE BLURRY VISION BIAS: On the power of vivid detail and the difference between communicating visions of the future with image-based rhetoric vs. nebulous, abstract language. Like meeting a person IRL rather than only interacting with them online, there's a depth of connection and a difference in empathy that comes from getting visceral. Seems like yet another feather in the cap for worldbuilding and its increasing importance in communicating effectively today and tomorrow.

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/111218/Lucas8_BlurryVisionBias.pdf

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 26, 2023 at 01:14PM

A TAXONOMY OF NEW COMMUNITIES: “Building new communities is hard. Doing it in a way that is responsible, honest, and productive for participants and the broader society is even harder. “ In this short, thought-provoking essay the author introduces a taxonomy of three kinds of “new community” advocates, situates them in relation to social progress, shares some observations about what makes communities coherent and attractive, and concludes with a few concrete proposals for experimentation that flow from the analysis.

https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/secret-societies-network-states-burning-man-zuzalu-and-more/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 28, 2023 at 04:02AM

A TALE OF RESILIENT FUTURES: Shared Data presents itself as a short story with a subsequent breakdown commentary: Shared Data exists as an eco-futurist hypothesis of a world existing and persisting throughout climate disasters that have now become commonplace and woven into the fabric of the characters’ everyday lives. But this story isn’t just about climate change — at the heart of Shared Data is a hypothesis of a future project and cooperative that could have numerous benefits for consumers- a shared data hub and cooperative that provides real time data, insights, and social interaction spaces for communities to provide mutual aid in real time.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/shared-data-a-short-story-from-an-alternate-future/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 29, 2023 at 07:35PM

ASK CULTURE vs. GUESS CULTURE: "If you’re more of a guess-culture person, asking people for help without knowing their circumstances can feel rude or intrusive. Broadcasting publicly your need for help can feel awkward and vulnerable. If you’re more of an ask-culture person, the guess-culture example of juggling everyone’s specific scenarios and the historical context of favors probably seems exhausting. Dropping hints in the hopes that you won’t even have to make your request can feel extra passive and manipulative."

https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/bridging-the-ask-vs-guess-culture

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

August 30, 2023 at 09:40PM

FROM PUSH TO PULL: “In the past decade, we have seen early signs of a new model for mobilizing resources. Rather than "push", this new approach focuses on "pull" - creating platforms that help people to mobilize appropriate resources when the need arises. In lean manufacturing, early elements of a pull model began to emerge from Toyota in the early 1950's. As we will discuss below, however, lean manufacturing represents a hybrid between push and pull models - it still contains significant elements of push models.”

https://www.johnhagel.com/paper_pushpull.pdf

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

September 01, 2023 at 09:39AM

BEGINNINGS EVERMORE.

Today, we say farewell to many beloved kindred.

It is September 1st, a day that will live in infamy as The First Culling.

—::—::—

Arise now, arise, Journeykin of Folklore!
Dire deeds awake: dark is the forest.
Let the dreams emerge, words engrave in stone!
Forth Cybernauts!

Arise now, arise, Journeykin of Folklore!
Delays have dangerous ends: Think and Mint!
Paper shall crumple, keyboards split,
A pen-day, an ink day, ere the sun rises!
Read now, write now! Learn for all!

—::—::—

Thank you again to all the Season 1 supporters. This channel will remain public and the forum eligibility has been updated. Our gratitude for your tributes as we continue the steady path of curation, commission, and community.

For those interested in continuing the journey alongside the mid-season members and S2 members, just visit folklore.institute. The membership link should be open for a few more weeks.

May you be blessed by the algorithms,
Folklore

https://folklore.institute

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

September 02, 2023 at 07:26PM

INTO THE DEPTH OF /b/: “ Our first study uses a large dataset of more than five million posts to quantify ephemerality in /b/. We find that most threads spend just five seconds on the first page and less than five minutes on the site before expiring. Our second study is an analysis of identity signals on 4chan, finding that over 90% of posts are made by fully anonymous users, with other identity signals adopted and discarded at will. We describe alternative mechanisms that /b/ participants use to establish status and frame their interactions.”

https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/14134/13983

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September 04, 2023 at 08:56PM

CONTENT DISTORTION: “ Sullivan says PageRank’s algorithm is a lot simpler than most people assume it is. At the beginning, most of the tips and tricks people were sharing were largely pointless for SEO. The subject of SEO is still rife with superstition. There are a lot of different ideas that people have about exactly how to get a prominent spot on Google’s results, Sullivan acknowledges. But most of the stuff you’ll find by, well, googling “SEO tricks” isn’t very accurate… And here is where you get into the circular nature of his argument against Google’s influence. Thousands of food bloggers are searching for advice on how to optimize their blogs for Google. The advice that sits at the top of Google is bad, but they’re using it anyway, and now, their blogs all look the same. Isn’t that, in a sense, Google shaping how content is made?”

https://www.theverge.com/23846048/google-search-memes-images-pagerank-altavista-seo-keywords

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September 06, 2023 at 02:56PM

INDUSTRIAL STUPOR: “ The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London. And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders--a lot of things we like--didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset. It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20080708220257/http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

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September 07, 2023 at 09:37AM

TIME FOR WASTE: "The collapse of CPU prices led us directly from mainframes to the personal computer era; the collapse of storage prices (of all kinds) led inevitably to more personal computers with useful local storage, which helped spark databases and spreadsheets, then led to web services, and then to cloud services. And, most recently, the collapse of network transit costs (as bandwidth exploded) led directly to the modern Internet, streaming video, and mobile apps... Each beneficiary of a collapse requires one or more core technologies' price to drop and performance to soar. This, in turn, opens up new opportunities to “waste” them in service of things that previously seemed impossible, prohibitively expensive, or both... AI as the Next Collapse Dynamic in Technology"

https://skventures.substack.com/p/societys-technical-debt-and-softwares

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September 08, 2023 at 11:49AM

PROTO-APP THESIS: “ And here we arrive at the moral of our little tale, that according to The Social App Thesis, we’ve simply reached saturation ::::: Now. —— It would be hard to say The Social App Thesis is wrong, exactly—within the terms of this tale, it seems fairly irrefutable. But it’s telling that The Social App Thesis neglects the fact that a major new app has ascended for the first time in nearly a decade. Yet so game-changing is this app that you might not even notice it’s an app at all. I’m referring, of course, to Chat-GPT.”

https://davidphelps.substack.com/p/the-proto-app-thesis

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September 09, 2023 at 03:34PM

DO ARTIFACTS HAVE POLITICS? “In what follows I shall offer outlines and illustrations of two ways in which artifacts can contain political properties. First are instances in which the invention, design, or arrangement of a specific technical device or system becomes a way of settling an issue in a particular community. Seen in the proper light, examples of this kind are fairly straightforward and easily understood. Second are cases of what can be called inherently political technologies, man-made systems that appear to require, or to be strongly compatible with, particular kinds of political relationships. Arguments about cases of this kind are much more troublesome and closer to the heart of the matter. By "politics," I mean arrangements of power and authority in human associations as well as the activities that take place within those arrangements…My intention is not to settle any of the issues here once and for all, but to indicate their general dimensions and significance.”

https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

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September 10, 2023 at 09:47PM

AUSTERITY-CORE: “ The decor is what you might call austerity-core. It is both corporate-loud (garish displays of next season’s decorations) and minimalist-clinical (pilled gray carpeting, fluorescent lights). People in pain and in search of relief, people picking up the prescriptions they need to live, and people who really want a soda all stalk the aisles.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/08/30/passionate-kisses-the-soundtrack-at-cvs/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

September 14, 2023 at 03:02PM

BONDED: “Tokens are algorithmically minted and then used to deposit it against participants in the community that curate and foster the shared goals of the community. These participants can then use their standing (proportional backing) in the community to curate any information in this community. Anyone, at any point in time can become a curator. It is dynamic. The deposits can be shifted around to other curators as desired.”

https://medium.com/@simondlr/a-bonded-curation-community-247f14a6de04

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September 15, 2023 at 09:59AM

FORK IT: “ Moloch DAO always leaves a door open. Every time there is a vote, one can decide to exit (“ragequit”), turning non-transferable voting shares into transferable “loot tokens”. If you destroy your loot tokens, you can exit with your proportional amount of the organization’s resources (“treasury”).”

https://medium.com/@simondlr/the-moloch-dao-collapsing-the-firm-2a800b3aa2e7

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September 16, 2023 at 03:13PM

COMPRESSION PROGRESS: A simple principle explains essential aspects of subjective beauty, novelty, surprise, interestingness, attention, curiosity, creativity, art, science, music, jokes. This David Perell essay serves as a bit of a compressed appetizer, but the seminal 2008 Cornell paper is linked out for those who want the whole meal.

https://perell.com/essay/expression-is-compression/

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September 18, 2023 at 03:29AM

HERE'S A WILD THOUGHT: don't just offer data protection, especially when you can't guarantee it. Offer data destruction. Not BrinWorld, where everyone knows everything and lions lie down with lambs; a more hard-edged place where, when the lions come calling, we burn down our chunk of the veldt rather than hand it over. Forget the Transparent Society. Let's call this the Scorched-Earth society.

https://rifters.com/real/shorts/TheScorchedEarthSociety-transcript.pdf

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September 21, 2023 at 10:21AM

INTER-ACTION: “ Another potential pleasure offered by interactivity is that of 'control' -- control being on a dangerously sliding scale which could also result in displeasure for an audience. 'Control', like 'choice' depends on degree -- is the artist giving a token degree of control which is ultimately frustrating, or giving the audience full control, in which case what is the artist there for?”

http://www.berylgraham.com/serious/other/bgessay.htm

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September 23, 2023 at 10:16AM

TRIBE ERA: “ As influencers became brands themselves they were able to launch white-labeled products top-down - dumping merch on their followers. As explained above, the brands’ way into cultural relevance was via influencer partnerships and memes. But what if we could own the memes collectively? Enter the era of tribesmen.”

https://zeeprime.capital/the-future-of-owny-fans

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September 23, 2023 at 09:02PM

ARCHIVE OF PUNK TECHNOLOGIES: Punk technologies are those that have been deliberately designed as a mode of resistance against the mainstream. It serves the same role in technology as punk rock did in music: social resistance and subterfuge against the imposition and oppression of mainstream systems that dictate a particular set of values or ways of living and being.

https://medium.com/@annaharrisonlathrop/introducing-the-archive-of-punk-technologies-5707e166e01d

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

September 25, 2023 at 04:29AM

INTERWEAVING COMMUNITIES: By emphasizing bottom-up supersidiarity, adaptability, and interconnectedness, coordi-nations allow for the creation of new layers of sovereignties that operate independently of existing nation states, yet nonetheless maintain an interface and symbiotic relationship with the existing state system.

https://jessykate.medium.com/coordi-nations-a-new-institutional-structure-for-global-cooperation-3ef38d6e2cfa

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

September 26, 2023 at 11:01AM

STYLE GUIDE: Zora Zine's Open-Source Style Guide. Great insight into writing online, and an excellent resource to think about style with all the neologisms that we're engulfed in.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fkxmd0lpbqocehg/ZINE%20%E2%80%A2%20WEB3%20EDITORIAL%20STYLE%20GUIDE.pdf?dl=0

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September 28, 2023 at 09:07AM

WORLD AUTONOMY: "Worlds with a blockchain substrate are maximally autonomous: anybody can enforce the introduction rule, without damaging its objectivity. The disappearance or betrayal of any particular individual does not hurt the world: its diegetic boundary remains as hard as ever. Such worlds can be nearly on par with systems like the English language, or physics itself. Of course, autonomy is something you can only measure in retrospect. Before an actual existential threat faces the world, autonomy is often performative. Sometimes, a credible path towards autonomy is what allows worlds to be seen as autonomous."

https://aw.network/posts/the-case-for-autonomous-worlds

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September 30, 2023 at 02:31PM

A EULOGY FOR CHECKPOINTS: An emergent digital behavior, one that originated in the comment section of a YouTube video, the story of Checkpoints reminds us to be fully aware of the infrastructure we use in community building in digital realms. Are the structures sturdy? Who controls them? Who is responsible for archiving or providing additional fault tolerance in the community’s memory system?

https://open.substack.com/pub/donotresearch/p/ruby-thelot-a-eulogy-for-checkpoints?r=l1m1r&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

October 02, 2023 at 03:14PM

DIGITAL THEATRE OF THE MIND: "Computers as Theatre" serves as a seminal text for understanding the psychological and emotional dimensions of UX design. It argues that by adopting a theatrical approach, designers can tap into the innate human desire for narrative and emotional engagement, elevating UX design from mere functionality to an art form.

https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2019/02/book-review-computers-as-theatre.php

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October 03, 2023 at 10:19AM

OOZE OOZE OOZE: "Ironically, fear of oozification, and the temptation to respond in these ways, is strongest in those who most evangelize progress, innovation, change, and endless economic growth... No, the paradox has to do with the fundamental nature of change: change carried far enough necessarily changes the changer. There is no such thing as “sustainable progress” because any pattern of sustained change will eventually oozify the defining certainties of the identities that thought it was a good idea in the first place, and pursued it."

https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/fear-of-oozification

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October 05, 2023 at 12:00PM

CULTURAL RADIATION: "A cultural product with a "high half-life" would be one that endures over a considerable period, retaining its influence, recognizability, or relevance. Such long-lasting impact could be attributed to various factors, such as deep aesthetic resonance, legibility, or the establishment of a dedicated community that continues to engage with it."

https://www.13101401.studio/research/the-crisis-of-legibility

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October 07, 2023 at 03:08PM

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF SOLARPUNK/BLOCKCHAINS: In this talk, Paul Graham Raven contextualizes solarpunk futures and the promises of blockchains within the frame of utopias and challenges the enthusiasts to come to terms with (or at minimum acknowledge) the invisible infrastructures that underpin every optimistic utterance and hope-inducing extrapolation.

https://youtu.be/imZu4sY0kr0?si=fsKkXuW1E4JVCyp2

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

October 08, 2023 at 08:08PM

LIQUID MODERNITY: “What all these features of fluids amount to, in simple language, is that liquids, unlike solids, cannot easily hold their shape. Fluids, so to speak, neither fix space nor bind time. While solids have clear spatial dimensions but neutralize the impact, and thus downgrade the significance, of time (effectively resist its flow or render it irrelevant), fluids do not keep to any shape for long and are constantly ready (and prone) to change it ; and so for them it is the flow of time that counts, more than the space they happen to occupy: that space, after all, they fill but 'for a moment'. (LC 311)”

https://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2014/05/liquid-modernity.html?m=1

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October 10, 2023 at 11:10AM

THE HOURGLASS PINCH: "A new computer model that describes the evolution of the Internet's architecture suggests something similar has happened among the layers of protocols that have survived -- and become extinct -- on the worldwide network."

https://phys.org/news/2011-08-internet-architecture-hourglass-future.html

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October 11, 2023 at 12:41PM

CENTAURS AND CYBORGS: "Centaur work has a clear line between person and machine, like the clear line between the human torso and horse body of the mythical centaur. Centaurs have a strategic division of labor, switching between AI and human tasks, allocating responsibilities based on the strengths and capabilities of each entity... On the other hand, Cyborgs blend machine and person, integrating the two deeply. Cyborgs don't just delegate tasks; they intertwine their efforts with AI, moving back and forth over the jagged frontier. Bits of tasks get handed to the AI, such as initiating a sentence for the AI to complete, so that Cyborgs find themselves working in tandem with the AI."

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/centaurs-and-cyborgs-on-the-jagged

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October 12, 2023 at 04:57PM

New from Folklore's Community ::: OBJECT HISTORIES ::: "What conversation would you want to have with every person who will one day be in the exact same location as you? What puzzles or riddles would you gift them?"

https://folklore.mirror.xyz/mXUdGyFMkotAOEJvJY4ecwMUi3ze-uZ_3s8IQ3UpD3g

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October 14, 2023 at 08:56AM

DIGITAL CONTAGION: “ We report the first outbreak of a new type of mass sociogenic illness that in contrast to all previously reported episodes is spread solely via social media. Accordingly, we suggest the more specific term ‘mass social media-induced illness’.”

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/145/2/476/6356504?login=false

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October 14, 2023 at 01:17PM

MYTHIC TURNED REAL: “The open-ended design of the Whole Earth Index is intended as a sort of provocation towards future works — a message and invitation in the spirit of the original catalog’s epochal claim that “we are as gods and might as well get good at it.” The tens of thousands of scanned pages will live on the servers of the Internet Archive — as good a place as any to try and stave off a Digital Dark Age — but the ideas of the Whole Earth Catalog and its heirs will always live among those of us who read it and access its tools. What will you do with them?”

https://longnow.org/ideas/the-lasting-whole-earth-catalog/

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October 15, 2023 at 02:04PM

MIND MATTERS: “ If my suspicions are right, all this spiritual entrepreneurship I’ve been documenting is playing the role of competitive evolution towards a new synthesis, a new way of making sense of mental health in the West. We may be surprised at what happens in the coming decades; we may end up with concepts of wellness and illness that do not exist today.”

https://subpixel.space/entries/american-psychology/

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October 16, 2023 at 04:43PM

PRICE AND VALUE: "Rennekamp’s perspective on liquidity in markets indicates that art often operates in a realm of low liquidity, especially when new ideas and practices have not yet achieved widespread understanding or agreement. This dynamic creates a large potential “spread” between the valuation of artworks, challenging the dichotomy of “good art” versus “bad art.” His observation highlights that art’s value is not solely determined by financial metrics but is influenced by a complex interplay of factors. Rennekamp posits that while the established definitions of value may be accurate, they are limited in scope. He highlights the liquidity, or the lack thereof, in art markets, arguing that art thrives in the bounds of low liquidity, leaving ample room for varied valuation. The central dichotomy has shifted from questioning the authenticity of art to its qualitative value and its economic worth — stressing the tension between the subjective value of art and its market price."

https://walrus-flower-cnxs.squarespace.com/new-page

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

October 19, 2023 at 10:04AM

“VERIFIED” :: How open-source intelligence (OSINT) accounts are wreaking havoc on modern warfare. “What exists now is a profit and engagement driven ecosystem of non-experts who in some cases may be spreading videos for the clout and cash, rather than to inform readers about what is actually true. One respected OSINT expert, known as Obretix, told 404 Media that Twitter now is “self promoting aggregators, posting thousands of tweets to get some revenue share from Elon.”

https://www.404media.co/twitter-verified-osint-accounts-are-destroying-the-israel-palestine-information-ecosystem/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

October 21, 2023 at 04:39PM

WIKIPOCALYPSE: What happens if Wikipedia starts ingesting itself through generative AI? Wikipedia is one of the most important sources for training generative AIs. Will we experience model collapse, where models trained on their own data degrade in performance? Will projects like Wikipedia collapse under the weight of unverifiable information?

https://ethanzuckerman.com/2023/10/10/heather-ford-is-the-web-eating-itself-llms-versus-verifiability/

https://folklore-cms.vercel.app/entries.rss

October 23, 2023 at 01:36AM

ARCOLOGIES IN FICTION AND REALITY: The article delves into the cultural and social implications of arcologies, both as architectural projects and as represented in simulation games. It discusses how these megastructures often reflect societal ideologies and fears, such as the dystopian corporate arcologies in William Gibson's "Neuromancer." The article also considers how games like "Dwarf Fortress" allow for a complex and nuanced understanding of social relations and community building.

https://flatjournal.com/work/the-arcology-mode/

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October 24, 2023 at 12:04PM

BABELIFICATION: In this essay, commissioned by Folklore, Ruby and Rue explore the diverging tongues of our digital terrain. "In these digital enclaves, languages mutate and new semiotics emerge. The issue? These 'languages' are almost unintelligible outside their community. We no longer speak a common digital tongue." We encourage you to collect this essay (see link) and join our membership (pinned message) -- In this way, we can fund a perpetual media machine exploring the online realms.

https://folklore.mirror.xyz/YBIKcVZkEi-KiL836LK40O6ZBC1yaSt0-yuUkPvdMgo

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October 25, 2023 at 08:38AM

USER CAPTURE: "Montana has basically passed a law to ban TikTok. Immediately, TikTok filed a suit challenging it, bringing a whole bunch of artists forward who said that their whole livelihood was TikTok, so therefore, it’s the core of First Amendment protection. I think it’s going to be hard under the First Amendment. I actually volunteered to help Montana defend their law, but I think it’s going to be hard. Even if you solve the foreign influence problem, you still haven’t solved the business model problem because, even if you know that China is not intentionally trying to screw with the elections, you still have a platform that’s trying to figure out how do you make people spend more time on the platform?"

https://www.theverge.com/23929233/lawrence-lessig-free-speech-first-amendment-ai-content-moderation-decoder-interview

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October 27, 2023 at 08:41AM

AUTHOR DEATH: “ The problem here is perhaps less in the interpretation of old art than it is in the creation of new art. The author’s duty is now to guard against every possible misreading or bad faith reading. It’s a defensive posture that can only produce bland art. If you’re always guarding against your worst reader, you’ll never create work that appeals to your best reader.” 💀

https://open.substack.com/pub/countercraft/p/yall-wanna-see-a-death-of-the-author

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October 30, 2023 at 02:54PM

FEELING IMPATIENT? We don’t just live in any economy. We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.

https://brettscott.substack.com/p/tech-doesnt-make-our-lives-easier

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October 31, 2023 at 07:57AM

DEEP FICTION: Misinformation can be other than a propaganda ad or conspiracy. In this article we learn about deeply networked fictions inside the Wikipedia behemoth. Some might say a work of art given the complex and detailed approach to create such a vast networked of fictional content.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgbwm/chinese-woman-fake-russian-history-wikipedia

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November 03, 2023 at 02:58PM

GAMES, not GAMIFICATION: "Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game. Creating meaningful play is the goal of successful game design... Too often, game designers forget that they are creating, above all, an experience of play. It is not enough to tell a story. It is not enough to create pretty pictures or use dazzling technology. A game designer creates an interactive system, a set of choices, an activity. When you are making a game, ask yourself fundamental questions: What is the player actually doing from moment to moment in the game? How are these moments connected in a larger trajectory of experience? How does the experience of play become meaningful? What, above all, is the play of the game? Although there are no easy answers to these questions focusing on the play of a game's core mechanic is a good starting point for designing powerful player experiences."

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/687312148854210619/1164907790561705985/rules_of_play_game_design_fundamentals.pdf

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November 03, 2023 at 03:03PM

LUCKY PLAY: "If play is the way in which human beings rehearse life, it follows that we require our games to be filled with uncertainties, moments of caprice to which we must adapt our position and strategy. But we’ve grown more demanding about the luck that games serve to us—not too much, not too little. What remains constant is our interest in the nature of the luck that we experience. “When we experience luck in a game we feel a deep sense of attunement and alignment, almost like we’ve found the pattern, and predicted it,” Schüll says."

https://nautil.us/how-designers-engineer-luck-into-video-games-236363/

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November 04, 2023 at 02:50PM

STATEBOOK: Part IV of Joshua Citarella’s Platform Wars series is a provocation around a public option for social media. A joke? Implausible? Maybe, but despite these affirmations, this essay exposes how the essentials for this public utility are relatively simple to design and provides the imagination a healthy look at the implications for regulatory control, user privacy, and democratic consensus that could emerge from this digital communications infrastructure.

https://joshuacitarella.substack.com/p/platform-wars-part-4-a-public-option

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November 06, 2023 at 07:32PM

SEEDCRAFT: In this commissioned essay we explore what the future of branding might look like in digital spaces which are decentralized and shared with AI capabilities. Moreso, we test out the theory with Folklore itself. “ Folklore proposes that a contemporary, networked brand be designed not for its human demographics, but for its machine intermediaries. In lieu of finalised assets — iconography, typography, photography — Folklore provides seeds and prompts: inputs for further, generative, creation and mediation. These seeds can be thought of as descendants of artist Harun Farocki’s concept of the ‘operational image’. With this term, Farocki theorised a genre of images not meant for human attention. Images produced by one machine for another to process in the course of a computational operation; be it identification, navigation, or something inscrutable. Operational images are neither outputs nor inputs; they are throughputs.” Read the essay, and take a moment to compete — there’s a $200 USD equivalent award for the best remixed visual submission.

https://folklore.mirror.xyz/v3KHFm-Fz288fjTIcp5Gd63rXoANBewXqbypQqZesSw

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November 07, 2023 at 10:15PM

WHOLESOME SYSTEMS: In a digital realm akin to a warm, inviting café, Maggie Appleton's "cozy web" concept stands out, offering a nurturing space for gaming communities to thrive away from the starkness of mainstream platforms. The article from Autonomous Worlds highlights how these "wholesome" games encourage players to engage with complex systems lovingly, fostering digital environments where one can cultivate and cherish the growth of a living, breathing world.

https://aw.network/posts/how-to-fall-in-love-with-a-system

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November 11, 2023 at 12:22PM

CLEANS THY EYES: Use this website to find explore a gentle stream of visuals and find new aesthetic inspirations. Enjoy the Saturday and remember to submit your remixed visuals on Source. Deadline is tomorrow evening!

https://river.maxbittker.com/

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November 12, 2023 at 10:31AM

SINCERITY IS SCARCE, THEREFOR VALUABLE, UNTIL IT IS NOT: "There’s a certain slanted similarity to how a social media feel full of garbage content is more valuable, to a select, trusted group of friends, than whatever beautifully posed shots make it to the public-facing feed. The value is not in the actual “quality” of the content. (What does quality even mean, anyway? Production quality? How cunningly the picture was framed and filtered?) The value is in the content’s level of authenticity. Because authenticity, not quality, is the scarce resource on social media."

https://bonner.jp/posts/digital-sincerity.html

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November 13, 2023 at 09:21AM

ART AS INTERFACE: “In StarryNight, each email in the archive was represented by a glowing point of light against a dark background, which would increase in brightness each time its corresponding message was accessed in the archive. Users could navigate among them by selecting assigned keywords, which would draw “constellations” connecting related emails in the database.”

https://anthology.rhizome.org/starrynight

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November 14, 2023 at 06:22AM

NOT JUST DISCOVERY, DIFFUSION: “ At DARPA we viewed innovation competition through the lens of evolving, complex adaptive ecosystems, examining the critical role of knowledge diffusion, feedback loops, and adaptations to accelerate learning, exploit opportunities, and spread innovations for competitive advantage. From this vantage point, a country’s diffusion capacitydetermines its competitiveness. Political scientist Jeffrey Ding has shown that diffusion capacity, even more than the ability to achieve breakthroughs, is essential for sustaining economic growth and productivity gains.”

https://issues.org/arpa-catalyze-diffusion-paschkewitz-patt/

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November 17, 2023 at 09:22AM

MACHINE CREATIVITY: “When machine learning solves problems, it can come up with solutions that range from clever to downright uncanny. Biological evolution works this way, too - as any biologist will tell you, living organisms find the strangest solutions to problems, and the strangest energy sources to exploit. Sometimes I think the surest sign that we’re not living in a computer simulation is that if we were, some microbe would have learned to exploit its flaws.”

https://www.aiweirdness.com/when-algorithms-surprise-us-18-04-13/amp/

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November 18, 2023 at 03:06PM

A PROTOPIC CENTAUR FUTURE: The most recent report by RADAR co-instigated by one of Folklore’s very own, @keels223, “yields a blueprint for action that challenges the idea that we’re but passengers on someone else’s ride into the future. When you leave this report, that’s what you’ll have: our start at a protopian blueprint for a Centaur Future that is, indeed, a better future. And an invitation to continue the journey with us.”

https://centaur.radardao.xyz/

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November 20, 2023 at 02:34PM

DRAMA EATS THE WORLD: “With each passing year, more and more facets of popular culture become something like wrestling: a stage-managed “reality” in which scripted stories bleed freely into real events, with the blurry line between truth and untruth seeming to heighten, not lessen, the audience’s addiction to the melodrama.”

https://archive.is/muwUp

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November 20, 2023 at 02:36PM

MODERATION MATH: “ While crowdsourced content moderation is not a new idea with various implementations deployed on other platforms (i.e. Wikipedia, Reddit), Community Notes uses a unique implementation that attempts to only surface notes if they are rated positively by users with diverse viewpoints (i.e. on the political spectrum).”

https://www.yondonfu.com/p/under-the-hood-of-community-notes

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November 22, 2023 at 11:06AM

LIVE, LAUGH, LURK: “ If you lurk IRL, people can see you lurking and people know when and by whom they are being seen–the context is almost entirely visible to all parties involved. Online, there is no such exchange, you can only see what I show you and if I use the right tools, you won’t even know I’m there.”

https://dirt.fyi/article/2023/11/what-type-of-lurker-are-you

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