Storytelling as gift, storytelling as currency ⊗ (Re)Negotiating utopias and dystopias ⊗ Does Open Source AI really exist?

Storytelling as gift, storytelling as currency

Lovely piece by Daniela Bologna, who has always had “an unwavering belief that everything is made of stories: that we can break down our world into stories we tell ourselves and each other. For meaning, for belonging, for purpose, for faith.” She explores the profound impact of storytelling as a means of connection and understanding among people, and argues that stories are not merely narratives but gifts that forge relationships and create a sense of belonging. Bologna also shows how stories resonate deeply, making us feel connected to others and to our shared human experiences.

We rely on them for sense-making, meaning-making, and relationship-forging. We give them to each other. In a way, stories are gifts, and gifts are stories. In a network of stories, each thread is a symbiotic relationship. […]

“Telling stories across multiple media is a strategy to make sure that your ideas become more like a rhizome — they become sticky, and accessible to many generations.” […]

“But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?” […]

[James Baldwin recalled of his childhood:] “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” […]

More recently I have tried putting a name to this: I am captivated by storytelling as a technology, as a practice, as an economy, as a tradition, as a field of study. […]

(Re)Negotiating utopias and dystopias in building new worlds

Part of the Earthseed series at MOLD Magazine. Shakara Tyler, “a returning-generation farmer, educator, and organizer,” explores the themes of utopia and dystopia as depicted in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, emphasising the interconnectedness of survival, community, and liberation. She highlights the importance of cooperation over competition, drawing parallels between the fictional Acorn community and real struggles against systemic injustices and environmental degradation. Tyler advocates for the power of ancestral memory and collective action in building new worlds, arguing that food and land are vital for nurturing community ties and fostering resilience.

In this way, the Parables represent a fictional collection of nonfictions that prophesied the cyclical relationship among the beginnings and endings of the world, and liminal spaces between them. […]

Knowledge with and for—instead of knowledge over and against—is a hallmark process for using imagination as the resistance it was meant to be. […]

Butler’s mantra “God is Change” illuminates how we are cultivating worlds that transform into other worlds. This is the beauty of building worlds we find along the way to the worlds. The migration itself is the liberation.

Does Open Source AI really exist?

The entertainingly and correctly critical tante reminds us of good old Freeware, Free Software, and Open Source software, to analyse the Open Source Initiative’s (OSI) proposed Open Source AI Definition. With much of AI, the problems arise when we start looking at the data, and it’s the same thing here. Where these other forms of software can have code that provides four freedoms to its users, the OSI’s definition provides a relatively blurry view on data, which is as much part of an LLM as its code. Since it’s pretty much impossible to exactly replicate an AI without using the same data, tante argues that “Open Source” AI models fail to actually be Open Source, and are more akin to Freeware.

When I run software, I need to trust the people who wrote it. Trust them to do a good job, to build reliable and robust software. To add only the features in the documentation and nothing hidden, potentially harmful. […]

• Use the system for any purpose and without having to ask for permission
• Study how the system works and inspect its components.
• Modify the system for any purpose, including to change its output.
• Share the system for others to use with or without modifications, for any purpose.

§ The Kevin Kelly interview: The power of “radical optimism”. “Over time, I came to see the long-term view as a subset of thinking about the future. It’s thinking about the future in terms of generations, in terms of continuity, and sustaining something over that period of time that is growing. It’s not just ‘stuff that hasn’t happened yet.’” … “I have chosen to be more optimistic than I would normally be. I’ve chosen to be radically optimistic. We don’t need everybody to do that, but we can all be more optimistic than we might ordinarily be. So, it’s a choice.” (There’s a bit too much “techno” in his “optimist” for my taste, but still a good read.)

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• Library of Possibilities. “This is my latest experiential futures project: a series of books from the future, each inspired by the work and interests of a different NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist or engineer, made tangible, and smuggled on to public library shelves in Los Angeles for readers to discover.”
• Future Food Trajectories. “This Future Food Trajectories toolkit shares a taster of futures material from Forum for the Future to help explore, and potentially to challenge, current themes, narratives, debates and assumptions about what the future holds, what change is needed, and what good outcomes look like (and for whom). The trajectories are designed as a creative stimulus for individual reflection, team discussions or structured workshops, rather than predictions or forecasts.”
• Breaking Futures post-election breakdown. Make a note in your calendar. “It's the day after the US votes for president, and the outcome is still not clear. Wondering where we might go next? Come wonder with IFTF Governance Futures Lab director Jake Dunagan, Global Voices Executive Director and writer Malka Older, writer and lawyer Christopher Brown, and me for an hour-long #BreakingFutures livestreamed discussion.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• The Veridica Trade. Beautiful work by Pascal Wicht, as always. Also shared here for this side note: “Relying on style references doesn’t really appeal to me, but my biggest frustration is how using those references and personalized codes introduces too much unpredictability and uncertainty in the process. It’s led to outputs that feel especially bland and lacking in detail. So, I’m going back to version 5.2 to see if I can recapture that creative edge and move away from the dull results I’ve been getting with the newer versions.”
• Redirecting Europe’s AI Industrial Policy: From Competitiveness to Public Interest. “Europe’s nascent industrial policy on AI is gaining steady momentum, potentially allocating significant public and private funds and shaping regulatory actions in ways that will set the trajectory for years to come. This effort needs urgent public scrutiny. That is where this report intervenes: to ask hard questions of how resources are allocated, the process by which priorities will be decided, and most fundamentally, to examine the premises underlying its vision.”
• Technology Report 2024. Report season is upon us, this one by Bain & Company. “In 2024, the technology sector moved firmly into the AI phase of computing. Cloud service providers, enterprises, and technology vendors are spending more on AI than ever, and adoption rates are high. But skeptics are wary of AI’s return on investment. What explains the dissonance? Our work with clients suggests that AI, more than other technology disruptions, generates little value from deployment alone.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• The greening of Antarctica is another sign of significant climate shift on the frozen continent. “The findings, published Friday in Nature Geoscience, based on a meticulous analysis of Landsat images from 1986 to 2021, show that the greening trend is distinct from natural variability and that it has accelerated by 30 percent since 2016, fast enough to cover nearly 75 football fields per year.”
• World’s largest mass timber airport opens to travelers in portland. “Sustainability was a key focus in the terminal’s design. By reusing much of the existing infrastructure and optimizing the use of wood, steel, and concrete, the project achieved a seventy percent reduction in embodied carbon compared to building a new terminal. The terminal’s highly efficient envelope and all-electric ground-source heat pump system contribute to a fifty percent reduction in energy use per square foot.”

Asides

• I quite like it, but much as in Zawinski’s law, which states that “every program attempts to expand until it can read mail,” it’s starting to look like every minimal attention-saving device might expand to… a black and white smartphone. Punkt. MC02 secure phone with Apostrophy OS.
• I must try this fun project by oio. “Walkcast is an ever-changing podcast generated as you walk, revealing the hidden layers that surround you. Each step might unlock a new fact about the street you’re on, or sometimes, it just makes stuff up. But does it matter if it’s real, as long as it’s a good story?”
• Sorry, but I never tire of discovering the extent of the D&D wave. Deborah Ann Woll teaches Jon Bernthal Dungeons & Dragons (nicely done). Inside Hollywood’s elite Dungeons & Dragons club. “Actor and Dungeons and Dragons aficionado Joe Manganiello takes Variety inside his weekly D&D campaign which features some of Hollywood’s elite players including Vince Vaughn, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, wrestler Paul ‘The Big Show’ Wight, ‘Game of Thrones’ co-creator D.B. Weiss and more.” (Four years ago, I just hadn’t seen it.)
• Eight soothing cabin interiors to retreat to this autumn. “Our latest lookbook collects eight cabin interiors united by their calming timber accents and escapist settings, ranging from an English conservation area to a private Norwegian island.”