The art of not knowing

We're just talking apes, after all. 

Our ancient ancestors, living in nature with handmade tools, survived in part by learning everything they could about threats, food sources, the location of shelter, and how to maintain a fire. "Content creators" were just people talking -- sharing knowledge, telling stories.

Millennia into the Neolithic Age, information was still scarce, with only a tiny minority of the world's population having physical access to "content" -- books, newspapers, etc., knowledge was rare and hard to get. 

Knowing used to be the most valuable thing in the world. 

Nowadays, some 6 billion people or so have access to the internet. What that means is that all these people have access to too much information.

For example, it would be impossible for any person to learn all the new information uploaded to the internet during the span of a single minute, even if they spent their entire lives learning that minute of data. 

We can only hope to learn a tiny fraction of 1% of the information posted online. Which is to say, we cannot learn 99.9999% of the information that is instantly available to us.

A great way to look at this problem is to stop asking ourselves only how to learn what we want to learn, but instead also ask how to stop learning the information we don't want or need to know. 

The garbage comes at us. The celebrity gossip, random videos, pointless memes, every careless thing the president says, and many other useless things. 

By all means, work on cultivating sources of information that help us live and work better. But also work on blocking information. 

Blocking is the harder problem. 

There is no "the media"

You hear it all the time. The media lies. The media favors the powerful. The media are communists, fascists, or part of a global conspiracy. The media this. The media that. 

Trouble is, there is no "the media." 

Take a few seconds to consider this label, and it reveals itself to be a ridiculous concept. 

Every conceivable perspective on Earth is represented by some organization, group or person categorized as part of "the media." 

If someone believes that "the media" has lied, misled, or favored some powerful interest, the reason they believe that is that they have facts and perspectives provided to them by some other media organizations. That is, of course, unless that someone personally travels around the world to investigate all matters by themselves and to see all current events with their own eyes and does all their own investigation.

It's true that we live in a world of weaponized lies, attention-algorithm garbage, state-sponsored disinformation, conspiracy theories, and bullshit. 

But the reason that characterizes our world is that people choose bad media and bad sources of information. 

X's algorithm, TikTok's algorithm, Facebook's algorithm are bad sources of information. 

NN News, RT, Sputnik, CGTN, Global Times, Iran's Press TV, and Venezuela's TeleSUR are bad sources of information. 

National Report, RealTrueNews, Huzlers, 70news, Disinfomedia, and Global Associated News are bad sources of information. 

Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Epoch Times, Breitbart News, The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars are bad sources of information. 

They are all "the media." 

Meanwhile, BBC, PBS, Reuters, NPR, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Consumer Reports, Mother Jones, Nature, The Wall Street Journal, The Dispatch, The Christian Science Monitor, The Bulwark, and National Review are good sources of information. 

These are also "the media." 

The blogosphere, the podcast world, and the newsletter platforms have uncountable numbers of content creators providing truly excellent reporting and perspectives. 

These are also "the media." 

Even if you disagree with my lists, you cannot disagree with the fact that there is far, far more high-quality journalism available than you could ever read. The internet and the larger media ecosystem have handed all of us brilliant sources of factual information on a silver platter. 

It's all "the media." 

So choose your media diet well. And reject lame venting that rails against "the media." In fact, the best media is literally the only thing that can save us from the world of falsehoods pushed by the worst media. 

Because there is no "the media."

Ahem!

It’s OK for blog posts to be short.

Why you should love blogs now more than ever

AI is eating the world. Most content online is AI-generated. And most human-generated content is helped by AI. 

While AI has its uses, it's nice to hear from actual people once in a while. 

Dave Winer, one of the original bloggers, and the guy who co-invented podcasting along with Adam Curry in 2003, defined a blog like this: 

"A blog is the unedited voice of a person."

He explained: "The lack of editing is central, because it's one person who's responsible for every word."

So while the machines are churning out words on an unprecedented scale, representing the hive-mind groupthink of the posted content hoovered up as training data, it's more valuable than ever to hear the "unedited voice of a person" once in a while. 

That's why you should love blogs more than ever. 

How to quit algorithms

Social algorithms are expertly updated and optimized every day to draw you in, literally take your time, and consume more of your attention. 

So the "news," current events and viral videos it shows to you are brilliantly designed to affect you emotionally.

For news and current events, anger and fear are the easiest emotions to engender.

If a billion things happen a day, showing you the 10 worst things makes social networks the most money.

So we're all left angry and afraid, with no headspace left to enjoy the beauty of the world, so that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk can make even more hundreds of billions of dollars than they already have.

Take control. Stop reading posts on social. Instead, write posts and read the comments. Comment on the comments. 

Find the very finest, most fact-checked, fact-based, science-based sources of information you can find and curate these sources with a quality RSS reader. 

Make RSS your input. Make social your output. 

That's how you quit algorithms. That's how you gain a better perspective on the world and what's happening in it. And that's how you foster community. 

Blowing up my blog and starting over

I've been blogging since the 90s. My posts have always evolved. In the beginning, I blogged to share the crazy shit I encountered as a tech journalist. Most of those posts were funny or ironic. There was no other place for people to find out that stuff. 

Then the information landscape changed. The internet got better. Social emerged. Eventually, just about anybody could find out about just about anything. 

Now, the information landscape is changing even more. Social is dying. Blogs are dying. Even the Wikipedia has a head cold. AI has sucked all the oxygen out of the room. 

In recent years, I've used this blog for self-promotion. It hasn't gone well. If social is bad for self-promotion, blogs are even worse. So I'm going to stop promoting my work here. 

Lately, I've been embracing an everything-in-the-right-place approach to posting. For example, I've been de-emphasizing posting my photography on Instagram, where I'm shadow-banned for criticizing Meta, in favor of Flickr. 

(Nobody cares about Flickr, and I have almost no followers there. But the pictures look perfect. I care more about perfect pictures that are available to the public than building a following of people who want to find my pictures.)

In the spirit of posting everything in the right place, I've decided to stop posting my best observations and advice on social, and instead post them here. 

As with my Flickr account, I'm going to stop trying to get followers and instead post good stuff from my own brain in public for anyone who's interested.

Always disclose how you use AI

As we slouch toward a world of AI-made fake everything (and the distrust that follows) it’s time to spell out exactly how you’re using AI. Read my opinion column at Computerworld.com.

(Disclosure: The words and image in this post were made without AI.)

Superintelligent: I Can't Believe It's Butter!

Superintelligent hosts Mike Elgan and Emily Forlini explore the link between churning homemade butter and the craving for authenticity in the new world of fake AI everything. They talk about Google’s new Gmail AI features as the most recent example of companies pushing everyone to use AI for communication. The hosts allow themselves to be influenced by influencer and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, who says that in 2026 influencers will need to prove their humanity by posting authentic content and disclosing how they use AI.

Subscribe by searching your podcast app for "Superintelligent"

The virtues of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

I asked Gemini to read Book One of Meditations and concisely list the virtues Marcus Aurelius advocated. Here they are:  

  • Maintain a noble character and control your temper.

  • Embody modesty and manliness.

  • Practice piety, generosity, and simplicity in diet while avoiding the habits of the rich.

  • Invest liberally in good education and teachers.

  • Endure pain, work hard, desire little, and ignore slander and partisan games.

  • Avoid superstition and empty enthusiasms, tolerate plain speaking, and embrace the discipline of philosophy.

  • Reform one's character, avoid ostentatious rhetoric, and read texts with deep precision rather than superficiality.

  • Exercise moral freedom, rely solely on reason, and remain consistent in behavior regardless of fortune.

  • Live according to nature with dignity, graciousness, and affection, while remaining free from passion.

  • Correct others gently by setting a good example rather than by criticism or fault-finding.

  • Recognize and avoid the malice, caprice, and hypocrisy often associated with absolute power.

  • Fulfill social obligations and avoid using "busyness" as an excuse to neglect duties to others.

  • Accept criticism from friends even when unreasonable, praise teachers heartily, and genuinely love children.

  • Love family, truth, and justice, and cherish the ideal of a commonwealth based on equity and freedom of speech.

  • Exhibit self-mastery, cheerfulness in illness, and genuine integrity without the need for display.

  • Act with unshakeable resolution, suppress vanity, work diligently, and treat all with impartial justice and temperance.

  • Be grateful for good relationships, the preservation of health, and the guidance to live in obedience to nature.


Digital twin tech is a double-edged sword

Using digital twin technology to simulate real people can be powerful. But when it’s used to represent the views of people (leaders, celebrities, customers, or the public), people tend to oppose the idea. When they interact with prominent people, they want to interact with the real people. When their views are considered, they want to be asked rather than represented by a digital twin. 

This might change later, but for now the lesson is clear: it’s important to use digital twin tech carefully — and watch out for reputation harm from using it wrongly. Read my opinion column at Computerworld.com.

Don't miss This Week in Tech: “A Shortage of Shame"

Host Leo Laporte is joined by Daniel Rubino, Sam Abuelsamid, and me! We do a post-mortem on Black Friday. We dig into record online sales, shaky in store traffic, and the tricks retailers use to turn inflated prices and AI shopping tools into “record breaking” headlines. From defense tech stumbles at Anduril to China leapfrogging the US on “open” AI models, the we point out how a shortage of shame runs through everything from autonomous weapons to space data center fantasies and EV pullbacks.​

You will also hear our honest takes on Trump’s Silicon Valley powered AI agenda, the Warner Music and Suno AI music deal, leaks about ads coming to ChatGPT, and rumors of a Jony Ive and Sam Altman hardware device, plus why Roblox, spying cars, and out of control RAM prices all point to the same broken incentives. 

This Week in Tech records live every Sunday at 5:15 p.m. Eastern, 2:15 p.m. Pacific, 22:15 UTC, and you can watch or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, RSS, YouTube, or through Club TWiT.

Intelligent Machines: 'None Pizza Left Beef'

Check out the latest episode of Intelligent Machines with Leo Laporte, Paris Martineau, and me, Mike Elgan. 

In this episode, we push the conversation to the edge: Could the future of AI be sitting right on your desk instead of hiding in giant data centers? We dig into Nvidia’s new Blackwell chip and HP’s ZGX Nano—tiny but powerful machines that could let people fine-tune advanced AI models at home. 

Other stories include ChatGPT Atlas, Claude Skills, new research on AI news mistakes, OpenAI’s crackdown on Sora 2 deepfakes, and a look at why some experts say AI hype is getting out of hand.

Go here to listen, watch, subscribe and join the club!

Superintelligent: "Zuckerberg’s new birth control glasses"

In this episode of Superintelligent, we dove headlong into the spectacle of the Meta Connect event, where Mark Zuckerberg and team set out to convince us that the future is wearable, voice-activated, wrist-twitching and dorky.

Yes, we’re talking about the Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses and their neural band companion—the gadget duo supposedly destined to replace keyboards and smartphones.

The demo was a train wreck. The AI hallucinated. Mark couldn’t answer a phone call. But it’s also true that a bad demo doesn’t mean it’s a bad product.

Meta’s glasses raise big questions about social acceptability, privacy, and whether the market will truly take off like the Silicon Valley giants hope it will. Also: Can Apple’s design sophistication rescue wearable tech from utter dweebdom? We pitted optimism against skepticism, debating everything from the speed of miniaturization to necessity of face computers.

Watch, listen and subscribe!

Zuck’s hot mic mea culpa exposes $600 billion BS

This week on Superintelligent, we tackled the spectacular rise of “Blame AI!” culture, where everyone from politicians to pop stars can now attribute any inconvenient fact, viral video, or even White House trash-bag scandal to AI-generated fakery. We explored how ordinary cultural events—like a K-pop musical hit or a Will Smith Instagram—that seem “too perfect” now get hit with AI accusations, often as a kind of backhanded compliment. Watch or listen to the Superintelligent podcast.

AI and the end of proof

Fake AI images can lie. But people lie, too, saying real images are fake. Call it the ‘liar’s dividend.’ Call it a crisis of confidence. Read my column at Computerworld.com.