This little reflective essay by Robin Sloan gives an approachable and succinct encapsulation of the pro vs. con Large Language Model viewpoints.

The con viewpoint:

Here is the ultimate act of pulling the ladder up behind you, a giant “f*_k you” to every human who ever wanted to accomplish anything, who matched desire to action, in words, part of Everything. Here is a technology founded in the commons, working to undermine it. Immanuel Kant would like a word.

The pro viewpoint:

If super science is a possibility — if, say, Claude 13 can help deliver cures to a host of diseases — then, you know what? Yes, it is okay, all of it. I’m not sure what kind of person could insist that the maintenance of a media status quo trumps the eradication of, say, most cancers. Couldn’t be me. Fine, wreck the arts as we know them. We’ll invent new ones.

I’ve been POSSE-pilled. POSSE stands for Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Here’s a link to an image of what POSSE looks like.

Let me explain:

Existing in a digital space between July 2024 - November 2024 radicalized my views on what individual engagement with social platforms and publishing should look like. I happen to live in a political “battleground” state in the U.S. so pretty much any time I engaged ANY sort of digital media (social, streaming, news/information) I found myself deluged with targeted advertising, and if it wasn’t some super PAC screaming at me, it was the newsletters or newspapers I follow, or it was the general vibe of lament/panic in most of my social media silos.

So I reached a personal breaking point where I’m weighing that I would like to maintain some sort of digital presence (for professional, communal, and utilitarian reasons), but my direct engagement with all the specific platforms I use is absolutely toxic. Additionally, so many of the major social media sites are designed for surfing more than creation (the photography sites are not as bad, but even the video-centric sites want you cruising the algorithm more than posting your own stuff). Doing or creating something just feels better than sinking a chunk of time into doom scrolling an algorithmic feed, and I need hardwired systems to get me to create instead of consume.

So, I decided a hard reboot was necessary. For a conceptual/theoretical framework I’ve adopted Alan Jacob’s sharing and reflecting engagement model. I needed a dedicated blog/site for publishing longform/reflective thoughts, and a space for posts like you’d find on Bluesky, Mastadon, Threads, etc. While I have my own Squarespace site that I’ve maintained since my graduate school days back in 2012-2014, I’ve decided the platform doesn’t quite give me the oomph I needed when considering the subscription cost. Therefore, I set up a Ghost site for my primary reflective writing/blogging project and a micro.blog site to serve as my POSSE hub for social media style sharing. I also signed up for a dedicated reading app that I can funnel newsletters and important RSS feeds too, or save articles to read later - this is particularly important for news websites where I don’t need (and probably can’t emotionally handle right now) a constant deluge of front-page news designed by editors to try and keep me hooked on the website.

A quick note about POSSE privilege - I have the disposable income that allows me too absorb the subscriptions necessary to set up these sites, and I have enough technical know-how and social capital with IT folks to create my own domains and customize these spaces the way I want. I think it’s worth the investment, for my mental health, and my creative and intellectual life. I’d be happy to help get you started if you are in a similar (exasperated) place like me.

We’ll see how this goes…

Links for where to find or follow me

A couple newsletter/RSS subscription opportunities if you want to spend less time on social media, but still are interested in engaging with my stuff:

You can see everywhere I have a presence on the web here. You can use this link to get a weekly email newsletter of all the things I post on my micro.blog site - this will include links to my Ghost blog posts, which I intend to announce each week on the micro.blog. If you want just an email newsletter of my longform blog posts you can sign up for that here, or sign up for the RSS feed with your RSS reader - just copy this link.

Manton Reece - Bluesky relays, Mastodon discovery providers

For years Micro.blog customers have also asked for a firehouse view of blog posts. I’ve avoided it, and I’ll continue to avoid it, because it creates new problems for spam and moderation. It’s great that Bluesky and Mastodon offer their own forms of this. Not all platforms need it, though, and as Bluesky and Mastodon become busier, Micro.blog will continue to carve out a quieter, slower niche on the social web.

So far I’m liking the slower pace and POSSE functionality. We’ll see how it goes as the honeymoon wears off.

TLDR

(keep some Generative AI related carbon out of the atmosphere and just skim this section if your in a hurry)

• This post extends some thinking and justification for this blog’s existence beyond the inaugural post. Specifically, my desire to embrace a posture of sharing and reflecting as the two primary modes of digital existence.
• Many of the social platforms and digital media spaces that exist are designed to rob users of their agency and keep them coming back for more content/engagement–and this blog provides the infrastructure to resist those nudges.
• I compare my effort to reboot my online presence and digital engagement to curriculum design at colleges and universities, and observe that there is a dearth of reflection on the role of habitual practices in the student development process.

Sharing and Reflecting

Starting and opening a brand new blog/publishing project feels like inviting your friends into a home you’ve gutted down to the studs. You can enthusiastically show them around the joint and cast a vision of what its gonna look like once the work is done, but mostly they’re going to be avoiding the mud and worrying about stepping on a nail. So mind your step because I intend to share a little bit about how this project fits with a larger philosophy of digital presence.

The example I’m following comes from Alan Jacobs, an English Professor and academic administrator at Baylor who has cultivated an online presence I find aspirational. Alan makes it look easy, but of course he does, he’s got 20+ years of inertia behind him. He summarizes his online presence as cultivating digital space for the practices of sharing and reflecting. Sharing takes the practical form of micro-blogging while reflecting is done through his longform blog. In time, I’d like to consolidate my online presence into a similar framing - maintaining a digital space I can use for short-form sharing and a space for long(ish)-form reflective blogging.

Terminally Online

I happened upon a Tiktok/Reel I think about frequently that showed a long bank of slot machines with senior citizens dutifully tapping away at the controls, each with a vacuous and hypnotized look. We’re all living with little slot machines in our pockets though for most of us it’s not pennies but attention we’re repeatedly feeding into the machine.

This blog is part of a broader attempt to reset my relationship to my digital self. I came of age digitally in the era of MySpace and .edu-requiring Facebook. I remember fondly the curiosity and optimistic epoch of digital engagement that didn’t feel like I was having my attention milked like a horseshoe crab’s blood. While I encounter ideas worth pondering in some of the digital spaces I frequent, currently, most of my activity on the numerous social media sites I maintain is directionless. I’m simply riding the algorithmic currents, scrounging for a means to sustain a dopamine drip with little regard for actual intellectual edification, professional development, or cultural enrichment.

Curriculum Design and Personal Transformation

Can I relate this musing back to thinking about colleges and universities?

I believe that education is about more than just banking information,^[1] it’s a transformative process. Particularly with the way that the U.S. “does” college and university life, there is an understanding that the student experience should be considered holistically–that the educational process includes not only what happens in the classroom but also encompasses all the individual, and communal experiences that occur during the period of matriculation.^[2]

Beyond simply considering the institutional and communal ecosystem in which learning takes place, curricular practices matter as well–and it is here that I find overlap between my grasping for an alternative form of digital engagement and college and university dynamics. I find a lot of credence in the claim that our habits are as important–possibly more important–than the sequencing of activities, experiences, and content structured into a learning plan. ^[3]

My updated online presence and (hopefully over time) shifting social media habits are an effort to build appropriate boundaries around my media consumption in an anxious age. Over time I hope they will change the way I consciously and unconsciously respond to the specifically engineered means by which these platforms try to harness my attention and manipulate my endocrine system to keep me engaged. Similarly, colleges and universities should be a bulwark against a waning appetite for pluralism and intellectual curiosity. They should intentionally construct their built environment, social opportunities, curricular approach, and rituals for proactive civic engagement and democratic participation.