Doc Searls Weblog

His story

A thousand years ago, when I was in college, there was a traveling museum of some kind, I forget what. All I remember was a pair of very large bronze hands, from a plaster cast. The hands were thick and plainly those of man whose work was heavy manual labor.

Then I looked at the plaque explaining them. The hands were Lincoln’s.

See a 3-D view, with call-outs, at the Library of Congress.

Nothing personal. Yet.

The Resonant Computing Manifesto: “And so, we find ourselves at this crossroads. Regardless of which path we choose, the future of computing will be hyper-personalized. The question is whether that personalization will be in service of keeping us passively glued to screens—wading around in the shallows, stripped of agency—or whether it will enable us to direct more attention to what matters.”

That sounds like computing is still corporate. Institutional. For us, but not ours. From Personal vs. Personalized AI:

Technologies extend us. They enlarge our capacities in the world. Intelligence is one of those capacities. So is memory. Your rectangles help a lot with both. That’s why those have already scaled to ubiquity, or close enough.

AI will do the same, but only if it’s personal. Not if it’s just “personalized.”

As Jamie Smith made clear here a year ago, “your personal AI isn’t really personal.”

Two years later, it still isn’t. Yes, there’s progress. And there are pockets. Companion Intelligence is one example. (Looks like a Mac Mini without Apple.)

We’ll see

Prophesy: Indiana in 2026 became to college football what Duke in 1991 became to college basketball.

How Bloomington it is to stock up on greens?

Consumageddon is here: 5 inches of snow is coming. We’re all gonna die folks.

And how can this go well?

YouTube plans to let creators make AI Shorts using their own likeness.