Technology is never just technology. All Models Are Wrong examines who controls and benefits from these systems and how they might be organized differently.
A podcast by Joshua Davila.
Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/
As some of you may have seen, the blog and podcast I ran for 7 years ended but the rebirth is here.
The short description for All Models Are Wrong is:
“Technology is never just technology. All Models Are Wrong examines who controls and benefits from these systems and how they might be organized differently.”
My thesis is that the continued development and introduction of “frontier technologies” will (as it has already) bisect traditional political camps in ways that will surprise us. The models that we’ve grown up with to make sense of the world have increasingly failed us and do not reflect our current reality.
All Models Are Wrong, but Some Are Useful by George Box. As some of you may have seen, the blog and podcast that I ran for seven years ended, but the rebirth is here. The short description for All Models Are Wrong is technology is never just technology. All Models Are Wrong examines who controls and benefits from these systems and how they might be organized differently. My thesis is that the continued development and introduction of frontier technologies will, as it already has, bisect traditional political camps in ways that will surprise us. The models that we've grown up with to make sense of the world are increasingly failing us and do not reflect our current reality. Given Box's aphorism, this is not per se a surprise, as no model can encapsulate all of the complexities of existence. But the goal of this platform is to figure out which ones are the useful models we should be looking at, given ongoing technological disruptions, knowing that they too are wrong. Neoliberalism provides no answers for a world where half of knowledge work is automated and companies are forcing workers to wear video cameras to record how they do the work to train AI models for robots to do it in the future. We are in a strange interregnum where the contradictions of the system are being made bare for all to see, but not easily make sense of. The question of ownership of these technologies has always been pertinent, but we've reached a new tipping point. Similar to my last platform, my goal here is to provide not just a cathartic critique of the system, but to outline viable alternatives based on the best map of the territory that we can possibly make. All models are wrong is for people who want to truly grok the truth, see the world for what it is, and play a part in changing it. Some of the technologies that I see already here and on the horizon of potentiality for disrupting how we see the world, how we make a living, and how we fall in love include various forms of advanced cryptography like zero knowledge and fully homomorphic encryption, neurotechnology with wearable EEGs and EMGs, biotechnology, including synthetic biology and genetic engineering, the death and rebirth of narrative technologies like platforms, social media, and the feed, quantum technology potentially breaking away a lot of the existing cryptographic schemes that we rely on, robotics, including drones, automation, killchains, et cetera, the continued financialization of the economy via real assets, stablecoins, and tokenization, personalized computing, including personal user interfaces and local AI, and the expansion of open source and decentralized alternatives, including blockchains and CRDTs, and of course the ongoing buildup of new infrastructures, including more data centers, energy, and compute. These are just some of the technologies that I have in mind. I don't really feel the need to include AI specifically in this because I think it's pretty obvious that one way or another, AI is going to be used to accelerate one, if not some of these things, if they haven't already. The introduction of these technologies will force us to ask ourselves difficult questions that we may or may not have much time to come to grips with before they disrupt our lives. It's not that all of the technologies that the industry hype is for sure coming, and we all need to completely change how we live our lives right now because of existential risk. But too many times progressives have been caught on the back foot and working people have been hurt because of it. It's been a pretty hectic but fun past couple of months preparing this launch, and I'm very excited to kick it off. You can follow along by subscribing on Substack or to the channel on YouTube, and I'll also be posting on social media like Twitter, Blue Sky, and Instagram. I've already recorded four interviews during my time at DWebcamp, including Brewster Kale, the founder of Internet Archive, Walter Tebbins, the founder of the Free Knowledge Institute and the Democratic Tech Fund, Renee Pinnell, the founder of Artisan, and Daniel Erasmus, the founder of Digital Thinking Network. The experience at DWebCamp was incredible. And not just because my lovely partner was one of the people to help organize it, to have contact with people who have been fighting the good fight for decentralized web for such a long time in order to learn from them was a real privilege. With this platform, I plan to publish podcasts, video essays, and writing just like I did before. However, this time I have access to my own recording studio here in Berlin and will be focusing on interviews in person. So if you know anyone around that you think would be a good candidate for this, then let me know. Thanks to all of you who have been supporting me throughout the journey and continue to do so financially or not. First interviews are coming soon. All models are wrong.
