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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· philosophy · technology · 1 min read

The semiotics of networked content

Explore how networked content transcends platforms, focusing on the significance of signs over replication in the evolving digital landscape.

Working on content interop super-ontology in the #mastodon, #micro.blog, #twitter, #feedland, and #wordpress multiverse.

Posts are actual pieces of content. They are mostly made on the platform where you find them.

Timelines are views into (yours and others’) posts. These views are made possible by transmitting information about the post via #RSS (or something else) and aggregating into a timeline. Timelines can include feeds from yours or others’ sources.

What’s interesting is that timelines can also be published and consumed, also via #rss.

This means that, if you consume a feed, you don’t know if the source-content in the feed originates with that feed. Feed elements could “pass through” as signs to their sources. In fact, it doesn’t even matter.

In this sense, we don’t want to replicate content around the networks, we want to replicate signs.

Nobody takes you aside anymore

Print taught a generation when to stop. What we lose when the machines absorb the constraints that used to form us.

Your AI agents need a water cooler

Coordination is a property of the room, not the org chart. What that means when your coworkers are agents.

On the death of the author and the birth of the detector

Why worrying about AI authorship is lazier, and more prejudiced, than it looks.

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Did the state change? A simple test for whether work actually happened

Either something exists now that did not exist before, or it does not. A simple test for whether work actually happened, and what changes when you build your systems so they can't record anything else.

How to manage content for multiple clients without flattening their voices

How to manage content for multiple clients without their voices blurring into one house style: a workspace and a voice profile per client, batchable stages, and approval buffers.

Why does AI writing sound generic? It has nothing to work with

Why does AI writing sound generic? Because the model has none of your perspective, examples, constraints, or stakes to work with. The fix is interview-first, not better adjectives.

ActivityPub spec

Explore the ActivityPub specification to understand how to write effective specs and enhance your web development skills.

The ur-post

Explore the concept of the ur-post and its role in microblogging, sources, and references in the digital content landscape.

Embracing the AI workforce

Discover how AI enhances the workplace by fostering collaboration and spontaneity, offering a fresh alternative to traditional office dynamics.