(highlight:: Use Physical Metaphors to Communicate and Understand Abstract Concepts
Summary:
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is a book that had a profound impact on the author's identity.
The concept of everything being metaphorical to some degree and grounded in embodiment became an obsession for the author. This understanding is especially relevant for those working in programming and digital design, where abstract ideas often lack a physical reality.
The author's experience in illustration and designing digital products involved intentionally crafting concrete representations of abstract concepts.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I first read metaphors we live by by George Lakeoff and Mark Johnson which is probably one of my canonical books that defined my identity or something. I even like my mother studied metaphors in her thesis and kind of passed it on to me. It was very much an inherited thing. I kind of become obsessed with this understanding of that everything we experience in the world is metaphorical to some degree, almost all that is based in embodiment. That's another one of my huge themes is like I'm a, I just keep going on about how everything relates to metaphors and embodiment. That our experience in the physical world is the basis of all our abstract understanding. So that is obviously incredibly relevant for people like us working in programming and digital design and knowledge management where we're trying to grapple with these big abstract Ideas and all this kind of like free floating digital stuff that sometimes doesn't feel very grounded in a physical reality. But our understanding of it always is so this carry through all the illustration work I did when I worked in like programming education, working on designing digital products, you're Obviously a very intentionally crafting metaphor, you're intentionally crafting concrete representations of abstract concepts.)
- Time 0:04:19
-

(highlight:: Using Web Mentions to Have a Conversation With the Whole Web
Summary:
The web mentions protocol searches for a specific URL and links websites that mention it at the bottom.
This creates backlinks and opens up the conversation to other perspectives.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The web mentions protocol is looking for that specific URL that I've given it. And when it finds another website that mentions that URL, it will link it in the bottom of mine. So if you were on your blog, what to write about one of my pieces and link to it, it would shop at the bottom of mine. So you're getting this like backlinks, but across the whole web. Well, the effect of that is that it opens up the, the note to other voices, right? So there's a little bit of feedback involved, but it also kind of invites other other points of view perspectives.)
- Time 0:22:44
-

(highlight:: The Issue of LLM Generated Content and Google Search
Summary:
It's become cheap to generate content that is published online, which raises concerns about trust and truth.
We don't know how Google will respond to this influx of generated content. Search results may be dominated by generated content instead of personal opinion.
While the content may be accurate, it lacks the human touch and validation.
This could impact our ability to form relationships online.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So the thing that I really valued from publishing so much. Um, and then trust and truth, I think are kind of up for debate. Um, because what happens is that now it has just become incredibly cheap to generate content that is being published to the web, right? So like you can get any of the large language models like chat, TPT or code or any of these funds to just generate like millions of words in a couple of minutes and it'll cost you like pennies. And you can, you can generate, you know, keyword stuffed articles on anything you want under the sun and publish those to the web. And I think it's still an open question of like what happens to Google search in this world because we don't quite know how Google's going to respond to this like outpouring of generated Content, which is already happening. So there's plenty of evidence people are already doing this, but it means that if you search for a topic on Google that otherwise would have led you to someone's personal website with Their personal opinion on it, an opinion that is grounded in like a very embodied reality, their experience of the world, who they've read, who they know, you're instead going to all The top results will just be generated content. It's just going to be, you know, rehashed stuff out of language models. And that doesn't mean that the content isn't true or it isn't accurate, right? We have trained these models to actually be quite accurate. But there isn't a human behind it. So you can't have a relationship with whoever's writing these words. And while it's more likely to be accurate and true, it still isn't grounded in reality. Like when it comes down to it, those words could be false. And like, but we have no way to validate that and you have no way to check it. Because you can't contact the person who wrote it because no one wrote it. It's like it was just generated text. So I think I'm very worried about our ability to connect with one another and like form relationships when everything you read on the web is no longer has a human behind it.)
- Time 0:27:41
-