Stories
I am working on a reboot of Kin Lane and what I do as the API Evangelist in the face of the authoritarian support present in the technology industry I have worked in for the last 25 years. I am good at what I do, and continue to do the work for clients who care, but I just can’t stomach being part of the cast of characters peddling AI, which has completely consumed the technology industry. While I have no idea what the future will hold, I am confident in my ability to reinvent myself. I ha...
We went to see the Emmet Cohen Trio last night at the Birdland. We try to go see Emmett whenever he is playing there. He is an amazing performer, and usually has some very talented musicians along for the ride. I will dig into Philip Norris who played bass this time and last time we saw him in another post, but right now my mind was blown by Joe Farnsworth who played drums last night. Maybe it was because we were front row in front of the drums, but more likely it was Joe’s skills, but in ...
Audrey and I listened to a keynote by Dan McQuillan on Responsible AI Means Decomputing at Goldsmiths, University of London yesterday. There are a number of things he focus on that resonate with me, but nothing more than is vision of how we need decompute and descale. These are concepts that will get you laughed out of the room in Sili...
As Poppy and I made our second loop of Central Park yesterday on our bike we stopped at the top of cat hill for a hot dog. I care some treats for Poppy but I usually find myself stopping at the top of the hill to remove a coat, drink some water, and align something on the bike. So buying Poppy a hot dog is something I do from time to time. As we sat in line waiting, a lady and young boy came up and asked if they could take a picture of Poppy—I happily obliged.
As a white person working in technology you tend to not think too much about why the SOMA (South of Market), Market Street, and the Tenderloin look like they do, let alone why West Oakland is in the state that it is. Audrey and I just finished The Pacific Circuit by Alexis Madrigal, which in my mind reveals why these places are the way they are, but more importantly it reveals the deal we’ve all made with the devil to look the other way when...
There has been plenty of times in my life where my head has gotten in the way. I experienced an overclocked and racing brain as early as 12 years old. Maybe earlier, but I didn’t have the awareness. It is more than just overthinking something, but seriously spinning out, with my thoughts spinning helplessly out of control. All I can do is just sit there and experience what is happening to me, and wonder what the hell is wrong with me, hoping things will eventually subside and I can get bac...
There are many things that leave me questioning the decisions people make around supporting the current artificial intelligence being unleashed on everyone in this moment, but the dishonesty I feel is a pretty foundational reason why one should stay clear of this shitshow. The dishonesty of the hustlers who have flocked to the space because of the financial opportunity, all the way to the polishing of artificial intelligences images using the word “hallucination” for when it lies sets a to...
Lauren the main character in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower as been occupying my brain for the last couple of weeks since finishing the book. I am finding myself not just thinking about the character but actually find myself consulting Lauren regarding how’d she’d handle a situation or approach something I am encountering in my day. I am much better off after reading the Parable of the Sower, which at first glance might be a pretty dark story to be reading in this messed up timel...
Silicon Valley has always been big on producing technological solutions in search of a problem. Hell, I’d say this is something baked into the DNA of digital technology and the transformations that have come with it. However, the current crop of artificial intelligence believers are beyond desperate to tell you about the problem they have solved with their AI solution. I am really curious why people are so craven, obsessed, and driven to be the champion for artificial intelligence, which h...
I am fascinated with information isolation and manipulation these days. I’ve written about the separation between the social networks like LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and Mastodon, but I am also interested in the Dunning Krueger Effectification that occurs via the isolation. When you are isolated to a specific network, as well as your specific network of people, your confid...
I am pushing myself to write here on Kin Lane, but also Alternate Kin Lane daily. I have a story series I am trying to twist the perspective in the way I narratie it. I am pushing myself to think more about how technology is used for surveillance and I was working my way through the common perspectives or “person” to write from, but thinking about how I can twist things a bit for this authoritarian moment we find ourselves in.
I’ve always wondered why the popular narrative for the origin of compute references Babbage and not the Jacquard Machine. When you google the history of compute, or hear talks across the venture backed field of technology, Babbage’s calculating machine dominates the narrative. I was captivated by this narrative for many years, but then I began reading more about Jacquard’s loom, punchcards, and Luddism, and you begin to realize t...
You hear the phrase a lot, “things are moving faster than ever before”. It is something that when you live in the tech echo chamber or in today’s ubiquitous digital casino, you believe and throw around as if you live in some sort of exciting wind tunnel. “Hey Bro! Things are moving faster than they were ever before!”. You repeat it over and over, and your buddies all repeat it, so yeah, it must be true. However, it is something that if you shut off your social media, change up the people y...
Cybernetics is the study of control and communication in machines and living organisms, focusing on how systems regulate themselves using feedback loops. Back in the 1950s this area of study was gaining momentum cross disciplines, bringing together mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, communications and other sciences together to have constructive conversations around our relationship with technology. However, shortly after building some momentum the coordination and concept of ...
I am reading Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives by Lisa Guenther and learning about the social death of prisoners, especial the black and brown bodies that fall through the cracks of society through being deemed as criminals in the same moment I am pondering the shift, purpose, and exploitation that occurs via social media. I am following my wife’s lead of staying off of social media and just sy...
It becomes really difficult to defend large enterprises from the endless waves of venture-back startups. People are so enamored with the technical shine of these startups they are very willing to give so much away today, and tomorrow. I know there is a lot of procurement and other forces to prevent the average enterprise worker from making bad decisions, but as I answer questions around why you might want to be concerend the current AI moment we are in, I wanted to share the standard playb...
APIs being used for shady shit is nothing new. I have been calling out the bad seeds in the API realm since shortly after leaving Washington D.C. However, the brazenness and mainstreaming of this bad behavior using APIs leaves me questioning what it is I do for a living. So it is really interesting for me to think about how I used to work within the federal government advocating for APIs and hackathon, and why I am concerned,
I have been fascinated by how the conservatives use austerity as a tool to react to and tear down whatever they don’t want to see in the world. Austerity creates the environment that conservatives want to obtain the eventual results they desire. It is difficult for people within communities, institutions, and even companies to make the right decision in an austere environment, especially a perpetually austere environment—everybody is stressed, on edge, worried, and in a general state of pr...
I am reading about the men who disappeared to El Salvador because of their tattoos, and find myself having flashbacks to 1990 the first time I was arrested and strip searched. The police were eager to find any tattoos to photograph while I was standing there naked in a holding cell. I didn’t have any. I only have this gaping scar on my leg from a chainsaw-—good enough, sn...
I drove my vehicle into the ditch on Tuesday. Not for real—I don’t own a vehicle anymore. Metaphorically, the circuit breaker in my brain flicked off, and I had to take a couple of days to better understand what happened. I was dealing with the regular amount of harassment from my dedicated stalker, but also the increased levels of fascism from not just the current administration, but the technology sector in general, as well as the remai...
I was putting the finishing touches on wiring up the form for submitting my API pulse to the API behind it last night. I had an hour before I quit working and figured I’d take care of administrative work which involves documenting the daily harassment I receive on LinkedIn from a very troubled man. I literally had just stopped working on adding the JSON Schema validation, administrative emailing, and logging for my API Pulse API, and switched to screenshottiing and logging comments about h...
I love spending time with words. I am really getting into the depths of the dictionary and having a physical Thesaurus on my end table next to my working chair. Words matter for my writing and storytelling, but words matter in a time where they are often being drained of meaning resulting in zombie commercial words that are ubiquitous but devoid of any of their previous meaning. In the age of artificial intelligence and endless content creation I want to understand where I fit in with my e...
As long as I have been telling stories as the API Evangelist I have been told by technologists that stories don’t matter. They love to comment and respond on social media that my words do not matter. My full time stalker posts on every single LinkedIn post of mine that I need to show evidence of the code I’ve produced. And while documenting his harassment recently I found a screenshot of a social media post from another friend of mine saying that I have never once committed code to the API...
I use machine learning for images, and ChatGPT for writing descriptions for APIs, but I regularly get confused about all the layers of artificial intelligence and found this diagram helps me remember which layer of it is being focuse don.
I was talking with my little sister about investing in her career while out west last week. She responded that she isn’t a career gal, and doesn’t see herself investing much in that–she just works. I tried unsuccessfully to dissuade her of the idea by telling her that neither was I, but I think the narrative playing in her head was too loud for me to cut through and convince her of anything. Anyways, it left me thinking a lot about my “career” on the way home from our gathering, and just h...
