The end of the calendar year often feels like the time for tech talk.
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Museum Computer Network's annual conference (virtual again this year) is about halfway through its distributed and low-impact schedule (registered attendees being able to watch videos of the presentations within a few days is a huge plus). I'll be providing a write-up after the conference ends next month, so I thought I would provide a few tech-related links for now. After all, fall is when Apple does its own tech talk …
- The digital advertising model of monetizing online content is about to collapse, as per this piece from Medium. And that's a good thing, I'd posit. I hate having to block digital ads and cookies all the time (I know, the latter isn't necessarily all about ads); privacy will only become more valued going forward, and museums can't maintain their ethical standards if they act as surveillance capitalist operations.
- It's hard to talk about any digital monetization model without talking about AI—and regulation is coming, as per Harvard Business Review. Expect large companies to provide more AI-as-service solutions to businesses. Here's HBR on automating data analysis (and read my recent posts on automation, also here, and personas).
Speaking of my personality types and personas article from earlier this week, I got a couple of replies from museum-field readers who discuss positive uses of personality typing—a great icebreaker and discussion-prompt for gatherings—and the deliberate embrace of the uncertain as a learning point for ethics discussions in the sector. Both are good points—thanks, readers, you know who you are!
- This interesting article from The Verge describes how, in an age of all-pervasive search, the file-and-folder metaphor of desktop and server is vanishing (something that sci-fi like Star Trek got right, it seems).
- Wired compares the fall from grace of Facebook to that of automaker Ford. HBR adds thoughts on how regulation of network platforms might actually work, or not.
- Here's a Medium piece on recognizing the slippery slope of new technologies from an exciting frontier to a tool of awfulness. (Three signs: the new powers the technology gives us, clear incentives to abuse a new technology, and a lack of roadblocks to stop it from being used in terrible ways.
- Finally, a few articles about art-world NFTs, bitcoin e-waste, and bitcoin bubbles.
Enjoy the links!
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cover photo by Luke van Zyl / Unsplash [description: dark pants and sneakers on the middle lines of a road with trees in the background]
Links of the Week: October 22, 2021: Tech in the Middle by Robert J Weisberg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
