My last post, the first video post I have ever created was by far my quickest trending post so far and also generated an organic pledge of support.1 Honestly, I don’t know if it is convenience, curiosity, or a conditioned habit. Regardless of the ‘why’ the outcome is what it is. Substack recognizes this and spent a lot of engineering effort developing their video capabilities most of which are still well beyond my capabilities and desire. But, I recognize that the more people that see what I write the more people will think about the subjects - which is ultimately the point of my posts.

Therefore, I’m trying to incorporate video. Right now I’ve kind of settled on a hybrid. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has spoken with or worked with me over the years. Unlike what the big B-Schools teach - the right answer it almost always somewhere in between. As a previous manager of mine used to say, the burden of communication is on the sender, not the receiver. So here I am, trying to bridge the gap between those whose attention is caught by images and sounds more than words.

For me, I don’t care for trailers nor do I favor click-bait tactics. So I’m focusing on introductions and will see how those fair. I was also told I need to use the Video post option, not as I previously did, where I embedded my video in a traditional text post. As you can tell, my video creation skills are somewhat rudimentary. Will I ever get to full video posts? Perhaps. Will I keep writing? Absolutely! Ultimately the most important audience is the quiet one in your own mind.

Systems engineering is a robust field that has a rich history dating back to just before World War II. As weapons advanced they started specifying operational requirements to the military industrial complex to deliver against. Concurrently, scientific innovations were independently pursued by researchers in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and the social sciences.1 As with much of the hard systems disciplines, the origins tie to the aerospace industry. Various types of flight performance charts ( examples ) connoted the use of the terms edge, corner, and boundary cases. Corner and edge cases refer to the boundaries around system design parameters for flight envelope testing of the where unknowns proliferate ( greater than 3 Sigma deviations or 99.865%).

The charts lent themselves nicely to the use of ‘corner’ - where the chart does not exist (off-chart) while the edges help capture the curves of categorized performance boundaries (on-chart). Establishing these parameterized conditions was done through calculation ( Planning ), extended with ( Research ), and validated with ( Testing ) by pilots. Thus, test pilots. Confidence intervals were based upon statistical parameters calculated by hand and later with mechanical computers, and eventually the first electronic machines. Ironically, those machines were first used for the calculation of artillery charts. Trajectories factoring heavily into both literally and metaphorically sometimes with tragic results aka when someone or thing became a lawn dart and burned in. Recently, a blockbuster pop-cultural reference, about moving from Test into Unknown/Unknown ( Avoid ) was presented in Top Gun: Maverick when Tom Cruise’s movie character Maverick takes the Top Secret Hypersonic Darkstar beyond Mach 10.

Test pilots pushed the known boundaries with knowledge, experience, determination, and courage. In doing so they helped redefine the engineering, methods, and parameters for military and civil aviation to follow. This complex stew, sans perhaps courage, tested the advanced systems of the day - often times resulting in failure. Here, at FAIL is where I’ve ‘earned’ this moniker. For I seem to have an uncanny ability to push systems into areas their builders and designers did not consider. Following a unique trajectory through complex systems like modern technology.

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The genesis of this post is due to my own System 1 thinking. I read a post recently about a presentation at a symposium. A comment was made that immediately sat poorly with me (reaction). I reached out to a friend to discuss said reaction and upon recounting the comment (reflection) a switch in my mind flipped. I realized I had fallen into an ontology trap. The comment at the symposium was using a formal language, not common in everyday practice. I fell into the trap of ‘thinking’ fast. The commentary about personal and professional ethics — their origins and locus. In truth, there are few clear cut rules and these two topics overlap substantially. Enough so that, for many, they are interchangeably used. In formal practice however, they can be quite distinct.

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Personally, I believe this subjectivity regarding the use and understanding of Ethics and Morality creates an issue, especially for everyday understanding. I suspect use of Morality has been avoided in many casual and popular use due to a secular distancing from terminology common within religious contexts. Ethics, whether professional or personal, seems to have been more colloquially adopted by secular society. In doing so unfortunately, their subtle differences have been lost. My search for the headline image for this post supports this distinction. When I searched for morality I was provided many stock images of pages from the bible. When I search for ethics I was presented many secular images of business, leaders, and popular causes.

Morals

Broadly these are our personal beliefs. They inform what we ascribe to be right or wrong. Good and bad. We inherit these from our surroundings and personal experiences in the world. We personally refine these throughout our life and they provide our internal compass to navigate our lives. These are individualistic.

Ethics

On the other hand ethics are external and structured rules of behavior. These tend to be defined in codes of conduct - whether in professional societies or social norms. They work to guide an formalize a specific set of behaviors. This is why trade groups, business schools, professional societies, and other organizations publish their guidelines and conformance to an agreed upon set of ethical behaviors. These are organizational.

Situations arise, sometimes quite frequently, where Morals and Ethics are in opposition. Ethical behaviors, as these are externally defined and agreed upon change according to and along with, society itself. A behavior or act can be both ethical and immoral - depending on the individuals and situations involved. The reverse is also true, where something can be moral and un-ethical at the same time. So what? How does all of this relate to media, technology, or systems? Simple. We nearly all live in at least two worlds. Very few people are their work nor is their work them. Which means, nearly all of us potentially will encounter situations where we are morally and ethically conflicted. This produces a complexity which imbues our work and our personal lives.Okay, great you say. You knew that… but did you really?

When you watch something, listen to something, or read - do you actively differentiate that something can be both Ethical and Immoral? Moral and Un-Ethical? The media is full of statements and claims about ethics and morality. In reality it is arguable that in recorded human history there has never been a time of more mis-alignment between these two critical concepts. Perhaps, just maybe, this is because they are so routinely smooshed (a highly technical term!) into the same thing.

Photo by Alberto Duo on Unsplash

On April 10th Artemis II successfully splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. A successful trans-lunar orbit mimicking Apollo 8’s first journey beyond Earth’s gravity nearly 57 years later and 50 years since the last visit in and around the moon. On Saturday I will re-enter the gravity of a world (Media Technology) I’ve spent most of my adult life within.

As I watched re-entry and splashdown I appreciated the success of the mission, but also a bit of regret for the half-century lost. NASA seems to have forgotten itself that this has been done before with comments like that of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, "…pushed Orion, SLS, and human exploration farther than ever before.” Not quite. With this I wonder if the infatuation with technology for the sake of technology, media too has forgotten.

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What do moon rockets, space capsules, astronauts, and the like have to do with NAB? Aside from the obvious parallel of a return to something which I’ve done now for many years? Me. Air & Space have always been my north star. In high school I created my own independent ‘space studies’ course as part of my curriculum and spent untold hours reviewing and studying video tapes ordered from NASA regarding space-stations, lunar bases, and the technologies of space travel. When I went to university, it was for aerospace engineering. Unfortunately, I hit that world right at the worst time. Aerospace was cratering. Lay-offs and shutdowns were rampant and highly experienced people were relegated to the proverbial scrap-heap. Much like the efforts of Apollo in the 1970s. Disillusioned, I put my skills and knowledge of systems to other use, in the burgeoning IT world which eventually led me into one of the truly revolutionary systems of modernity, mass-media production and distribution, and to NAB.

My first visit to NAB was at the behest of my boss. I was a younger me, but not young. He specifically instructed to me walk all the halls. To see everything that went into the production and distribution of audio and video. From the rows of F-connectors, to helicopters, satellite trucks, and the people. I talked with engineers at standards booths, looked at artistic sculptures that were actually specialized RF antennas. I talked with vendors, distribution people, and of the video processing and delivery contingent in the South Hall. That year (2012) there were 91,932 attendees including 1,600 exhibitors, 151 countries, spread over 815,000 sq ft (and several parking lots).

That first NAB was an unforgettable experience as a Principal Engineer and one which, when I started managing my own team, I encouraged my team members to experience. What I did not know, at that time, was that the very technologies I was crafting, the experiences I was delivering, were sewing the very seeds of its decline. I arrived at the apogee of NAB, right at the time when COTS HW and SW systems, those very systems which ‘experts’ like myself had developed.

Technology cycles. Looking at the infrastructure that monitors, communicates, and shares journeys such as these is still remarkably similar. Sure the miles of copper wire have been replaced with filaments of fiber-optics. The green-scan monitors and projectors of mission control are now OLED/LED panels. The infrastructure, the effort relying upon telemetry, audio, and video, deliver the story and more than the people - have become the story.

This year’s NAB marketing email says that the show has about 54,000 registered attendees. Like so many other human-human enterprises and events suffered terribly from Covid mandates and restrictions. The lock-downs and mandates weren’t the cause however, but they were the accelerant. Most of what we’re experiencing today was already well in the works. My “A History of Ai” outlines some of the key developments in technology which, over the last eighty years, conflated and emerged into todays Ai.

The IT development that really transformed media wasn’t COTS HW or even SW. Those all existed in workflows and production systems already. The missing ingredient was telemetry. A back-haul network that existed in digital cable, but not for broadcast radio and media. Streaming technologies, over bi-directional IP networks, was the real Cambrian change in media that lit the fire. Mass media and the systems that create, produce, and distribute the spoken, written, and motion word will still exist. The platform company shows now rival, and exceed, the industry shows. December’s AWS re:Invent (63,000+) and Google Next (30k+) join Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft, and the myriad of other smaller platform conferences vying for corporate marketing and expenses budgets.

Contraction is not always a bad thing. As I read “The Show Floor as a Lagging Indicator” by the venerable Mr. Beach I am of the mind to think of it as a distillation. That necessary process that concentrates flavors in spirits or a filter on an RF signal, increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. No doubt technology, especially all things Ai - will be significantly amplified by the marketing efforts of technology companies and technologists who are working to understand shifts. But maybe, with 1/2 the people in attendance, there will be less background noise too.

The streaming world is condensing into forms which begin to look much like the ‘legacy’ media companies before them. Artemis II did not unite the world in a watching experience the way the Apollo missions did. I don’t ever expect to have another experience like my first NAB or AWS. That doesn’t mean these efforts aren’t still valuable. In the end what really comes through is that the technologies evolve and revolve - but the people are were the real value remains. Remember this when you valuable and important. NASA really forgot that without people, people loose interest. To those fellow attendees at NAB - remember if your differentiator is less humans. Ultimately the show will continue to shrink and you may very well sew the seeds of your own demise. NASA seems to have woken up to this having forgotten without people, people tend to loose interest.

This morning I noticed a series of “we see you’re having trouble logging in” emails for my IG account. I really don’t use it much but for some reason I’ve kept it. I have updated the password recently. Seeing this, and wanting to take care of it, I immediately tried to access my account. Denied and into the rabbit hole I go…

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I may have shared this already, but a refresher is in order. A good friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed by me, says I’m all edges and corners. While you may interpret this in multiple ways, perhaps he even intends those alternatives, but he says that I am all edge and corner cases. I come about these quite naturally and as a direct result of my own behaviors. I’m simply not the typical user. These characteristics manifest themselves with a remarkable propensity to break systems. These systems can be bureaucratic processes, corporate HR rules, and especially technical systems.

My present status is ‘stuck’ in a loop where I cannot access the account, though I was able to receive emails, click links in those emails, and even change the password to the account which I did, even using a suggested ‘strong’ password.

Now many people would wonder ‘why me?’ Well, I know that it has nothing to do with me being me. Most likely this is part of a brute force effort of many accounts based upon dictionary information from who knows how many cyber breaches that any of us are victim to these days. I’m not an influencer, I don’t have many contacts or followers on Insta. But… if those people don’t practice suspicion and open a link or accept a file from me - even something like a PDF which they open, then Bam! They become a victim by proxy. Lovely, eh?

Now, this is complicated because I haven’t used the native IG app in years. Why? Well, primarily because it is a privacy nightmare. When I do use IG, I’m in a web browser and I use private browsing which minimizes their ability to harvest my web browsing habits, but also eliminates their cookies. The very cookies they’re looking for to verify that I am who I say I am. So I’ve now tried on 4 different devices, 2 different browsers on my computer and all of them say to verify on something else.

So you may be wondering, what’s a giggle loop and why does it apply here? The term I first heard from the British show Coupling. Brian, the whacky Kramer-esque Welshman starts describing that little giggle you have on a subject. That one small laugh that suddenly causes you to laugh a bit more, and then a bit more. Eventually the reinforcing nature of the laughs turns into a full on belly laugh. Well folks, I’ve successfully de-platformed myself due to my own security and privacy actions. At least I didn’t loose the pass-phrase to billions of dollars of bitcoin ;-)

You’re welcome to come in and sit down, but you must leave your glasses outside. When you rebrand a company as big as Facebook, generally it’s because you’ve so trampled your own reputation that you’re trying to shed that skin. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the serpent beneath has changed. Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten have just completed an investigation into what happens behind the glass of Meta’s glasses in Nairobi, Kenya. The results of which might shock many people. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

I have worn glasses since about 9th grade. I was told that if I wore them regularly my vision would deteriorate far less than if I only wore them at certain times. This proved to be great advice; advice which I’ve followed since. To tell the truth, I like wearing glasses now. I have a giant pale orb of a head and glasses provide some needed character as well as generally keep random objects out of my eyes So almost first thing in the morning I put on my glasses and take them off just before going to sleep.

I see the world through my glasses and they accompany me in nearly everything I experience. I know this. This and my profound understanding of how untrustworthy Facebook is are why I cannot imagine why people would use these products. This is not news to most that know me.

So I’m curious. Why would would anyone?

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I’ve spent the last several weeks deeply engaged in Meatspace. You know, that space consisting of real people, real food, and real discussion. I have been overwhelmed, bored, sunburned, cold, hot, hungry, full, and pleasantly buzzed a few times too. My journey has covered 10s of thousands of miles, climates, and spaces. From prime cuts to intestines and glands, I have not always liked each moment as much as another but each contributed to refining my palette and my preferences.

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My time and efforts have not been without evidential artifacts - tangible realities. I’m not referring to dopamine driven attention targeting social media but tangible realities. Works of critical effort. The Athanor Manifesto is the output from deep engagement in the Meatspace where corporeal engagement and enjoyment was fueled with an abundance of food, drink, and thought. Montevideo Tech Ventures and Alchemy co-produced an innovation retreat to shift the trajectory of the conversations. Practically, there is a line that extends from LA → NYC → LON around which global media revolves. Throw in another point and the ‘best fit’ line shifts. Include MVD into that mix and the shift is profound or an outlier.

When one looks at data there may be a tendency to toss out those anomalies, those points far removed from the majority to simplify conclusions or normalize the system. Sometimes this is warranted. If an experimental apparatus failed or a procedural step was missed throwing out that iteration might make sense. However, as history has shown us - sometimes those ‘mistakes’ provide an innovation that changes everything. This intentionality of being an outlier was baked into the event and was, as the Manifesto states “by design.”

Ultimately, time will determine whether the Athanor manifesto succeeds in bending the media technology ‘curve’. In the meantime I’ll continue my Flâneuring ways. Happy to seek out meaningful interactions. To contribute where I can and thankful to meet those along the way.

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When I make reference to the Pareto Principle, that eighty percent of something is due to twenty percent of a quantity, I frequently find myself wondering in the deep recesses of my own thoughts if this is really as universal as we tend to believe. Today, as I was contemplating a new post, right there in front of me was the Pareto Principle staring back at me. Sans the wiggly bits and bright yellow star of course.

My efforts here have been, and likely will continue, to be organic. With my reach as limited as it is one might expect that my subscription curve would be subject to more distortion. Yet, as you can clearly see, the curve is nearly perfect. The star is exactly at the eighty percent mark and occurs almost exactly at 1/5th of my time on Substack. Remarkable!

I enjoy traveling and have been to South America several times in the last year. I enjoy post cards and letters. On trips such as these I typically send a few of each. The activity of looking for good postcards, stamps, and post offices gives me a good framework to explore and interact in ways which I may not normally do. During these visits to South America I’ve spent a good bit of time trying to continue the habit with no success. Undeterred I’ve continued to press on, until last week. To my surprise I have found this seemingly universal activity most difficult on these trips. No one I would talk to in my broken traveller’s Spanish would seem to understand what I was trying to do, or really, why. I haven’t been able to ask or understand why till I had coffee with Juan.

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Juan is a few decades older than I am and a native. He’s retired from his family business and now spends most of his time going amongst activities with friends and family. I met him at a wine and music event at a local restaurant quite by chance. He was there with some family to enjoy some traditional local music. I was the flaneur who stumbled in sitting out of the flow quietly enjoying the music, food, and wine. When the music completed Juan knew I spoke English from my interactions with the staff and my broken Spanish. I’ve found that broken Spanish, delivered with a hearty smile and a warmth is often enough to get by. That said, at times you want to know and understand more. As it turns out, people like Juan, sometimes too want to practice their English.

Juan introduced himself and sat down to enjoy a drink. He apologized, as is typical for those of us uncomfortably venturing into the deep ends of trying to bridge language divides across cultures. We struck a chord and for 15-20 minutes had a nice chat till his time to leave arrived. We exchanged contact information - made an indefinite plan to reconnect in the future and went our separate ways. A few days later, with a bit of time left before I was to leave, I reached out to set up a coffee somewhere in Juan’s neighborhood and we eventually got to sit down.

Believe it or not this specific topic was top of mind for me. When I asked Juan where a post office was he immediately laughed and said, there aren’t any, besides one downtown that is. There are no mailmen, no places to buy stamps, and as he addressed my follow-up questions on this summarily said, this all stopped with email, text, and WhatsApp. Mystery solved. In continuing my journeys I could now ask different questions and thus learned different perspectives on the digitization of their society. People as old as their forties have never received a card in the mail and have never written a check in their life. A few years younger and these people have never used a film camera. Cards may be exchanged personally at holidays and celebrations, photos may get printed but increasingly are sent to digital picture frames. The result of all this is that tangible memories, hard links back to our own histories and culture are increasingly becoming threatened notions, left to the fringes of eccentrics and sentimentalists willing to accept inconvenience or scarcity over digital abundance.

I have often expressed my concerns over such developments, a seemingly futile rebuke to mass-complicity. I’ve doubled-down on some of my more eccentric habits over the years and found a renewed joy for reading, writing, thought, and creativity. Occasionally a shooting star of hope, such as the black and silver Canon AE-1 with ISO 4000 film donned by a fellow traveler, will streak across my sky and remind me that all is not lost.

Standing in line the other morning I witnessed what I myself, to varying degrees, have done many times. A man had traveled into town with his packages for shipping at the post office. Upon reaching the counter he asked if, due to their weight, he should bring them to the front or the back of the post office. The clerk asked him how much they weighed and upon hearing his answer informed him they exceeded the weight limits of the post office. He said he’d checked online and that 70 pounds was acceptable. No, she said, fifty pounds is the USPS maximum. He had mistakenly confused the USPS for UPS.

In 1919 the American Messenger Company switched their name to UPS. Then, in 1970 the United States Postal Service splits out of the US Government as part of the Postal Reorganization Act.1 Somewhere along the line thereafter, the post office started branding themselves USPS and from this, confusion ensues. While the history of the post office is maligned with mistakes and controversy, I suggest, the post office as a service is important for a society.

My parents did not have a mailbox at the house. When they wanted mail, they’d go into the small mountain town and pick it up at the counter. Our address was name @ general delivery, city, state. My first address, that wasn’t a dorm mailbox, was a Post Office Box as is my current one.

To get a POB you have to have a government issued ID. You must also have an address or secondary acceptable document that ties you to a particular location within their service area, whether personally or as a business. They accept utility bills which rely upon an assigned address or a deed. I can only imagine why these restrictions exist as I do not know why. Perhaps digging deeper into this in the future is warranted. As I have just gone through the reassignment process I thought I would share a few observations which seemed odd to me.

• You must check your box at a regular interval. They do not like them to go unchecked or for mail to accumulate. The Post Office also does not hold mail for more than 30 days. This can make life for frequent travelers interesting. Non compliance leads to cranky postal employees.

• When I went into the post office to return my keys, they told me I could not do this unless I had closed my PO box online already. Evidently the post office, where you sign-up for a mailbox, does not want you to change your address there or to return your keys there. Not without first going online to enter a valid email address and telephone number. Curiously this number cannot be something like google voice either, whether it’s your only number or not. When I asked what if I did not have a telephone or email I could see the springs and gears go Boing! in their mind. Good luck I guess ?

I can think of several good reasons that this might be the case. Perhaps these aren’t even as draconian as I imagine as well. However, since they do exist, their purposes can and likely will become more nefarious.

The USPS informed delivery system, that one that will email you photos of your mail being processed, collects and stores all the to and from addresses for all the mail it processes. Imagine the social-graph this creates? When this is further enriched with the contact list(s) from all those phone apps which ask for access to your contacts and your email address you can see how quickly any notion of privacy, if not already a distant memory, could be at great risk.

Whenever we’re offered a convenience today, or a service for free, we should stop and ask who, what, when, where, why, and how. Unfortunately, all too frequently, people simply comply and they know this. That is why those that wish to harvest, accumulate, and broker vast amounts of data have such lengthy end user licensing agreements or terms and conditions policies. Telling someone that you do not collect, store, or sell their personal information does not take much legal language but creating a vast web of complex legalese for which to wage law fare upon does.

I lament the state of affairs regarding privacy and grid lock-in that continues to persist, ever increasing its grapple on society. I suspect that more and more people, though still an extreme minority of the populations, will bump into these issues. Will they be enough to influence a different direction?

Happy New Year y’all! I hope that 2026 has begun with an optimistic note and trajectory towards good things for you and yours? I have been laying low on technology for the last few weeks enjoying time with friends and my own solitude. In general, when I remove myself from the technological circle, streaming, radio, news, social media, etc I notice a dramatic difference in my cognitive stress. These last couple of weeks have been no different. I hope you’ve all taken some downtime for yourselves.

Introduction

This new year I find myself physically and mentally quite removed from where I left 2025. As I was wrapping up 2025 I started to become overwhelmed with logistical concerns. I sold the farm and had much to resolve in doing so. I crafted my initial plan, began to execute and as time and weather proceeded, I began to feel the crunch. I just could not see how I would be able to get everything done within the allotted time. For any of you all who deal with projects, you’ll surely understand. I had unconsciously chained dependencies on an ‘ideal’ outcome. In this case, it was not having to move things twice. Unfortunately, this outcome would mean each load would require days and involve risk of breakdown or delay due to storms. I finally realized a few things.

First, I was embedded within the situation and this was a problem. I was emotionally invested in the activity (moving) as well as the potential solutions. Having created the plan myself I was holding on to it. This is not ideal. Secondly, I was trying to be overly efficient. I did not want to move items multiple times nor incur recurring costs. At the same time, I did not want to simply fire-sale items I might need later on. These two perspectives were at odds with the absolute time constraint. Fortunately, as soon as I realized what I was doing I was able to take myself out of the circumstances and look at the problems with fresh eyes. Upon doing so I realized the only way I would be successful in moving of the farm by closing was to create an intermediate step.

Once I created that intermediate milestone I was able to execute quickly and rapidly. My trips were measurable now in minutes, not days and signs of progress became obvious. I did still end up making quite a few donations of products and materials. Thankfully, these wound up going to good causes and were well received. Emotionally, rather than remaining a mental tax, these became an unexpected happy outcome. At this point you might be wondering, “How does this relates to systems Kreig? I’m glad you asked!

Boundaries

A system begins with the definition of the boundary and whether it is open or closed. My move involved various sub-systems all combined into the entire effort. Each of these sub-components have their own dependencies and interactions. For example the tools in the garage versus the wine cellar. While both may seem to be inanimate, the wine cannot be stored under the same conditions as tools can. Wine requires a regulated climate for storage - tools do not. This meant identifying and transporting a significant amount of wine somewhere that could satisfy this for an indeterminate amount of time and within my paltry budget ($0). The tools however, could be stored in just about any secured location. Thankfully books, household goods, and various equipment also required only a secured location.

Interactions

The interaction of the objects (tools or wine) with the weather created its own set of dependencies and requirements. The storage facility, for sure, but also my relationship to/with that facility, cost, and ultimately the logistics of working with the facility. Contrast this to my tools which were more directly within my control. I did not have to work with anyone to coordinate time and effort to transport or store these. The same for my household goods. Unwittingly, however, what I did do was to create an interaction of distance and weather by my desire to move these only once. That changed the interactions, opening up the system to weather, time, and a potential for breakdown(s) which I had already endured several times prior.

Complexity

Lots of moving parts versus moving parts that multiply. This is perhaps the best way I can explain the difference between complication and complexity. Any move is complicated. There are many things that need to be done before the effort is complete. Complexity is when those efforts, themselves, take on what seems like a life of their own. The low point of all of this was the day the mechanic could not successfully get one of my pieces of equipment running. That was the moment my emotional, cognitive, and physical fatigue peaked. I believed that piece of equipment needed only one thing to return to a nominal state - the mechanic. I was wrong. Many hours, and a considerable sum of money, became necessary. An unexpected outcome of this difficulty is a new-found appreciation for the true complexity that arises from embedded systems, like equipment, materials, tools, and household stuff.

Closing

I have moved countless times in my life but this last one is most definitely the most difficult. I used to always wonder whey farms and ranches held auctions when they retired. I now know why. Farms and ranches are complex systems involving many independently complicated systems of their own. Whether equipment runs or not, whether vehicles are licensed, or not. Insurance needs, emotional consideration, financial costs, and of course time.

When you’re in the middle of it, one tends to see trees, not a forest. This is where an external perspective helps. One cannot simply leave the keys on the table and pull the door closed on these types of systems. I was fortunate that I was able to pause and reconsider my objective. I suspect this is the true value of the auctions I never understood. All those bargains existed because the owners had decided to optimize differently. Now I know why.

In the background Fatboy Slim is cranking out some beats at Creamfields courtesy CreamfieldsTV and I’m finally taking a few minutes to put down some thoughts. Over the last couple weeks I have been almost completely consumed with a very different kind of movement than the Fatboy Slim reference would suggest. I’ve been moving house. Except, in typical me fashion, the move is to storage. Let me explain…

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My mind has been twisted up like a Gordian knot of late. I have been under-contract on my house and had not found anywhere to go. Put simply, I had too many degrees-of-freedom. There is probably a good post simply in discussing how degrees-of-freedom can inhibit, rather than inspire, progress. While I was considering this difficulty I came to realize something about the typical modern condition. Some call it a rat race, but that isn’t it. Some may say overwhelmed, but that’s not it either, though that very well may be true. What I realized is that over the last several years I had woven a complicated set of interactions, relationships, aspirations, and expectations. These were not simply physical inter-connections but emotional, and cognitive too. One day last week, dealt one more challenge, I hit bottom. I’d reached a physical, cognitive, and emotional trough.

The trigger was something quite simple. A failed service call. What i realized after standing outside with the mechanic for a few hours of head-scratching in the misting rain was how much I had pinned on this working. An expectation I needed to be able to continue with the mental gymnastics that I was undergoing in moving my physical assets and self off my property and to another place. Several people that encountered me that day remarked how tired I looked. They seemed to be able to see the accumulated depth of fatigue.

Sure, my diet had been a steady one of eat, sleep, move, repeat… day in and day out for a couple of weeks. As I crawled onto the floor to go to sleep that night I put myself to sleep wondering how I came to be so tired. Suddenly it seemed as though all the positive physical and mental health gains evaporated. In the quiet exhaustion on the floor that night I realized that what wore me out complexity.

Where to move, what to move, how to move it, when to move it, how to coordinate with the buyers, the agents, the appraisers, the mechanic, the vendors. A complex multi-variant, non-linear equation with a definite time-boundary to it. No matter how many values I evaluated - no solution presented itself. With this I became stuck, my mental horsepower pulling on an intractable stump in the ground. The stump didn’t move, I just wore down. I was caught in a reinforcing negative feedback loop. The harder I worked, the more complications I was making. The more complications, the worse the situation got. My control point, the fix? Was to stop. To crawl onto the floor that night, defeated and down. To pause.

In that pause I realized I believed that all my years of moving prior did not apply to this move. I wasn’t going to something. I was heading into the unknown. I did not have that place I was going to. I did not have that thing I was going to do. Never before in my life had I had so many degrees of freedom and it was daunting. Once I realized that the methods which had worked for me in so many previous moves were not directly applicable to this one, that this was not simply a repeat, my mind went to a different space, a space Clement Decroup calls “The idea space.” And that made all the difference.

I finished the move. The house closed. Today is day one in a brave new world.

It has been a few days since I’ve written. As the ice chunks melting in the sun flew from the hood this morning in the cold, crisp, sun drenched air I struggled for an obvious topic. Having a few days away from a routine and being on the road I haven’t read much of any news, political or technological. My attention and thoughts have been focused on scenery, weather, and people instead.

Suddenly it occurred to me that my exposure to technology, my years of experience and history with the product teams, engineering groups, and management in technology had provided me with the anti-bodies to understand what was occurring with technology. This is an exposure that the vast majority of society lacks. Who would resist the warm gesture of a blanket when they’re cold? What harm could follow from wrapping oneself in something familiar? A blanket, a broach, or a phone?

The fact of the matter is, most people do not know how much Ai is already used. That the fundamental building blocks of deep learning, neural networks, and machine learning are embedded into decision support systems, credit scores, admissions tests, poll interpretation, news reports, and surveillance systems. Because of this, the ‘immune system’ of people to their personal, professional, and social risks are unprepared. Perhaps they suspect that law will protect them. Unfortunately, however, most laws today regarding technology, privacy, and lawful uses were crafted in the 1970’s and 1980’s. 1

The science, psychological, political, and sociological is becoming increasingly clear. The technology blankets we’ve been provided are not benign. They are infected with consequences that appear lethal to our general way of life. As these effects roll-out successively with upgrade after upgrade the swaddle of technology tightens. Ai the new feature, all the rage - marketed as capability enhancement for a new age. New capability for sure, but to what end and for whom? Ai is not an objectively neutral technology nor are the systems, corporations and institutions propagating its development. Ai technologies are not mere tools, but are agents of a colonization already deeply advanced. Technology metastasized, forever altering our relationships with ourselves and each other.

When settlers from Europe gave smallpox infected blankets to indigenous inhabitants they likely knew what the outcome would be. Today, society generally regards this as a heinous act. What will future generations say of us, sprinkling Ai into the cozy technology of today? That cell phone or laptop that you are now reading this upon. Ai inside, like a virus waiting for you to bring it inside your habits. Perhaps you’ll be strong enough to fight off the infection - the damage to your attention, your concentration, your discipline. Or maybe you won’t.

If this is all new to you, some further reading

Lifting a Few with my chatbot

One-way relationships

Hooked on Screens

Explaining the Mating and Dating Crisis

Yann LeCun’s tweet comparing the incremental development of aviation to the evolution of AI is misleading. AI certainly has not just begun, it has been developing incrementally for more than 80 years, he knows that. OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022 unarguably landing AI into the public discourse. The concerns around the current AI are not entirely new. This is also important. There is an existing concern over digital rights, privacy, security, and societal harm. As such, not only has AI ‘crossed the Atlantic non-stop’ it lands in an area already rife with concern. Therefore, now is decidedly the time to debate and craft the controls computational intelligence will operate under in society. Perhaps, to borrow from his analogy and previous post, perhaps it is time for FAiR – a Federal Ai Regulatory, rather than the FAIR he leaves behind at Meta.

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Surrendering the responsibility for ethical development of technologies to the corporations that develop them puts society at grave risk. Companies, with the concentration of power and influence, with the resources, motive, and history of Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, X, Anthropic, and others have is categorically unwise. The time is now to discuss and craft the controls that will be used to regulate systems which will accumulate, in an inscrutable way, more knowledge than any single person could could ever hope to comprehend.

One need only look at the current employment trends, capital markets, and pathologies of social-media to see there /are/ effects to these technologies. Their development have already demonstrated systematic disregard for law, morality, and ethics of various individuals, populations, societies, institutions, and law. I would suggest, as would many more, that we are well beyond the point of need for broad understanding and ethical discourses necessary to affect the development of reinforcement based LLMs. We should also consider whether those closest to the power of these systems are those who should arbitrate the environment and power they operate within.

Dr. LeCun’s cannot possibly be unbiased in his suggestion, especially as he strikes out to create a new start-up on what the rest of society /should/ do regarding AI. A clear conflict of interest exists. Notice, with his already significant wealth, that he choses not to take his work back into academia, where ethical concern, bureaucracy, and transparency would certainly affect his work.

Society is already behind the curve, having failed to identify the emergence of ChatGPT, in understanding how impactful and prolific its adoption would be. As the EU demonstrated with GPDR, whether perfect or not, there is a need for regulation regarding the systematic accumulation of personal and copyrighted data. There are risks to privacy, and the emotional and psychological well-being due to technological impacts to our society. His is but one, albeit very-influential and intelligent in the field, but that’s the thing about society, the rest of us matter as dammit, so does our future.

In a similar locker room, but not nearly as nice, years ago I recall the general tone of a conversation which seems appropriate today. The TV was silently tuned to some bobblehead investment news channel. The locker room discussion was about stocks. Sound familiar? They were talking about Yahoo! and how they were getting in. If I recall, their share price was approximately USD$200. You likely know how that played out. Recently, Investor’s Business Daily reported that just 8 stocks are responsible for 50% of this year’s USD$11.8T run-up. Eight. I don’t have access to posh locker rooms anymore, so spend more time in public cafes in the flyover areas of the country.

When you sit around and hear people you have no idea what a LLM is, or stochastic gradient descent means discussing how you’ve gotta get into Nvidia now. We are all in for a tumble. Most of those very same people couldn’t tell you what NVIDA’s real secret sauce is either. *hint* It isn’t a GPU. Their real competitive advantage, besides brand recognition (which clearly IS important) especially when you are trying to attract the punters to your table over the one next to you - is CUDA. CUDA is the software that seamlessly enables software developers to write applications, build LLM frameworks, and access all the raw connectivity and computation contained in those GPUs. This is why you hear about NVIDIA more than AMD’s very capable GPUs, or the emergent entrant in the space Intel. What they do not have is CUDA.

NVIDIA does not own production capacity for these GPUs either. For that they, like so many more, rely on TSMC - Taiwan Semi-conductor Manufacturing Company.

Now ask yourself… What would make a VERY stable company, one that has to invest billions of billions of dollars and 5-7 years worth of delivery effort to produce even one more manufacturing facility. What could they do in a single day that would increase their market capitalization over USD$500billion? Further, in a world where software eats hardware. Where is the most likely disruption ?

It is over fifty miles from home to a Barnes & Noble bookstore. You remember those corporate places generally in or around major shopping centers filled with dead trees, people, and the weird staff members… also known as bookstores? Yeah, well I was in one today wandering around drinking my decaffeinated Americano… Don’t start. Anyways, as I was perusing the shelfs for nothing in particular this caught my eye oh and am I glad it did!!!

It is big, hefty, slick, and so very well done that I immediately found one of the rag-tag comfy chairs and began to explore. This magazine is what Wired wishes they could have been - except if you depend on advertising, you gotta bend the knee. Frankly, I do not know how they got away with what they’ve done in here. Their satirical ads are brilliant! The design did take a bit of getting used to as it is a feast for mind and eyes alike, quite different than all my other current reading.

As I reviewed the contents I immediately felt seen and a bit less like a Don Quixote, alone tilting at windmill of technology in our modernity. That, and ever so slightly more hopeful that maybe, just maybe, there’s enough people aware of what is going on that - with some dedication… we might not all turn out like the Eloi from H.G. Well’s Time Machine - little more than witless snacks for the subterranean Morelocks.

Their website is here, but don’t expect much and they are sold out of copies of Vol 3. You probably wouldn’t want to pay the shipping costs on it anyways. I do recommend popping in to a B&N near you to at least flip through it, it’s worth a marginal coffee’s worth of time at minimum. And, if you buy it, you can take it to somewhere you can have a really good cup of coffee with your read.

Apologies for the size of that image, but it captures the magnitude and essence of this post remarkably well, so I am gonna use it anyways even though I try to also keep the narrative coherent without the pictures. I do this for those, like myself, who turn off image-loading in emails. It isn’t that I don’t like photos - I quite do actually. I mean, hey… I’ve built a career in media processing and delivery. I digress…

This post was going to be a part of Sorry, not Sorry but Substack warned me I was approaching a limit where people would not be able to completely read that post in email form. I am certainly not going to be the one that forces you off of the only truly democratic digital platform to sully yourself, even if it is a website.

Those that know me well know that I cut a different path with regards to technology, platforms, privacy, and frankly, stubbornness. I don’t pretend that this is endearing, cute, or clever. But it is genuine. I wrestle with these topics within my own inner-dialogue as well as those who will permit me both grace and opportunity - you’d be amazed how infrequent both of these intersect anymore.

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The Data

As I wrote in my History of Ai I had never truly appreciated the bottleneck that Artificial intelligence was facing before Steve Jobs landed a telemetry device in all of our hands with the iPhone. The system was primed and ready to go, but needed fuel. This concept has been debated extensively, which I won’t get into right now, but was insightfully captured by Clive Humbly’s remark in 2006 at the Association of National Advertisers Conference, ‘data is the new oil.’ Well guess what !? Apple decided to not only fill the tanks but also to lubricate the world.

Microsoft spent $USD26.2 Billion in 2016 to purchase LinkedIn which today would be $USD35.5 Billion adjusted for inflation. Their stated purpose was to integrate in into the Enterprise software. You know, so that you could see your LinkedIn photo in your Outlook. Remember? Yes that, but really, the data and of course the advertising tie-in which for LinkedIn represents about $USD 6Billion in 2023 - a tidy sum, but a paltry amount compared to those other folks by the bay, or is it sound? Wait.. how about we just say West Coast US tech titans… yeah, them.

See what most people don’t realize, or perhaps care about, is that while you’re on the site not only are you exposing yourself to their targeted advertising, you also contribute to demographic profile data which says a lot about you. In addition, you also provide additional data, which they scrape up as you connect, whether via browser (as I do, from private windows, with restricted settings, etc.) or their native platform app (which are the worst offenders - despite what you may think because you are on an iPhone). So I thought I’d dip in a bit from my Incomp* post and share a specific application - yes, real data.

The Dump

Do not think you have stumbled upon the beginnings of your data brokering start-up here. I assure you the individual data are less important than the themes. We only tend to remember 4-5 things at anyone time anyways, so the details tend to get lost. My hope is that these themes will strike your Ah-ha! bone, or at least make you shake your head.

So it began with LinkedIn’s Terms-of-service change which I referenced preceding this post and my disagreement with their intentions to break the silo between LinkedIn profile data and Microsoft’s advertising stack (one of the biggies mind you). So I initiated my data dump.

It did take a bit of time and was actually two different downloads. I initiated these the week before their Nov 4th deadline which was really Nov 3rd at 23:59 I’m sure, but had no idea what timezone they’d use so I wanted to be safe. The image above is the page that allows you to dump your data, which I encourage you to do to see for yourself.

Caveat emptor

If you do, be careful! This will contain a surprising amount of information. Which, unfortunately, keeping private is becoming increasingly difficult. Yeah, I wrote about that too in Evacuate, Evacuate.

The Data

This data journey starts, unsurprisingly, with your LinkedIn connections. This is something that you’d expect them to have and I was pleasantly surprised how legible it was. I was able to download a csv file with my connection information - sans email addresses unless those were explicitly shared. The csv did share the LinkedIn URL for the user however. I haven’t looked whether there is a clean way to use these to re-connect, or whether I even will.

From connections we move on to Inferences which is the basis for all of this. This contains what LinkedIn are willing to share with you about the profile they’ve built around targeting you for ads. I’ve redacted mine (which was pretty boring anyways actually as I didn’t give them many of the things they like for these things). They’ll use ASL (Age, Sex, Location) and any of those other handy things you’ve incorporated into your profile that you share with your connections.

A bit of set-up for the next bit. Well before LinkedIn even disclosed they were going to start using your information to train their AI tools I decided to delete much of my content. This was no easy task I tell you (by design). I manually went back through decades of data clicking buttons. There are some tools out there that will do this for you via cloud apis, but think about it. If you’re not paying for it do you really think they aren’t stealing your data? That’s rhetorical obviously…

So I eliminated a lot of this data, posts, comments, etc. What there was /no/ way to eliminate, that I could find were Reactions. Those nearly passive clicks that trigger for so many today their digiX receptors washing over their consciousness like X does for candy kids at music festivals, if only for a fleeting moment. But… What the data-nerds love about those things is 1) the demonstrate engagement — which is crucial because, against all the other passive things you do not engage with, they represent a response which, is an action that is measurable, can be correlated, and goes right into that Inferences model I just described.

So my reason for deleting my profile was all this data that I couldn’t see and did not know how far back it would go. As a previous premium customer representing about $USD 6.44 Billion, just a few 100 million more, than their advertising. (Which do you think has more upside?) I decided to contact Premium Support. What this really means is that they’ll send a ticket to a human, eventually, somewhere. TL;DR on this? They weren’t saying.

As I was saying, I was concerned about how long they’d been keeping data and what it might be. So after I downloaded my data this is the primary question I was seeking to understand.

Ads Clicked

Again, this is to be expected and of little value as who knows what their adIDs are. What is important here is to pay attention to the date. Just over a year ago in September 2024.

Reactions

Comments

I edited this version to improve readability. Notice how far back that date goes in comparison, now we are seeing stored data back to December 2013.

Shares

Rewinding further, now we hit early 2012 for shared posts with others. So, there it is. LinkedIn’s day goes back at least 13 years, perhaps even longer. Data which would have gone over into Microsoft’s advertising platform. I find the retention policies across these various categories interesting and somewhat helter-skelter. Maybe that’s why they are unwilling to disclose more. As I reflect, I find myself wondering if 2005 Kreig would have ever agreed to sign-up for a platform like LinkedIn had they described this as their business model back then. What I come to realize is, like the proverbial frog and the pot, I like many other would have just opt’d out. What digital platforms have learned, and is a spin on a well know sysadmins adage everywhere is, the sticky principle. Once it’s launched, it sticks. So, turn the heat up slowly, pay careful attention, a/b test enough, and eventually you have frog soup. Ribbit.

I’m a bit slow in putting this one out there as I have been working on some other writing. Today is an important day however as I surged past my ‘re-do’ LinkedIn profile with my Substack subscribers. A small victory (yes, really, it is) but symbolic and hey, as humans we are all about symbolism. As you can also see, the bar was set pretty low =)

“The internet is not an instrument of mass communication for those lacking brand names.” Herman and Chomsky, 2002

When I initiated the download of my user data from LinkedIn as the deadline for their new Terms of Service approached I had 1,332 connections. As of today less than 1% have made the connection across. Ouch! While low, that number tracks to other online metrics of response, engagement, and conversion that I’ve personally experienced. I made it as easy as I could to connect. According to my post analytics on LinkedIn this had 439 impressions, reaching 270 members, resulted in 10 profile views, and 5 reactions, with 1 save.

I have been paying attention to my own feelings around this decision. What I’ve realized is that I seem to have a feeling of possession over these connections. Unlike many, my connections are people that I’ve actually interacted with through business, school, or personally over the last 20 years. This does not mean that I am close to everyone nor that I interact with them on a regular basis, but I have. In doing so these people represent a knowledge-graph, of sorts. In a world of digital reach these connections also represent an aspect of digital reach. One now significantly reduced.

You might notice the humanoid icon below my profile title. This is something I’ve long used to limit my exposure to my connections. This is also why my posts are ineligible to be boosted and why, after 20 years on a platform, I don’t have 1000’s more connections. This also means that my content has not been hovered up by all the Ai platform companies. Ironic, since now I’m writing this on the public internet for all to see.

So what line was crossed causing me to commit platform hari-kari or digital self-immolation?

I was not willing to allow was the sharing of decades worth of platform interaction data with an advertising giant like Microsoft for whatever indiscriminate uses they can conjure up today, or in the future, whether directly, indirectly via their agents, assignees, or business-partners, see Accept-ing for more, due to their Terms of Service changes.

I did not want to close my account as you might have guessed by my examination of my own sentiments regarding its existence. Yet interestingly, it was that engagement with my own own thoughts that pushed me through the hesitance. Once my data was downloaded, and a few days ahead of the new terms ultimatum I closed my account. I ultimately decided to open a new account. I am not active there, but it does show I exist which in today’s online world accounts for more than I care to admit.

There was no heartbreak or tears due to the loss. None I could empirically validate. Perhaps there was an electron or two, somewhere which spun out of orbit causing a bit or two to flip - perhaps the butterfly’s wings which caused the AWS outage. Who knows! But I did get a very pleasant form email that they were sorry to see me go. You think they will refund the remainder of my Premium Subscription? I don’t think so either. Ultimately, what Herman and Chomsky said seems to be true and maybe this is why so many are now focused on developing their own brand.

Inadvertently this photo is evidence to the issue this post hopes to illustrate. The composition of the photo is legit, the cascade of technology real. The picture is not the one I intended to take and became the point, I did not expect. Many of the people that know me have expressed how atypical my relationship to technology is compared to the average person. Accurate and quite fair. One of my favorite quotes seems quite apropos, you will know it quite well “the pen is mightier than the sword” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839.

I enjoy journals, pens, paper, stationary, books, and assorted miscellanea that accompany them. I fondly recall the instruments and routines from my classes in mechanical and architectural drawing. From the eraser bits to prevent scribbles to setup and layout of the paper. Alas, the last truly legible writing I’ve likely produced made was via lettering guides in those classes. The sound and feel of the graphite, the drag of a ball-point versus a rollerball. Too much fluidity and my writing is a mess, the same true of the fineness of the point of my pen. My quick loops and drawn scrawl are lost in the broad strokes of a wide-point.

My morning began by picking up the book which, due to its age (1968), is falling apart. After reading a bit and putting the pages carefully back within the loosened covers I realized I’ll soon get to take a stab at bookbinding, or at least a bit of it, to keep the book whole. A project I’m keen to try. I then started to capture some thoughts on the aptly named reMarkable which is a fantastic electronic reader/notebook. Within a few minutes of musing, I realized it needed to charge and pushed it aside after connecting it to my portable battery. I then grabbed for pen & paper. My effort finally broken by a phone call, thus the mobile in the foreground. When the call ended, looking at the table before me, considering this cascade of technology, my thoughts drifted to resiliency. Perhaps because of the slow by inevitable failure of my book, the spent nature of the battery, or likely both. How each of these systems differ in their capability to convey ideas across time - from one point forward to another and to others.

I appreciate that the reMarkable captures much of this appreciate - translated into their slim, elaborate tablet down to the way it responds to ambient light and the sound of the stylus across its smooth surface. What I do not like about devices like these are batteries and unfortunately, as I soon found out, this one was dead. Thus pushing it aside for the trusty pen & paper.

Seldom, I suspect, do we think of resiliency when we grab for pen and paper. In the broadest sense, this technology has been with us for thousands of years. Whether finger-painting on cave walls, carvings in clay, writing on papyrus or velum or the etch-a-sketch-esque beeswax slates of ancient Greece to the Chinese introduced paper - the written word is the oldest surviving form of knowledge we have. When we put a writing instrument to a surface we are continuing a practice for which science is only now beginning to appreciate the coevolutionary benefits for of this uniquely human practice. As I looked at my pen, I realized that like the battery, the pen also requires refilling. Whether a new one, if disposable, a cartridge, if replaceable, or a well if a fountain. None of which I manufacture.

As I set the phone down after my call, I wanted to capture the scene. I went to get my digital camera from another room. Since I hadn’t used it in a long time, defaulting as so many now to the camera on my phone instead. As I took the camera from its shelf I quickly gave it a test: no power. Well, no big surprise there. Fortunately this model supports external power which will work fine for this purpose. As I pop the small plastic cover off the ports I suddenly realize, its no a typical port. A deep breath, and a long exhale… and now a hunt for either a suitable power-cable or the charger for the battery.

Thankfully I had a good idea of where to start looking. Somewhere in a cardboard box of miscellaneous cables, manuals, antennas, adapters and convertors, or a junk drawer of seldom used electronic debris so common today. This process ended up taking more than an hour and resulted in, as you might guess, failure. Nowhere could I find the special type small USB cable I needed or the battery charger that the special LiIon battery maximized to fit within the grip of the camera. Bugger! So the picture ended up being taken with an old Apple device that uses the same charging cable my iPhone does. This is exactly why the EU decided to mandate USB-C as the standard form-factor for chargers on so many consumer electronics.

At some point we all depend upon technology and trade - an engrained reliance upon a system we seldom consider except for when it fails. In doing so, we’ve made a bargain few of us deliberately consider. As I looked at these pieces of technology I realized that what we tend to choose is potentially less about the technology itself as it is the resiliency we prefer. I do recognize the efficiency in carrying 10’s of books and 100’s of pdf papers on the reMarkable and enjoy using it - though it is almost never, my default. For me I enjoy the resilience that books, pens, and paper provide by not relying on a charged battery or software to access their value. I suspect my preference for them owes some debt to the deep, historic connection with their technology as well as a healthy, perhaps heavy, dose of my own nostalgia. However, in the end - they too are still products of a technical complexity and systems - whether we see them or not.

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“By continuing to use our Services after November 3, 2025, you are agreeing to these updated Terms of Service. If you do not agree to the new terms, you can choose to discontinue using the products and services, and close your LinkedIn account before these terms become effective.”

The recent updates to LinkedIn’s Terms of Service raised concern for many users, myself included. With over 20 years on that platform (Jul 2005 is when I created my profile), by far my oldest social network, the decision to allow Microsoft to aggregate two decades of usage data for advertising purposes is not trivial. The ultimatum, delete your account by Nov 3 or you’re agreeing puts a sharp point to the matter. Additionally, the lack of clarity around what would constitutes violations relating to deep fakes or wrongful impersonations contributes to the uncertainty of these new terms.

• My value derived from the platform has shifted over the years and prompts a reevaluation of its role in my professional networking. I’m not alone as many users have remarked how LinkedIn seems more Facebook for business now than professional networking.

• Key points from the updated Terms of Service include an expansion in data sharing with Microsoft, as well as the acknowledgment that changes may occur without prior notice due to legal requirements or new product launches.

• The mention of addressing deep fakes and wrongful impersonations, essential at some level today, raises questions about their internal decision-making processes and transparency. Which is to say, they aren’t. This was made clear when I tried to find out how far back their data goes that they’re sharing with Microsoft.

  

• The combination of all three. Surely this won’t occur on day one, but as I’ve written before, even as a paid premium subscriber, you’re not the customer. Their target customer, the ones that move the needle, are enterprises. Those big subscriptions for LinkedIn Learning, LinkedIn Sales, and LinkedIn Recruiting. These are the real customers and all of that enriched data is one helluva marshmallow to ignore.

These concerns exist on a slope of possibilities and surely, at least in the beginning, won’t all combine at once - except in accepting the Terms of Service. That ties them all up nicely now, doesn’t it? It’s crucial to consider the implications of these updates and how they may impact user experiences and interactions on the platform. The provided links offer further insights into the evolving landscape of data privacy and platform policies.

These links are shared to illustrate some additional information on concerns these types of data have produced.

• 650,000 ways advertisers label you

• Xandr (Microsoft AdTech) refuses to comply with GPDR (German Source)

• Unintended Consequences of deplatforming on spread of hateful content

• LinkedIn Terms of Service

Deep Dive

This is a long post, thanks for sticking it out. I felt I needed to get this done today, Friday October 31, 2025, only a few days before LinkedIn’s new TOS. My greatest hope is that it will surface some consideration by people who care, but do not spend their idle time digging in on subjects like this. I also know those who really care but are stuck with their LinkedIn because of work necessity. I just completed my data-dump from LinkedIn prior to deleting my profile and wanted to share just how far back some of this data can go.

One caveat, me being me I had already gone through a rather substantial pruning of posts and comments in the last year as Ai usages, known and unknown, began to proliferate.

Inferences

LinkedIn builds a set of inferences about you. These can be implied or explicit based upon what information you provide. Keep in mind, as they said in the email to me, they don’t describe their data retention policies either. So, they may keep historical snapshots of your changes through time for nearly all of these records.

These inferences are highly-valuable to advertisers and all of them build some version of these for their marketing purposes. So don’t think that LinkedIn, or Microsoft, are doing anything exceptional here.

Ads Clicked

Of all the data included in the data-dump that will be forked over to Microsoft’s AdTech systems this one is the most obvious, Ads I have clicked on. As you can see, this data doesn’t go too far back, only the last year or so. Still, this is a very strong signal of interest (in Advertising terms) and the algorithms just LOVE this type of data point. Now, unfortunately, they have NO idea whether I intended to click on the ad (almost NEVER) or whether it was the result of a slow scroll, an errant thumb, or some other PEBKAC malfunction. Regardless, in an ad driven model, this one is an obvious one.

Reaction and Shares

These two allow the models to ‘understand’ more about you than can simply be inferred from who you’re connected to. The later being an obvious graph. So what did I find when I went digging?

LinkedIn has kept track of my Reactions (which I was not able to manually remove) since January 31st of 2014. These are highly valuable for inference enrichment. These include Like, Praise, Interest, Entertainment, Empathy, Appreciation, and Maybe. My dataset had 3,516 of these records. As I mentioned in my post A History of Ai large data systems have been data starved which is why we’ve seen such flagrant disregard for intellectual property rights and privacy.

Then there’s the other side of the network graph and a much stronger type of signal - a share. This represents a deeper level of interaction and may/may not be assigned a stronger weighting in determining your persona. One of the key things you want to think about here is - why? Why did you share something? Was it something that you identified deeply with? Something that bothered you? Perhaps something that you were undecided on and were looking for more information on. I know people who will intentionally post divisive content to spark engagement. Have you ever done something similar? Something to take note of here, notice that this goes back nearly two full years farther. Curious… no?

Follow/Unfollow

This one was super interesting as I had completely forgotten about many of these. Ah, but never fear, the platform did not! When you enrich your connection graph with this information and all the other users data, profile information, sentiment, and external sources (remember, they continuously aggregate public and private data to augment these models) you end up with a fairly interesting (creepy) way. Once again notice how this data goes even farther back. I can’t honestly say if I had any follow/unfollows before this time as, like I said, I forgot about many of these.

Leveling Out

I know that de-platforming myself from LinkedIn will result in a terrible attrition. However, if you’d told me in July of 2005 that LinkedIn would save every action, click, comment, message, image, post, follow/unfollow, connect/disconnect for the next 20 years to enrich one of the world’s largest AdTech systems? I wouldn’t have signed-up, would you?