oddletters @oddletters@everything.happens.horse

my new favorite thing to do at dinner parties is when someone turns to me and asks "so what are you a professor of," i smile real wide and say GUESS because 1) i'm an asshole and 2) they know that i know that they were going to say "gender studies" but now they're definitely not going to say that at all

finance historians ain't easy to love

mothers dont let your babies grow up to write finance history books

drink some more coffee about your anxiety, mols, that'll fix it

: screams in chapter revision anxiety :

i want a version of M3GAN where every time someone says the name "Megan" it is replaced with someone saying "mmmmmmTHREEgan!!"

g*orge s*ntos's whole tie/sweater/blazer combo is actually batshit and always has been and perhaps should have tipped everyone off sooner

starting off the lunar new year right: reading Kate Beaton's DUCKS and then having a good hard lay down on the floor about it

are you an #sts or comms scholar who is interested in how money works in the high tech space? are you going to ICA or are you already in Toronto? you should submit to my coincidentally co-located not-an-official-pre-conference workshop on TECH/MONEY! find the CFP and submission form here and please share with folks who might be interested: https://forms.gle/ZgLEk817PWoUHt1V9

: opens can of fediverse worms, shouts into it : can someone explain the difference between mentions and DMs to me bc i have things in my DMs tab on tusky that look like mentions to me

ok, im on a new app now that lets me mute conversations but damn having a post go big here is unpleasant in a way that having a post go big in the other place never really was for me.

good _lord_ i need mastodon app that lets me mute replies to specific posts, anyone want to help me out here

welp that took off surprisingly fast for a 7:30 AM on a Sunday post. time to sign off for a while.

turns out i never did an #introduction post: hi, i'm mols. i'm an academic working in the science and technology studies/comm studies/info studies space. i do work on the philosophy, theory, and history of digital technologies and "innovation economies." i used to write a lot about digital activism. i'm currently on book leave writing about the role of east coast financiers in the development of venture capital policy in the 1970s. you can find most of my work at oddletters.com

if you would like to know more about the history of the Media Lab and the way it encourages these practices in its students and spinoff companies, i highly recommend Molly Wright Steenson's ARCHITECTURAL INTELLIGENCE and Morgan Ames's THE CHARISMA MACHINE

i suppose this is also the time to note that the Media Lab was founded as the pseudo independent entity it is because Negroponte hated doing grant reporting and ethics review and a substantial part of its whole _vibe_ is dropping untested technologies on populations with little supervision and nebulous consent.

it is really not surprising to me that someone who got their PhD there in 2014 (so we would have overlapped) thinks that this is an ok way to treat people

oh i see that someone who got his phd at the media lab decided to use ChatGPT as a therapy standin for thousands of patients without their clear consent, was surprised when the patients hated it, and is now surprised that people are pissed about it.

wild.

oh i also see that he declared the study exempt from IRB and ethics review because it was for a business with no intent to publish in an academic journal and he thinks filing for IRB approval is hard.

_wild_.