A letter from Om. Issue #14/2023

Hi! I am Om & this is my letter where I share what’s on my mind, my latest writings, articles worth reading from around the web, my recommendations & some of my photography. 

In this issue, I address: 

What I am up to?

I recently had a chance to visit New York, to attend not only to some board duties but also to catch up with friends. It was wonderful to see the city that I call my spiritual home having rediscovered its verve. What used to be West Broadway is now Lafayette Street. The shuttered storefronts have slowly started to fade from memory. One of the great strengths of New York has been its ability to reinvent and recreate itself.

One of the joys of visiting New York is that it gives me an opportunity to plug back into the world of media and information. This time was no different, though we now have the dark cloud of “artificial intelligence” and its potential to turbocharge “misinformation.” Verified sources are becoming amplifiers of half-truths, and you can see the media ecosystem slowly crumbling.

We are starting to see it already—whether it is the propaganda war being waged by despots, AI-generated imagery that is being created to exploit the vulnerable, or machine-generated lies and half-truths on our social networks—we, as humans, are beginning to lose the ability to discern fact from fiction. The lies are starting to win, and it is clear we need technological advancements to help us distinguish signal from noise. The half-truths are going to threaten the advance of AI itself, exacerbating the Internet’s existential crisis.

I remain resolutely optimistic about the potential of AI to help augment our capabilities and help fix the problems that threaten to drown us in information chaos. Given the very selfish track record of some of our current giants, it is impossible to count on them to do the right thing. Instead, we have to bet on the open-source ideologues to step up and fill the gap with open-source AI models.

What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we will mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that, if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is who is to blame.

Chernobyl, The Cost of Lies

My recent articles. 

  1. Process Breakdown
    Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX has been found guilty, embodying a stark reminder of systemic flaws in startup and venture funding practices. Amid a culture where fear of missing out (FOMO) often trumps due diligence, even seasoned investors like Sequoia Capital succumbed, overlooking red flags in a frenzy to invest. This saga underscores the enduring tension between Silicon Valley’s disruptive ethos and its susceptibility to its own dogmas. 
  2. Apple is finally embracing the AI.
    We have firmly entered the age of artificial intelligence, which has personalized our interactions with computers. Everything is adapting to this new reality, with AI becoming an integral part of our technological transformation. With the introduction of the M3 chips, Apple is fully embracing AI, employing its signature approach through sophisticated hardware and chips. Here is my analysis of Apple’s M3 announcement, the competitive landscape, and the impact of AI on the industry.
  3. iPoddery
    A fond rumination over the early days of the iPod & the iShuffle Principle.
  4. Kids know what we don’t: Social media is dead.
    This is a follow–up to my essay pointing out that Social Media is dead. 
  5. Spinning Memories
    The passing of Bishen Bedi, a cricketing legend of my youth, sent me down memory lane. 

Interviewed by FullStackWhatever Podcast.

I was interviewed by former Facebooker and designer Maykel Loomans. In Part 1 of the podcast, we talked about the evolution of technology and the internet from its early days to now. We chatted about how it has moved from connecting information to connecting people to connecting machines. We talked about the coming era of social discontinuity, where people will retreat into more isolated spaces online due to the high judgment and cost of interacting openly on today’s social platforms. We ended up talking at length about technology media, the need for optimism, and my journey. If you have some time, please take a listen.

5 Articles Worth Reading

Michael Lewis got played by his protagonist, writes Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts, who himself was played by SBF and called him the new Warren Buffett. His review of ‘Going Infinite’ is worth reading. Molly White, a well-regarded crypto skeptic, doesn’t pull any punches in her review either. I didn’t read the book — I listened to it as an audiobook, and all I can say is this: it is not Lewis’s finest work.

Electric vehicles may be having their moment a century after they first burst onto the scene. We all know why they didn’t make an impact before, but for now, enjoy this photo essay from The Guardian. I share this because the EV industry is going through a momentary hiccup, and every player is suddenly worried and readjusting. Heat News has a good summary.

In the absence of comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the United States, the targeted advertising industry is as bad as government surveillance, argues the EFF. Telecom providers are at the very heart of this surveillance economy, as revealed by Citizen Lab’s latest research. 

Get off social media and start reading books. Emily Gorcenski did just that and says she is better for it. This makes for a great read. 

Just like pageviews, and most web metrics, social media metrics too are lies, damn lies, and half-truths, The New York Magazine notes. Just to be clear, so are the numbers reported by magazines and every legacy media outlet. 

As you all know, I am a big fan of the late John le Carré and his books. It should come as no surprise that I eagerly watched the documentary about his life, ‘The Pigeon Tunnel,’ on Apple TV. While I prefer the book that inspired this documentary, spending an hour with the film is still a great pleasure. The music score by Philip Glass is sublime.

My Photography

I captured a lovely October evening on my iPhone, once again marveling at its 5x Zoom camera. And as a goodbye to October, I share with you  Still Waters — a new interpretation of an old photo.

November 5, 2023. San Francisco

A Letter From Om
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Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. Read More