@DrPen@mastodon.social

Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Jul 31, 2026

*Break everything, let someone else clean up after us ... if they can*

I truly believe the university community has no idea what they're doing to promote Gen AI in any way at all. Gen AI is absolute chaos, anarchy, in all things concerning information, knowledge, value and trust. Yet universities think their job is to welcome it. Teach idiotically simplistic things like 'use responsibly', 'guardrails', 'ethical policy'. Ridiculous.

#academia #academicchatter #GenAI

https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plant-in-iran

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Jul 27, 2026

Slides for my spot at hcii2026 on Wednesday in the DAPI track.
(Test)

#academia

https://files.penworks.net/smart/knowledge_power_pres.pdf

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Jul 24, 2026

Ongoing electricity crisis in Malta. Im very lucky to not be affected (yet) from long power cuts but the vast majority of people have been without power for 30-50 hours and counting. Infrastructure is not fit for purpose. A big increase in resident population, plus now millions of tourists coming and going. Yet no one can plan for huge increase in demand. Its chaos.

Im now seriously considering return to UK. I might even find a bit of academic/edtech work!

#malta #academia #climate #UK

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Jul 23, 2026

Sweden have started to print loads of textbooks and removed laptops and tech from early years. California have just passed a law requiring teachers to be human. UK? As usual theyre full of techbo corporate zombies.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/london-first-ai-primary-school-inspired-edge-olympia-b1290761.html

#academia #schools #education #ai #uk

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · May 12, 2026

Replying to @carnage4life@mas.to

@carnage4life@mas.to and how will skill of humans be maintained and fostered in new humans so they can do the judging and managing? Skills and knowledge wither and die when they are not used and developed.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · May 11, 2026

Why writing with LLM bots misses the struggle, search and refining of the writing process. It's worse than just 'cheating', it's autopilot cognitive stagnation, and a terrible flattening of what each human mind can create.

#academia #academicchatter #AI #education

> "Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null
Dead perfection; no more"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/may/10/fiction-writing-professor-ai

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · May 11, 2026

Replying to @clusterfcku@mastodon.social

@clusterfcku@mastodon.social @wdlindsy@toad.social hey, just wanted to say in case this might be useful. A great way of duplicating posts in Mastodon is to use their RSS and archive it. This wont capture threads (responses to posts) but will capture each single post. I archive my acct using Obsidian. I wrote a blogpost about the procedure a while back. https://penworks.net/blog/importing-feeds-into-obsidian-with-simple-rss

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · May 05, 2026

Replying to @evan@cosocial.ca

@evan @pizaaman I dont google, I search ;) In fact I do not use google search much at all these days. I am going on international friends/colleagues who train wikipedians, and/ or use WP in their teaching. I am going on the resources it offers and not headline news. I think the AI deals are a massive ethical problem but we soldier on. All this applies to IA as well.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · May 05, 2026

Replying to @evan@cosocial.ca

@evan @pizaaman I didn't notice Wikipedia in decline at all. Maybe this is a north American thing, or Chrome user thing. I turn off all ai summary stuff as its not good or reliable enough. Wikipedia is always my first check. Wikipedia is vital in many parts of the world.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @evan@cosocial.ca

@evan obv the poll is finished but Im always surprised about these sort of gatekeeping rules posts. Hey, its socmed, many sorts of people are here, there are very few rules except be nice and do good. I share posts to my FB academic brethren, who are mostly normie types who are very mainstream. Its almost like showing off to them how interesting fediverse posts are, and how much engagement they sometimes get. You know, we are here to actually be social, not just grift and build our 'profile'.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 30, 2026

Replying to @openrisk@mastodon.social

@openrisk@mastodon.social tbh I'm not understanding your point. Are you saying gen ai courses have no educational value (as 'utilities'), or that they aren't being used educationally? Or something else?

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 30, 2026

Ben Ws blogpost about LMS and academic content assetisation is spot on but saying LMS "impose templates on how courses can be taught and what content can be used during classes" is *slightly* misleading. In fact dig-learning can be anything you want it to be - but by default is digital. A certain flattening can happen, but can also be very diverse, open & creative. But! The more automated you are, the more extractive the platform(s) are.

#academia #academicchatter

https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2026/04/29/ai-and-the-amplification-of-academic-content-assetization/

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 22, 2026

Replying to @yhancik@thereisno.computer

@yhancik @asrg@tldr.nettime.org upvote for rss. Your website may be generating an rss feed automatically (eg if you're using WordPress or similar blogging cms). I'd definitely follow that.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 18, 2026

**AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance. **A paper from researchers at Oxford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and UCLA that needs to be seen by everyone in the education community.

Full Abstract in alt text.

#ai #GenAI #chatbots #edtech #education #academia #academicchatter

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @openrisk@mastodon.social

@openrisk@mastodon.social I think we are talking about the same thing >> Luddism is not about being against all technology (an innaccurate assumption), it is about being against damaging technology. And again, Im not only talking about "AI". Small tech is a great example of luddite approved tech - it is not damaging or extractive. It is home grown, independent and life-enhancing.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @openrisk@mastodon.social

@openrisk@mastodon.social Im talking about the growing luddite mindset of discontent. Its not only about Gen AI and AI data analysis. Its about any tech - the given perceived future of digitized life. This is not an inevitability, it is a choice. Its not really about unseeing anything, its about disempowering bigtech from its political power in society, for each person and for governments. Small tech, open tech, sovereign privacy tech - yes. But what is happening now is not that.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

New article: "Techno-feudalism and the new Luddites"
There's growing frustration around AI and big tech: people scared of losing their job, who don't want so much tech in their education, of abandoning digital tech, or people physically attacking technology - and now attacking the homes of AI company personnel and politicians who are doing the bidding of those companies.
This isn't going to stop, it's going to increase.

#ai #genai #luddites #academia #academicchatter

https://penworks.net/blog/techno-feudalism-and-the-new-luddites

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Apr 13, 2026

Replying to @fulelo@journa.host

@fulelo I think this is exactly what is happening in the UK with the so called popularity of Reform. But AfD success in Germany I fear is real.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Mar 26, 2026

Replying to @yoasif@mastodon.social

@yoasif @rootwyrm @quarknova Scraping open content is going to happen. What we do about it needs to be much more robust, technically and legally. a) AI scraping is not fair use bc of vast profit made by AI Co's, and amount of content scraped/copied. b) fair use is a US construct, interpreted differently elsewhere. EFF know this. (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/murky-waters-international-copyright-law) c) to me, EFF decision seems contrary to their own standards. d) AI scraping goes against most CC licences. #AI #fairuse #academia #copyright

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Mar 21, 2026

Replying to @yoasif@mastodon.social

@yoasif @quarknova sadly, this is the reason I won't donate anymore to Wikipedia, instead I'll donate to Internet Archive.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Oct 29, 2025

Replying to @benroyce@mastodon.social

@benroyce@mastodon.social the most common nickname for this rag is the Daily Heil.

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Jun 26, 2025

Replying to @Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt humble contributions submitted

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Dr Pen @DrPen@mastodon.social · Feb 14, 2025

Replying to @RuthODay@chaosfem.tw

@RuthODay @distrowatch @jalager @Seetee these are Microsoft branded file extensions. Eg .keynote is the Mac slides software etc, or .odp is the Libre office slides file extension, .ods is the Libre spreadsheet file ext, etc etc.

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