Lisa Messeri

i suffered for this paper, watching all of Facebook's annual keynotes: "In 2011, SNL cast member Andy Sandberg began with a 4 minute monologue pretending to be Zuckerberg, before handing it off (in hallmark awkward fashion) to the actual Zuck"

Or better yet: make GenAI about an assault on civics. Because if you are selling a product that necessarily attempts to con one person into believing they are engaging with another person when they are not, you’re not just ruining education. You’re dismantling society’s foundations in social trust.

So the next time someone tries to draw you into a conversation about that piece they saw on 60 Minutes or read in the NYT about how educators are coping with/ combatting/whatever students using GenAI, don’t accept that framing. Make it about the industry that is impoverishing their education.

Visions of Computing Futures: Meta, Apple, and the Technological Fictions of Digitally Real Worlds Abstract: The vision of seamlessly integrating virtual and physical environments – variously called spatial computing and the metaverse – has been around for decades. Recently, Big Tech companies, including Apple and Meta, have prioritized ushering in this computing paradigm. Despite hardware and interface inadequacies, how do these companies make such visions feel not only inevitable but also readily achievable? This paper analyzes performances of corporate vision-making as technological fictions, drawing attention to the genre and aesthetics that make a future seem like the future. By interweaving narratives illustrating the sociality of metaverse futures with presentations of technical capabilities, corporate visions purposely blur fiction and fact such that the former is mistaken for the latter. As scholars consider how to refuse Big Tech visions, excavating how inevitabilities are mere possibilities offers one critical strategy.

oops, w/ alt text

In a stroke of good timing, my article excoriating the metaverse (and taking shots at spatial computing) was just accepted at Games & Culture. How do these companies make implausible and undesirable futures seem inevitable? abstract posted here!

It is truly ‘unholy’

happily, this article does quote a researcher calling out the bullshit of this approach.

Um, if an LLMs's tendancy to lie and cheat isn't something that can be stopped, maybe this isn't a great product to incorporate at every level of our professional and personal lives?

There are many good arguments for why AI/ML will struggle to predict replicability.

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

I'm curious why, in light of these arguments and now data, COS is continuing to pursue this project.

"AI expert" is ... interesting.

"We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”"

-Ray Bradbury, The Veldt. Or, the 1950 version of "touch grass"

how about, "this is destroying my soul"

I have had success with "this text is so bland and not reflective of you that it seems like it could have been written by GPT". "It seems" does a lot of work in avoiding accusation but opening the space for confession.

it is certainly related to the word for good faith engagement with a reader response that has clearly been generated by GPT

This is HUGE news, that was reported right before Thanksgiving. I just looked online and, sure enough, all the grants that our PhD students normally apply for are not accepting applications this cycle. Maybe they will come back, maybe they won't. But right now, this is a devastating set back.

Tragic. This funded my dissertation research and many of the students in our program.

i had to sit in one of the open air cafeterias for an hour and 20 minutes with my head on the table and my partner feeding me grapes before i could possibly go get korean bbq.

it was the one that also had a spinning component for each individual car. i don't know what i was thinking. the rattlsnake, maybe?

i got so sick on a KBF roller coaster last year. i declared myself to be done.

i'm staring into the future forged by "AI scientists" and, my friends, it is bleak. Humans might be slow and expensive, but let's all just agree that this trade off is worth it, m'kay?

Assistant Professor of Anthropology (Linguistic Anthropology) - Williamsburg, Virginia job with William & Mary | 707272 Tenure track position at the Assistant Professor level in linguistic anthropology

My amazing department is hiring a Linguistic Anthropologist!

careercenter.americananthro.org/job/707272/a...

In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles by Lisa Messeri

Now that #AAA2025 is a wrap—time for an award 🏆 thread! Congratulations @lmesseri.bsky.social for winning this year's Gregory Bateson Book Prize!! Awarded for In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles. More info here @dukepress.bsky.social: dukeupress.edu/in-the-land-...

🥰🥰🥰

An absolute delight to be in your stellar company!

Sign announcing ‘ln the land of the unreal’ as Bateson prize winner

#AAA2025 has been its usual whirlwind of fun and overwhelm. But I can’t underscore how much it has meant for ‘in the land of the unreal’ to be recognized as the winner of the Bateson book prize, and to celebrate the news w my ever growing anthro fam. @dukepress.bsky.social @culanth.bsky.social

excellently timed for the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Fill your feeds, folks at #AAA2025

(Excited to now be on my flight connect to New Orleans. My people are here)

Gentleman w ‘Make Orwell Fiction Again’ baseball cap is giving strong speculative anthro grad student vibes.

We’ve been or hope to be each of these anthropologists. I have a stop over, so sadly can’t play this game.

absolutely deserved!