Issue 108: Time Travelling AI
A new TikTok channel of AI created time-travel videos has taken the world by storm and its content is trash. But people love it.
Welcome to issue 108 of Digital Things, by Alec Ward. Lots of interesting things have happened over the last few months, from the launch of a museum management based video game to Google renaming the Gulf of Mexico. What a time we live in.
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Something good
My Local Authority has joined in on a game called Beat the Street, which aims to get people out and about exploring their community. It's made quite a buzz around my area and it's doing a great job of getting young people outside exploring their local spaces. One to check out.
Two Point have created Two Point Museum, a game focused on creating, designing and curating your own museum. Two Point took over the mantle of the old Theme games, from back in the 90s, where you could create and run hospitals or theme parks. The reviews for their new museum game are pretty good, may be worth a play. H/T to Kelly Forbes for telling me about it.
Web and social
The National Trust are making some really interesting content at the moment - cementing themselves into online culture and I've seen their TikTok videos reshared a lot recently on various platforms.
You might have noticed the 'Time Traveller POV' account on TikTok recently, which uses AI generated content to give a first person view of historical events. It's truly garbage content, BUT people clearly like it. The BBC published an article talking about the account and getting the opinions of people from the sector.
BuzzFeed is launching its own social media platform. Not sure how I feel about it, but thought I'd tell you anyway.
This was an interesting article from Amy Brown, who is the ex head of socials at Wendy's and known for being a pioneer of content on the platform. Amy has written about the slow death of Twitter and what you might do next.
Digital culture activities, experiences, projects
The Royal Shakespeare Company have teamed up with immersive game producer iNK Stories, to develop their first ever video game reimagining the story of Macbeth in a modern setting.
Our Let's Get Real: AI collaborator, Jocelyn Burnham, has written a great article for us on AI innovation in the cultural sector and the importance of vulnerability.
Technology / digital news
In response to Trump's executive orders and the general political environment in the US, Google renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" for US users (and it's in brackets for everyone else), as well as no longer marking Pride Month and Black History Month on Google Calendar.
The Government has published an AI playbook for civil servants. Potentially, it's a useful starting point for you to start considering your own policies and strategies around AI.
Resources, reports, development opportunities
The Charity Digital Digital Skills survey is live to fill out for non-profits (of any kind) based in the UK. Whilst it's not arts / culture specific, the findings are always insightful and useful to use as a benchmark of the digital skills of your own organisation.
Ash Mann is running a survey asking people to share the times that their digital projects fell short. I often find it difficult to source case studies talking about failure (in a positive way). So this is a good chance to contribute to the idea that the only time failure is bad, is when you've not learned from it.
Supercool are also running a cultural website carbon footprint study and the more organisations that take part, the better their data.
What I’m…
📺 Watching: I’ve started watching a show with my wife called Yellowstone. It follows a family living in Montana who have swathes of land. They’re trying to protect their property and their way of life by any means necessary. It’s a very intense show and the family are by no means the good-guys. Interestingly there doesn’t really seem to be any good-guys in the show, it’s all very grey. Much like life. Overall it’s a fair watch.
🎮 Playing: I’ve started playing Avowed, the new game from Obsidian Entertainment, the developers behind Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas, The Outerworlds and more. I had high hopes for the game and hose hopes haven’t been met. It’s not a bad game by any means, but it isn’t great. My main complaints is that the story is fairly uninspiring thus far and that the world feels lifeless - particularly in the towns / cities. Overall I’d give it a 6.5/10. I’ll keep playing it in the hopes that it gets better after a few more hours (first world problems).
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