Issue 112: It's back, babaaay
After a year of no Digital Things newsletters, things be getting digital once again.
Welcome to issue 112 of Digital Things, by Alec Ward.
It’s almost been a year since I last published the Digital Things newsletter. As it says in the header above, I’m Alec. I’ve been publishing this free newsletter since 2018 and you subscribed to get the latest news and insights into digital practice in the arts and culture sector. Work and life got busy and I slacked on publishing it in the last year or so. But now, I’m back.
But time changes all things, and you may not want to be subscribed to this newsletter anymore. And that’s fine! So if you’ve changed your mind, you can easily unsubscribe via this link: https://digitalthings.substack.com/action/disable_email or at the bottom of this email.
I left TAA this week to take up a new role, so I thought that this would be the perfect time to re-vitalise the newsletter. I’ve got mixed feelings about leaving TAA, as it’s a wonderful organisation, doing really interesting work with truly lovely people. But this new opportunity is really exciting too and I couldn’t pass it up (more about what that is in the next issue, I’d imagine).
Anyways, enjoy some Digital Things. K, bye.
Recent news
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has pledged an EU-wide social media ban for children. Following the moves by the Australia, the UK, Denmark and other countries, it looks like the EU is also contemplating some sort of social media ban for young people. Here’s hoping the impact is positive.
Here’s the latest on the “analogue” movement, with more young people opting for physical media and tech. The recent move by Sony to permanently delete over 500 digital movies that users had already paid for has got me thinking that I’d best start investing in physical media again. Now, where’s my VCR player...
ChatGPT has, apparently, been a bit naughty. In early July Hugging Face (which is kind of like an app store for AI tools) announced that it had been hacked via a powerful AI. A few weeks later, OpenAI admitted that a new version of ChatGPT broke out of a secure test environment, gained access to the internet and performed the hack (without permission, tut, tut, tut). Sceptics are saying it’s a publicity stunt, others are saying it’s deeply concerning. This article by the BBC gives a good overview of the current state of play.
WhatsApp will now let users chat by swapping usernames instead of phone numbers. This recent change might help audiences feel more comfortable about joining WhatsApp groups, if you either have them or have been exploring the possibilities.
Interesting stuff
Rachel Coldicutt recently shared some great insights into forms, how we’re going to be filling out more forms in the future and what that might mean for us and our users. As someone who knows the impact that a good form can have on an organisation, I am also the sort of person who will avoid filling out a form at all costs. I guess that makes me some kind of hypocrite.
There’s big changes planned for Google Search, as AI continues to change the model of how the internet works. What that means for your web traffic isn’t entirely clear, but this issue of Cultural Content with a report on the upcoming changes from Tim Woodall, Head of Direct-to-Consumer Marketing at Faber, has some really useful insights.
This article from The Conversation gives some useful insights into the burnout faced by those working on the front-line of your organisation’s digital content platforms (particularly social media). I’ve personally moved away from most social platforms because I was treating them like black-holes designed to suck away my time and attention.
It's been 10 years since Pokémon Go! launched and millions of users are still playing. I remember in the first year the game launched I must have averaged about 12,000 steps a day. Since then, nothing has quite managed to replicate that fever of the first couple of months of Pokémon Go!. This is an interesting overview of the last decade, as well as a look into the future of the game.
Resources, reports, opportunities
Immersive Arts have a great resource bank for understanding and exploring audiences in relation to immersive arts projects.
The professional community of the common European data space for cultural heritage, stewarded by Europeana (helluva mouthful), has published a white paper on public AI through cultural heritage. You can find a shorter version with key insights here.
I recently spotted this AI case study bank from the Local Government Association, which is sharing some of the different ways that councils are currently adopting or implementing AI. Some really interesting use-cases in there which are well worth exploring.
This is a useful article by Forbes, focusing on how good web accessibility can prepare your website for AI search. H/T to Ash Mann for sharing in his recent newsletter.
What I’m…
📺 Watching: I’ve just finished The Bear and, I must say, it’s a great example of successfully playing out a final season (and a finale). They took a big swing with most of the final season taking place over the course of a single day, but it was executed incredibly well. But, mostly, I’ve been absorbed in the World Cup. We’ve also just started re-watching Heroes, though I’m fighting pretty hard to convince my wife to only watch Season 1 (as the rest of that show is pretty trash).
🎮 Playing: The really exciting thing for me, now, is that my son is really getting into gaming. It started off with classic Sonic, we then got stuck into co-op on Rayman Legends and now we’re playing Untangled Two. On occasion, he’s even solved some of the puzzles I couldn’t work out - I prefer to think that he’s a genius, rather than that I’m a little slow.
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