Social Video Is Taking Over TV, Kriss Kross Changed My Life, And How To Prove You're Not A Robot

👋🏼 Hi there!

🔔 Hello! It’s Friday again! This week started with what PR agencies have tried to coin as ‘Blue Monday’, when the last vestiges of Xmas cheer have disappeared and the credit card bills of January land in our inboxes. But that’s rubbish - this week is as full of delight, curiosity and creativity as the other 51 weeks. And to prove it, we’ve curated 10 awesome links to take you into the weekend. After all, the only Blue Monday I care about starts with a DMX drum pattern.

💻 Today’s data point comes from the Collective Intelligence Projects’ report I link to below. I was particularly interested in what the report had to say about trust and relationships with AI. Over a third of users say they felt AI ‘truly understood’ them, and 11% would consider a romantic relationship with AI. It’s just maths, people! It’s just maths!

📕 The Short Story

How The World Lives With AI (PDF report, 5-min summary)

Show Your Work To Prove Your Not A Robot (8-min read)

How The Telegram Changed Global Politics (5-min read)

Is This Post Designed To Make You Angry? (useful tool)

The Smithsonian’s History of The Postcard (Online Exhibition)

Social Video Is Taking Over The TV (7-min read)

Why We Need To Teach AI About TV (5-min read)

Kriss Kross Changed My Life (4-min read)

The Golden Era of Crisp Packet Design (4-min read with gallery)

📣 Why Your Brain Has a Risk Officer (10-min read) 📣

📚 The Long Story

How The World Lives With AI (PDF report, 5-min summary)
This is a great report from The Collective Intelligence Proejct. They interviewed over 6,000 people worldwide to find out how we’re using AI, how much we trust it, and what we think it will do to our jobs. The results are very interesting, and worrying.

Show Your Work To Prove Your Not A Robot (8-min read)
As a counterpoint, this is a great article from our friends at It’s Nice That, showing the trend in artists sharing behind the scenes pictures and videos to prove their work is not made by AI. It includes some absolutely gorgeous paper-craft work by artist Priscilla Ong that I featured above.

How The Telegram Changed Global Politics (5-min read)
This short essay from Nicholas Carr comparing the rise of the telegram in the late 19th/early 20th century with current government use of WhatsApp is very good. I’m a sucker for anything that draws comparisons from the early era of the telegraph and modern digital communications - if you haven’t read Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet, you should get a copy now!

Is This Post Designed To Make You Angry? (useful tool)
Anjali shared this in the Storythings’ Slack, and it’s a really good tool that calculates whether a post is rage bait or not. Spoiler alert - it probably is. Especially if it’s on Twitter/X.

The Smithsonian’s History of The Postcard (Online Exhibition)
Our second historical media/communications link! You can tell it’s my turn to write the newsletter. I loved this Smithsonian online exhibition because it shows us how much government regulation shapes our networks. We could do with a bit more of that today…

Social Video Is Taking Over The TV (7-min read)
Everything is becoming video nowadays (the supposedly newsletter-centric platform Substack just launched a TV channel this week), and more of that video is being watched on the TV in the living room. This great data essay from Digiday shows how that is changing the advertising sector.

Why We Need To Teach AI About TV (5-min read)
Following on from that, as AI becomes a bigger part of automating ad-buying platforms, they have a huge blindspot - traditional TV. As the current training models aren’t based on TV archives, are we going to see a decline in TV ad buying in favour of things the AI does understand?

Kriss Kross Changed My Life (4-min read)
Storythings’ Audio Producer Chris Mitchell just dropped this in the team Slack, so it’s going straight in the newsletter. It’s a lovely story about how Kriss Kross helped him see himself as a rapper, but it’s also worth the click for the very sweet picture of Chris as a school kid. He uses that as his Slack avatar, and it makes me smile everytime I see it.

The Golden Era of Crisp Packet Design (4-min read with gallery)
Talking of Chris, one thing I share with him is a terrible crisp addiction. This Guardian article about a new book on crisp packet design in the 1970s/80s is full of nostalgia if you’re [cough] as old as I am.

📣 Why Your Brain Has a Risk Officer (10-min read) 📣
I posted Hugh’s new newsletter Okay Brain a few weeks ago, but if you haven’t signed up, this week’s edition is a really fascinating look at how your brain’s internal risk officer can stop you making creative decisions. Don’t listen to your risk officer - sign up today!

💌 Humans of LinkedIn

We loved Harry Morton from Lower Street talking about how they made a video ad for their podcast agency for just £5k, and turned it around in 3 weeks. All made by Humans! (and a couple of cows).

READ ABOUT THE VIDEO HERE →

Drop us a line if you have anything you’d like us to share in a future edition of this newsletter, or of course if you have any comments or suggestions for us!

Have a great weekend!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh, and the team