Controls [from the archives, 9 May 2021]. Originally performed and recorded for the Modular World 1st anniversary show (8-9 May 2021) which was a massive livestream event of 33+ hrs during the pandemic lockdowns.

During the lockdown years, Modular World became one example of a fairly niche thing gathering people together worldwide to make experimental art online - when it was not possible to organize the usual small local performances - to create something positive and reach more people than they ever could individually. As the pandemic finally, thankfully, subsided, however, it seems that people went back to the enclosed local communities, and these types of global online communities lost their drive. 

Also the rapidly accelerating #enshittification cycle of the past few years has buried the visibility of these kinds of communities from all major social media platforms. Of course, as Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic ) has been pointing out for years, the enshittification of these platforms started much earlier. But somehow amid the pandemic, this niche scene still seemed to flourish, and it was only after Silicon Valley lined up to kiss the ring that the aggressive changes to the algorithms really seemed to change things. 

Maybe this is correlation more than causation, but as activity at such niche scenes is often also created by fairly principled DIY-oriented people, it seems that many (myself included) have struggled with justifying why we keep feeding these platforms. This disillusionment is further exacerbated by the rise of the AI-slopmachine that will rip off all the non-commercial work from these platforms just like everything else. Online activity that gathers enough momentum to actually keep things active has in these types of niche scenes been very much dependent on instagram and youtube. Over the past few years, the visibility of this type on stuff that doesn’t try to optimise for the alorithm has plummeted. 

Perhaps all of this has resulted in events such as the Modular World shows reaching fewer and fewer people. As wonderful as the promise of #Fediverse is, so far it seems that we’re very far from reaching the critical mass where it would actually start reaching new people. If the utopian enclave remains enclosed, it eventually dwindles away.

But we can try! I’m posting these weird little Johannes Karkia mini music videos and performances here bit by bit. It’s a transfer of archive, posted on insta & youtube over th years, and also new work now & then. 

But also Modular World does still exist! Go check out their channel: https://www.youtube.com/live/07ErB3AjlAo?is=qr9q2pXlhWm7Hie2 (Full performance of this piece, and interview with MW’s Johno Wells there on the Modular World youtube channel and on the Johannes Karkia youtube channel [link in the bio above], audio track also on Bandcamp).

#enshittification #fediverse #modularsynth #modularworld #anniversary #liveshow #electronicmusic #modulartechno #covid19 #pandemic #darkwave #eurorackmodular #community #surveillancecapitalism #platformcapitalism #algorithm #bigtech #siliconvalley #kissthering #socialmedia #utopianenclave #utopianism

Looking at USA neutering the #votingrightsact, I for one will be doing everything possible to kick USA out of #NATO before 2032..

Because when this hits the ground and racism can become a founding argument in how political power works in the US (because supposedly it isn’t real), it’ll crawl over the pond here real fast through the umblical cord of military alliance.

#Europe needs military independence from USA, or they’ll turn us back to colonial racists by #money & #algorithm real soon!! 😩

Free will in the age of the #algorithm

https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-will-in-age-157134018

Uma das otimizações que os compiladores da linguagem #C são capazes de fazer

#programming #algorithm #cplusplus #talesmdRepostagens

You can beat the binary search

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/04/27/you-can-beat-the-binary-search/

#HackerNews #binarysearch #algorithm #optimization #techblog #codingtips

Professor Dungeonmaster made a great video where he talks about the push-pull between making great content and feeding the YouTube algorithm, two things that aren't always aligned.

I've experienced this in making my own content (YouTube and blog). Like a tree falling in the forest, if you make great content but the Algorithms in the Sky don't send readers or viewers to see it, does it still make a noise?

[His video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSXC6H-1cJc ]

#ttrpg #dnd #YouTube #algorithm

So, the Alibaba Group is one of the biggest public cloud providers in the world, and the biggest in China. They design their own CPUs and "AI" chips and everything, just like the western Big Boys.

They have compute by the bucketful. They have whiz-bang engineers and data scientists and researchers and mathematicians.

And the AliExpress recommendation algorithm still thinks "Show him exactly what he bought yesterday" is a winning formula. 🙄

#AliExpress #AliBaba #algorithm #recommendation #ForYou #wat #OneJob

New Saturday thought is up. It's about the gap between knowing exactly how social media manipulates you and being unable to stop it working anyway. Also about the particular humiliation of being a self-aware user who still falls for it. Which, if you're reading this here, you'll probably recognise.

https://ollierelfe.com/saturday-morning-thought-awareness-of-the-cage-doesnt-open-the-door/

#SocialMedia #DigitalWellbeing #Doomscrolling #BigTech #Meta #DigitalFatigue #Mindfulness #Attention #Algorithm #SaturdayMorningThought

So #YouTube #algorithm threw me a weird one, a recent video from some YouTuber who was afflicted with some disease and had prerecorded a video in case he died. So his brother posted the video.

Okay, that was bittersweet and all that.

What was considerably weirder was that I just reloaded the YouTube home page and it served up *two* videos in the same vein (from years ago) as well as some other videos about people dying.

As we hu-mans often say: What are you *doing,* algorithm?

#socialmedia