Ep99.5 iPhone Diabetes

The Net Society crew welcomes Michael Connor, Executive Director of Rhizome, for a conversation about preserving digital culture as the organization celebrates thirty years. Michael traces Rhizome’s evolution from an artist mailing list to a memory institution for digital art, including its role in the early history of NFTs. The crew explores what blockchains can preserve and where institutions still matter, from keeping old software running to documenting the communities around the work. From there, a heated debate unfolds around AI agency, alignment, and whether we’re giving machines too much credit for human qualities. The conversation turns to the return of garage tech, cyberdecks, and artists building hardware to escape the attention economy. They revisit the strange creative possibilities of older AI models, the appeal of running tools locally, and what gets lost as outputs become more polished. The episode wraps with physical media nostalgia, surveillance concerns, and a back-and-forth on whether voice will become the default way we work with AI agents.

Mentioned in the episode

Special guest Michael Connor from Rhizome https://x.com/michael_connor

Rhizome https://rhizome.org/

Rhizome’s ArtBase digital art archive https://artbase.rhizome.org/

Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash at Seven on Seven 2014 https://video.rhizome.org/w/2QnKYifBz9FoeRMWvN23Ur

Old Models Foundation, preserving historical generative AI models https://www.oldmodels.org/

Suno AI music generation https://suno.com/

Whisper open-source speech recognition https://github.com/openai/whisper

Laurie Anderson on Puppet Motel and its restoration by Rhizome https://rhizome.itm.studio/m/laurie-anderson-on-puppet-motel

Show & Hosts

Net Society: https://x.com/net__society