Read Before Monday

This week #RBM is about fetal kicks logged in apps to forgotten memes preserved in digital museums, where our lives are increasingly mediated by technologies that both cradle and commodify us. Amanda Hess’s memoir on digital motherhood reveals how the same platforms that offer support can also monetise our fears. Miyazaki’s early cartoon pandas show how play evolves into poetry, while a newsroom’s AI rollout blurs the line between productivity and surveillance. We'll also go through the culture and the quiet labour behind open-source software, holding the web together. If you’re curious about the stories beneath the screen, where human instincts meet algorithmic intent, this one’s for you. Ah, you also have the ThisWeekInGenAI built-in.

This week’s #RBM deep dive spans hidden histories, digital fingerprints, AI awakenings, and paradigm shifts; from Hernando Barragán’s under-credited role in Arduino’s origin story to Bill Gates’ stealthy imprint in early BASIC code, it’s clear that tech’s evolution is riddled with overlooked voices and personal imprints. Meanwhile, AI continues its rapid ascent, but as Scott Werner warns, speed without structure threatens knowledge work as we know it. Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor offer a calmer lens, urging us to see AI not as a supervillain-in-waiting but as the next electricity; powerful, but ultimately human-shaped. And just when we catch our breath, DeepMind’s Silver and Sutton shift the ground again, envisioning AI that learns not from us, but through its own lived digital experiences.

I'll be cutting down on my side projects and revamp somethings. Rest assured, #RBM isn't one of them :) My weekly live This Week In GenAI and when_i_can Now About This will be merging, but that's soon, now into this week’s edition of Read Before Monday! The folks at Road to VR dissect the secret sauce behind VR hits like Beat Saber and Until You Fall. It turns out it's not just about rhythm or action - it’s "Instructed Motion". Then Matthew Ström tells a gorgeous tale of how album covers evolved from plain brown sleeves to pop culture landmarks. Wired reports that OpenAI has launched a shopping feature inside ChatGPT. It gives product recommendations, without ads, based on user preferences and review. Hello WeChatGPT! Next, the number of people with no close friends has quadrupled since 1990. While tech gets the usual blame, it’s also cultural; work and family take centre stage, and friendships fall behind. Finally, Devesh’s sharp Substack post explores a looming knowledge-work crisis.

Sun is back to the UK and this week feels like a mashup of retro circuitry and bleeding-edge algorithms. Lets start with OpenAI’s newest o-series models that now weave live web searches into their own train of thought, then the tinkerers at Obsolescence Guaranteed are resurrecting PDPs and Whirlwind consoles so today’s hackers can flick front-panel switches and boot vintage OSs as if 1965 never ended! Did you know that a joint MIT-Center for AI Safety study shows that modern AI models out-diagnosing PhD virologists in lab troubleshooting? I know! Turbo-charging drug discovery while raising bio-risk eyebrows... Meanwhile across the Atlantic, WhaleSpotter pairs thermal cams with machine learning so cargo captains can dodge endangered right whales in real time - how cool is that?! Finally, Longreads rewinds to 1995, when a gas-balloon race drifted into Belarusian airspace and was tragically shot down.

Happy Easter! This edition is about cracking open Isaac Asimov’s 1992 reflections on AI, which feels like revisiting a time when silicon fuelled optimism met clear‑eyed caution. Fast‑forward three decades and Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor offer a welcome reality check: AI is not a sorcerer’s apprentice but a “normal technology,” as mundane - and as manageable - as electricity or the internet. Its power, they argue, lies less in runaway super‑intelligence than in the boring policy choices, procurement decisions, and governance frameworks we make today. Then, Josh Collinsworth’s ode to the “blissful zen” of a side project is a timely reminder that creating for its own sake can be the antidote to burnout and the algorithmic rat race. Pair that with Kevin Kelly’s classic “1,000 True Fans” thesis and you get a playbook for sustainable creativity: feed your curiosity first, cultivate a community that genuinely cares, and you can trade viral one‑hit wonders for a resilient micro‑economy of trust and support. Finally, Gregor Hohpe then lifts the curtain on the economics of writing technical books, showing that a well‑crafted book (or internal e‑book) becomes an intellectual calling card that accelerates careers, codifies tribal knowledge, and signals leadership far louder than another growth‑hack tweet ever could. In short: make stuff, share it, own the narrative.

This week is all about the good ol'times! Really! From the medieval manuscripts to modular synths, from retro gaming caves to five-key USB keysets; this #RBM roundup details the artefacts and moments that shaped how we interact, create, and connect. Lets revisit the quirky journey of the manicule, a typographic pointing hand that’s silently guided us for centuries, and trace how an Altair 8800 sparked a grassroots tech revolution. Then we detour through the pixelated, puzzle-packed tunnels of The Troll Hole Adventure. And how about a look at the soulful reengineering of Daft Punk’s Something About Us as both homage and autobiography? Finally, a tribute to the tactile innovation of Douglas Engelbart’s chorded keyset, now reborn with USB. This edition is a true celebration of legacy tech, human creativity, and the quiet brilliance hiding in every byte!