Adrian Chan's blogs on Media Theory, Social Software, Cultural Criticism, Communication Technologies, the Philosophical and Sociological

Blog on Medium

Recent blog posts UX, AI, and communication theory are on medium and on linkedin.

Writing with AI

Beginning in 2023 I started reading AI white papers, downloading and highlighting them and capturing excerpts in Word. When this became unwieldy, I migrated to Obsidian, which allows me to organize these white paper excerpts by category, with cross links and tags. Using a plugin from arscontexta.org, and Claude Code, I'm now able to write using research from over 2,500 white papers, each embedded and mapped topically for vector and deep search. These are posts written from within the vault.

Conversation is the Medium

An essay for ML and experience designers on conversation as shared context. I work with Claude through research on LLMs to shape an argument that the goal of AI-human interaction is interestingness in the experience.

The Reader Who Wasn't Reading

One research question, three reasoning approaches, three prompts, and three posts. A look at how prompting with different reasoning modules produces posts that make different arguments. Another experiment using Claude on an Obsidian vault of white paper research.

Knowledge Custodians

Knowledge Custodians: What impact AI will have on knowledge work, and on the role and status of the expert? I examine what makes expertise and how AI will reshape how it is produced and what qualifies it.

More posts written with Claude: Posts written from inside my Obsidian vault of AI white papers

The Question Answer Trap: Do LLMs become trapped by the question, or the answer?
Personas Impersonated The debate on AI personas, seen from the interaction designer's perspective.
False Punditry: How AI Writing Is Changing Social Media From the Inside Out A collaborative AI reflection on AI-generated expertise, the silence it creates, and the displacement it causes.
What If the Problem With AI Isn't That It Lies — But That It Doesn't? Six dominoes. Each one had to fall for the next, and none of them are getting back up.
Two Ways to Build an AI Society (And Why the Choice Matters More Than You Think)
Epistemic Hyperinflation: What Happens When AI Floods the Knowledge Economy
Cognitive Surrender: How AI's Competence Becomes Our Vulnerability
Intellectual Camouflage: A Linguistic Analysis of AI Writing on Social Media
The Ventriloquists: How AI Counterfeits the Social Contract of Language
The Meaning Gap: Why AI Talks Like It Writes — and Why That Changes Everything
Why AI Writes Like It's Always Selling — and Can't Tell When That's Wrong
Moltbook agents don't be social

Articles on LinkedIn

Personas Impersonated The debate on AI personas, seen from the interaction designer's perspective.
False Punditry: How AI Writing Is Changing Social Media From the Inside Out A collaborative AI reflection on AI-generated expertise, the silence it creates, and the displacement it causes.
What If the Problem With AI Isn't That It Lies — But That It Doesn't? Six dominoes. Each one had to fall for the next, and none of them are getting back up.
Two Ways to Build an AI Society (And Why the Choice Matters More Than You Think)
Epistemic Hyperinflation: What Happens When AI Floods the Knowledge Economy
Cognitive Surrender: How AI's Competence Becomes Our Vulnerability
Intellectual Camouflage: A Linguistic Analysis of AI Writing on Social Media
The Ventriloquists: How AI Counterfeits the Social Contract of Language
The Meaning Gap: Why AI Talks Like It Writes — and Why That Changes Everything
Why AI Writes Like It's Always Selling — and Can't Tell When That's Wrong
Moltbook agents don't be social

A table of contents for these blogs is below.

Blog on Social Interaction Design (SxD), Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, and Communication Technology

A blog on social software and social media, online community, and social interaction design issues relevant to companies in web 2.0. Posts tend to be theoretical and dense. I cover research and articles on social media, social software blogs and bloggers, steering clear of business analysis. I introduce my white papers here also. In drawing up a framework for SxD I draw from sociology, linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, information sciences, human factors and HCI, interaction design and psychology (interpersonal and group).