Projects

There’s a new protocol for web browsers called WebMCP. At time of writing, it is very early in its development but the idea being that it allows AI to help you browse a website - to act as your assistant as you stumble around the human world wide web. The idea has appeal: if you are annoyed at having to click manually through lists of clothing on someone’s website, you can just tell your in-browser AI, “Hey, Claude - filter these dresses by my size and my favourite colours”1. Using the tools exposed through the new WebMCP protocol, Claude will know how to manipulate the page to alter the filters and, hey presto, you’re only seeing what you want. ...

AMBIENT PRIVACY (a term coined by Maciej Cegłowski) is a physical index of my voice search history over the ~4 years I’ve been using the technology. When displayed, it consists of 689 index cards, stationery suitable for annotating these cards, and headphones playing the entire audio archive. It is intended to ask the viewer/listener to consider two perspectives. The first is the view of a life heard only through these 689 audio clips, recorded as queries to a corporation through its devices. These queries are to either an always-on microphone purchased and placed in my home, or to my phone, a similarly-attentive device. It reveals an off-kilter portrait of a person through only snippets of a life. From these, they will form their own incomplete narrative of a person’s life. ...