John W Lewis

John W Lewis

@johnwlewis.com

Applied physicist, focussed on innovation. Founder of @NeatStrategy.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwlewis X: @JohnWLewis Mastodon: @JohnWLewis@mas.to

112 followers82 following1.8K posts

A10 #DigiBlogChat I don't know which browser is better. But being in Apple's world, Safari it is. For search, though, DuckDuckGo (not the G word ... although I use them for several other things.)

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q10. Which browsers best protect your anonymity (Tor, DuckDuckGo, etc.)? #DigiBlogChat

A10+ #DigiBlogChat How well do other browers manage, for example, the consistency of tab groups between computer and phone ... for which I find Safari very useful?

A7 #DigiBlogChat Folders for apps (presumably on a phone) work well in some ways. But, as with files, messages, etc, things belong to multiple categories. On my computer, the apps are all in one place.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q7. How do you manage your apps? Do you use folders? #DigiBlogChat

A6 #DigiBlogChat Not overwhelming, but probably (in general) relating the logical structure (topics, date, etc.) to the physical structure (location, naming, type, etc.).

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q6. What part of managing data is the most overwhelming, if any? #DigiBlogChat

A4 #DigiBlogChat I don't take many, but they're in the Apple Photos app and iCloud. 🤷‍♂️

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q4. How do you manage your photos and is it enough? #DigiBlogChat

A3 #DigiBlogChat Lots to concerns. As I see it the level of general knowledge about the risks is far too low.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q3. What concerns do you have about privacy and your digital data? #DigiBlogChat

A3+ #DigiBlogChat Perhaps the one technology which does provide some confidence is the use of end-to-end encryption. Ways can still be found to access (or enforce disclosure) of unencrypted data at the "ends", but confidence is high that it is not (yet!) accessible in transit.

A10 #DigiBlogChat Who knows?! I expect that people will find that the most useful applications are different from those expected today. For example, in the software world, everyone seems to focus on generating code, but my experience is that by far the most useful application is in fault diagnosis.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q10: Looking ahead 12–18 months, what will be the single most disruptive change brought by autonomous agents in the digital workspace? #DigiBlogChat

AI models can find (or at least suggest) why some software is doing something incorrect or not doing something correct in seconds, which would have taken me, not minutes but, hours or possibly days to figure out. #DigiBlogChat

A7 #DigiBlogChat The LLMs just produce (mostly) coherent words and sentences. The risk is that, because it refers to relevant topics and appears to be coherent, that some people believe it. But that's not different from people spewing nonsense.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q7: What are the biggest operational risks (e.g., hallucinations, API costs, runaway loops, security) you worry about with agentic AI? #DigiBlogChat

Q6 #DigiBlogChat People forget that current AI systems are **language** models!! They manipulate text!! AI systems of the 1980s would not be making these kinds of nonsensical mistakes/hallucinations/confabulations ... they were "expert systems" operating on rules specified by subject domain experts.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q6: How do you maintain quality control, brand voice, and factual accuracy when content or data workflows run autonomously? #DigiBlogChat

A4 #DigiBlogChat Showing how far behind the (b)leeding edge I am, I haven't heard of any of those (except for Zapier itself). I'm applying AI to software development, but even there, unlike others, I can't not look at the code!

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q4: What tools or platforms (e.g., n8n, Zapier Central, AutoGen, CrewAI, LangChain) are you finding most effective for building agentic workflows? #DigiBlogChat

A3 #DigiBlogChat Pretty much anything involving text (after all they're Large *Language* Models): so reading and writing of textual messages, including programming language source code. When applied to anything else they are just blunderbusses

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q3: Which everyday blogging, marketing, or business tasks are most ripe for handoff to autonomous agents? #DigiBlogChat

A2 #DigiBlogChat Only a little, for software development. But I don't trust it enough (yet). People I know have them running all the time (some on local machines for which they pay no fees to the AI companies).

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q2: Have you or your team experimented with autonomous AI agents or automated multi-step workflows yet? What did you build or test? #DigiBlogChat

A1 #DigiBlogChat I expect that we're all at different stages of understanding this fast moving field. But, as I understand it, they're both generative and the difference relates to whether it waits for a prompt before acting.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q1: In your own words, what is the difference between standard generative AI (like ChatGPT) and Agentic AI? #DigiBlogChat

🤣 Well, it's slippery stuff! #DigiBlogChat

Jim Katzaman - Persevering Writer@jkatzaman.bsky.social

Joining #DigiBlogChat pre-recorded from Maryland to talk with Carol Stephen and LazBlazter about Agentic AI, which sounds like a soap additive. Maybe a podcast would clarify, in which case tune into yesterday's article.

John W Lewis reposted

Joining #DigiBlogChat pre-recorded from Maryland to talk with Carol Stephen and LazBlazter about Agentic AI, which sounds like a soap additive. Maybe a podcast would clarify, in which case tune into yesterday's article.

jimkatzaman.substack.comSay Something Worth HearingPodcasts are everywhere, but attention remains scarce. Their proliferation paints a picture of too much of a good thing - as indeed many aspire to quality.

John W Lewis reposted

Despite the unreliability of Bluesky today, we trended anyway! #DigiBlogChat

Trending Hashtags@toptags.bsky.social

🚀 BlueSky trending hashtags (15m) #16-30: #horny #beyondthegates #oc #porn #lookandsee #tftuesday #anthro #digiblogchat #of #nowplaying #furryfandom #sexy #gay #photography #nude 👇 #1-15 trending hashtags

Maybe we can go on a bit longer ... after all, does Larry need to go to work tomorrow?! 🤷‍♂️#DigiBlogChat

I'm only seeing my own messages at the moment and am unable to search/explore for #DigiBlogChat. @carolstephen.bsky.social, @lazblazter.bsky.social

If BlueSky /bsky.app was playing up, I was wondering where to go to message each other about #DigiBlogChat! Is it wrong that I thought of Twitter *or whatever it's called now)?

Huge topic on #DigiBlogChat next week! I spend far more time watching podcasts (I know that many people only listen to the audio, but videos are so much more informative) than I do on conventionsal news reports.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Between questions, we’d like to announce our next topic: Podcasting and Podcasts! #DigiBlogChat

#DigiBlogChat Maybe some content is not useful on social media?! 🤣

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

I think that you guys are trying to rope me into one!! #DigiBlogChat

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Thanks to everyone for your enthusiasm and contributions! Remember–if you want to discuss a topic let us know! #DigiBlogChat

A4 #DigiBlogChat Definitely! And it depends on one's perspective. Personal-level strategy, tactics, and operations are important. But are unlikely to be effective without the necessary infrastructure. E.g. from a UK perspective: watch, listen, and learn from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h77C...

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q4. Have you found that your attitude toward being productive has changed over the years? #DigiBlogChat

A3 #DigiBlogChat Sorry to be a bore, but: #GTD has answered many/most/all? of these questions in ways which would take longer (although not necessarily as long as his wordy book!) to desciribe than we have space for here.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q3. What's your secret to getting the difficult chores done? #DigiBlogChat

A2 #DigiBlogChat Nope! While this question is very personal (bottom-up), there's an important top-down (or maybe it's the other way around) way of looking at this: micro-economic / macro-economic, tactical / strategic.

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q2. Do you have a productivity mentor or someone who inspires you to stay on track? #DigiBlogChat

A1 #DigiBlogChat Without claiming any proficiency or effectiveness in implementation, EASY: #GTD thinking and the Things app!

Carol Stephen@carolstephen.bsky.social

Q1. How do you track the chores and daily tasks you need to do? #DigiBlogChat