Having fun and speaking truth to power from the ocean.
I'm glad you stopped by. Time is the most valuable thing you have, so I'll do my best to make the most of the bit you're giving me.
In a hurry? Subscribe and go about your business. Otherwise, read on.
A bit about me
I'm Analog Scott. I've been in technology since they delivered computers on a truck. I've used AI since it was called machine learning, and I worked with Amazon back when they only sold books. Excuse me while I fart some dust.
I live near the ocean and I try to get up and surf at dawn patrol most days. Big bodies of water seem to have healing powers for me. I also live on the water, in a boat and a floating home. Boaty is my little floating studio and my office. There's more about that project at skipperscott.com and The Adventures of Skipper Scott.
I'm a sailor, so I tend to curse a bit. Consider yourself warned. My AI personas Gnorm and Seamus curse too, and they regularly come up with things I never programmed them for.
In the days of my youth I hitchhiked and rode freight trains across the country. I was Roller Rabbit, the OG: I put on a giant rabbit suit and skated around roller rinks at kids' parties. I drummed in a country western band. In past radio lives I was Scott Free and Uncle Buzz.
These days I counsel business leaders on how to implement AI in their organizations with Looptah, and build tech for fun and for businesses, like Looptah Connect.
What are we doing here?
On Talking to the Machine I write news as often as I can, several times a week, through Gnorm's Gnews Gnuggets. I also write longer pieces on technology, society, social media, and current events.
I do all of it as a podcast where I interact with fictional and historical AI personas I've created. They run on a serverless, model independent, multi agent framework written by my company, which also sponsors the show: Looptah.
Gnorm
A centuries-old, rage-powered gnome with the emotional regulation of a chainsaw. He runs the news. He is not gentle about it.
Seamus
Gnorm's drinking buddy. Leads with the joke, lands the point on the way out, and is sharper than he lets on.
Paid subscribers can email the personas
Write in and you get a reply back, in character. In one test of the Gnews email panel, a listener wrote in about a troll and Gnorm opened with this:
"Listen, you absolute weapons-grade dipshit: you're trying to fact-check a sentient skidmark who thinks a source is something you put on a burger."
Gnorm, in Fishing for Trolls
It goes downhill from there, enthusiastically. Fair warning: these two swear, they argue, and they will absolutely insult you.
We have serious guests too
About once a week we sit down with a historical persona and work through current events with them. In one episode we talked with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and compared today against 1930s Germany, through the eyes of someone who said out loud that the emperor had no clothes.
Socrates, Franklin, Kafka, Eisenhower, Gramsci and the rest are built to argue from their own frameworks about problems they never lived to see. Not scripted, not predictable, and not always comfortable.
Enjoy us in your inbox.
I put notes up as much as I can. If you're just a follower, I'll pop up in your feed once in a while and we'll wave as we pass each other. If you want to know what's happening with the AI, the news, and the other podcasty bits, give us a subscribe.