Whose Truth Gets Optimized? AI and the New Epistemic Order This is an edited version of my keynote talk delivered at the IV. International Communication, Digitalization and Society Symposium (ICDS), Istanbul Aydın University, April 28, 2026. The theme of this year’s ICDS symposium — Truth in an Optimized Society: From Democracy to Infocracy — is … Read more
I attended the Artificial Intelligence, Manipulation, and Media Literacy Summit in Cyprus yesterday. Session 3 was in a question-and-answer format, which I prefer to just speaking. I asked Claude.ai to format my answers. I have to highlight that this formatting misses the anecdotes and lively occasions. Well, those who attend get the benefits. Still, for … Read more
Key Insights by Merlin AI Google Maps Evolution – Google has been mapping the world for over 20 years, launching its Street View feature in 2007. – Initial camera systems were bulky, weighing up to 500 pounds, but have since evolved to lighter, more versatile models used on various vehicles including backpacks and even … Read more
Palantir occupies a more extreme place in Silicon Valley but represents a new, growing ethos Big Tech is developing. We have seen the company’s official X message today. A few early comments: This is the nationalist turn. Big Tech now explicitly acts as an agent of a nation-state, which in turn justifies its regulations worldwide. … Read more
I first saw the news at the Guardian and asked Perplexity to do a roundup. Here is the issue: What the investigation actually found An investigation by Investigate Europe, published with the Guardian and others, shows that Microsoft and the lobby group DigitalEurope (representing Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, etc.) proposed language to classify all individual … Read more
OpenClaw, a viral open-source AI agent launched in 2026, promises to control your computer autonomously—but quickly exposed major security risks. Key Insights by Merlin AI Overview of OpenClaw – OpenClaw emerged in early 2026 as a highly anticipated AI tool, capturing the attention of creators and entrepreneurs. – It was designed as an open-source software … Read more
Claude Code Source Code Leak: What Was Revealed Reactions have been a mix of fascination, alarm, and ridicule, while Anthropic has tried to frame it as an embarrassing but contained packaging error with no user-data impact. How Anthropic Responded Anthropic confirmed the incident, saying “some internal source code” for Claude Code was leaked in an … Read more
Reflections from the panel “Dijital Ekosistemlerde Kültürel Miras” at Feshane [in İstanbul], December 20, 2025, organized by Europa Nostra Türkiye Association. The Infrastructure of Cultural Memory To understand digital transformation in the context of cultural heritage, we must first recognize it as what Foucault might call a “technology of power” rather than simply a … Read more