A perfect storm for AI: Critical turning points in digital media development and uses

Livable futures in the context of continuous tech crises? What do we do in the face of the current disruptive effects of GenAI? How can we break out of the grand narratives of inevitability around AI? On August 13, 2025, Jill Walker Rettberg and I gave the opening keynote as a dialogue at this year’s Nordmedia conference in Odense, Denmark. Best moment? Having the audience talk with each other instead of doing a traditional Q&A session.

In the talk, we provided a selective history of critical turning points in the development and uptake of social media. We argue these are critical junctures that built the perfect storm for the situation of AI we find ourselves in now, in mid-2025. These provocations are intended to promote discussion about what might influence how we might imagine livable futures, the theme of this year’s conference.

We describe these in more detail in the talk, and will publish it soon, but in the meantime:

1. Shift from performance of identity to algorithmic profiling
2. Shift from social media that encouraged conversation among friends to targeted advertising
3. Sociality shifts to corporate controlled platforms where people have little control over affordanced
4. Automated decision making through algorithmic processes, for incoming content or one’s own archives, memories
5. normalization of misinformation, misdirection, radical polarization
6. Distrust in datafied and automated information systems that are biased from top to bottom
7. The pandemic and its further erosion of trust
8. Absence of effective regulation to slow down or control big tech company interests.

Besides getting burying our heads in the sand, brushing up on Marxist theories, or capitulating to the tech overlords, we concluded our talk with a question for the audience to discuss: “What should we be doing in the next year to build better futures?” on Jilltxt.net, you can read the 70+ responses from the audience.

Meanwhile, here’s a pic of us just prior to taking the stage 🙂

jill walker rettberg and annette markham before their shared opening keynote at nordmedia 2025