Reading this article I couldn't help but think of a fantastic talk I found quite motivating by Andrew Kelley, Don't Take The Black Pill.
In it he talks about staying in the game, keeping strong voices advocating for good and positive change, and how stepping back, while a valid protection mechanism concedes the victory to whatever it is that's exhausting us.
We're going through a phase. It'll die. It'll die, because the previous phases died, or at least evolved into something else. We're not in the Dotcom era because the market dealt with that suckiness. We're not in Eternal September because Usenet was killed by other platforms because Usenet sucked as a UX. We're not in Web 2.0 because the market decided the semantic web was a noisy hot sucky mess. We aren't all just using AOL or (OMG, do you remember this?), MSN, because, well, they sucked.
If I look around me today, I see stuff that sucks. I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
And it's natural to not want to try and build that, and instead just accept that [waves hands] all this is a sucky mess, and it's burning us out, and you go fix it, because I'm out.
But the best way to fix this is to roll up your sleeves and fix it. Maybe going and writing a religion zine is part of that, maybe it isn't. Maybe going and becoming a farmer fixes it, but it almost certainly doesn't.
We need more talented people building the future they want to see, not running away from the one they're being handed by a roomful of billionaire morons (who consider themselves geniuses).
Take it back. We've done it before. It's not easy, but the journey is where the stories are.
> I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
This. AI has helped me realize some really engrossing and satisfying coding projects I may have otherwise not done. The flip side is that they wouldn't have worked if business-as-usual / do-same-but-faster-with-AI was imposed upon me.
Use of AI can be highly personal and symbiotic, just as it can also be dehumanizing and parasitic.
I look forward to new ways of working both individually and structurally that yet may emerge, and it will require creative elbow grease to materialize.
I also empathize with, and support, those that feel the experience has shifted beyond something they care about, enjoy, or want to participate in. As I'm sure we all do, I have very good friends who lead very different lives from me. AI can be seen negatively as a wedge, or perhaps more positively as a tech/pasttime/activity that we yield in unique ways, making (keeping!) unique in the process.
This is more like shouting to everyone in a restaurant that's mainly filled with people you've never met that you're done with your meal and are leaving
If you cast your gaze way down the road, circa 2064 AD, one of the multitude of permutations that might play out is that the promise of bona fide AGI and automation has been achieved. La dolce vita becomes the standard in the age of abundance, and freed from the tyranny of making a living, we are then fully unplugged, or at least have the option to be.
The internet is decentralized, which is another way to say lacking in meta-incentive capabilities (e.g. cannot resist incentives for long, unable to influence or modify the set of incentives being applied to it), which means it will always fall prey to the dumbest race-to-the-bottom traps.
What else is possible in our personal lives other than to eventually let the internet go? I'm almost certain that 90% of the content I read is AI slop. Software in general is horrible, advertisements and dark patterns are everywhere. Even offline, it ruined movies, series, books and games. Now I have to research an author before buying a book to make sure that they are real and they don't mass produce AI slop.
Sure, I will still use internet and AI professionally, because they are paying me to do it, but it will be just a tool.
I just read HN comments and that's all I do, and it works for me. Nobody cares about anything I make now because you used to have an innate marketing boost by the sheer fact that you put in the time to make something, but now everyone makes things so nobody cares.
Still, it works for me. I use the things I make and I just don't really share them any more, and that's enough for me. I don't feel like throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quitting "the Internet".
In it he talks about staying in the game, keeping strong voices advocating for good and positive change, and how stepping back, while a valid protection mechanism concedes the victory to whatever it is that's exhausting us.
https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4
You could code, go and run an Alpaca Farm for 10 years, give that up and probably within 6 months of study be ready to work as a coder again.
If I look around me today, I see stuff that sucks. I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
And it's natural to not want to try and build that, and instead just accept that [waves hands] all this is a sucky mess, and it's burning us out, and you go fix it, because I'm out.
But the best way to fix this is to roll up your sleeves and fix it. Maybe going and writing a religion zine is part of that, maybe it isn't. Maybe going and becoming a farmer fixes it, but it almost certainly doesn't.
We need more talented people building the future they want to see, not running away from the one they're being handed by a roomful of billionaire morons (who consider themselves geniuses).
Take it back. We've done it before. It's not easy, but the journey is where the stories are.
> I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
This. AI has helped me realize some really engrossing and satisfying coding projects I may have otherwise not done. The flip side is that they wouldn't have worked if business-as-usual / do-same-but-faster-with-AI was imposed upon me.
Use of AI can be highly personal and symbiotic, just as it can also be dehumanizing and parasitic.
I look forward to new ways of working both individually and structurally that yet may emerge, and it will require creative elbow grease to materialize.
I also empathize with, and support, those that feel the experience has shifted beyond something they care about, enjoy, or want to participate in. As I'm sure we all do, I have very good friends who lead very different lives from me. AI can be seen negatively as a wedge, or perhaps more positively as a tech/pasttime/activity that we yield in unique ways, making (keeping!) unique in the process.
Protocols going to keep on trucking regardless of whether Twitter, IG, Facebook go up/down/sideways.
Sure, I will still use internet and AI professionally, because they are paying me to do it, but it will be just a tool.
Still, it works for me. I use the things I make and I just don't really share them any more, and that's enough for me. I don't feel like throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quitting "the Internet".