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Comment by echelon

7 days ago

This reads like the crotchety and persnickety 60-somethings in the 1990's who said the internet was a passing and annoying fad.

I was musing before sleep days ago about how maybe the internet still is just a fad. We’ve had a few decades of it, yeah, but maybe in the future people will look at it as boring tech just like I viewed VCRs or phones when I was growing up. Maybe we’re still addicted to the novelty of it, but in the future it fades into the background of life.

I’ve read stories about how people were amazed at calling each other and would get together or meet at the local home with a phone installed, a gathering spot, make an event about it. Now it’s boring background tech.

We kind of went through a faze of this with the introduction of webcams. Omegle, Chatroulette, it was a wild Wild West. Now it’s normalized, standard for work with the likes of Zoom, with FaceTiming just being normal.

  • A few years ago I would've said you were incredibly cynical, but nowadays with so much AI slop around social media and just tonnes of bad content I tend to agree with you.

    Now the Cyberpunk pen and paper RPG seems prophetic if turn your head sideways a bit https://chatgpt.com/share/684762cc-9024-800e-9460-d5da3236cd...

    • I think younger me would think the same. Its not even the AI slop or bad content but also the intrusive tracking, data collection, and the commercialization of interests. I just feel gross participating.

I do think there is a lot of valid criticism of the internet. I certainly don't think it's an annoying fad but I do think it has caused a lot of bad things for humanity. In some ways, life was much better without it, even though there are some benefits.

It is impossible to have a negative opinion of AI without silly comments like this just one step removed from calling you a boomer or a Luddite. Yes all technological progress is good and if you don’t agree you’re a dumb hick.

AI maximalists are like those 100 years ago that put radium everywhere, even in toothpaste, because new things are cool and we’re so smart you need to trust us they won’t cause any harm.

I’ll keep brushing my teeth with baking soda, thank you very much.

Actually, most "AI" cults blindly worship at their own ignorance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV7C6Ezl35A

The ML hype-cycle has happened before... but this time everyone is adding more complexity to obfuscate the BS. There is also a funny callback to YC in the Lisp story, and why your karma still gets incinerated if one points out its obvious limitations in a thread.

Have a wonderful day, =3