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Overall good observation, but... > You just need to know where to look. My belief is that the best place to look is crypto and web 3. I've been around the web

Overall good observation, but... > You just need to know where to look. My belief is that the best place to look is crypto and web 3. I've been around the web2 emergence and seen the meetups/evening/weekend reunions around the excitement. It felt and looked like toys, and the tech was dead easy to comprehend and extend at the time. Neither crypto or web3 seem to fit in this picture though (overly complex to explain, to implement, no fun factor, and obnoxious people promoting it). On the other hand, Dall-e kind of AI tools (recreation from textual prompts and/or visual/audio hints) do fit: progress is apparent, people play with it for fun and discovery. Ad-blocking and privacy techs, also, are still in a toy-like/diy stage but seem to become more crucial. Human-scale centered stuff (better housing, cities, transporation, care, slow-everything, energy-effiency, etc.) also seem to be in the toy-becoming-crucial stage.

eternityforest 4y ago
As far as I can tell, what the smartest people do on weekends now is pure analog/nontech, or toy/throwaway/education stuff, learning new programming languages, or very small personal use software(I know someone who made their own VCS!). Most engineers thing "Unnecessary privacy risk" or "Boring bloatware" when they see the stuff that would have been big in 2003. In 10 years, I doubt I'll be using anything that the smartest people are playing with now, the smartest people seem to be more interested in ideas and logic than products and projects. If there's no real novel idea in it(Or at least new to them), they'll get bored. A lot of stuff is possible and users would love it, but... engineers have no interest, because their idea of tech progress is less software not more. Human centered stuff is basically impossible to change on a DIY scale, so the transition from toy to practical is a lot harder. A city is inherently almost unchangeable except via million dollar contracts, and any kind of commune/ecovillage/etc has the overhead of trying to do its mission, while also existing within the current economy, so everyone seems to do a lot of work and make a lot of sacrifices as far as I can see from the outside. There's still smart people playing with stuff that will be everywhere(Like IoT), but not as many. Or, perhaps it still works that way, and in 10 years the world will find a deep respect for Kackzynski, and my next computer purchase will be a black market laptop when everyone votes to ban them and be done with it!
gwern 4y ago
I agree. There was a time when cryptocurrency gave me the vibes which Dixon describes: weirdo cutting-edge hackers on the weekend screwing with this strange new toy - it was 2013 or so for Bitcoin, then 3 years later for Ethereum. That was an era where '$30M' exits were shocking and flattering. Today in 2022, $30m isn't even the losses in bankruptcy to a crypto thing you've never heard of up to its gills in suits (both human and law-). Somewhere around the $100,000m marketcap, the cute-and-fluffy aspect of it all kinda wore off. Meanwhile, there is another area today where $30m is a surprising exit for a weekend project taking off, where hackers eagerly debate on Twitter and show off the latest baffling thing they've just coaxed a new tech into doing and wonder what it could do next, and draw lines on log graphs... And that is indeed AI.

eternityforest 4y ago

As far as I can tell, what the smartest people do on weekends now is pure analog/nontech, or toy/throwaway/education stuff, learning new programming languages, or very small personal use software(I know someone who made their own VCS!). Most engineers thing "Unnecessary privacy risk" or "Boring bloatware" when they see the stuff that would have been big in 2003. In 10 years, I doubt I'll be using anything that the smartest people are playing with now, the smartest people seem to be more interested in ideas and logic than products and projects. If there's no real novel idea in it(Or at least new to them), they'll get bored. A lot of stuff is possible and users would love it, but... engineers have no interest, because their idea of tech progress is less software not more. Human centered stuff is basically impossible to change on a DIY scale, so the transition from toy to practical is a lot harder. A city is inherently almost unchangeable except via million dollar contracts, and any kind of commune/ecovillage/etc has the overhead of trying to do its mission, while also existing within the current economy, so everyone seems to do a lot of work and make a lot of sacrifices as far as I can see from the outside. There's still smart people playing with stuff that will be everywhere(Like IoT), but not as many. Or, perhaps it still works that way, and in 10 years the world will find a deep respect for Kackzynski, and my next computer purchase will be a black market laptop when everyone votes to ban them and be done with it!

gwern 4y ago

I agree. There was a time when cryptocurrency gave me the vibes which Dixon describes: weirdo cutting-edge hackers on the weekend screwing with this strange new toy - it was 2013 or so for Bitcoin, then 3 years later for Ethereum. That was an era where '$30M' exits were shocking and flattering. Today in 2022, $30m isn't even the losses in bankruptcy to a crypto thing you've never heard of up to its gills in suits (both human and law-). Somewhere around the $100,000m marketcap, the cute-and-fluffy aspect of it all kinda wore off. Meanwhile, there is another area today where $30m is a surprising exit for a weekend project taking off, where hackers eagerly debate on Twitter and show off the latest baffling thing they've just coaxed a new tech into doing and wonder what it could do next, and draw lines on log graphs... And that is indeed AI.