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A while back I saw the original unveiling of the Next Cube, when Steve Jobs called computers a bicycle for the mind - it was so apparent in what they demoed. A

A while back I saw the original unveiling of the Next Cube, when Steve Jobs called computers a bicycle for the mind - it was so apparent in what they demoed. A machine that helped people create rather than just consume, even simple things like having an inbuilt dictionary. We still have that but it is always running off to the internet to do what was done in 1987. And that leap to something external is not just for convenience, it is a leap of how we used these things. Like Rushoff, for the last 15 years I have been trying to figure out ways to return a little of that of that isolated but functional style to computing. I no longer try. Every attempt has just been meet with further disappointment. Unlike others here advocating for pushing through, I don't think we can. In pushing through it is merely providing more fuel for potential missuse. I still use modern technology but only that which is basically forced on me by the rest of society. Even then its impact is minimized - I think Hacker news is the last regular thing I really engage with in this space and that is slowing down with time as well. Maybe there is a part where spectacle is the main driving force that allowed these technologies to become so pervasive in our world? That is to say that if we never went down this path computers would be treated more like we treated type writers. A neat tool but something few would get obsessed with.

rektide 3y ago
I think we've become obsessed with the conservative, scared, frightened, what-about-the-potential-for-abuse viewpoint. Because, in large part, it's the only view we can talk about & sell. Everything else is esoteric & technical & speculative, is just some idea that may not work, & is mostly abstract. But damage & harm is real, and it makes a powerful headline. I really believe things would look different if we weren't all to at ends. If we could actually see & experience tech in a modestly reasonable, user-controlled way, if we could see the overlays of weights & pressures that make up our current upvote/downvote algorithm & tune it ourselves... if we had some post-consumer avenues for exploration we were walking, I think we could see society improve itself & make gains. Right now that's unimaginable. The harm & the bad is the only thing we can grasp. In part because computing is kept all in the cloud, in big data keeps, far off & remote, with us here as powerless agents simply receiving whatever signals it deigns beam at us. Society, if given a chance to do so, would regulate & improve this world. But society's input has not been welcome. Computing has been getting less & less democratic, less and less part of the natural observable world, and more cloistered, closed & shitty, for decades. We cannot even imagine a progressive outlook, where we might participate, and it's hard to guess what things would be like, if we could.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  I wrote an essay a few weeks back that has yet to be published (it was about AI but it applies here). It is starting to feel like everything is starting to feed back on itself. The output is being funneled back into input. Like a fractal. Interesting but you do not want to build a society on a fractal. Or a city on Rock and roll for that manner ;). In that sense technology is becoming a feed back loop of society itself. Anxiety, can be an act of repeating the same nervous though again and again in a loop never moving on. In that way, this is were information technology had lead a lot of realms of us to. To some degree I think this is what Jaron Lanier means when he says AI could drive us insane. This level of feed back is not going to work out well.
  - leonroy 3y ago
    > In that sense technology is becoming a feed back loop of society itself. I had a discussion recently with somebody about how it feels as though the 70s, 80s, 90s had a distinctive style but from the early 00s onwards there appears to be no distinguishing character to the recent most decades. Their conclusion was that it was due to 'the increase in technology use, less creativity - more sat about consuming media in one way or another'. I wonder if that's true - we no longer have to suffer silence or boredom thanks to an endless stream of 'content' available to us. It prevents rumination and leads us to have every thought impressed upon it variations of patterns from the past.

rektide 3y ago

I think we've become obsessed with the conservative, scared, frightened, what-about-the-potential-for-abuse viewpoint. Because, in large part, it's the only view we can talk about & sell. Everything else is esoteric & technical & speculative, is just some idea that may not work, & is mostly abstract. But damage & harm is real, and it makes a powerful headline. I really believe things would look different if we weren't all to at ends. If we could actually see & experience tech in a modestly reasonable, user-controlled way, if we could see the overlays of weights & pressures that make up our current upvote/downvote algorithm & tune it ourselves... if we had some post-consumer avenues for exploration we were walking, I think we could see society improve itself & make gains. Right now that's unimaginable. The harm & the bad is the only thing we can grasp. In part because computing is kept all in the cloud, in big data keeps, far off & remote, with us here as powerless agents simply receiving whatever signals it deigns beam at us. Society, if given a chance to do so, would regulate & improve this world. But society's input has not been welcome. Computing has been getting less & less democratic, less and less part of the natural observable world, and more cloistered, closed & shitty, for decades. We cannot even imagine a progressive outlook, where we might participate, and it's hard to guess what things would be like, if we could.

NovaDudely 3y ago
I wrote an essay a few weeks back that has yet to be published (it was about AI but it applies here). It is starting to feel like everything is starting to feed back on itself. The output is being funneled back into input. Like a fractal. Interesting but you do not want to build a society on a fractal. Or a city on Rock and roll for that manner ;). In that sense technology is becoming a feed back loop of society itself. Anxiety, can be an act of repeating the same nervous though again and again in a loop never moving on. In that way, this is were information technology had lead a lot of realms of us to. To some degree I think this is what Jaron Lanier means when he says AI could drive us insane. This level of feed back is not going to work out well.
- leonroy 3y ago
  > In that sense technology is becoming a feed back loop of society itself. I had a discussion recently with somebody about how it feels as though the 70s, 80s, 90s had a distinctive style but from the early 00s onwards there appears to be no distinguishing character to the recent most decades. Their conclusion was that it was due to 'the increase in technology use, less creativity - more sat about consuming media in one way or another'. I wonder if that's true - we no longer have to suffer silence or boredom thanks to an endless stream of 'content' available to us. It prevents rumination and leads us to have every thought impressed upon it variations of patterns from the past.