> You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than

> You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.” Back then, info-determinism was exciting. Today, it feels like a challenge which we must surmount, or else. ♦ You can learn more about the deranged minds of CIA officers and "public intellectuals" from the backgrounds of their arguments than you can from taking them at face value. These people are _completely afraid_ of living in a world which does not require their permission or ideology in order to function. This article is written entirely from the "state" point of view and completely lacks any "humanity" whatsoever. > And yet, “the public opposes, but does not propose.” Demolishing ideas is easy in a subreddit; crafting new ones there is mostly beside the point. Give me a break. Tons of new ideas and new systems and new projects have been created on the internet using precisely this mechanism and with zero government authority involved. This is a completely ridiculous assertion by the article. > How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge becomes a political act? Is it the rejection of knowledge or simply the rejection of authority? Perhaps people expect those in authority to actually explain themselves, to act in a transparent manner, and to not use their power to unfairly benefit one group over another. > But democracy on a mass scale depends on mass institutions—mass media, mass education, mass culture—that seem likely to fracture or mutate with the arrival of A.I. The forms of government that flourished in one info-epoch may not thrive in the next. I'm sorry, but what a total crock of shit, this idea that "mass anything" is somehow _required_ for "mass democracy" to function, or even that "mass democracy" is something experienced in any of our governments. It really sounds like these people want to diminish humanity at all costs, in favor of AI, so they can regain control of our information space, and have the ability to manipulate the entire world en masse and without any oversight or responsibility for it. I'm completely grossed out by this article and the people within it.