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The analogy is with Iain Banks’ The Culture. Anyone can be anything and do anything they want in an abundant, machine assisted world. The connections, cliques

The analogy is with Iain Banks’ The Culture. Anyone can be anything and do anything they want in an abundant, machine assisted world. The connections, cliques, friends and network you cultivate are more important than ever before if you want to be heard above the noise. Sheer talent has long fallen by the wayside as a differentiator. …or alternatively it’s not The Culture at all. Is live performance the new, ahem, rock star career? In fifty years time all the lawyers and engineers and bankers will be working two jobs for minimum wage. The real high earners will be the ones who can deliver live, unassisted art that showcases their skills with instruments and their voice. Those who are truly passionate about the law will only be able to pursue it as a barely-living-wage hobby while being advised to “not give up the night job” — their main, stable source of income — as a cabaret singer. They might be a journalist or a programmer in their twenties for fun before economics forces them to settle down and get a real, stable job: starting a rock band.

retransmitfrom 2y ago
The Culture is about a post-capitalist utopia. You’re describing yet another cyberpunk-esque world where people have still have to do wage-labor to not starve.
- gorgoiler 2y ago
  You’re right so I made a slight edit to separate my two ideas. Thanks for even reading them at all! I try to contribute positively to this site when I can, and riffing on the overlap between fiction and real-life — a la Doctorow — seems like a good way to be curious.
comrade1234 2y ago
Naah… in the culture you could change your sex at will, something soon to be illegal.
idiotsecant 2y ago
The culture presents such a tempting world view for the type of people who populate HN. I've transitioned from strongly actually believing that such a thing was possible to strongly believing that we will destroy ourselves with AI long before we get there. I don't even think it'll be from terminators and nuclear wars and that sort of thing. I think it will come wrapped in a hyper-specific personalized emotional intelligence, tuned to find the chinks in our memetic firewalls just so. It'll sell us supplements and personalized media and politicians and we'll feel enormously emotionally satisfied the whole time.
- OhioMan2943 2y ago
  That's why it's so important to reduce all of your personal data points online. Imagine what they can reconstruct based on their modeling and comparing you to similar users. I have 60 years of involuntary data collection ahead of me. This is not going to be fun.
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    Yes, full agree. I also think there is a future in personal memetic firewalls that will filter ideas before they hit our wetware and filter our tics and habits that uniquely identify us on the way out. Such a firewall would need to be much smarter than we are, but not necessarily as smart as the smartest ai trying to 'attack'. It would have perfect knowledge of its user, and as such possess information assymetry.
- mrandish 2y ago
  Brings to mind the title of a Roger Waters album: "Amused to Death" Great title and an even better album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amused_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amused_to_Death
  - latexr 2y ago
    First a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
- overfeed 2y ago
  > It'll sell us supplements and personalized media and politicians and we'll feel enormously emotionally satisfied the whole time. Which is why we'll need to acquire the drug gland technology before AGI - no mind can sell me anything if I can feel content on demand.
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    Alternatively they can sell you anything if they can make you feel content or euphoric on their command. Get your new drug gland today, free of charge, sponsored by Blackrock
Nursie 2y ago
> The real high earners will be the ones who can deliver live, unassisted art that showcases their skills with instruments and their voice. We already have so many of those that it’s very hard to make any sort of living at it. Very hard to see a world in which more people go into that market and can earn a living as anything other than a fantasy. Cynically - I think we'd probably end up with more influencers, people who are young, good looking and/or charismatic enough to hold the attention of other people for long enough to sell them something.
ur-whale 2y ago
> Those who are truly passionate about the law will only be able to pursue it as a barely-living-wage hobby while being advised to “not give up the night job” — their main, stable source of income — as a cabaret singer. They might be a journalist or a programmer in their twenties for fun before economics forces them to settle down and get a real, stable job: starting a rock band. Controversial stance probably, but this very much sounds like a world I'd love to live in.

retransmitfrom 2y ago

The Culture is about a post-capitalist utopia. You’re describing yet another cyberpunk-esque world where people have still have to do wage-labor to not starve.

gorgoiler 2y ago
You’re right so I made a slight edit to separate my two ideas. Thanks for even reading them at all! I try to contribute positively to this site when I can, and riffing on the overlap between fiction and real-life — a la Doctorow — seems like a good way to be curious.

comrade1234 2y ago

Naah… in the culture you could change your sex at will, something soon to be illegal.

idiotsecant 2y ago

The culture presents such a tempting world view for the type of people who populate HN. I've transitioned from strongly actually believing that such a thing was possible to strongly believing that we will destroy ourselves with AI long before we get there. I don't even think it'll be from terminators and nuclear wars and that sort of thing. I think it will come wrapped in a hyper-specific personalized emotional intelligence, tuned to find the chinks in our memetic firewalls just so. It'll sell us supplements and personalized media and politicians and we'll feel enormously emotionally satisfied the whole time.

OhioMan2943 2y ago
That's why it's so important to reduce all of your personal data points online. Imagine what they can reconstruct based on their modeling and comparing you to similar users. I have 60 years of involuntary data collection ahead of me. This is not going to be fun.
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  Yes, full agree. I also think there is a future in personal memetic firewalls that will filter ideas before they hit our wetware and filter our tics and habits that uniquely identify us on the way out. Such a firewall would need to be much smarter than we are, but not necessarily as smart as the smartest ai trying to 'attack'. It would have perfect knowledge of its user, and as such possess information assymetry.
mrandish 2y ago
Brings to mind the title of a Roger Waters album: "Amused to Death" Great title and an even better album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amused_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amused_to_Death
- latexr 2y ago
  First a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
overfeed 2y ago
> It'll sell us supplements and personalized media and politicians and we'll feel enormously emotionally satisfied the whole time. Which is why we'll need to acquire the drug gland technology before AGI - no mind can sell me anything if I can feel content on demand.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Alternatively they can sell you anything if they can make you feel content or euphoric on their command. Get your new drug gland today, free of charge, sponsored by Blackrock

Nursie 2y ago

> The real high earners will be the ones who can deliver live, unassisted art that showcases their skills with instruments and their voice. We already have so many of those that it’s very hard to make any sort of living at it. Very hard to see a world in which more people go into that market and can earn a living as anything other than a fantasy. Cynically - I think we'd probably end up with more influencers, people who are young, good looking and/or charismatic enough to hold the attention of other people for long enough to sell them something.

ur-whale 2y ago

> Those who are truly passionate about the law will only be able to pursue it as a barely-living-wage hobby while being advised to “not give up the night job” — their main, stable source of income — as a cabaret singer. They might be a journalist or a programmer in their twenties for fun before economics forces them to settle down and get a real, stable job: starting a rock band. Controversial stance probably, but this very much sounds like a world I'd love to live in.