I’ve just been reading about how in the future, AI will allow us to speak with animals, and people will be able to communicate telepathically and live in their own VR worlds. (etc., etc.)
Man, this isn’t a world I want to live in. I’m so tired of the constant paradigm shifting that you have to put your brain through with each innovation. I wish technology just stayed frozen in the 1980s – there would be so much less uncertainty in my life and I could just focus on being a human.
Innovation keeps being forced on you and I just feel tired. >!And I’m only just in my 20s!< Is this ok? Is this valid? When resisting it is a loser’s game…
Isnt this the premise of the matrix? Tech plateaued in 1999 and went downhill from there
The bicycle might have been a good place for us to stop.
First thing you gotta do is tune that bullshit out. None of the fantastical things materialize like that. Its always layers of technology that births miracles.
It would probably seem less daunting if we knew that these great technological innovations couldn’t be controlled and hoarded by a small group, but were instead widely available for the public to use on equal ground. And further, if we would all equally share in the efficiency benefits, rather than just a small group.
Like, if my boss told me half my job was being automated by ai, but I’d still get the same salary and only have to work 2.5 days per week, I certainly wouldn’t complain.
Time to flip on Analog Man by Joe Walsh https://youtu.be/6YkAnv8inQE
Change is hard, but necessary.
I would agree change is hard. And I believe change is inevitable. But is all of it really necessary?
We are self-aware beings that can evaluate what technology has done and is going to do to individuals and society at large. Metrics for attention span, reading comprehension, social connection, and many more things are trending in damgerous directions already. Some change is not necessary and is objectively doing more harm than good.
I’ll keep it short, you got a lot of replies already. A lot of the tech is actually quite valuable and a lot of the promises of people like Elon Musk are, for lack of a better term, nearly complete horseshit.
What I’m personally exhausted by is how we’re doing all this and yet we can’t seem to bring ourselves to use it to help anyone. It isn’t the tech or the pace of development rather it’s the fact that we’ll triple someone’s productivity while keeping a five-day work-week with eight-hour days despite a mountain of studies and real-world examples showing how that’s not beneficial for anyone. So much of the development is going towards making the worst people more money and I fucking hate it so much.
we can’t seem to bring ourselves to use it to help anyone
Well, that’s not true. Thanks to CRISPR, we’ve been making huge leaps in medicine. Solar panels are getting better and cheaper. Battery development is advancing at a rapid pace. Satellite internet now enables wireless communication anywhere in the world. And LLMs provide lonely people with someone to talk to, anytime and anywhere.
There are countless of other examples like this. It’s not that none of this technology is used for good. We just seem to be addicted at focusing on all the negatives.
Which is part of why I brought up that it’s valuable as a lot of people here seem to have decided that it’s not. My main sentiment is that we hold it from a lot of people, and instead of going Star Trek future we’re careening towards Cyberpunk 2077 and there are morons who are genuinely excited about that.
Somebody once said that “dystopia is just taking current third world/minority situations and applying it to white people”. I’m bringing it up now because so much of the world currently lives without a lot of that technology simply because using it isn’t immediately profitable. Most* white people do have greater access to newer innovations and discoveries.
(The LLM advancement is that we’re getting closer to being able to use plain language to interface with technology but yea, sure, a couple lonely people can do that I guess and we’ll pretend that it doesn’t land in the dystopia category).
The irony is the use of technology to ask the question. Your level of tech use and engagement is a personal choice. You can minimise or stop anytime. Most choose to minimise, I’d suspect because some innovations are quite useful.
Also, in an existence where the only constant is change, where every moment and conscious perspective is uniquely different and where novel complexity only increases, it would be wise to cultivate patience and a neutral perspective on change.
Normal? I don’t know. Do I share the sentiment? Definitely.
ITT: people hating on capitalism and its grip on technology.
The future is tied to big companies and subscribing to thier services. I would love to get a smart watch for my health checks. I love the circle to search from anywhere on your phone screen (samasung phones). I would love to try those ray bans AR glasses. But I will almost never get to use them because that means signing my data away to make big companies bigger.
Just as a random side note, circle to search is an aosp/Google feature, rolling out to more and more devices :)
Most of the tech in my house is at a minimum 3 years old. It all still works just fine, I don’t need new tech.
My phone? 3 years old.
My laptop? Probably 6 years old.
My television? At least 13 years old. HD too. Doesn’t even have the smart TV features that are usually way too slow anyway.
My fridge? Probably older than my sister.
My other computer? As old as the telly. I might need to go fix it since it basically stopped working, and maybe upgrade some components, at least it’s future-proof for as long as it runs a currently up to date supported operating system. Hey, I might put Arch on that, btw.
My microwave? Duh, my whole life, I’ve only had three. And the latest one is 9 years old.
Our current microwave came used with the house we bought 10 years ago!
Nice.
I think technology’s great, but the way people have chosen to use it is occasionally awful.
This is more in line with how I feel. Tech is great, but tech bros not so much…
The technology we create takes the form of the incentives that drive its’ creation. If we create technology for the exploitation of others we shouldn’t be surprised that people use it for the exploitation of others.
Animals use a lot of body language. So, if AI could lift your tail to “speak” cat, i would finally get impressed by AI.
Technology moving forward doesn’t mean you have to move with it. In fact, there’s an advantage in realizing when something is good enough and that you don’t need a better version. Smartphones, for example, haven’t added a single feature I need since around 2016. In many ways, they’ve even regressed, using more fragile materials for aesthetics and removing useful features like the headphone jack. Back then, I needed to invest in flagship models to get something I liked, but now the flagship models are overkill for what I need, so I can just go with a mid-range device instead.
The same applies to cars. My truck is from 2007 and has every feature I need, without the ones I don’t. I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. I can just keep replacing broken parts for a fraction of the cost it would take to do the same on a newer model.
