Viewing profile — pdfernhout

I'm hoping that someday more people will appreciate the humor in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those …

A deeper issue from the post-war era and science according to Dr. David Goostein, then vice-provost of Caltech from 1994: https://web.archive.org/web/20240213233731/https://www.its…

Inefficiency all too often is celebrated by our society, as I wrote in 2010: https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html "Also, many current industries that employ l…

"What if the future didn’t end in collapse… but in transformation? 2100 — Beyond the Horizon is a utopian short [ten minute] film presented as a speculative visual timeline, explor…

Some options for dealing with economic dislocation by AI and robotics that I put together about more than a decade ago (which relate to my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st c…

"The artificial intelligence and robotics being developed by multi-billionaires will allow corporate America to wipe out tens of millions of decent-paying jobs, cut labor costs and…

Anxiety is not identical to depression, but consider: "The Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression: Where Is It Going?" https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/02/chemical-imbalance-theo…

Indeed; good point! And how will all that play out? Better communications or more schlock to wade through on the internet? Or both? As a historical analogy, a lot of telephone swit…

What I put together circa 2010 is becoming more and more relevant: https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recover…

"a friendly and kind guy mostly contented with his life" reminds me somewhat of another Irish author, James P. Hogan (who I was lucky enough to meet in person once through Princeto…

We already have that "defeated underclass" courtesy of a century of mainstream schooling (according to NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto): "The Underground History of Ameri…

Retrotopia by John Michael Greer has an aspect similar to different technology levels. Except that in the novel they are essentially taxation zones relating to infrastructure. If y…

The future the USA could have had, sigh: "A brief history of Steve Jobs’ automated factory at NeXT" https://www.cultofmac.com/news/a-brief-history-of-steve-jobs... "Put simply, the…

Good point and links on architecture. I am so grateful to the architecture student who told me about Jane Jacobs around 1990 and opened my eyes to how much urban architecture desig…

Just saw this idea recently -- to add to your list: "Magnetars’ strong flares forge gold and other heavy elements" https://earthsky.org/space/strong-flares-magnetars-forge-hea... "…

Thanks for the example. I agree they look very similar, which is what dsego saw intuitively and commented on. The difference in the two examples is essentially whether things need …

Thanks for the replies. Having to add "proxy" or similar everywhere is the ergonomics issue to me (others might disagree).

Yes, I noticed that similarity too a bit -- from the use of a "HyperScript"-like approach (although Mithril can be used with JSX too). https://mithril.js.org/hyperscript.html Aberd…

As a deeper issue on "justification", here is something I wrote related to this in 2001 on the risks of non-profits engaging in self-dealing when they create artificial scarcity to…

Coincidentally, and as another pre-1.0 fart myself :-) -- one who remembers when Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib / Dream Machines" was still just a wild hope -- I was thinking of someth…

Something I wrote related to this in 2001: "An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society" https://pdfernhout.net/open-lett…

I wrote StoryHarp for creating speech-interactive choose-your-own text adventures back around 1998 (in Delphi for Windows desktop), and ported it to the web about seven years ago (…