171–180 of 452 posts
It destroyed the average Joe's faith in the average Joe. Now, people are more separated than ever, in their echo chambers, hating each other and firmly believing they are better and righter than the other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I typically avoid the streisand effect by not reacting when something has attention, and then subsequently removing all references to it months later. Nobody important/loud enough notices.
My strategy is to never do anything noteworthy.
Hasn't been the reality for me. I would prefer to be behind the scenes but that's not whats always been the case. I like the financial outcome though.
Without ending up on an FBI watchlist, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Sales and "Uncle Ted" were on the right track about technology inevitably leading toward psychic isolation and environmental devastation, that corporations are finding ways to turn each human interaction into a commodity, that we're well beyond carrying capacity for the planet and have likely screwed up the ecology for the next mill…
He may have lost his bet, but maybe he came close. 2020 was the closest I’ve come to feeling that society was collapsing.
The problems of 2020 weren't rooted in tech, however.
Can people be super dependent on a financial system if it weren't digital?
Even government—people had more freedom under a low-tech monarchy than a high-tech democracy. Can't enforce too many laws when law enforcement doesn't have vehicles or phones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't get people I am close with to even consider engaging in conversations about firmly held beliefs they have if I even remotely present myself as possibly holding a different opinion.
Same. I want to start a club of people like us. At a library with a coffee shop and bar included. Bunch of us philosophical peeps chillin and talking shit but nobody gets mad. I would love such a paradise.
edit: Probably better after Covid.
He may have lost his bet, but maybe he came close. 2020 was the closest I’ve come to feeling that society was collapsing.
The only way I could fathom "society collapsing" is if I felt the interactions you see on the internet were an accurate reflection of society at large. It's not - not even close.
Regarding the first paragraphs where luddism is mentioned several times; Lord Byron, father to Ada Lovelace the first programmer, was one of the few on the House of Lords to defend the Luddites: > But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime of poverty; men, who had been nefariously gui…
Babbage was the first programmer seeing as he invented the first computer.
Lovelace is a perfect mirror for our society: a vapid socialite with shallow understanding of the problems and a willingness to make grandiose claims without the ability to back them up. That she is a woman just makes it even more blatant that we care nothing for ability as long as it makes for a good story.
In short: if you are the type of person to think she had anything important to add to computer science you are the type of person to think Steve Jobs was anything but a snake oil salesman with a decent understanding of typography.