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Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

cnn.com

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Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#31

Post by squidbeak »

pessimizer wrote: post #28
adamwong246 wrote: post #3

I still think the internet could undergo a "collapse" and rapidly shrink to something resembling the 2000's internet. The enshitification of everything is quite literally, "mining out" the value of the internet, hollowing everything from below. At some point, nothing is believable and putting your "content" online amounts to giving it away. Eventually, the users _will_ walk away and suddenly the whole affair falls ap…

The 2000s internet was way bigger than the 2026 internet. Every google search pulls up the same 50 sites now, and the first page will be split between just two sites, as if I needed 6 slightly different Amazon links about a book I was googling. In the 2000s you could literally use google to scrape for open camera feeds; it was just internet-grep. Random people had extensive pages about their random hobbies. The actua…

> The 2000s internet was way bigger than the 2026 internet. Every google search pulls up the same 50 sites now ...

Poorer discoverability through search doesn't mean the internet is smaller.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#32

Post by cornonthecobra »

I think it's more that AI is the final straw for many. Social media exhaustion. Everything needing an account or (worse) subscription. The stupidity of smart devices/appliances. Software and media not being ownable anymore. Constant data breeches.

Chatbots are just the latest in a long line of everything digital being little more than a rent-seeking, ad-riddled, privacy-invading scam.

The work required to protect yourself from it all is an arms race, and LLMs only dialed up the cost.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#33

Post by OptionOfT »

For the, the difference, and why I'm really disgusted by AI is that the sole reason there is so much money being dumped in it, not because it'll create a service that the common people will like, but for the dream of CEOs to be able to lay off many people.

I think if AI succeeds in this way, it's going to be extremely bad.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#36

Post by nospice »

nphardon wrote: post #7

This seems ubiquitous (in baby steps) in my social circles. I think there's a big difference between general ai (LLMs) and the troubling implementations of ai like flock, and other surveillance implementations, spotify and their distortion of music, and their investment into ai military drone tech, etc. and how wrapped up politics has become in everything. Its a bad time to have a browser in your pocket.

> I think there's a big difference between general ai (LLMs) and the troubling implementations of ai like flock ... spotify and their distortion of music ...

I'm curious about the distinction you're making here. If we accept mainstream uses of LLMs, such as writing online content or generating images, why is music different?

As for the surveillance stuff, outside some geek bubbles, it's really not something that people care about. The prevailing narrative is that crime is getting worse and when the push comes to shove, most residents want more policing, more license plate readers, etc.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#37

Post by falcor84 »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #35

I know language evolves over time, but I can’t help but be irritated when people refer to anything non-computerized as analog. If it isn’t representing something with a continuously various signal then it ain’t analog!

Also - Analog Computing [0] seems like it could be particularly well-suited for AI, e.g. by leveraging optics [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09430-z

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#38

Post by tayo42 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #30
sph wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not gonna collapse. It can only grow bigger; the entire world economy runs and depends on the internet. Rather, what will happen is a bunch of us will willingly stop participating and stepping away from the technological singularity. A bit like the Amish, this time not for religious reasons. Let the urbanites enjoy their AI-generated virtual realities, with work, sex, and food from the comfort of your phone, com…

> I just want to live on a farm > with solar panels, grow tomatoes > and write code for fun. Back in 2000 I cudda made a song outta that, recorded it to mp3, and uploaded it to Napster. 25 years later? aren't many places to upload naked audio to.

There's sound cloud, band camp, any video host like YouTube or vimeo.

You can seed a torrent and put it on w/e pirate site is cool right now.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#39

Post by falcor84 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #30
sph wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not gonna collapse. It can only grow bigger; the entire world economy runs and depends on the internet. Rather, what will happen is a bunch of us will willingly stop participating and stepping away from the technological singularity. A bit like the Amish, this time not for religious reasons. Let the urbanites enjoy their AI-generated virtual realities, with work, sex, and food from the comfort of your phone, com…

> I just want to live on a farm > with solar panels, grow tomatoes > and write code for fun. Back in 2000 I cudda made a song outta that, recorded it to mp3, and uploaded it to Napster. 25 years later? aren't many places to upload naked audio to.

You can still share via torrents, but Soundcloud seems to be the main place, as it has been for almost 20 years now.

On a separate note, I must say that starting to read your comment, I was sure it'll be going towards "Back in 2000 I cudda made a song outta that... Now, in 2025, I just use suno"

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#40

Post by tim333 »

adamwong246 wrote: post #3

I still think the internet could undergo a "collapse" and rapidly shrink to something resembling the 2000's internet. The enshitification of everything is quite literally, "mining out" the value of the internet, hollowing everything from below. At some point, nothing is believable and putting your "content" online amounts to giving it away. Eventually, the users _will_ walk away and suddenly the whole affair falls ap…

I think rather than collapse it may get filtered down more. I've already got ad blockers and some similar stuff like fbpurity which removes the sponsored nonsense from facebook. LLM type AI might help there by filtering down to things you are interested in and connecting with real friends rather than the junk that commercial algos push at you.
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