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This is not the future

blog.mathieui.net

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Re: This is not the future

#51

Post by titzer »

cons0le wrote: post #27

>Your computer changing where things are on every update is not inevitable. This a million times. I honestly hate interacting with all software and 90% of the internet now. I don't care about your "U""X" front end garbage. I highly prefer text based sites like this

It's been driving me nuts for at least a decade. I can't remember which MacOS update it was, but when they reorganized the settings to better align with iOS, it absolutely infuriated me. Nothing will hit my thunder button like taking my skills and knowledge away. I thought I might swear off Mac forever. I've been avoiding upgrading from 13 now. In the past couple of updates, the settings for displays is completely different for no reason. That's a dialog that one doesn't use very often, except for example, when giving a presentation. It's pretty jarring to plug in on stage in front of dozens or even hundreds of people and suddenly you have to figure out a completely unfamiliar and unintuitive way of setting up mirroring.

I blame GUIs. They disempower users and put them at mercy of UX "experts" who just rearrange the deck chairs when they get bored and then tell themselves how important they are.

https://suno.com/song/797be726-c1b5-4a85-b14a-d67363cd90e9

Re: This is not the future

#52

Post by ang_cire »

Inevitability just means that something WILL happen, and many of those items are absolutely inevitable:

AI exists -> vacation photos exist -> it's inevitable that someone was eventually going to use AI to enhance their vacation photos.

As one of those niche power users who runs servers at home to be beholden to fewer tech companies, I still understand that most people would choose Netflix over a free jellyfin server they have to administer.

> Not being in control of course makes people endlessy frustrated

I regret to inform you, OP, that this is not true. It's true for exactly the kind of tech people like us who are already doing this stuff, because it's why we do it. Your assumption that people who don't just "gave up", as opposed to actively choosing not to spend their time on managing their own tech environment, is I think biased by your predilection for technology.

I wholeheartedly share OP's dislike of techno-capitalism(derogatory), but OP's list is a mishmash of

1) technologies, which are almost never intrinsically bad, and 2) business choices, which usually are.

An Internet-connected bed isn't intrinsically bad; you could set one up yourself to track your sleep statistics that pushes the data to a server you control.

It's the companies and their choices to foist that technology on people in harmful ways that makes it bad.

This is the gripe I have with anti-AI absolutists: you can train AI models on data you own, to benefit your and other communities. And people are!

But companies are misusing the technology in service of the profit motive, at the expense of others whose data they're (sometimes even illegally) ingesting.

Place the blame in the appropriate place. Something something, hammers don't kill people.

Re: This is not the future

#54

Post by actionfromafar »

ekianjo wrote: post #47
yunohn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AR/VR definitely turns off a lot of people, me included. Further it is seen as anti-social and unnecessary to many. I think the lackluster sales prove the “not inevitable” point.

Why single out the Apple Vision Pro and not the Meta Quest?

Don't know, but, several times now, a product category was not universal until Apple "invented" it. Haha, only serious.

Re: This is not the future

#55

Post by jjice »

tolerance wrote: post #16

This is high quality blog post! I’m all for a good argument that appears to challenge the notion of technological determinism. > Every choice is both a political statement and a tradeoff based on the energy we can spend on the consequences of that choice. Frequently I’ve been opposed to this sort of sentiment. Maybe it’s me, the author’s argument, or a combination of both, but I’m beginning to better understand how t…

I really don't like the "everything is political" sentiment. Sure, lots of things are or can be, but whenever I see this idea, it usually comes from people who have a very specific mindset that's leaning further in one direction on a political spectrum and is pushing their ideology.

To clarify, I don't think pushing an ideology you believe in by posting a blog post is a bad thing. That's your right! I just think I have to read posts that feel like they have a very strong message with more caution. Maybe they have a strong message because they have a very good point - that's very possible! But often times, I see people using this as a way to say "if you're not with me, you're against me".

My problem here is that this idea that "everything is political" leaves no room for a middle ground. Is my choice to write some boiler plate code using gen AI truly political? Is it political because of power usage and ongoing investment in gen AI?

All that to say, maybe I'm totally wrong, I don't know. I'm open to an argument against mine, because there's a very good chance I'm missing the point.

Re: This is not the future

#56

Post by jasonshen »

delichon wrote: post #30
gwbas1c wrote: post #19

I do think AI involvement in programming is inevitable; but at this time a lot of the resistance is because AI programming currently is not the best tool for many jobs. To better the analogy: I have a wood stove in my living room, and when it's exceptionally cold, I enjoy using it. I don't "enjoy" stacking wood in the fall, but I'm a lazy nerd, so I appreciate the exercise. That being said, my house has central heati…

For you it's "purely for pleasure," for me it's for money, health and fire protection. I heat my home with my wood stove to bypass about $1,500/year in propane costs, to get exercise (and pleasure) out of cutting and splitting the wood, and to reduce the fuel load around my home. If those reasons went away I'd stop. That's a good metaphor for the rapid growth of AI. It is driven by real needs from multiple directions…

You may be saving money but wood smoke is very much harmful to your lungs and heart according to the American Lung and American Heart Associations + the EPA. There's a good reason why we've adopted modern heating technologies. They may have other problems but particulate pollution is not one of them.

> For people with underlying heart disease, a 2017 study in the journal Environmental Research linked increased particulate air pollution from wood smoke and other sources to inflammation and clotting, which can predict heart attacks and other heart problems.

> A 2013 study in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found exposure to wood smoke causes the arteries to become stiffer, which raises the risk of dangerous cardiac events. For pregnant women, a 2019 study in Environmental Research connected wood smoke exposure to a higher risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, which include preeclampsia and gestational high blood pressure.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/12/13/lovely-but-dangerou...

Re: This is not the future

#57

Post by yawpitch »

ansc wrote: post #39

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but I disagree a whole lot. The whole problem is that is it inevitable. Technology is an enormous organism. It does not care about the ethical or moral considerations of it. It's a tug-of-war who can use most technique to succeed -- if you do not use it, you fall behind. Individuals absolutely can not shape the future of technology. States can attempt, but as they make use of technology f…

> Technology is a living organism.

Oh my, the shear number of philosophers, biologists, ethicists, and, for that matter, bacterium rotating in their graves.

Life might be a technology… many technologies are not only not-living, they’re mutually contradictory with life.

Re: This is not the future

#58

Post by nostrademons »

croes wrote: post #31
lekevicius wrote: post #28

I do disagree that some of these were not inevitable. Let me deconstruct a couple: > Tiktok is not inevitable. TikTok the app and company, not inevitable. Short form video as the medium, and algorithm that samples entire catalog (vs just followers) were inevitable. Short form video follows gradual escalation of most engaging content formats, with legacy stretching from short-form-text in Twitter, short-form-photo in…

> Short form video as the medium, and algorithm that samples entire catalog (vs just followers) were inevitable. I doubt that. There is a reason the videos get longer again. So people could have ignored the short form from the beginning. And wasn’t the matching algorithm the teal killer feature that amazed people, not the length of the videos?

I've got a hypothesis that the reason short-form video like TikTok became dominant is because of the decline in reading instruction (eg. usage of whole-word instruction over phonics) that started in 1998-2000. The timing largely lines up: the rise of video content started around 2013, just as these kids were entering their teenage years. Media has significant economies of scale and network effects (i.e. it is much more profitable to target the lowest common denominator than any niche group), and so if you get a large number of teenagers who have difficulty with reading, media will adjust to provide them content that they can consume effortlessly.

Anecdotally, I hear lots of people talking about the short attention span of Zoomers and Gen Alpha (which they define as 2012+; I'd actually shift the generation boundary to 2017+ for the reasons I'm about to mention). I don't see that with my kid's 2nd-grade classmates: many of them walk around with their nose in a book and will finish whole novels. They're the first class after phonics was reintroduced in the 2023-2024 kindergarten year; every single kid knew how to read by the end of kindergarten. Basic fluency in skills like reading and math matters.

Re: This is not the future

#59

Post by pjc50 »

tolerance wrote: post #16

This is high quality blog post! I’m all for a good argument that appears to challenge the notion of technological determinism. > Every choice is both a political statement and a tradeoff based on the energy we can spend on the consequences of that choice. Frequently I’ve been opposed to this sort of sentiment. Maybe it’s me, the author’s argument, or a combination of both, but I’m beginning to better understand how t…

> Every choice is both a political statement

I think this is a variant of "every action is normative of itself". Using AI states that use of AI is normal and acceptable. In the same way that for any X doing X states that X is normal and acceptable - even if accompanied by a counterstatement that this is an exception and should not set a precedent.

Re: This is not the future

#60

Post by iterance »

voxleone wrote: post #50

The author says>> "Not being in control of course makes people endlessy frustrated, but at the same time trying to wrestle control from the parasites is an uphill battle that they expect to lose, with more frustration as a result." While this reaction is understandable, it is difficult to feel sympathy when so few people are willing to invest the time and effort required to actually understand how these systems work…

The fact is, most of the systems people use in their day do day that behave the way described simply require no mastery whatsoever. If your product, service, or device is locked behind learning a new skill, any skill, that will inherently limit the possible size of the audience. Far more than most realize. We can rail against this reality, but it is unforgiving. The average person who is struggling to put food on the table only has so many hours in the week to spare to stick it to the man by learning a new operating system.
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