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Leaving the Physical World

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Re: Leaving the Physical World

#51

Post by homebrewer »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #15
jdw64 wrote: post #3

Reading this essay brought tears to my eyes. To me, the physical world is a realm permitted only to those with wealth. The author beautifully romanticizes the evaporation of tangible labor, but the physical labor I actually experienced meant unpaid, stolen wages. It meant working through the night, dozing off on the early morning subway until the very last stop, and enduring endless contempt, humiliation, and the tox…

> Especially with the advent of AI, it feels like the time I had left to learn and actually build something has run out. Why? Just go build stuff! AI makes an excellent tutor assuming you can exhibit a bit of self awareness and ask directed questions. > yet the seats are strictly limited. Why do you say that? > But I do not possess the skills that the people inside that castle desire and admire. I appreciate the seem…

In poor countries like mine (and looks like GP's too), IT positions are very limited indeed. Nevertheless, it has been one of the very few sectors open to nobodies, helping us to pull ourselves out of poverty, open to those who weren't born to the right family with the right connections, or to a sugar daddy who can cover the first 25 years of our lives to go get a good education in Europe or the US.

Looks like it's being slowly taken away from us to make a few billionaires into proper trillionaires. Can't see this ending well for humanity.

And the common advice you hear on this site ("just migrate to country X") doesn't really apply to most of us. Even if you can name many examples of people doing just that, you're seeing a very narrow slice of the population; I can find many more counterexamples for each one of them.

Your weak passport won't impress anybody, almost all of the world is closed to you, you can't travel anywhere (forget migrate) without going through a lengthy and expensive process where you're treated with suspicion, and can be denied with no compensation, on every step of the way. I'm still talking about traveling here; finding work is much more difficult.

So it's really hard to move anywhere decent if you're not at the top of your profession, which in large part depends on your innate abilities, not just how many hours you put in.

I've become jaded and extremely cynical; if worst comes to worst, there's always one universal way out, which is what keeps me going for now.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#52

Post by the_arun »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #37
jdw64 wrote: post #3

Reading this essay brought tears to my eyes. To me, the physical world is a realm permitted only to those with wealth. The author beautifully romanticizes the evaporation of tangible labor, but the physical labor I actually experienced meant unpaid, stolen wages. It meant working through the night, dozing off on the early morning subway until the very last stop, and enduring endless contempt, humiliation, and the tox…

I think Barlow, like all counter culturalists or hippies, was first and foremost a romantic. Him entering the new information age only after leaving his farm in -87 is quite apocryphal - dude hanged out at Warhol’s Factory and wrote songs for Grateful Dead for crying out loud. He is cleverly using the romantic image of Wild West and the Cowboy criticising its commercialisation while at the same time claiming its auth…

Good writing! Thanks

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#53

Post by ynac »

Anyone see a link to the audio / video, or better transcription? The text seems to have been transcribed and the typos / mistakes are splitting the intended meanings of things. Some of which seem to be causing misunderstandings in here. (Dialup for the day here, or I'd do it myself)

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#54

Post by layer8 »

cb321 wrote: post #36
layer8 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several bibliographic references put the article to 1993 or 1992. The Soviet coup quote would confirm 1992. There was more than one HyperNetwork Conference in Oita, the first one was in 1990. Maybe it was annual or biannual.

I am unfamiliar with the history of the piece. Many things are possible. He may have "mostly wrote" it in 1992 and then "polished it" for a 1994 Oita conference, but was somewhat sloppy in internally updating everything date-dependent like the coup part. People also can be very flowery/metaphorical about using the word "coup". Not sure if they even have attendee/speaker lists online for those Oita conferences anymore…

I found a source that confirms the 1992 or 1993 date: https://people.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/vcbook7.html

“Two years later [after the first conference in 1990], I was invited back, along with John Barlow […].” “[…] which explains why I was invited to Oita in 1990, and why Barlow, Johansen, and Johnson-Lenz were invited to join me there in 1993.”

While 1992 vs. 1993 is still ambiguous (either 1993 is a typo, or the invitation was two-and-something years later), the text confirms that there was a second HyperNetwork conference in Oita in either 1992 or 1993, and that Barlow was invited to it.

EDIT: Another source: https://www.eff.org/pages/complete-acm-columns-collection

“Will Japan Jack In? For the October, 1992 Electronic Frontier column in Communications of the ACM by John Perry Barlow […] At a conference on globally networked computing in Oita Prefecture in February, I was astonished to hear a number of Japanese corporate officials […] proclaim enthusiastically the potential of the "Hypernetwork"[…].”

This would imply that there was a Hypernetwork-related conference in Oita in February 1992 that Barlow attended.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#55

Post by AIorNot »

jdw64 wrote: post #20
hattmall wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird take, IMO, the physical world is much more oriented around not being wealthy and you can still find plenty of community online. And your English seems fine. 90s / early 2000s internet was awesome though.

I'm writing this from East Asia, not the US. Over here, there is a suffocating cultural expectation: if you aren't in a specific tier of jobs by a certain age, you are branded a loser. Furthermore, the economy is so heavily centralized that there are very few tech jobs outside of Seoul. I tried to make it there, but after being heavily scammed, I had no choice but to return to my rural hometown. My English is also a…

Good luck man, keep at it.. rooting for you! now that I am in my 50s and being passed over for tech jobs thanks to a bad market, ageism, AI fears etc and I had to build my own career again and dived into the startup world, its not been easy but keep looking at all your options.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#56

Post by cb321 »

layer8 wrote: post #54
cb321 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unfamiliar with the history of the piece. Many things are possible. He may have "mostly wrote" it in 1992 and then "polished it" for a 1994 Oita conference, but was somewhat sloppy in internally updating everything date-dependent like the coup part. People also can be very flowery/metaphorical about using the word "coup". Not sure if they even have attendee/speaker lists online for those Oita conferences anymore…

I found a source that confirms the 1992 or 1993 date: https://people.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/vcbook7.html “Two years later [after the first conference in 1990], I was invited back, along with John Barlow […].” “[…] which explains why I was invited to Oita in 1990, and why Barlow, Johansen, and Johnson-Lenz were invited to join me there in 1993.” While 1992 vs. 1993 is still ambiguous (either 1993 is a typo, or the i…

Ah. Good searching! So, maybe the 800,000 computers was "in DNS but un-pingable IP hosts" (dial-up was a big then then) or maybe included non-IP "networked" hosts or who knows.. Anyway, I agree that your finds make it more likely to be 1992/3 than 1994. Thanks!

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#57

Post by debesyla »

jdw64 wrote: post #22
fc417fc802 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially with the advent of AI, it feels like the time I had left to learn and actually build something has run out. Why? Just go build stuff! AI makes an excellent tutor assuming you can exhibit a bit of self awareness and ask directed questions. > yet the seats are strictly limited. Why do you say that? > But I do not possess the skills that the people inside that castle desire and admire. I appreciate the seem…

Thank you for your encouragement, and I know it's sincere. In a purely technical sense, if you have the resources, AI is an good tutor I'm constantly astonished by it myself. However, the difficult part about what you said is this before AI, even relatively simple tasks carried a certain cost. But with the introduction of AI, that cost has actually gone up. And honestly, what shocked me when I first encountered AI wa…

To be fair, being from a small country can help too. (Hi from Lithuania.) It helps with marketing, because while it's difficult being Worlds Amazon, it's easier and more marketable to be lithuanian version.

Yes, it has downsides too, as economy and people resources work depending on scale - smaller community is going to be smaller - but it's a way to startup and build a base solution, while thinking of something else that may change the rest of the world later.

Of course, yeah, in the end it's just different...

P.S. I'm in same boat technology wise. It's difficult to learn everything, and learn it "on time" :)

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#58

Post by virgildotcodes »

stavros wrote: post #48
virgildotcodes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have missed that they're from the developing world, where menial labor is far less well paid and far more backbreaking and dangerous than in the US.

Korea is hardly the developing world, but they're from not-US, basically, which might as well be the developing world as far as the conversation is concerned.

Hmm, yeah I'm confused, they said "as a citizen of the third world" but then noted working in Korea and Japan.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#59

Post by jdw64 »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #58
stavros wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korea is hardly the developing world, but they're from not-US, basically, which might as well be the developing world as far as the conversation is concerned.

Hmm, yeah I'm confused, they said "as a citizen of the third world" but then noted working in Korea and Japan.

The point that is often misunderstood is this: Korea is a wealthy country, but that wealth is highly concentrated in Seoul. Once you leave Seoul, the quality of jobs often drops significantly.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#60

Post by jdw64 »

debesyla wrote: post #57
jdw64 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your encouragement, and I know it's sincere. In a purely technical sense, if you have the resources, AI is an good tutor I'm constantly astonished by it myself. However, the difficult part about what you said is this before AI, even relatively simple tasks carried a certain cost. But with the introduction of AI, that cost has actually gone up. And honestly, what shocked me when I first encountered AI wa…

To be fair, being from a small country can help too. (Hi from Lithuania.) It helps with marketing, because while it's difficult being Worlds Amazon, it's easier and more marketable to be lithuanian version. Yes, it has downsides too, as economy and people resources work depending on scale - smaller community is going to be smaller - but it's a way to startup and build a base solution, while thinking of something else…

We are both navigating a challenging road. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, my friend.
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