My father used to print websites up and put them in a 3-ring binder. Now it seems more prescient than anachronistic.
Ha, I used to do the same back in high school. Never know when a site's going to go down or change without warning.
As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
711–720 of 897 posts
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#712I called this maybe 3y ago, but I think so did everyone else that was sane. Sure, we get immense value from AI, but indiscriminately injecting into everything, the one thing we know to be unreliable above the threshold we used to fire people for, is probably the greatest undoing of all the good companies like Google brought to the internet. I mean what a way to destroy your legacy of democratizing information. The am…
We’re burning the new library of Alexandria on the altar to a new god.
Worse, we're replacing the contents of the library with shit and leaving it standing. Burning it down might be the correct response.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#713I find Brave search is superior to Google, particularly in linking me to more useful references.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
I called it 2001/2002 or whenever they appeared when I tried to explain why personalized search results are the beginning of the end of a shared reality and therefore the ability to reason and act in public, and with others. I bet some still consider it hyperbole. It's just taking in trends and seeing where the glacier moves to, how the cookie will crumble so to speak.
Personalization came along in MMOs around the same time, and it was hard to communicate the difference to people between a persistent MMO zone as a "place" where people and things exist, even if those things are inappropriate for your character or hostile to the point that you can't survive there or too crowded for the intended flow... versus an instanced MMO zone, a little pocket universe for you specifically that h…
Similar impact to non-massive multiplayer online games. Skill based matchmaking destroyed the third place that once existed on public game servers.
I still don't understand the appeal of an online game where you're algorithmically guaranteed a ~50% win rate after a calibration period. Seems to be selling well enough though.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really happy for you. It's disheartening how many people put off or choose not to have kids because they think some combination of climate disaster, famine, overpopulation, war or skynet will ensure a life of misery for their children. There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it.
Those I know don't because of money. Everyone seems to forget that children cost money. You have to feed them food, medical, clothes, life and anything else. I couldn't afford to have a child in this climate at this time. Yourself, has to be prepared to sink all in to. You have a secure job for the next 25 years, it's a big commitment. The world is overpopulated as it is, adopt. But however, if you can afford all of…
Children cost relatively little themselves. What "costs" a lot is the opportunity cost of the mother not working, or paying a salary to someone else to watch your kids.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of this is "accelerating trends." That is, the www was "being killed" already in a lot of ways. "Democratization" and suchlike open ideals had already been receding for a long time. In part, this is because of "democratization" of access. The old web was a self selected, subpopulation. After smartphones, it is the whole population. Facebook's walled garden and other apps using the web as "merely infrast…
If the timeline of things as you present them is taken as accurate, then I would say the www being killed was good, with FB opening up to everyone being the inflection point toward bad. Webrings are nostalgic, but the old web sucked, and there was a dearth of information and fun to be had. I remember getting online and being able to confirm "nope, no new anime content worth looking at today" by quickly checking Usene…
I don't know about anyone else, but anybody who goes into a "1970s library" (I don't know what that is, but I guess it means a good old-fashioned library with like, books) and complains about the lack of 3D printers or that their obscure animated series catalog isn't wide enough would embody the definition of an uninteresting person to me.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#717My father used to print websites up and put them in a 3-ring binder. Now it seems more prescient than anachronistic.
I think the modern day equivalent to this is saving PDFs of webpages you want preserved. I have the feeling that I'm turning into my grandfather every time I do it, but it's proven valuable from time to time.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - previously there was some chance someone reading the ideas on the blog would contact the author to thank them, or ask them to collaborate. When laundered via LLMs whose pretraining destroys all credit, that can't happen.
OK, and there's still some chance, right? I don't understand why you say it can't happen any more.
Search is dead, so they'll never see the blog post in the first place.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#719Already happened: SEO, spam, all conversation moving to closed silos and social platforms.
AI is maybe the last few nails in the coffin but the guy inside was already dead.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
With photos, I could see a cryptographic solution. Of course it would still need some kind of centralized trust, but it's doable if people cared enough. It could be applied by cameras themselves.
> It could be applied by cameras themselves. And equally faked by bots.
If it were generally possible to forge cryptographic signatures we'd have bigger things to worry about than AI generated photos.