Actually Brave New World was a utopia, not dystopia. Many confuse it with 1984. Every need of the common people was met and their happiness was catered for. And those who were unusually independent, intellectually curious, creative or couldn’t fit in were “exiled”, to a place with their equals, where their were free to continue their studies, art, etc. Imagine a world where the MAGAs are happy and content instead of…
What? Brave New World is Huxley’s famous dystopian novel. Like many dystopian novels it is presented as a utopia to begin with that unravels to expose it’s horrors as the plot unfolds. He did write a utopian book called Island.
What are the dystopian parts then? You didn’t explain..?
Well in the Industrial Revolution, the no-longer-necessary skilled craftsman became miserable, poorly paid cogs in service of their new automatic controllers. So a lot of us have that to look forward to. Personally, I’ve switched back to the track I was on in my twenties: I spent the day doing moderately interesting work in a skilled trade, periodically having to haul 80lb-90lb steel machine parts up two flights of s…
With all due respect, you seem rather cynical and upset for someone who made it past "the first week of a years-long trade apprenticeship".
In general, as a person? Not at all. When discussing the tech industry that employed me for almost two decades, in total? You’re definitely not wrong. Especially after graduating from art school in 2024 to career change into technical artistry, seeing the very real damage generative AI was doing to people trying to enter the creative fields, and seeing the tech scene responses range from incredibly smug to outright jubilant. Suddenly HN and every other technical forum was full of overnight armchair philosophers making sweeping statements about art, artists, commercial art, and who deserved to be paid for art. (Coincidentally, since the tech job market slowed way down, far fewer tech people here seem so smug about people losing their careers to automation!) The prospect of sweeping tech industry job market disruptions used to make me feel bad, but I can’t really muster that up anymore. So yeah, sure. Despite it being a huge part of my life for a very long time, I’m pretty solidly in the “fuck the modern tech industry” camp right now, and I think it’s a pretty rational response.
What? Brave New World is Huxley’s famous dystopian novel. Like many dystopian novels it is presented as a utopia to begin with that unravels to expose it’s horrors as the plot unfolds. He did write a utopian book called Island.
What are the dystopian parts then? You didn’t explain..?
I don't see NFTs (for example) as a valid product, it was always a scam. Always based on speculative gambling with no actual value to anyone underpinning it. And because of that, the whole "crime having a positive social outcome" doesn't work for me - doing crime to keep a scam going is not positive.
>I don't see NFTs (for example) as a valid product, it was always a scam. Always based on speculative gambling with no actual value to anyone underpinning it. NFT is a protocol. Its technology. It shouldn't be a product, it should enable products. If NFT's were ever going to become widely used, they wouldnt be described as NFTs. Its like going around selling TCP/IPs to someone. Cryptokitties remains its most proven u…
"In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is"
In theory you can use NFTs to make a valid product. In practice, it was part of the cryptocurrency culture who are locked into speculative gambling and so it was never going to be used for anything but that.