I could absolutely see a second wave amish-like society spring up in response to AI and AR. Locking people into the general technological capabilities of 2005. No, or very limited, smart phones....
I could absolutely see a second wave amish-like society spring up in response to AI and AR. Locking people into the general technological capabilities of 2005. No, or very limited, smart phones. No AI. No walking around wearing a VR headset. We've been experimenting with becoming cyborgs in little steps. I'm sure enough people will want to opt out of that to form a society around the idea of abstention.
Right here. I draw the line firmly at direct brain interfaces. AR can live on a screen I can put down and turn off, not semi-permanently wired to my face. Everything that Black Mirror showed will...
Right here. I draw the line firmly at direct brain interfaces. AR can live on a screen I can put down and turn off, not semi-permanently wired to my face.
Everything that Black Mirror showed will come to pass if it hasn't already.
In a sense, I somewhat agree with the mindset of the Amish: Technology should only be used insofar it improves the human experience, not supplants it.
Vanilla WoW is better than retail WoW in part because of its flaws. Something something "never stopped to ask if they should."
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I see so many people singing love songs to modern technology, but the vast majority of technology of the past 100 years haven’t really changed things,...
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I see so many people singing love songs to modern technology, but the vast majority of technology of the past 100 years haven’t really changed things, and those that have are not entirely positive changes. The internet, for instance, has many positives but many negatives as well. In the meanwhile you can watch a movie made 100 years ago and find it just as relatable today. The changes are almost only aesthetic.
Utopia is not built from technology. It’s built from the people who use it.
100 years ago is too wide. 100 years ago most Americans didn't have running water. Air conditioning had just been invented, and was only used in commercial settings. Refrigerators had yet to be...
100 years ago is too wide. 100 years ago most Americans didn't have running water. Air conditioning had just been invented, and was only used in commercial settings. Refrigerators had yet to be commercialized. You can go on and on. Life 100 years ago was not great. If it looks similar on the silver screen, that's because they only showed the parts of life people found intense and invigorating.
Many people also note that many Roman diaries and manuscripts seem shockingly similar to modern life; that's because they only talked about matters important to the rich and powerful.
At most you can make it the last decade or two. The internet age is somewhat unique in that there hasn't been notable productivity gains in that decade, whereas it was practically exponential since the 1800s.
Pardon? They might not have all had public water facilities, but almost all had access to clean freshwater. I've chatted with my wife's grandmothers, whom both grew up in the 1930's. They don't...
100 years ago most Americans didn't have running water. Life 100 years ago was not great.
Pardon? They might not have all had public water facilities, but almost all had access to clean freshwater.
I've chatted with my wife's grandmothers, whom both grew up in the 1930's. They don't deny that the comforts of today are better, but the 1920s/1930s were not some primitive hellscape where everyone was miserable either (economic crash of the 30s aside). They managed fine without refrigeration or air conditioning. They played games with their neighbors instead of watching TV every night.
Heck, the two they consider more important than any you mentioned was the advancements of vaccines and antibiotics.
But like automobiles? It didn't really change the nature of how things are done...we just burn dead dinosaurs instead of riding horses.
Yea thats fair, though the coal for longer....and by those standards Appalacia has always been done dirty. My mom's family liked ice skating on Love Canal in the 50's and 60's because the ice...
Yea thats fair, though the coal for longer....and by those standards Appalacia has always been done dirty.
My mom's family liked ice skating on Love Canal in the 50's and 60's because the ice always had a pretty shimmer to it and it never froze quite as solid as other areas. :(
That's probably the main reason that entire half of the family tree is seeing a lot of cancer.
There is a big, big chasm between "I have access to clean water" and "I have full indoor plumbing with magical poop receptacles that take my waste away somewhere I never have to think about it."
There is a big, big chasm between "I have access to clean water" and "I have full indoor plumbing with magical poop receptacles that take my waste away somewhere I never have to think about it."
Indoor plumbing is one of the single biggest contributors to improved public health in the 20th century, up there with vaccines and antibiotics. Someone whose never known anything better than an...
Indoor plumbing is one of the single biggest contributors to improved public health in the 20th century, up there with vaccines and antibiotics.
Someone whose never known anything better than an outhouse and hauling water between a well and their kitchen every day might not think it's so bad, but they also probably think high infant mortality rates and getting sick all the time are just normal things you have to live with.
You and I are thinking on very different wavelengths. I am thinking about people in terms of happiness, and you are thinking about people in terms of capabilities. Productivity has limited impact...
You and I are thinking on very different wavelengths. I am thinking about people in terms of happiness, and you are thinking about people in terms of capabilities. Productivity has limited impact on happiness.
The thing about technology is that it tends to divide us in the short term. There is a popular internet saying, “the future is here, it just isn’t very evenly distributed.” That divide is a source of very short happiness for those who have it from the novelty but for those who do not have it it can be a source of pain as a reminder of their social standing. I can’t think of a better example than AIDS treatments; we can be happy for Magic Johnson for overcoming AIDS due to his access to cutting-edge treatments but that happiness does not hold a candle to the feeling when you think about the countless number of people who died because they were not so fortunate.
Happiness is relative. We hear a great many more people these days who are suffering from depression what with our riches that were unimaginable 1000 years ago, but at the same time depression was not nearly so widespread then as it is today. Life was certainly harder back then but their lives were not full of despair and they lived at least as happily as people do today. With few exceptions I have never heard a historian ever insert the phrase “keep in mind that everyone was miserable at the time” into their work.
I would argue in some ways, it’s a trade. We have higher rates of depression in exchange for dramatically higher incidence and severity of parasitic infections, deaths caused by easily curable...
I would argue in some ways, it’s a trade. We have higher rates of depression in exchange for dramatically higher incidence and severity of parasitic infections, deaths caused by easily curable disease, and much shorter lifespans.
Is that an objective improvement? Depends on who you ask, but I believe many, even those who suffer depression, would answer with an emphatic “yes”.
There's no such thing as an "entirely positive change" - ALL technological advances have drawbacks. The automobile revolutionized travel... but led to the loss of walkable communities. The camera...
There's no such thing as an "entirely positive change" - ALL technological advances have drawbacks. The automobile revolutionized travel... but led to the loss of walkable communities. The camera allowed us to preserve our most cherished memories... but also led to revenge porn. Electricity brought light and warmth to our homes... but the power plants generating that electricity are destroying our planet. Conversely, cell phones may be addictive... but they allow us to communicate with our loved ones in an instant.
I love Black Mirror, but it's simplistic "PHONE BAD?" messaging has really fucked with the entire 20-40's demographic's opinion on tech.
I don't think Black Mirror is as much "PHONE BAD?" as much as it asks some pertinent questions that prompt the viewer to think about their engagement with technology and how it is impacting their...
I don't think Black Mirror is as much "PHONE BAD?" as much as it asks some pertinent questions that prompt the viewer to think about their engagement with technology and how it is impacting their lives. If more people are turning away from integrating software and hardware solutions into their daily lives and maybe eventually even themselves and their own bodies (at some far flung, or maybe not so far flung future time)...well, that's choice for a person to make for themselves if you ask me.
I don't think "PHONE BAD" but I do think that we're still figuring out the impact of widespread social media and personal device use on a psychological level, and it probably is re-shaping how our brains are wired to some degree. How much of a degree is that? I dunno, I'm not a professional sociologist or a psychologist so my input is just spurious data and personal opinion on my part.
If we're still figuring all this out now, I can see why someone would be hesitant to fully embrace whatever the newest thing is without a bit of scrutiny. I think it's smarter to be suspicious than to just embrace something just because it promises to do something better than whatever it is replacing.
What a wild statement. Before the internet if I was curious about something I’d write it down in a notebook and then, eventually, when I found myself in a library I’d maybe be able to find a...
The changes are almost only aesthetic.
What a wild statement. Before the internet if I was curious about something I’d write it down in a notebook and then, eventually, when I found myself in a library I’d maybe be able to find a reference book about it. And even then it would provide the most cursory overview or be a single paragraph encyclopedia entry.
With the internet I can google and find step-by-step instructions, with video, on how to do basically anything. You can’t imagine the impact this has had on disseminating knowledge about a whole variety of crafts and skills.
A smartphone doesn't really provide that much more utility than the old Motorola Razer 3, at least in terms of what you genuinely need a mobile communication device to do. Ability to call...
A smartphone doesn't really provide that much more utility than the old Motorola Razer 3, at least in terms of what you genuinely need a mobile communication device to do.
Ability to call emergency services if dying? Check.
Can send a text if you're running late? Check.
Can take a quick picture to send to somebody else? Check.
Can do a quick google search? Check.
Play MP3s? Check
And that thing had like 3 days of battery life with heavy usage, almost a week with light usage. Also much easier to carry and much more durable. It's taken almost 20 years of battery advancement to get smartphones up to 2-3 days with light usage.
GPS navigation seems like a big one that I use constantly, especially when traveling somewhere unfamiliar. I'm just old enough to remember what driving was like before we had magical touchscreen...
GPS navigation seems like a big one that I use constantly, especially when traveling somewhere unfamiliar. I'm just old enough to remember what driving was like before we had magical touchscreen gps maps in our pockets and I still struggle to imagine going back.
I had one of those offline only garmins circa 2005. Worked pretty well. Especially paired with some printed out Mapquest directions. That, and I was way better at remembering directions before...
I had one of those offline only garmins circa 2005. Worked pretty well.
Especially paired with some printed out Mapquest directions.
That, and I was way better at remembering directions before GPS. Nowadays I have to pull it out for places I've been like 6 times, which used to be the upper bound.
I did the mapquest thing too, you could make it work, but you had to plan everything ahead of time. I don't really like those offline-only GPS solutions, since they are often out of date, and lack...
I did the mapquest thing too, you could make it work, but you had to plan everything ahead of time. I don't really like those offline-only GPS solutions, since they are often out of date, and lack traffic and construction information.
But a common use-case for me these days when I'm out and about, is to find something nearby to eat. For that you want something that can give you user reviews, operating hours, and maybe even an idea of what is for sale at the various eateries in your vicinity. This is just not something you could realistically do in 2005.
I also was able to do basic Google searches on my RAZR back in the day, and that could work, but the UX is absolutely terrible for these kinds of use cases. The 3-5 day battery does little to compensate for that, as I just put my phone on its charging stand when I go to bed. It doubles as my alarm clock.
What if the interfaces were standardized and you could run it entirely with open-source? I would never volunteer to give a tech giant a direct link to my brain, but if I could inspect and write...
What if the interfaces were standardized and you could run it entirely with open-source? I would never volunteer to give a tech giant a direct link to my brain, but if I could inspect and write the code myself for a brain interface, I would jump on that without reservation.
Honestly? Nope. No amount of standardization or auditing is gonna make me trust that some malicious actor isn't going to be able to inject all sorts of nastiness. We have not yet been able to...
Honestly? Nope. No amount of standardization or auditing is gonna make me trust that some malicious actor isn't going to be able to inject all sorts of nastiness.
We have not yet been able to created a trusted computing platform, at all. Everything has exploits. And that's a tolerable behavior when it's not directly altering my perception of reality.
You are a lot more confident in your software and bioengineering capabilities than I am in mine. I wouldn't even think about letting any combination of hardware and software interface directly...
if I could inspect and write the code myself for a brain interface, I would jump on that without reservation.
You are a lot more confident in your software and bioengineering capabilities than I am in mine. I wouldn't even think about letting any combination of hardware and software interface directly with my brain until all of it has been through years of clinical testing and passed various not-yet-existent regulatory requirements. And even then, I would only want it as a means to cure an ailment (blindness, paralysis, etc.)
I find myself with mixed feelings here. While the advancement of technology has been deleterious in some ways, I think it’s important to not get too caught up in romanticization of the past,...
I find myself with mixed feelings here. While the advancement of technology has been deleterious in some ways, I think it’s important to not get too caught up in romanticization of the past, because that brings its own dangers with blind, dogmatic rejection of everything new being chief among them.
In my mind the problem isn’t so much with technology itself but rather with the forces that drive it. Nearly all of its most significant negative effects came about because they’re what’s most conducive to profit in our capitalistic system as it currently stands.
Point in case, smartphones. The only reason they’re bad is due to the endless instant gratification they enable by way of the services they’re a portal to. Strip that negative aspect away and they’re wondrous, infinitely useful devices with nearly no downside.
It’s possible that it’s a lost cause, but I believe that it may be more productive to as a society try to course correct the development of technology such that it’s for the benefit of people, not for benefit of corporations. We need to push back hard against everything that’s made technology worse in the past 20 years and then keep going to fix the problems it’s always had. Reject subscriptions and comically bloated software, regulate social media into no longer being a dopamine IV drip, reign in advertisers, demand privacy.
I’ve had a Luddite idea like this for a long time, a future-earth sci-fi setting except where they draw the line is the 1930s. Their village is on the coast of northern Washington facing the San...
I’ve had a Luddite idea like this for a long time, a future-earth sci-fi setting except where they draw the line is the 1930s. Their village is on the coast of northern Washington facing the San Juan Islands. Even called the 30s. Everything is locally handcrafted and most of them are farmers and it’s a really good life.
In the San Juans, they have gone for high fantasy instead. My story is about the boy Chaplin who grew up in the 30s and suddenly finds himself across the water with the castles and the dragons of the islands.
Alternatively, those technologies may just not take off for various practicality reasons or find far more niche, out of sight and unspectacular uses than people expect, and it won't be an issue. I...
Alternatively, those technologies may just not take off for various practicality reasons or find far more niche, out of sight and unspectacular uses than people expect, and it won't be an issue.
I have my suspicions that even LLMs might not catch on long term due to cost; at the moment they're all operating at a loss and burning VC money, once that runs out and everyone is charged full price, will they still be worth it?
LLMs are here to stay. The ones that run locally are getting much better over time. They're already helpful for programming auto-complete. Within a few years they should be comparable to GPT-4. If...
LLMs are here to stay. The ones that run locally are getting much better over time. They're already helpful for programming auto-complete. Within a few years they should be comparable to GPT-4. If you're skeptical, consider:
This is a domain-specific AI. You might even have different versions tuned for different programming languages. That means you need fewer resources to achieve good results.
Programming languages work within a much simpler world (computer vs. real world) and use much simpler grammar rules than English etc.
Programmers often already have high-end graphics cards that are sitting unused when working. You might program on a gaming computer by day and play games at night. Might as well use that GPU all day long.
I've seen cost differences betwen GPT3 and GPT4....If things continue to scale like this without some sort of 5x reduction in cost the whole thing will implode inside of a decade, especially once...
I've seen cost differences betwen GPT3 and GPT4....If things continue to scale like this without some sort of 5x reduction in cost the whole thing will implode inside of a decade, especially once the novelty of having an AI assistant on every webpage wears off.
Already it's been a noticable downgrade having to chat to a glorified FAQ instead of a person who had the ability to actually make changes.
Everyone, including my own company, are including chatbots now and they're rarely useful. Getting to a real person is a hassle, and always necessary in the end, at least for me, because the...
Everyone, including my own company, are including chatbots now and they're rarely useful. Getting to a real person is a hassle, and always necessary in the end, at least for me, because the chatbots are only able to help with basic problems or questions, and never ones from someone who actually tries to solve problems on their own.
An interesting experiment would be to allocate some segmented portion of land: On one side of the border, technological amplification and expansion is limited and suppressed. Nothing past 2005 era...
An interesting experiment would be to allocate some segmented portion of land:
On one side of the border, technological amplification and expansion is limited and suppressed. Nothing past 2005 era tech is permitted unless it has been well-vetted to be net beneficial and not change the values of the society.
On the other side of the border, complete embrace and empowerment of unmetered growth in tech. Anything and everything goes. Beta software and hardware launching daily. New energy tech, biotech, transportation, communication, education tech, etc permeating the society at a rapid pace.
Then see the effects on both sides a century later.
So, a toned-down version of Sakoku decree. We all know how it ends up: American Black Ships blasting Japan's door with American bravado and superior firepower.
So, a toned-down version of Sakoku decree.
We all know how it ends up: American Black Ships blasting Japan's door with American bravado and superior firepower.
They go to meet...the higher-tech side has depleted their natural resources 10-to-1 as a result of rapidly discarding everything. The toxins from the discarded e-waste are poisoning their food and...
They go to meet...the higher-tech side has depleted their natural resources 10-to-1 as a result of rapidly discarding everything. The toxins from the discarded e-waste are poisoning their food and water supplies.
The lower-tech side finds the higher-tech technology borderline unusable, as despite 80 years of hardware advancement, it has been negated by 80 years of software bloat.
In all fairness, humanity's technological advancement had rockets shoddily strapped to it in the 20th century and we still don't really know how a lot of that has changed our brains. Evolution is...
In all fairness, humanity's technological advancement had rockets shoddily strapped to it in the 20th century and we still don't really know how a lot of that has changed our brains. Evolution is so slow, it'll never catch up to us until we learn how to manipulate it ourselves (And who knows if that's a good thing or not). I regularly view things like this as a potential "Great Filter" that we're hurtling towards, unbeknownst to ourselves that we approach our eradication if we don't do it just right. I have very little faith humans are.
I feel the spirit of this comment and generally agree with the sentiment, in some aspects. I'm not sure how things will play out but I'll probably be an old grey codger long before we understand...
I feel the spirit of this comment and generally agree with the sentiment, in some aspects. I'm not sure how things will play out but I'll probably be an old grey codger long before we understand even how the internet and social media has shaped the human mind and also communication in general.
It's definitely an over simplification, I'm more just trying to convey my opinion that we are doing a lot of stuff to ourselves as a species that we can't see the outcome of.
It's definitely an over simplification, I'm more just trying to convey my opinion that we are doing a lot of stuff to ourselves as a species that we can't see the outcome of.
I'm not sure how much I can trust an article that has to be either misleading or outright lying about things. Considering this article is from February 11th and the Vision Pro came out February...
I'm not sure how much I can trust an article that has to be either misleading or outright lying about things.
The team wore Vision Pros and Quests around college campuses for a couple of weeks, trying to do all the things they would have done without them (with a minder nearby in case they tripped or walked into a wall).
Considering this article is from February 11th and the Vision Pro came out February 2nd (and only for very, very early pre-orders), there is no way this statement can be accurate. The "researchers" couldn't possibly have worn the Vision Pro around for a couple weeks because they haven't even been out for more than a week by this point.
Members of the press frequently get items to review, for press purposes, prior to the general public. It's not uncommon for researchers to also get access to tech before it's released, as well,...
Members of the press frequently get items to review, for press purposes, prior to the general public. It's not uncommon for researchers to also get access to tech before it's released, as well, but this tends to be more common in the medical device setting.
Sure, except that that’s not what happened here. The paper itself doesn’t even mention the Vision Pro except to say that the researches had done a demo at one of the developer labs. It even says...
Sure, except that that’s not what happened here. The paper itself doesn’t even mention the Vision Pro except to say that the researches had done a demo at one of the developer labs. It even says that they only spent their time using the Meta Quest 3.
It seems to me that the Vision Pro is only mentioned to have the effect of getting more attention by mentioning it.
The Marques Brownlee reviews asserts that the passthrough on the Vision Pro is seamless enough that you could easily catch things, play ping-pong, and cut onions without risk. It's as perfect as...
The Marques Brownlee reviews asserts that the passthrough on the Vision Pro is seamless enough that you could easily catch things, play ping-pong, and cut onions without risk. It's as perfect as it could be with current-gen technology.
I think you're right about why they're mentioning the Vision Pro.
Yes. I have one and have also used or own all the other VR headsets - Oculus, HTC, Valve, Meta. I believe the paper’s premise for VR but I have not experienced anything of the sort with the Vision...
Yes. I have one and have also used or own all the other VR headsets - Oculus, HTC, Valve, Meta. I believe the paper’s premise for VR but I have not experienced anything of the sort with the Vision or AR in general.
I could absolutely see a second wave amish-like society spring up in response to AI and AR. Locking people into the general technological capabilities of 2005. No, or very limited, smart phones. No AI. No walking around wearing a VR headset. We've been experimenting with becoming cyborgs in little steps. I'm sure enough people will want to opt out of that to form a society around the idea of abstention.
Right here. I draw the line firmly at direct brain interfaces. AR can live on a screen I can put down and turn off, not semi-permanently wired to my face.
Everything that Black Mirror showed will come to pass if it hasn't already.
In a sense, I somewhat agree with the mindset of the Amish: Technology should only be used insofar it improves the human experience, not supplants it.
Vanilla WoW is better than retail WoW in part because of its flaws. Something something "never stopped to ask if they should."
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I see so many people singing love songs to modern technology, but the vast majority of technology of the past 100 years haven’t really changed things, and those that have are not entirely positive changes. The internet, for instance, has many positives but many negatives as well. In the meanwhile you can watch a movie made 100 years ago and find it just as relatable today. The changes are almost only aesthetic.
Utopia is not built from technology. It’s built from the people who use it.
100 years ago is too wide. 100 years ago most Americans didn't have running water. Air conditioning had just been invented, and was only used in commercial settings. Refrigerators had yet to be commercialized. You can go on and on. Life 100 years ago was not great. If it looks similar on the silver screen, that's because they only showed the parts of life people found intense and invigorating.
Many people also note that many Roman diaries and manuscripts seem shockingly similar to modern life; that's because they only talked about matters important to the rich and powerful.
At most you can make it the last decade or two. The internet age is somewhat unique in that there hasn't been notable productivity gains in that decade, whereas it was practically exponential since the 1800s.
Pardon? They might not have all had public water facilities, but almost all had access to clean freshwater.
I've chatted with my wife's grandmothers, whom both grew up in the 1930's. They don't deny that the comforts of today are better, but the 1920s/1930s were not some primitive hellscape where everyone was miserable either (economic crash of the 30s aside). They managed fine without refrigeration or air conditioning. They played games with their neighbors instead of watching TV every night.
Heck, the two they consider more important than any you mentioned was the advancements of vaccines and antibiotics.
But like automobiles? It didn't really change the nature of how things are done...we just burn dead dinosaurs instead of riding horses.
Depends a lot on locality. Sizable chunks of my Appalachian home state lacked electricity and running water through the 30s and beyond.
Did they not have unpolluted wells and streams? That's what I was referring to.
No, not necessarily. The likes of coal mines and DuPont among others have been polluting the area for a very long time.
Yea thats fair, though the coal for longer....and by those standards Appalacia has always been done dirty.
My mom's family liked ice skating on Love Canal in the 50's and 60's because the ice always had a pretty shimmer to it and it never froze quite as solid as other areas. :(
That's probably the main reason that entire half of the family tree is seeing a lot of cancer.
There is a big, big chasm between "I have access to clean water" and "I have full indoor plumbing with magical poop receptacles that take my waste away somewhere I never have to think about it."
Maybe, but using an outhouse ain't that bad. And if you've never known different, you're not aware of missing out.
Indoor plumbing is one of the single biggest contributors to improved public health in the 20th century, up there with vaccines and antibiotics.
Someone whose never known anything better than an outhouse and hauling water between a well and their kitchen every day might not think it's so bad, but they also probably think high infant mortality rates and getting sick all the time are just normal things you have to live with.
You and I are thinking on very different wavelengths. I am thinking about people in terms of happiness, and you are thinking about people in terms of capabilities. Productivity has limited impact on happiness.
The thing about technology is that it tends to divide us in the short term. There is a popular internet saying, “the future is here, it just isn’t very evenly distributed.” That divide is a source of very short happiness for those who have it from the novelty but for those who do not have it it can be a source of pain as a reminder of their social standing. I can’t think of a better example than AIDS treatments; we can be happy for Magic Johnson for overcoming AIDS due to his access to cutting-edge treatments but that happiness does not hold a candle to the feeling when you think about the countless number of people who died because they were not so fortunate.
Happiness is relative. We hear a great many more people these days who are suffering from depression what with our riches that were unimaginable 1000 years ago, but at the same time depression was not nearly so widespread then as it is today. Life was certainly harder back then but their lives were not full of despair and they lived at least as happily as people do today. With few exceptions I have never heard a historian ever insert the phrase “keep in mind that everyone was miserable at the time” into their work.
I would argue in some ways, it’s a trade. We have higher rates of depression in exchange for dramatically higher incidence and severity of parasitic infections, deaths caused by easily curable disease, and much shorter lifespans.
Is that an objective improvement? Depends on who you ask, but I believe many, even those who suffer depression, would answer with an emphatic “yes”.
I suppose it is and it isn’t. Medical technology is very different than entertainment technology or manufacturing technology.
There's no such thing as an "entirely positive change" - ALL technological advances have drawbacks. The automobile revolutionized travel... but led to the loss of walkable communities. The camera allowed us to preserve our most cherished memories... but also led to revenge porn. Electricity brought light and warmth to our homes... but the power plants generating that electricity are destroying our planet. Conversely, cell phones may be addictive... but they allow us to communicate with our loved ones in an instant.
I love Black Mirror, but it's simplistic "PHONE BAD?" messaging has really fucked with the entire 20-40's demographic's opinion on tech.
To quote a great modern thinker.... "We're so buried in our phones. Instead of giving someone a real smile, we send an emoji... I mean, we don't even look at porn on our computer anymore - we look at it on our phone??? Hah. PornHub, Xtube... I know these names better than I know my own grandmother's. YouPorn, XXN, RedTube, Panty Jobs, Home-grown Simpsons stuff..."
I don't think Black Mirror is as much "PHONE BAD?" as much as it asks some pertinent questions that prompt the viewer to think about their engagement with technology and how it is impacting their lives. If more people are turning away from integrating software and hardware solutions into their daily lives and maybe eventually even themselves and their own bodies (at some far flung, or maybe not so far flung future time)...well, that's choice for a person to make for themselves if you ask me.
I don't think "PHONE BAD" but I do think that we're still figuring out the impact of widespread social media and personal device use on a psychological level, and it probably is re-shaping how our brains are wired to some degree. How much of a degree is that? I dunno, I'm not a professional sociologist or a psychologist so my input is just spurious data and personal opinion on my part.
If we're still figuring all this out now, I can see why someone would be hesitant to fully embrace whatever the newest thing is without a bit of scrutiny. I think it's smarter to be suspicious than to just embrace something just because it promises to do something better than whatever it is replacing.
What a wild statement. Before the internet if I was curious about something I’d write it down in a notebook and then, eventually, when I found myself in a library I’d maybe be able to find a reference book about it. And even then it would provide the most cursory overview or be a single paragraph encyclopedia entry.
With the internet I can google and find step-by-step instructions, with video, on how to do basically anything. You can’t imagine the impact this has had on disseminating knowledge about a whole variety of crafts and skills.
A smartphone doesn't really provide that much more utility than the old Motorola Razer 3, at least in terms of what you genuinely need a mobile communication device to do.
Ability to call emergency services if dying? Check.
Can send a text if you're running late? Check.
Can take a quick picture to send to somebody else? Check.
Can do a quick google search? Check.
Play MP3s? Check
And that thing had like 3 days of battery life with heavy usage, almost a week with light usage. Also much easier to carry and much more durable. It's taken almost 20 years of battery advancement to get smartphones up to 2-3 days with light usage.
GPS navigation seems like a big one that I use constantly, especially when traveling somewhere unfamiliar. I'm just old enough to remember what driving was like before we had magical touchscreen gps maps in our pockets and I still struggle to imagine going back.
I had one of those offline only garmins circa 2005. Worked pretty well.
Especially paired with some printed out Mapquest directions.
That, and I was way better at remembering directions before GPS. Nowadays I have to pull it out for places I've been like 6 times, which used to be the upper bound.
I did the mapquest thing too, you could make it work, but you had to plan everything ahead of time. I don't really like those offline-only GPS solutions, since they are often out of date, and lack traffic and construction information.
But a common use-case for me these days when I'm out and about, is to find something nearby to eat. For that you want something that can give you user reviews, operating hours, and maybe even an idea of what is for sale at the various eateries in your vicinity. This is just not something you could realistically do in 2005.
I also was able to do basic Google searches on my RAZR back in the day, and that could work, but the UX is absolutely terrible for these kinds of use cases. The 3-5 day battery does little to compensate for that, as I just put my phone on its charging stand when I go to bed. It doubles as my alarm clock.
What if the interfaces were standardized and you could run it entirely with open-source? I would never volunteer to give a tech giant a direct link to my brain, but if I could inspect and write the code myself for a brain interface, I would jump on that without reservation.
Honestly? Nope. No amount of standardization or auditing is gonna make me trust that some malicious actor isn't going to be able to inject all sorts of nastiness.
We have not yet been able to created a trusted computing platform, at all. Everything has exploits. And that's a tolerable behavior when it's not directly altering my perception of reality.
You are a lot more confident in your software and bioengineering capabilities than I am in mine. I wouldn't even think about letting any combination of hardware and software interface directly with my brain until all of it has been through years of clinical testing and passed various not-yet-existent regulatory requirements. And even then, I would only want it as a means to cure an ailment (blindness, paralysis, etc.)
I find myself with mixed feelings here. While the advancement of technology has been deleterious in some ways, I think it’s important to not get too caught up in romanticization of the past, because that brings its own dangers with blind, dogmatic rejection of everything new being chief among them.
In my mind the problem isn’t so much with technology itself but rather with the forces that drive it. Nearly all of its most significant negative effects came about because they’re what’s most conducive to profit in our capitalistic system as it currently stands.
Point in case, smartphones. The only reason they’re bad is due to the endless instant gratification they enable by way of the services they’re a portal to. Strip that negative aspect away and they’re wondrous, infinitely useful devices with nearly no downside.
It’s possible that it’s a lost cause, but I believe that it may be more productive to as a society try to course correct the development of technology such that it’s for the benefit of people, not for benefit of corporations. We need to push back hard against everything that’s made technology worse in the past 20 years and then keep going to fix the problems it’s always had. Reject subscriptions and comically bloated software, regulate social media into no longer being a dopamine IV drip, reign in advertisers, demand privacy.
I’ve had a Luddite idea like this for a long time, a future-earth sci-fi setting except where they draw the line is the 1930s. Their village is on the coast of northern Washington facing the San Juan Islands. Even called the 30s. Everything is locally handcrafted and most of them are farmers and it’s a really good life.
In the San Juans, they have gone for high fantasy instead. My story is about the boy Chaplin who grew up in the 30s and suddenly finds himself across the water with the castles and the dragons of the islands.
That'd be an interesting twist to game a la the village by shyamalan
Alternatively, those technologies may just not take off for various practicality reasons or find far more niche, out of sight and unspectacular uses than people expect, and it won't be an issue.
I have my suspicions that even LLMs might not catch on long term due to cost; at the moment they're all operating at a loss and burning VC money, once that runs out and everyone is charged full price, will they still be worth it?
LLMs are here to stay. The ones that run locally are getting much better over time. They're already helpful for programming auto-complete. Within a few years they should be comparable to GPT-4. If you're skeptical, consider:
I've seen cost differences betwen GPT3 and GPT4....If things continue to scale like this without some sort of 5x reduction in cost the whole thing will implode inside of a decade, especially once the novelty of having an AI assistant on every webpage wears off.
Already it's been a noticable downgrade having to chat to a glorified FAQ instead of a person who had the ability to actually make changes.
Everyone, including my own company, are including chatbots now and they're rarely useful. Getting to a real person is a hassle, and always necessary in the end, at least for me, because the chatbots are only able to help with basic problems or questions, and never ones from someone who actually tries to solve problems on their own.
An interesting experiment would be to allocate some segmented portion of land:
On one side of the border, technological amplification and expansion is limited and suppressed. Nothing past 2005 era tech is permitted unless it has been well-vetted to be net beneficial and not change the values of the society.
On the other side of the border, complete embrace and empowerment of unmetered growth in tech. Anything and everything goes. Beta software and hardware launching daily. New energy tech, biotech, transportation, communication, education tech, etc permeating the society at a rapid pace.
Then see the effects on both sides a century later.
So, a toned-down version of Sakoku decree.
We all know how it ends up: American Black Ships blasting Japan's door with American bravado and superior firepower.
It'll work better this time since both sides will have nuclear weapons at their disposal.
They go to meet...the higher-tech side has depleted their natural resources 10-to-1 as a result of rapidly discarding everything. The toxins from the discarded e-waste are poisoning their food and water supplies.
The lower-tech side finds the higher-tech technology borderline unusable, as despite 80 years of hardware advancement, it has been negated by 80 years of software bloat.
In all fairness, humanity's technological advancement had rockets shoddily strapped to it in the 20th century and we still don't really know how a lot of that has changed our brains. Evolution is so slow, it'll never catch up to us until we learn how to manipulate it ourselves (And who knows if that's a good thing or not). I regularly view things like this as a potential "Great Filter" that we're hurtling towards, unbeknownst to ourselves that we approach our eradication if we don't do it just right. I have very little faith humans are.
I feel the spirit of this comment and generally agree with the sentiment, in some aspects. I'm not sure how things will play out but I'll probably be an old grey codger long before we understand even how the internet and social media has shaped the human mind and also communication in general.
It's definitely an over simplification, I'm more just trying to convey my opinion that we are doing a lot of stuff to ourselves as a species that we can't see the outcome of.
I'm not sure how much I can trust an article that has to be either misleading or outright lying about things.
Considering this article is from February 11th and the Vision Pro came out February 2nd (and only for very, very early pre-orders), there is no way this statement can be accurate. The "researchers" couldn't possibly have worn the Vision Pro around for a couple weeks because they haven't even been out for more than a week by this point.
Members of the press frequently get items to review, for press purposes, prior to the general public. It's not uncommon for researchers to also get access to tech before it's released, as well, but this tends to be more common in the medical device setting.
Sure, except that that’s not what happened here. The paper itself doesn’t even mention the Vision Pro except to say that the researches had done a demo at one of the developer labs. It even says that they only spent their time using the Meta Quest 3.
It seems to me that the Vision Pro is only mentioned to have the effect of getting more attention by mentioning it.
The Marques Brownlee reviews asserts that the passthrough on the Vision Pro is seamless enough that you could easily catch things, play ping-pong, and cut onions without risk. It's as perfect as it could be with current-gen technology.
I think you're right about why they're mentioning the Vision Pro.
Yes. I have one and have also used or own all the other VR headsets - Oculus, HTC, Valve, Meta. I believe the paper’s premise for VR but I have not experienced anything of the sort with the Vision or AR in general.