My Internet: Derek Thompson

Last night at dinner talking about subculture stuff and I bring up my standard boring/reductive Q about “how punk skate hip hop etc had monoculture to rebel against, so what now?,” and a brilliant friend answered straight up, “AI will be mainstream monoculture-esque, and is at its core boring and average and uncreative, and that is what people will... See more

A less cynical way to think about the postmodern tech revolution is that it hasn’t completely subsumed the real, brilliant, chaotic world, but merely emphasized it as vital and precious. Artificial intelligence, in my view, continues this tradition. The only singularity it can truly achieve is one that understands humanity at its most inhuman (and ... See more

The media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said of technology that every augmentation is also an amputation. We chose our digitally enhanced world. We did not realize the significance of what was being amputated.

A quick example from my life: Twitter didn’t replace Facebook. The iPad didn’t replace my phone. My phone didn’t replace my TV. Now, I watch YouTube on my iPad, toss the video up to my TV, while checking Twitter and Facebook on my phone. It’s a little constellation of technology. But I keep asking myself: how many more things can I juggle? And for ... See more