Tech and Society

Laws of the Internet:

feels like we’re watching the beginning of a scary polarization trend the world feels everything accelerating the group building the tech that’s going to change everyone’s lives is small many outside that group will feel left out & polarize against it

One of the greatest tragedies of modern technology is entire generations afraid to sit with their own thoughts.

It’s wild that some mid level PM is making design tweaks for “retention” and ends up completely tearing the entire fabric of our society into a downward spiral of gamified virtual hot people musical chairs. “What if we added a bursting emoji heart?!” = Birthrates fall to zero

No amount of AI will automate away corporate dysfunction.

All new tech is scary, it's not just AI. • trains — the female body was feared to not be able to go over 50 mph, lest the uterus "fly out of the body" • subways — going underground was cursed because it brought you "closer to the devil" • elevators — early riders got… Show more

Quite a lot of AGI doomerism comes from the same place as tech solutionism - the idea that the world is simple, everyone else’s jobs are easy, and everything can be changed by this this one set of brilliant engineers with this one brilliant piece of technology.

I'm usually very much *not* on the 'tech people need to read more books outside tech' train, but by golly, a lot of these AI prognosticators need to read something that jars them out of the view that human life is nothing but a series of engineering problems.

"Futurism tells us more about the present than the future" --@mattwridley nails it

Mirrors and clocks transformed society, but they’re so old that nobody questions them. Clocks created a culture of anxiety. Mirrors created a culture of narcissism.