Tech and Society

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.

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

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

if people are so "exhausted" by the predictability and volume of meme culture, NFTs can be seen as a way of "professionalizing" memes and liberating ordinary people from having to care and participate

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

No amount of AI will automate away corporate dysfunction.

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

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.

Laws of the Internet:

I often use the analogy of “AI for social good” being like creating a tank first and THEN being like oh let’s see how we can use this tank for “social good.” Then why not create something other than a tank in the first place? Scientists follow the state’s endless in warfare.