Gordon
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Gordon
The problem with modern technology isn’t that it exists, but in how we use it, especially in highly individualistic societies such as the US, which is to go off on our own, into even more solitary lives, removed from community. It is an accelerator of an already existing problem. You can see that in Asian societies with a long-standing cultural... See more
Modern life is good actually
Getting offline / searching for stillness / in-person as premium
Technology is not the issue. It’s how we use it. Ask most people and they want more tech, not less. It’s only the elites that want less.
It is in Weber’s language, disenchanting, and I agree with the critics of modernity that a fulfilling life requires enchantment.
Is it Really So Much Better Now?
We have a culture of hyper efficiency and efficiency isn’t the only metric of a fulfilling life. While you can choose to opt out from a lot of it, certainly from ordering food online, you can’t so easily, or at all, from other essential parts of life — like medicine, work, education, and even finding a partner in life.
Cultures, even those with... See more
Cultures, even those with... See more
Is it Really So Much Better Now?
I’ve been flying internationally and locally for fifty-five years and it has never been safer, as convenient, and inexpensive as now. A lot of what gets thrown into the “it all currently sucks” label is that a lot more people are doing it, including the plebes, so everything is more crowded.... See more
The process all works rather smoothly though, until it
Is it Really So Much Better Now?
Getting offline / searching for stillness / in-person as premium
We want connection. We are social animals. The “personal connective tissue” is gone. So much of the modern world makes you feel like a widget on a conveyor belt, as our fetishisation of efficiency has begun to corrode our souls. We have offshored the personal, and people, a deeply social animal, aren’t built for that.
In a world where it seems like everyone is always online, a group of Brooklyn teens are promoting a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology.
Founded last year by Edward R. Murrow High School student Logan Lane, the Luddite Club is named after Ned Ludd, the folkloric 18th-century English textile... See more
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If AI is achieving general intelligence, though, we should see it succeed across multiple domains, not just the ones where it has obvious advantages. Coding has been the breakout application, but coding is in some ways the ideal domain for current AI. It’s characterized by well-defined problems, immediate feedback loops, formally defined languages,... See more
Tim O’Reilly, Mike Loukides • What If? AI in 2026 and Beyond
These two scenarios lead to radically different conclusions. If AGI is an economic singularity, then massive infrastructure investment is rational, and companies borrowing hundreds of billions to spend on data centers to be used by companies that haven’t yet found a viable economic model are making prudent bets. If AI is a normal technology, that
... See moreNobody knows which way it will go. If they do, they are selling you a product!