This is a fantastic distillation of how the last couple weeks have felt - the dizziness-inducing blitz.
My engineer friends I respect do feel the tide is beginning to turn in favor of AI, which I find...disquieting.
But on the other hand, other tides I see appear to be turning as well. I think your brother is right about a lot of things, although I have had a minor spat or two with him about the economy once or twice, because I do think the numbers fail to capture a changed reality - the numbers look good because they are no longer tracking lived experience well; things look good because the upper echelons are propping stuff up, and of course, those echelons are the ones who write the articles and the newspapers and make the media.
When I talk to people who live on the proverbial ground? Different story.
We live in interesting times, but of late, I find it hard to say they are good interesting. I wish they were, but 'Shitty Cyberpunk' feels so much more accurate with every passing year.
Oh, yeah, for sure. Better in the very wall-e optimized ways of "increasing utility," or something, but worse in the ways that we all know are worse but can't exactly numerically articulate.
It is wild how similar so many AI companies are. Not so much is that they're all trying to solve the same problem - there's a lot of variety in that - but in how they're trying to do it. But then again, if a bunch of them are are the fasting growing thing of all time, why try something else, I suppose?
You have put a lot of words into a feeling where I struggled to put any, thank you!! And I'm glad I'm not alone. And as always, really well written. Waiting for the book (no pressure but pressure)
Thanks! And I assume the robots will write the book for me, for all the other robots to read, and all of us (me included, probably) will just read summaries of it that get sent to us via WhatsApp.
Unless writing and reading gets prohibited, I doubt it ! :)
But If I start going down the rabbit hole, for some reason I think of starwars, and then I think - we should just send them to Mars and leave the earth (or what's left of it) to us.. maybe E.M. Is on to something after all
It would really be something if he actually "saved" humanity by getting us all to Mars, but the reason humanity needed saving on Earth was because he ruined society here.
I periodically think it would be fun to put soundtracks on pieces, where it plays stuff as you read it. But that would probably require me to write about more interesting things than, like, databases.
I’ve been feeling the breathlessness. My work is more intense, responding to agents I kick off to look into every bug, feature request, infra decision. I’ve been thinking about prioritizing time of really disconnecting and chilling out to balance it out.
I’ve been thinking about, but haven’t read “The Vertigo Years 1900-1914”, a period of so much change people were going insane, which I heard Cory Doctorow recommend on The Honest Broker podcast (and about the same time period, I loved Ragtime at Lincoln Center and plan to see it again!)
On one hand, it's maybe comforting that we've been through periods like this before. On the other hand, it's less comforting that that period ended in, uh, 1914.
This hit, feels like everyone is doomscrolling model releases and calling it history happening. Maybe the real takeoff is us, not the machines, so I’m trying to keep my feet on ground and build boring useful things anyway.
The pace and formatting of this piece are just as dizzying as the reality it describes, well done :)
That's writing, babyyyyyyyy!
Yea, it really is!
Intentionally nauseating? I got the point! +1.
This is a fantastic distillation of how the last couple weeks have felt - the dizziness-inducing blitz.
My engineer friends I respect do feel the tide is beginning to turn in favor of AI, which I find...disquieting.
But on the other hand, other tides I see appear to be turning as well. I think your brother is right about a lot of things, although I have had a minor spat or two with him about the economy once or twice, because I do think the numbers fail to capture a changed reality - the numbers look good because they are no longer tracking lived experience well; things look good because the upper echelons are propping stuff up, and of course, those echelons are the ones who write the articles and the newspapers and make the media.
When I talk to people who live on the proverbial ground? Different story.
We live in interesting times, but of late, I find it hard to say they are good interesting. I wish they were, but 'Shitty Cyberpunk' feels so much more accurate with every passing year.
It all feels very Doordash to me - easier, more effortless, "better," in nearly all measurable ways, but in a soulless, overmedicated sort of way.
"Better", if you have the money for it, maybe. Without that there's definitely a steady degradation in quality.
But yea, soulless & overmedicated feels on point
Oh, yeah, for sure. Better in the very wall-e optimized ways of "increasing utility," or something, but worse in the ways that we all know are worse but can't exactly numerically articulate.
Yea, completely agree. Metrics higher, even more of the soul has been consumed.
Getting caught up on some reading today! I very much feel the vertigo as well.
I think one really unique thing right now is that almost everyone is now essentially working on the same problem. Atleast in software.
Looping text images or audio through one of 3 or 4 apis that are all roughly the same.
It’s gives a really large number of people a common thing for good or bad.
It is wild how similar so many AI companies are. Not so much is that they're all trying to solve the same problem - there's a lot of variety in that - but in how they're trying to do it. But then again, if a bunch of them are are the fasting growing thing of all time, why try something else, I suppose?
Ya! Different problems - but doing basically the same things. It’s weird.
You have put a lot of words into a feeling where I struggled to put any, thank you!! And I'm glad I'm not alone. And as always, really well written. Waiting for the book (no pressure but pressure)
Thanks! And I assume the robots will write the book for me, for all the other robots to read, and all of us (me included, probably) will just read summaries of it that get sent to us via WhatsApp.
Unless writing and reading gets prohibited, I doubt it ! :)
But If I start going down the rabbit hole, for some reason I think of starwars, and then I think - we should just send them to Mars and leave the earth (or what's left of it) to us.. maybe E.M. Is on to something after all
It would really be something if he actually "saved" humanity by getting us all to Mars, but the reason humanity needed saving on Earth was because he ruined society here.
Yes of course, I meant that as a joke!!! (I was downward spiralling..)
And actually re-read my comment now and I meant he should send all the AIs (lol) to Mars 😂
I can get down with that. Let's see how smart these things really are, see if they can grow potatoes like Matt Damon.
Perfectly captured the Zeitgeist. Well done as always Ben
At least, we feel the asymptote - https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/the-singularity-is-always-near
The best way to read this is open up "short ride in a fast machine" and try to click every link in the first paragraph before the song ends.
I periodically think it would be fun to put soundtracks on pieces, where it plays stuff as you read it. But that would probably require me to write about more interesting things than, like, databases.
I’ve been feeling the breathlessness. My work is more intense, responding to agents I kick off to look into every bug, feature request, infra decision. I’ve been thinking about prioritizing time of really disconnecting and chilling out to balance it out.
I’ve been thinking about, but haven’t read “The Vertigo Years 1900-1914”, a period of so much change people were going insane, which I heard Cory Doctorow recommend on The Honest Broker podcast (and about the same time period, I loved Ragtime at Lincoln Center and plan to see it again!)
On one hand, it's maybe comforting that we've been through periods like this before. On the other hand, it's less comforting that that period ended in, uh, 1914.
and_i_oop.gif
Thank you for this recommendation, I'm going to look that up now!
love for sharing this 🫶
This hit, feels like everyone is doomscrolling model releases and calling it history happening. Maybe the real takeoff is us, not the machines, so I’m trying to keep my feet on ground and build boring useful things anyway.
Great post. Nicely done. Better than that LCD Soundsystem song.
Inflection point or infection point? 😉
There are far too many situations to monitor right now...