It took me a few thought cycles to put down that question.
In my understanding, we, as a civilization, are on a high wire number over a pit of knifes. The AI craze is full throtle as we speak, with conflicting indicators that it may/will cause the worst economical crash ever - becoming third in less than twenty years, where each was always reported as an unprecedented and irrepeatable event - while at the same time infiltrating companies in ways we are still to discover how ruinous may prove and spreading over the internet like a grotesque parasite, rendering services unsuable and leaking sensible data.
If the great AI companies tank (I can only hope) and the services they provide - whatever those may be - faill, how much is it going to affect companies? There is really no sense of consensus; some say it was the best thing ever, others are registering neglictable improvements, others failed miserably and had to return to the original state of affairs.
Then there is the constant attack from agents on the net, rendering websites, more or less important, more or less useable or stealing, destroying or corrupting valueable data.
I’ve reached a point where I am willing to forego internet and even computers. Even technology in a wide sense. At best, I may keep an air gapped machine, to use for writing and printing documents. But will others do it? And if so, will 8t happen in an organic fashion or will things devolve to a point where something cracks and things just get ugly? Because people are tired. Tired of datacenters popping up like poisonous mushrooms everywhere, destroying everything.
People are getting tired. Everywhere.
Nope.
I’ve reached a point where I am willing to forego internet and even computers.
they posted on the internet…
But seriously, what are you even talking about? Dozen of individuals might log out of social media, some might move out and try living in a forest or something. As a society we’re not going to abandon modern communication tools, modern medicine and modern financial tools. Some people are mad at AI, no one is mad at computers to the point of going analog.
Individuals might but not to the extent that it would make any difference. AI isn’t going anywhere. Even if the bubble bursts, many if not most of those companies would still survive and keep developing better models. The problem is not that they don’t have a product but that they’re overvalued - that will probably get re-adjusted at some point.
Ngl I only read the post title cuz I have a headache and should prob stop looking at my phone, but I have to say that I really miss buttons. Like, clicky buttons that depress when you push them and sometimes even make a nice little sound. Also knobs. Nice turny knobs, maybe the ones that do that little click every 5 degrees rotated. Yeah.
Already did!
No.
Convenience is king.
Analog tech is inherently slower, more expensive, etc.
This is like asking if farming by hand is better than farming using machinery.
The only reason people think this is way is because they didn’t live through analog tech, for them it is retro or nostalgia and they romanticize it because when they do use it, there are no downsides.
Just like the people who think farming by hand is better than farming with machinery are people who don’t farm, or they are those investment banking types who ‘retired’ to go start a farm in upstate NY for fun and pretend it’s a viable commercial enterprise.
The only reason people think this is way is because they didn’t live through analog tech, for them it is retro or nostalgia and they romanticize it because when they do use it, there are no downsides.
Yeah…no…sorry. But you’re deluded.
I’m exactly that generation that you speak of. I grew up Analog, came of age in my early twenties with the first popularization of the internet, and am now getting old while the internet enshitifies.
You are correct that early tech is better than analog, most definitely. Those early days of just about everything (internet, smartphones, computer gaming, etc…) were amazing and I loved them. It was new and exciting. We built the fucking internet with our bulletin boards, and myspace pages, and blogs and forums.
What you are referring to; what we’re living in now, is NOT that. We’ve gone past the phase where technology was legitimately better than Analog and we are well into the phase where the technology doesn’t work for us anymore. It works for the billionaires
Somewhere in the mid 2010’s, we stopped being the reason technology keeps progressing, and we became the product that the internet was selling to companies (our data, our tracking, our metrics).
Would I dearly love to go back to an early to late 2000’s version of the internet and tech in general, maybe all the way up to 2012. Absolutely. But if that’s not possible, than yes…Analog is definitely better than what we have now, even if it does take a bit more time.
Convenience is only convenience if you don’t have to sell your soul to get it. Maybe you’ll figure that out when you’re a big boy.
You’re confusing technology and politics.
Tech is always getting better. You just are getting as many of the fruits of those advancements due to politics and economic policies deriving form those politics.
analog wasn’t better, it was that economic policy was different. the 1980s economy was vastly different than the economy we have today.
but keep insulting me if makes you feel better I guess? clearly I’m ignorant and if we go back to tapedecks instead of spotify that would somehow mean billionaires would stop existing or something… I mean, yeah, please go out and buy one of those retromod tapedecks they sell on for $200 if you want, that will surely ‘show’ Bezos or something…
You just are getting the fruits of those advancements due to politics.
I’m not entirely sure what you are meaning with that. So forgive me if I’m misunderstanding you. But the fruits of those advancements (loss of privacy, destruction of the environment, etc…) are not political (or at least they shouldn’t be). They are very real and very dangerous consequences of an economic system that demands continuous growth for the benefit of shareholders.
Think of it this way. In project management we learn about stakeholders. When making corporate decisions, a stakeholder is defined as “any person, entiry, or thing that will be affected by that decision, good or bad”. If a company decides that they are going to cut health benefits, who is going to be affected by that decision. The employees, negatively. The shareholders, positively. The consumer, potentially positively if those savings equate to lower costs for the company’s products.
When techology was new, the decisions that were being made included us the end-user. We were a stakeholder that was considered when facebook/twitter/google would decide to add a feature, or remove a feature, or whatever. Around the same time that advertising revenue overtook subscription models and premium services as the way for these tech companies to make money, WE stopped being stakeholders. Any tech advance after that, stopped being about us and started being about profit extraction. If we didn’t like the change, well fuck us…we were now just the product because the advertisers were the ones paying the bills.
Just because on the rare occasion, these corporations happen to put out a product that has potential to improve things, doesn’t make it better, because WE, the users were never asked whether we wanted it, or whether or not we were willing to accept that tradeoffs that came along with it.
It’s like building a new sweat-shop in India in order to put out a new style of running shoe without bothering to do any market research to figure out if your customer base actually wants it or not. Because we, the customer base don’t fucking matter anymore.
You think Microsoft considered you a stakeholder when they released MS-DOS in 1981?
Customers aren’t stakeholders. They are customers. Your understand of economics and business here seems to be a lot of idealistic projection about how things should be, not how they are/were.
No idea what you are on about. Every product I use in the IT space is continually getting better than it previously was. Just because folks are mad things like subscription models doesn’t mean they are offering an inferior product. You never owned software in the first place, it was always a limited license. True that the ‘illusion’ of you owning it is gone in a subscription model because it’s no longer on a physical disk, but legally it’s the same.
What customers want is irrelevant and often erroneous. Most of my users say they want x, but if you given them x they freak out, and if you give them y they are happy, because well, they don’t know what they want and they especially don’t know what is good for them. It’s my job as their admin to make those choices for them. They mostly just hate change, even if the change benefits them overwhelmingly and have nostalgia for old inefficiencies that benefited nobody.
I know this isn’t exactly what you are talking about, but read the update portion of that post. I have been listening to music on cassettes for about a week now, and during those moments (circa 30 minutes per session) I feel so fucking free, because I don’t have to touch my phone. 🥰📼🎶
Beautiful read.
Are cassettes still easy to find or have it become a specialty item?
Thanks! ^^ I bought my audio cassettes factory sealed on a marketplace like website. Five cassettes for about $20.
we, as a civilization
No, LOL.
Only 1 out of ~200 countries (and maybe 2 or 3 others who follow them all too much, but not all hope is lost for them). And even the few ones from there who are still able to think somewhat straight, they also suffer from severe hybris, for example of thinking they were the whole civilization.
how much is it going to affect companies?
Again, I would separate: the current AI providing companies vs all the rest.
All the rest can easily and quickly turn to the free models. New operating companies for them, and self-operating solutions, are already in the making.
The current AI providing companies’ economic black hole is not identical to the world’s use of current ultra-expensive AI.
Its not about the tech, it how you use it. I’m nomadic, off grid, and pretty tech minimalist. My 5 year old smart phone just has comaps, revanced, Lemmy, signal and a few other basic tools. My PCs stay as airgapped as possible and I’m ready to hunker down and emulate the last 40 years of video games offline. I haven’t kept up with llms but I’d like to get a decent lower power, highly optimized open source model to run locally once they’re at the best they’ll get before being banned. I just want essentially a offline search engine summary. If its critical I’ll get online but a offline local llm is really useful for me to change little 3 hour ADHD adventures into just a few questions.
I had the exact same realization recently when our internet went down for a few days. I have a local LLM on my PC, and used it as a fake Google search, and to help me troubleshoot a couple programs. Not always accurate, but it did feel cool to have basically an internet search on my disconnected computer.
To some degree but not in the way you’re imagining.
I share your hope of a catastrophic crash for AI and a dramatic loss of consumer sentiment. However, in the worst case we’re talking about a 10 or more year “great depression” in which industries stall and so on. There’s not going to be an “internet doesn’t work” type crash.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a large portion of the children of today (gen alpha ?) eschew technology to the same extent that millennials embraced it.
Analog? Probably not. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if air gaps become more commonplace. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a feature that, in some instances, you pay for.
Please tell me I’m not the only one that still has a simple wristwatch.
I want to get one. Buuut the rabbit hole of watches is quite a steep one
I have a self winding one and a couple of old time mechanical ones.
When AI crashes it will make computing prices plummet…
All the factories making AI shit, will switch back to consumer grade.
Like, I don’t even understand you post, you say it’ll fail then go on a rant about it working?
AI isn’t going to crash. It’s here to stay I’m afraid.
I hope it will fail, terribly, miserably, irreversably, but I have to account for the now. And the now shows how bad things are and how worst they can get.
I believe ai will continue regardless if the market crashes, they will continue to build data centers and continue to expand surveillance, after all they are creating god finally to have their judgment day dreams come true, they probably feel a deep obligation to continue
Unless “to some degree” is doing an extreme amount of heavy lifting here, I don’t expect so.
In general, it’s a lot easier to build complex systems when error doesn’t propagate through the system, and that happens with analog systems.
With a digital system, a given component has precisely-defined behavior. 1+1=2. And if you manufacture many instances of that component, they all can have the same, precisely-defined behavior.
With an analog system, there are tiny errors that accumulate. 1+1=2.0001, say. Then that tiny error gets passed on to the next component, and maybe the error there magnifies this error.
That doesn’t matter much for some simple systems, but it becomes really problematic for complex ones.
Most complex systems we make are made out of simpler parts. Being able to cut that error out of the picture when specifying the behavior of a component or reasoning about it in the context of a larger system is helpful.
And in general, we want to be able to build complex systems.
Digital systems do force quantitization, and that is a limitation on precision. There will probably always be limited use of the occasional analog component, like, oh, a lens, say. Situations where you don’t have a chain of many analog components.
But I don’t think that we will return to a point where people made simple devices with few components, because the ability to make complex systems is very powerful. And complexity and analog systems don’t play well together.
We might be forced to.
