Stephen Farrugia
The thing is, I can criticise gen ai exactly the same as I criticised crypto and I’ll be able to criticise the next *thing* the same way because they are all just shitty products disguised as technologies and they use potential to distract from lack of purpose.
There is no escape from the need to qualify as an innovation by being better in every way and any shortcomings justified and balanced by the importance of the purpose being satisfied.
Rich Felker
@fasterandworse I never loved any tech products.
I loved the possibility of being able to find our people, communicate across borders with anyone, build things together, ...
Stephen Farrugia
You never *loved tech*, you loved good products that, for a period, were mostly digital.
Stephen Farrugia
The ai pin and rabbit should be seen as the virtual being taken away for a moment of clarity. A look behind the curtain. They weren’t crap products, they were manifestations of a crap product.
It’s important to remember there are two ends to the snake oil spectrum. Inert ones like homeopathy or potent ones like irradiated water. They all depend on a belief in potential.
Stephen Farrugia
And it sucks to hear so many critics like Ed Zitron have to keep saying “don’t get me wrong, I love tech” because they are constantly called pessimists or whatever. This stuff isn’t tech. It’s not innovation either. It’s crap products that are exposed only when we frame them as *products*.
Stephen Farrugia
We are very susceptible to thinking *anything* is more than a product because a lot of money and effort went into making it. But that’s like playing Desert Bus for the full 8 hours and expecting a reward.
I also think that Ed Zitron is right that this time *feels different* than just “that’s capitalism” because capitalism has never had such an advantage of a product being so *virtual*, so *ethereal*.
Stephen Farrugia
Even the critics elevate these software product pushers to something more by treating their outputs as emergent technologies free from the shackles of packaging that take up shelf space which would be justified if they can just find that killer app.
That’s the problem! All the killer apps of the past were recognised in hindsight. They weren’t anticipated as some inevitable justification for the underlying technology.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.