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Silicon Valley seems hell bent on surveilling everything we do and who wants that ? do I want a TV or a refrigerator spying on me ? no I do not. Everything they do seems to make life worse not better.

I think sometimes about my third grade self trying to invent the concept of the ebook (a little computer screen with a cover that flipped open like a paperback, with controls on the side and one floppy per book), and then I look at my suspicion of new tech now, and I just... Yeah. What you said.

Honestly, the perv glasses are the place where I end up angriest because I want the cool version of them that isn't creepy. Tagging people with floating names and notes on how we know each other, pronouns, other useful info my face blindness is so bad at. Live mapping while I walk. BUT NO.

I want the version of tech that doesn't violate privacy and doesn't record and doesn't ask for my date of birth, and I'm so far from where any of the work happens that yelling about it does feel shaking a cane at the moon to yell about the tides eroding the cliff where my house rests.

I sincerely think part of the issue is that: maybe (at least for now) the tech industry has kind of solved all of our current problems. Our SW more or less does what we need, and our devices also kind of do what we need. Big Tech is addicted to hypergrowth, and there's nowhere we need to "grow."

This has been my argument for a while. Powerful internet PC that fits in your pocket might be peak consumer tech for a while Games, music, and movies will still be big, but who needs actual new consumer tech? It's fluff All of the real tech advances these days seem to be in health care (mRNA etc.)

Ditto. Sociologists call this the "saturated state." We have all the apps we need for almost everything we do. Where we need attention is in physical things: Medical advances, energy advances, agricultural advances. But those simply aren't "sexy."

And according to all the data I’ve ever seen (which Krugman quotes here), Americans do indeed mistrust big tech MUCH more than they did a decade ago: paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-does-e...?

If you had asked me a decade ago what I thought of Elon Musk, I'd struggle to have an opinion. He does rockets and electric cars, right? I guess he's fine. Maybe a little weird. Now I'm convinced every tech billionaire is a nazi pedophile or at least OK with nazi pedophilia.

That really struck me with AI. Instead of telling us how it'd make life better, the messaging was "good luck affording food after a robot takes your job, sucker!"

The whole point of the Robotic Workforce is so PEOPLE don't have to work because robots don't need to be PAID and we can therefore spend MORE MONEY ON PEOPLE!!! If the people are not regarded, it may as well be a robot army that will do nothing and help no one. A waste of resources!!!

And also ‘every product you liked now has AI in it’

'And is worse'

This makes me wonder: How much of the way we discuss AI (in particular), is ending up at an impasse because of the moral injury of it? Those who embrace using it are doing it KNOWING other people consider it cheating, how does it change the way they feel and think?

I wouldn't be surprised if that lamp, however cute, turned out to be harvesting visual, sonic and movement data for training and monetisation. They aren't in the business of innovation any more, just trying to grab as big a piece of the enshittification action as possible.

yeah, that’s…that’s exactly the point of my article, did you read it lol