The World We're Designing
September 12, 2024 7:26 AM Subscribe
One day, James Williams —the former Google strategist I met—addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: “How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?” There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.
✋
posted by HearHere at 8:16 AM on September 12 [3 favorites]
posted by HearHere at 8:16 AM on September 12 [3 favorites]
There's a meme for that:
"Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus ..."
It's always the same when the bean counters take over. Line must go up.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:27 AM on September 12 [30 favorites]
"Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus ..."
It's always the same when the bean counters take over. Line must go up.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:27 AM on September 12 [30 favorites]
Line must go up for the next two quarters. After that, it's an externality.
This is why I left the private sector.
posted by TheHuntForBlueMonday at 8:44 AM on September 12 [17 favorites]
This is why I left the private sector.
posted by TheHuntForBlueMonday at 8:44 AM on September 12 [17 favorites]
And besides, if you program the Torment Nexus, you will get paid enough that your children can go to a screen-free private school, you can live in a socially liberal but gated community (or a community gated by remoteness and expense) and of course you won't be convinced to forgo vaccines and cancer treatment, plus you'll be able to afford them, so who cares what happens to the world you create? If people cared about what happened to the world they created, they would not be working for the torment-nexus projects.
posted by Frowner at 9:01 AM on September 12 [50 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 9:01 AM on September 12 [50 favorites]
In fact, the money they make creating the hellscape is precisely how they will guarantee that they don't have to live in the hellscape.
posted by Frowner at 9:03 AM on September 12 [85 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 9:03 AM on September 12 [85 favorites]
Alas that I can't favorite that remark as many times as it deserves.
posted by aramaic at 9:04 AM on September 12 [2 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 9:04 AM on September 12 [2 favorites]
... if you program the Torment Nexus, you will get paid enough
There are millions of eager, smart, hungry programmers from less-advantaged regions who will happily build the machinery of the Torment Nexus with zero moral qualms and at about 1/3 the wages of a first-world programmer. So, if you're in the west and you're just a programmer and haven't made it to management or a corner office yet... you too will probably share the hellscape.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:14 AM on September 12 [17 favorites]
There are millions of eager, smart, hungry programmers from less-advantaged regions who will happily build the machinery of the Torment Nexus with zero moral qualms and at about 1/3 the wages of a first-world programmer. So, if you're in the west and you're just a programmer and haven't made it to management or a corner office yet... you too will probably share the hellscape.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:14 AM on September 12 [17 favorites]
I dislike Google a little bit more every single day.
But the predominant emotion I feel is contempt for its collective stupidity.
posted by jamjam at 9:21 AM on September 12 [5 favorites]
But the predominant emotion I feel is contempt for its collective stupidity.
posted by jamjam at 9:21 AM on September 12 [5 favorites]
Google's Mensa inspired interviewing strategy should probably have been a big clue.
posted by srboisvert at 9:35 AM on September 12 [9 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 9:35 AM on September 12 [9 favorites]
It’s funny how many situations turn out to just be the tragedy of the commons, even if the situation the concept is named for apparently never happened. Greed is a thing, and it’s one of the reasons to have laws. Sadly, the laws are usually a generation or three behind the actual situation.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 9:37 AM on September 12 [11 favorites]
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 9:37 AM on September 12 [11 favorites]
I'm not a fan of the puerile term, but there is a word for this.
posted by bolix at 9:39 AM on September 12 [2 favorites]
posted by bolix at 9:39 AM on September 12 [2 favorites]
This is why I left the private sector
The unfortunate thing is that even in the nonprofit world, hype predominates and governs how money and time are spent. A lot of grants are specifically for hype-related projects. Rather than spending time building a web that has room for individual agency and ownership, or ensuring real people are able to pull the levers that control things, or ensuring that the algorithms that are built don't hurt people, everything is getting fed into LLMs and becoming less accountable and less accessible. Everything still has to be more and faster. Every week we hear about some new licensing fine print that sells our content and art to companies with few ethical considerations.
I keep wondering if I'm feeling this way because of my age (does one inevitably stop wanting to spend precious time pivoting to each new hyped-up thing?); because it feels like everyone in tech is wildly, irrationally exuberant and ignoring all possible security or social implications; or because my priorities have just realigned. I guess I've never stopped being a skeptic, and that's an especially unpopular stance these days. Like I've worked in tech for 10 years now, and 10 years ago, I dreamed of a role in the industry. But I'm feeling very burned-out on the web as it is right now, whereas I used to love it and spend a lot of time learning and strategizing how to build and update my website. I remember the grass-roots feeling of potential that the old web had, the idea that you could build something and people might see it. I remember when search worked! I felt the same way about Twitter and Instagram back in the day, that you could have an idea and people might see it and join you in your madness. Anyone else remember the Bike Furnace? It was like textual performance art.
Like memes still exist and can be created. But increasingly, especially on the big social networks, it feels like few people see anything I do, serious or unserious. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. And maybe that's fine—but how else can I make my work and my ideas discoverable to like-minded people?
Even when I was working on my own personal sites, I was always a flat-files kinda gal, because I value transparency and portability. Maybe part of what drove me away was working for an agency, learning how complex front-end web development actually can be, and feeling like I wasn't doing it right if it wasn't scalable, secure, and supported by a database. Like I would undermine my own credibility if I built a flat-files website in this day and age. I know how to administer and troubleshoot more complex WordPress websites now—I've done it for work for years, and trained thousands of people to do it. But maybe now that I don't care, I should return to that old simplicity, and figure out whatever is the current most simple flat-files CMS. (Blosxom was my roll-your-own flat-files system back in the day.)
posted by limeonaire at 10:15 AM on September 12 [20 favorites]
The unfortunate thing is that even in the nonprofit world, hype predominates and governs how money and time are spent. A lot of grants are specifically for hype-related projects. Rather than spending time building a web that has room for individual agency and ownership, or ensuring real people are able to pull the levers that control things, or ensuring that the algorithms that are built don't hurt people, everything is getting fed into LLMs and becoming less accountable and less accessible. Everything still has to be more and faster. Every week we hear about some new licensing fine print that sells our content and art to companies with few ethical considerations.
I keep wondering if I'm feeling this way because of my age (does one inevitably stop wanting to spend precious time pivoting to each new hyped-up thing?); because it feels like everyone in tech is wildly, irrationally exuberant and ignoring all possible security or social implications; or because my priorities have just realigned. I guess I've never stopped being a skeptic, and that's an especially unpopular stance these days. Like I've worked in tech for 10 years now, and 10 years ago, I dreamed of a role in the industry. But I'm feeling very burned-out on the web as it is right now, whereas I used to love it and spend a lot of time learning and strategizing how to build and update my website. I remember the grass-roots feeling of potential that the old web had, the idea that you could build something and people might see it. I remember when search worked! I felt the same way about Twitter and Instagram back in the day, that you could have an idea and people might see it and join you in your madness. Anyone else remember the Bike Furnace? It was like textual performance art.
Like memes still exist and can be created. But increasingly, especially on the big social networks, it feels like few people see anything I do, serious or unserious. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. And maybe that's fine—but how else can I make my work and my ideas discoverable to like-minded people?
Even when I was working on my own personal sites, I was always a flat-files kinda gal, because I value transparency and portability. Maybe part of what drove me away was working for an agency, learning how complex front-end web development actually can be, and feeling like I wasn't doing it right if it wasn't scalable, secure, and supported by a database. Like I would undermine my own credibility if I built a flat-files website in this day and age. I know how to administer and troubleshoot more complex WordPress websites now—I've done it for work for years, and trained thousands of people to do it. But maybe now that I don't care, I should return to that old simplicity, and figure out whatever is the current most simple flat-files CMS. (Blosxom was my roll-your-own flat-files system back in the day.)
posted by limeonaire at 10:15 AM on September 12 [20 favorites]
This is why I left the private sector
I used to work for a small educational non-profit that taught disadvantaged kids to program computers.
I happened to have a really good piece of software to do that. It was old, not flashy, run by a tiny Canadian company.
The pressure to switch to something “flashy” (and thus throw away our entire curriculum, and put my kids online into data tracking app providers…) was constant. Why? I had to raise $1.5 million a year.
And the people that can fund that kind of thing are, well, the focus of this post, to some extent.
posted by teece303 at 10:22 AM on September 12 [12 favorites]
I used to work for a small educational non-profit that taught disadvantaged kids to program computers.
I happened to have a really good piece of software to do that. It was old, not flashy, run by a tiny Canadian company.
The pressure to switch to something “flashy” (and thus throw away our entire curriculum, and put my kids online into data tracking app providers…) was constant. Why? I had to raise $1.5 million a year.
And the people that can fund that kind of thing are, well, the focus of this post, to some extent.
posted by teece303 at 10:22 AM on September 12 [12 favorites]
Beautifully said, limeonaire. I've had the same trajectory over my 16 years in data. For a lovely moment in time, it was about helping people make better decisions in the face of uncertainty, but now it's about letting executives look a table with red/yellow/green boxes and pretend they're informed. The robust and thoughtful analyses that underlie the boxes are poems sung into the void.
I swear I've worked hard to avoid contributing to the hellscape, but the best I've been able to do the last few years is "extract money from corporations without making anything worse". Ugh.
posted by McBearclaw at 10:46 AM on September 12 [10 favorites]
I swear I've worked hard to avoid contributing to the hellscape, but the best I've been able to do the last few years is "extract money from corporations without making anything worse". Ugh.
posted by McBearclaw at 10:46 AM on September 12 [10 favorites]
This feels like a meaningful quote and moment, but also so dang vague about timing and scope. The Anil Dash quote is from twelve years ago - when was this mysterious room meeting? The Dash quote is about the web, and a particular collective “we”. The room meeting was some different “we”. I realize I’m missing the forest for the trees here, but I’m annoyed about those trees.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:15 AM on September 12 [5 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:15 AM on September 12 [5 favorites]
limeonaire: how else can I make my work and my ideas discoverable to like-minded people?
Maybe it's time to revive an old MeFi idea: an internal webring of sorts. I keep meaning to restart my blog, but the web is very different now.
posted by dhruva at 11:18 AM on September 12 [4 favorites]
Maybe it's time to revive an old MeFi idea: an internal webring of sorts. I keep meaning to restart my blog, but the web is very different now.
posted by dhruva at 11:18 AM on September 12 [4 favorites]
It's funny, I've had a journey in kinda the opposite direction, though in a field that's two steps away. When I started in the computer animation industry, I thought of it as the home of brain-eating Disney propaganda worms for kids. I do IT and some software dev, not animation, but I still understood that that's what I was supporting.
But now that I've been in it for 20+ years and have a kid who spends a lot of her time watching and enjoying the products of my industry - and who will probably spend the rest of her life doing so - I've softened that stance a bit. There are some good people trying to make good animation for, and tell good stories to, kids.
There are lots and lots of shitty things about the industry, and plenty of shows that only exist to sell injection-molded plastic, but some of it, at least, is kinda okay.
posted by clawsoon at 11:19 AM on September 12 [5 favorites]
But now that I've been in it for 20+ years and have a kid who spends a lot of her time watching and enjoying the products of my industry - and who will probably spend the rest of her life doing so - I've softened that stance a bit. There are some good people trying to make good animation for, and tell good stories to, kids.
There are lots and lots of shitty things about the industry, and plenty of shows that only exist to sell injection-molded plastic, but some of it, at least, is kinda okay.
posted by clawsoon at 11:19 AM on September 12 [5 favorites]
Frowner: In fact, the money they make creating the hellscape is precisely how they will guarantee that they don't have to live in the hellscape.
I'm wearing a tee-shirt that reads "I earned good money so the Torment Nexus would not eat my face." You, too, can buy the merch!
posted by k3ninho at 11:19 AM on September 12 [4 favorites]
I'm wearing a tee-shirt that reads "I earned good money so the Torment Nexus would not eat my face." You, too, can buy the merch!
posted by k3ninho at 11:19 AM on September 12 [4 favorites]
Anil's quote reminds me of this one from J.L. Carr: "We can and ask and ask, but never have again what once seemed ours forever."
Well, that and perhaps the more cynical side of me, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:26 AM on September 12 [3 favorites]
Well, that and perhaps the more cynical side of me, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:26 AM on September 12 [3 favorites]
“ In fact, the money they make creating the hellscape is precisely how they will guarantee that they don't have to live in the hellscape.”
I would not be so sure of that. The problem is the longer this stuff goes on the bigger the hellscape gets. These folks are more likely betting they will either die before it becomes a problem for them, or be able to keep moving into places where it isn’t hell. Bets are not a sure thing. The hellscape is accelerating and moves faster and more randomly than it sometimes can be predicted to do.
posted by cybrcamper at 11:34 AM on September 12 [8 favorites]
I would not be so sure of that. The problem is the longer this stuff goes on the bigger the hellscape gets. These folks are more likely betting they will either die before it becomes a problem for them, or be able to keep moving into places where it isn’t hell. Bets are not a sure thing. The hellscape is accelerating and moves faster and more randomly than it sometimes can be predicted to do.
posted by cybrcamper at 11:34 AM on September 12 [8 favorites]
IMHO we're in an exciting moment where first world tech workers have the potential to start to understand themselves as workers - who are getting fucked by their bosses and also have a lot of potential collective power. Big love to No Tech for Apartheid, Tech Workers Coalition, Circuit Breakers, and tech workers' unions!
posted by latkes at 11:48 AM on September 12 [14 favorites]
posted by latkes at 11:48 AM on September 12 [14 favorites]
I'm confused, what is the hellscape? Social media? YouTube? The very technology that supported the blog author's (very thin) post? The thing that benefited everyone cited in this very thin post? It's just weird to list nothing but downsides and pretend that we've gotten nothing from this. Especially the very attention mongers quoted.
Also where did the idea that tech people don't give their kids screens/tech come from? That is not a common habit of tech people.
posted by ch1x0r at 12:19 PM on September 12 [5 favorites]
Also where did the idea that tech people don't give their kids screens/tech come from? That is not a common habit of tech people.
posted by ch1x0r at 12:19 PM on September 12 [5 favorites]
what is the hellscape?
The thing where your training and experience don't keep you employed and able to pay for your home and any semblance of a lifestyle.
posted by k3ninho at 12:37 PM on September 12 [11 favorites]
The thing where your training and experience don't keep you employed and able to pay for your home and any semblance of a lifestyle.
posted by k3ninho at 12:37 PM on September 12 [11 favorites]
The thing where your training and experience don't keep you employed and able to pay for your home and any semblance of a lifestyle.
Not to mention the "rushing headlong towards fascism and environmental collapse" thing.
posted by Lyme Drop at 12:41 PM on September 12 [12 favorites]
Not to mention the "rushing headlong towards fascism and environmental collapse" thing.
posted by Lyme Drop at 12:41 PM on September 12 [12 favorites]
I'm not sure it's possible to help build the Torment Nexus without being of the Torment Nexus.
Just because you can't see the hook-ended chains doesn't mean they're not there. It may take a bit longer, but Pinhead and companions will come for you.
posted by house-goblin at 1:01 PM on September 12 [2 favorites]
Just because you can't see the hook-ended chains doesn't mean they're not there. It may take a bit longer, but Pinhead and companions will come for you.
posted by house-goblin at 1:01 PM on September 12 [2 favorites]
The thing where your training and experience don't keep you employed and able to pay for your home and any semblance of a lifestyle.
I mean, I know this is a common talking point, but I don't think it's widely true (and the economic data doesn't support) that most Americans* are in fact widely unemployed or unable to keep any semblance of a lifestyle. We do have a housing crisis, brought about by not actually building housing, which I don't think you can lay at the feet of the tech industry.
I am 100% positive that many people are having a worse time now than they were 20 years ago, even if I don't think this is the common case. What I sincerely wonder is, why does it seem like metafilter only has commenters who are in this scenario? The vibes are bad, and the blue is heavily committed to reinforcing the bad as much as possible. I guess it proves that you don't need widespread social media to bum everyone out!
* Many other countries mostly seem to have done worse actually? Housing shortages certainly aren't unique to the US, sadly!
posted by ch1x0r at 1:11 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
I mean, I know this is a common talking point, but I don't think it's widely true (and the economic data doesn't support) that most Americans* are in fact widely unemployed or unable to keep any semblance of a lifestyle. We do have a housing crisis, brought about by not actually building housing, which I don't think you can lay at the feet of the tech industry.
I am 100% positive that many people are having a worse time now than they were 20 years ago, even if I don't think this is the common case. What I sincerely wonder is, why does it seem like metafilter only has commenters who are in this scenario? The vibes are bad, and the blue is heavily committed to reinforcing the bad as much as possible. I guess it proves that you don't need widespread social media to bum everyone out!
* Many other countries mostly seem to have done worse actually? Housing shortages certainly aren't unique to the US, sadly!
posted by ch1x0r at 1:11 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
The hellscape I had in mind was the one where everything you see on the Web is oriented to getting someone to click on ads, whose profits mostly accrue to a tiny handful of people, who then employ armies of designers (and data scientists like myself) to scrounge up an extra 0.01% of revenue while coincidentally platforming fascists because, y'know, gullible people clicking stuff.
posted by McBearclaw at 1:12 PM on September 12 [6 favorites]
posted by McBearclaw at 1:12 PM on September 12 [6 favorites]
Also where did the idea that tech people don't give their kids screens/tech come from? That is not a common habit of tech people.
Keeping the early years screen-light is certainly a preference of “upper middle class” people, in which tech people are included. It’s popular to tie this to some notion that it’s due to an insider cynicism about tech and I don’t think that has much to do with it, though. And it’s not like they’ll keep their kids away from tech forever - eventually they’ll have to learn to code.
It's just weird to list nothing but downsides and pretend that we've gotten nothing from this.
It’s pretty easy to feel like we haven’t gotten much from it. But you are getting at something here
I'm confused, what is the hellscape? Social media?
that I do think is relevant, which is that plenty of jobs feel more like “I’m working on some pointless bullshit dressed up blog platform but at least it pays well” than “I’m working on the Torment Nexus but at least it pays well.”
posted by atoxyl at 1:13 PM on September 12
Keeping the early years screen-light is certainly a preference of “upper middle class” people, in which tech people are included. It’s popular to tie this to some notion that it’s due to an insider cynicism about tech and I don’t think that has much to do with it, though. And it’s not like they’ll keep their kids away from tech forever - eventually they’ll have to learn to code.
It's just weird to list nothing but downsides and pretend that we've gotten nothing from this.
It’s pretty easy to feel like we haven’t gotten much from it. But you are getting at something here
I'm confused, what is the hellscape? Social media?
that I do think is relevant, which is that plenty of jobs feel more like “I’m working on some pointless bullshit dressed up blog platform but at least it pays well” than “I’m working on the Torment Nexus but at least it pays well.”
posted by atoxyl at 1:13 PM on September 12
Like yeah of course there are arguments for ill effects of the online ad economy or social media but it’s never going to be at the top of the list of morally troubling white collar jobs.
posted by atoxyl at 1:19 PM on September 12
posted by atoxyl at 1:19 PM on September 12
I am 100% positive that many people are having a worse time now than they were 20 years ago, even if I don't think this is the common case. What I sincerely wonder is, why does it seem like metafilter only has commenters who are in this scenario?
Metafilter skews heavily, I would say almost comically heavily, toward late-career tech workers who are probably feeling the worst effects of recent shifts in the industry. And those of us who aren't that tend to also be information workers in some way, who see that the great maw of vulture capital is coming for us next (if it hasn't already). We're old and pointless now, except that most of us still need to make a living for another thirty years because retirement is a pipe dream.
Young folks and folks who do, like, real actual work probably have a different take, natch.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:43 PM on September 12 [10 favorites]
Metafilter skews heavily, I would say almost comically heavily, toward late-career tech workers who are probably feeling the worst effects of recent shifts in the industry. And those of us who aren't that tend to also be information workers in some way, who see that the great maw of vulture capital is coming for us next (if it hasn't already). We're old and pointless now, except that most of us still need to make a living for another thirty years because retirement is a pipe dream.
Young folks and folks who do, like, real actual work probably have a different take, natch.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:43 PM on September 12 [10 favorites]
I mean, the climate impact of 'the tech industry' may end human society as we know it and rapidly accelerate mass extinction, so that seems possibly a lot of worse than the enabling fascists stuff, which is a pretty big bummer in itself.
I do love the internet! Wish it only had the good stuff like communities that are mostly kind where people share ideas and lols.
posted by latkes at 1:45 PM on September 12 [3 favorites]
I do love the internet! Wish it only had the good stuff like communities that are mostly kind where people share ideas and lols.
posted by latkes at 1:45 PM on September 12 [3 favorites]
It’s pretty easy to feel like we haven’t gotten much from it. But you are getting at something here.
I mean, for me a simple but powerful experience was the way that social media allowed people to share progressive ideas and experiences that really changed the culture of professional life for the better. Sexism was named and shamed, we gained concepts like "gaslighting" and we started to be able to see bad situations for what they were, and call them out. Things are by no means perfect and there's also backlash to contend with, but this is a simple thing that happened that I do think was enabled by one of the parts of tech (social media) that is also responsible for some of the worst stuff. Which is why I find it so hard to be black and white. I don't know that I would give up the changes that make my literal daily working life better, and I'm not convinced they would've happened so quickly without the ability for so many people to share information like that.
posted by ch1x0r at 2:18 PM on September 12 [4 favorites]
I mean, for me a simple but powerful experience was the way that social media allowed people to share progressive ideas and experiences that really changed the culture of professional life for the better. Sexism was named and shamed, we gained concepts like "gaslighting" and we started to be able to see bad situations for what they were, and call them out. Things are by no means perfect and there's also backlash to contend with, but this is a simple thing that happened that I do think was enabled by one of the parts of tech (social media) that is also responsible for some of the worst stuff. Which is why I find it so hard to be black and white. I don't know that I would give up the changes that make my literal daily working life better, and I'm not convinced they would've happened so quickly without the ability for so many people to share information like that.
posted by ch1x0r at 2:18 PM on September 12 [4 favorites]
You, too, can buy the merch!
Back when Anonymous was a thing, a lot of people seemed to think they were somehow socking it to the man by buying a Watchmen Guy Fawkes mask. From Warner Bothers.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:27 PM on September 12 [3 favorites]
Back when Anonymous was a thing, a lot of people seemed to think they were somehow socking it to the man by buying a Watchmen Guy Fawkes mask. From Warner Bothers.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:27 PM on September 12 [3 favorites]
We need less more efficent housing, not more housing overall ch1x0r, because we're already destroying too much of our ecosystem. Investment properties contribute though: empty homes owned by banks, vacation homes, etc.
Although environmental destruction trumps every other problem, we've created that disaster across our entire civilization, not just the tech industry. In fact, Jevons paradox suggest the tech industry made trade more efficent, which facilitated greater environmental destruction across the whole world. I'd blame oil extraction technology first there, but overall facilitating environmental destruction via Jevons paradox maybe the single worst thing the tech industry did.
Anyways..
In this article, environmental destruction means only consequences from energy, land, water, and manufactoring required by data centers, iphones, etc, because Jevons paradox never gets mentioned. That's very bad, but not as bad as the overconsumption and overpopulation, nor even as bad as everyone eating more meat.
Aside from environmental destruction, the article singles out surveillance capitalism and exploitive interfaces aka enshittification (Doctorow) describes the exploitive interfaces side as being hellscape development directions. At some point surveillance capitalism creates a hellscape all by themselves, even without the fully privatized flavor of exploitive interfaces.
At the end, it suggests we read The Web We Lost by Anil Dash, which feals dated in that surveillance capitalism would clearly exploit the open web he discusses.
Dude, you broke the Future! by Charles Stross (media.ccc.de) provides a more modern take.
Also Cory Doctorow provides an unending discription of this surveillance capitalism hellscape unfolding at pluralistic.net and in his ocasional talks. Doctorow's 28c3 talk The coming war on general computation seems more relevant today than Anil Dash's blog post.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:28 PM on September 12 [5 favorites]
Although environmental destruction trumps every other problem, we've created that disaster across our entire civilization, not just the tech industry. In fact, Jevons paradox suggest the tech industry made trade more efficent, which facilitated greater environmental destruction across the whole world. I'd blame oil extraction technology first there, but overall facilitating environmental destruction via Jevons paradox maybe the single worst thing the tech industry did.
Anyways..
In this article, environmental destruction means only consequences from energy, land, water, and manufactoring required by data centers, iphones, etc, because Jevons paradox never gets mentioned. That's very bad, but not as bad as the overconsumption and overpopulation, nor even as bad as everyone eating more meat.
Aside from environmental destruction, the article singles out surveillance capitalism and exploitive interfaces aka enshittification (Doctorow) describes the exploitive interfaces side as being hellscape development directions. At some point surveillance capitalism creates a hellscape all by themselves, even without the fully privatized flavor of exploitive interfaces.
At the end, it suggests we read The Web We Lost by Anil Dash, which feals dated in that surveillance capitalism would clearly exploit the open web he discusses.
Dude, you broke the Future! by Charles Stross (media.ccc.de) provides a more modern take.
Also Cory Doctorow provides an unending discription of this surveillance capitalism hellscape unfolding at pluralistic.net and in his ocasional talks. Doctorow's 28c3 talk The coming war on general computation seems more relevant today than Anil Dash's blog post.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:28 PM on September 12 [5 favorites]
For as long as I've understood the tech, web design is its own torment nexus, I can't imagine what Conway's Law lets us infer about the communications and inter-relationships of the node-react stack.
I figure the "big data" aggregation and "foundational model training" are intended to put users as consumers of pre-trained models without the ability to create our own models -- but small and well-adapted animals hold evolutionary niches, not large high-resource-demand monsters, so small tailored models or even local-customisation models can work well.
posted by k3ninho at 3:56 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
I figure the "big data" aggregation and "foundational model training" are intended to put users as consumers of pre-trained models without the ability to create our own models -- but small and well-adapted animals hold evolutionary niches, not large high-resource-demand monsters, so small tailored models or even local-customisation models can work well.
posted by k3ninho at 3:56 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
Unlike gopher, the web could be easily monetized. End of story. You must now curate your own private web. Be brutally selective...
posted by jim in austin at 7:49 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
posted by jim in austin at 7:49 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
We need less more efficent housing, not more housing overall ch1x0r, because we're already destroying too much of our ecosystem. Investment properties contribute though: empty homes owned by banks, vacation homes, etc.
Ok sure. Call me when everyone both happily reduces their overall square footage and when the elite happily gives up their vacation homes. This seems much less efficient than just, like, making more density happen where people already are but I guess we can dream.
Look if the best you've got is old anil dash quotes, stross, and doctorow, ok. They've made a good living peddling nostalgia to us olds. But I'm not sure that nostalgia is a useful reference point on which to base discussion about where to go from here. That Internet has been dead for years and it's really not coming back. But it isn't all bad, so how do we make a better path forward instead of constantly longing for our halcyon youth?
posted by ch1x0r at 8:18 PM on September 12 [4 favorites]
Ok sure. Call me when everyone both happily reduces their overall square footage and when the elite happily gives up their vacation homes. This seems much less efficient than just, like, making more density happen where people already are but I guess we can dream.
Look if the best you've got is old anil dash quotes, stross, and doctorow, ok. They've made a good living peddling nostalgia to us olds. But I'm not sure that nostalgia is a useful reference point on which to base discussion about where to go from here. That Internet has been dead for years and it's really not coming back. But it isn't all bad, so how do we make a better path forward instead of constantly longing for our halcyon youth?
posted by ch1x0r at 8:18 PM on September 12 [4 favorites]
"We do have a housing crisis, brought about by not actually building housing, which I don't think you can lay at the feet of the tech industry. "
No, of course not, not the whole thing... Just a portion of it, for example.
The Justice Department is gearing up to challenge what it says is collusive conduct in the rental housing market with a lawsuit against a software company that it believes allows large landlords to fix prices.
And you know, the first step to fixing the problem is admitting you have a problem. I know. I'm an alcoholic who has been sober for 3 years now. Once you become aware of the problem, you have to maintain that awareness. And awareness of your complicity in the role that brings you to that point. If I have another drink I may or may not go back into it, but I'd much rather not test that, even for a sweet sweet taste of relief, or, how do they call it "a solution" to the worlds problems. Not a drop. The "solutions" end up causing more of the problem, and the people who drive the solutions don't have a vested interest in actual solutions, they are interested in how the "solution" can bring them more money, regardless of its success in actually "solving" problems. And that's assuming the people are trying to do a good thing... When you have something like the above, it's not even a pretense. And this goes on all the time.
I just found out about Google's new "Topics" API. It's great! It's sooooooo wonderful for EVERYONE (*cough*I mean advertisers who give money to google) A site can say what "topics" it's about and then when you visit a site with google ads they can view your browsing topic HISTORY (across sites, across time); but don't you worry your little head it's "private" and my concern about privacy has to be dovetailed in with whatever the billionaires define as "privacy" and slowly erode it.
Remember the old "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" That's an ethos deeply engrained in the tech industry and it's disgusting and rapey, and as a society we've seemed to just "consent" because we prefer convenience over principles, and then we justify the conveniences step at a time.
posted by symbioid at 9:13 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
No, of course not, not the whole thing... Just a portion of it, for example.
The Justice Department is gearing up to challenge what it says is collusive conduct in the rental housing market with a lawsuit against a software company that it believes allows large landlords to fix prices.
And you know, the first step to fixing the problem is admitting you have a problem. I know. I'm an alcoholic who has been sober for 3 years now. Once you become aware of the problem, you have to maintain that awareness. And awareness of your complicity in the role that brings you to that point. If I have another drink I may or may not go back into it, but I'd much rather not test that, even for a sweet sweet taste of relief, or, how do they call it "a solution" to the worlds problems. Not a drop. The "solutions" end up causing more of the problem, and the people who drive the solutions don't have a vested interest in actual solutions, they are interested in how the "solution" can bring them more money, regardless of its success in actually "solving" problems. And that's assuming the people are trying to do a good thing... When you have something like the above, it's not even a pretense. And this goes on all the time.
I just found out about Google's new "Topics" API. It's great! It's sooooooo wonderful for EVERYONE (*cough*I mean advertisers who give money to google) A site can say what "topics" it's about and then when you visit a site with google ads they can view your browsing topic HISTORY (across sites, across time); but don't you worry your little head it's "private" and my concern about privacy has to be dovetailed in with whatever the billionaires define as "privacy" and slowly erode it.
Remember the old "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" That's an ethos deeply engrained in the tech industry and it's disgusting and rapey, and as a society we've seemed to just "consent" because we prefer convenience over principles, and then we justify the conveniences step at a time.
posted by symbioid at 9:13 PM on September 12 [1 favorite]
We need less more efficent housing, not more housing overall ch1x0r, because we're already destroying too much of our ecosystem. Investment properties contribute though: empty homes owned by banks, vacation homes, etc.
...aaand therefore we fix no problems because reasons. NIMBY tactic employed all the time as housing gets pricier and more scarce. Dare I say doomer?
Metafilter skews heavily, I would say almost comically heavily, toward late-career tech workers who are probably feeling the worst effects of recent shifts in the industry.
I've put it more critically in the past, only half jokingly describing the MF frequent flyers as the overeducated and underemployed fundamentally miserable people. From my vantage point, these are people who are generally privileged, educated, well informed, and unable to get a general satisfaction in life while indulging some curiously malcontent personas. Despite being blessed with the tools to be among the most successful members of society.
I agree the original post is pretty thin, reads like a MF reply, ambiguous enough to allow much interpretation and a springboard from which to riff off. And riff is where MeFites are vikings.
As a non tech person. Or perhaps a really old school tech person, these kinds of conversations kind of leave me baffled and a little amused. The internet of the 90s was amazing. The internet of now leaves it in the dust. Miles better. For whatever reason, I have little trouble ignoring the crap. Maybe that's my privilege, as a relatively uneducated old guy. IMO the tech industry isn't the big problem so much as the old information industries that still don't know how to deal with the evolution of the internet and the way it handles information.
The whole non-profit thing deserves a really deep, deep, deep, dive. For whatever reason, non-profit seems a fundamental conviction for many on the left. Which I think may be related to the "overeducated and underemployed fundamentally miserable people" who are deeply suspicious of success and the private sector, and end up being quasi-ascetics by virtue of... their own perception of virtue.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:30 PM on September 12 [2 favorites]
No. I'm not overeducated. Undermployed? Now, yes. Because I guess "AI was gonna fix our bankrupting company" (which just sold back to the company it bought its assets from 8 years ago after we build it all out and half of us lose our jobs (lowest on seniority, yay)). But the lovely british cheerio mate CEO said - I'm firing you, we'll use chatbots to fix everything.
Anyways, no, my problem such as it is, has nothing to do with overeducation or underemployment (but 3 family members have been homeless, and drug addicted and died as a consequence) and if I don't get a job in the next 3 months, my unemployment runs out and the hard work I did that got me enough to survive the past year was only enough to last til unemployment... but yeah, I guess we're just spoiled Silicon Valley jerks. I had a union job supporting blue collar workers, never went to college (never even THOUGHT about it).
So yeah no - It's none of the above. I'm a socialist, and I call the forces as i see it. If you wanna dig, maybe the "rental" issue I linked to is less about tech and more about the environment modern tech swims in (dating back to the fucking misguided hippies and their Esalen talks and Acid drops and TedX wow!) - What I mean is - fuck capitalism, it is a huge part of the problem, and I think that's what we're getting at...
And I hazard even those of us who are disagreeing on some of these points really do want to get to a community based system again (whether it's federation, etc). Some are just regular problems we encounter in social interactions. Some is driven by "bots". Some is data scraping of our thoughts. Some is profit oriented. IDK. It's not a single Tech is bad, but let's not pretend like the way it has evolved is what it could be or what it can.
Also, making it sound like Corey Doctorow isn't pushing for solutions and actually fighting for things to be better is a joke. He's not just pining for the past, he's actively working to make things better, before congress and with power players, which is more than I can say for the lot of us on the blue with all our snark for and against each other.
posted by symbioid at 9:54 PM on September 12 [2 favorites]
Anyways, no, my problem such as it is, has nothing to do with overeducation or underemployment (but 3 family members have been homeless, and drug addicted and died as a consequence) and if I don't get a job in the next 3 months, my unemployment runs out and the hard work I did that got me enough to survive the past year was only enough to last til unemployment... but yeah, I guess we're just spoiled Silicon Valley jerks. I had a union job supporting blue collar workers, never went to college (never even THOUGHT about it).
So yeah no - It's none of the above. I'm a socialist, and I call the forces as i see it. If you wanna dig, maybe the "rental" issue I linked to is less about tech and more about the environment modern tech swims in (dating back to the fucking misguided hippies and their Esalen talks and Acid drops and TedX wow!) - What I mean is - fuck capitalism, it is a huge part of the problem, and I think that's what we're getting at...
And I hazard even those of us who are disagreeing on some of these points really do want to get to a community based system again (whether it's federation, etc). Some are just regular problems we encounter in social interactions. Some is driven by "bots". Some is data scraping of our thoughts. Some is profit oriented. IDK. It's not a single Tech is bad, but let's not pretend like the way it has evolved is what it could be or what it can.
Also, making it sound like Corey Doctorow isn't pushing for solutions and actually fighting for things to be better is a joke. He's not just pining for the past, he's actively working to make things better, before congress and with power players, which is more than I can say for the lot of us on the blue with all our snark for and against each other.
posted by symbioid at 9:54 PM on September 12 [2 favorites]
For those of us that remember the before-times, the appearance of the internet was a bonafide Big Deal. I imagine it's impact was similar to the popularization of the Automobile, or the creation of the electrical grid. There was life before, and there is life after, and from the vantage point of after, before seems primitive and crazy.
I think about all the old newspaper and magazine ads that I've seen pop up over the years, full on maniac scams to give yourself electric shocks for health, or drink radium for that warm inner glow.
The internet was a one of those things that shifts the culture so fundamentally that it births new robber-barons, and I think inevitably spawns an intricate web of grifts, from straight tech exploits (getting people to unknowingly run cryptominers from web exploits), to deeper plays like NFT, Crypto itself, and now AI, an industry that tells lies to make the line go up, based on the recent memory of how a tech invention could change the world.
So, when someone can't invent the next internet, the settle for some small part of the Torment Nexus, knowing it can appeal to the investor class whose main memory is how the internet changed everything, and by god, next time the invention of the internet happens, they're not going to miss out.
TLDR; this will all blow over, just give it 30-40 years.
posted by chromecow at 11:07 PM on September 12
I think about all the old newspaper and magazine ads that I've seen pop up over the years, full on maniac scams to give yourself electric shocks for health, or drink radium for that warm inner glow.
The internet was a one of those things that shifts the culture so fundamentally that it births new robber-barons, and I think inevitably spawns an intricate web of grifts, from straight tech exploits (getting people to unknowingly run cryptominers from web exploits), to deeper plays like NFT, Crypto itself, and now AI, an industry that tells lies to make the line go up, based on the recent memory of how a tech invention could change the world.
So, when someone can't invent the next internet, the settle for some small part of the Torment Nexus, knowing it can appeal to the investor class whose main memory is how the internet changed everything, and by god, next time the invention of the internet happens, they're not going to miss out.
TLDR; this will all blow over, just give it 30-40 years.
posted by chromecow at 11:07 PM on September 12
« Older US and the Middle East | A gambling career with a gardening hobby Newer »
The Web We Lost
Rebuilding the Web we Lost
posted by signsofrain at 7:29 AM on September 12 [6 favorites]