I was initially thinking of writing a cheat sheet on all of my ongoing struggles for the next therapy session. Lately there have been so many things happening that I’m having a hard time keeping track of them all. That’s not to say life has become worse – rather very difficult. Suppose undertaking a gender transition will do that to a person. It’s not about just that though.
In fact, to me it seems like all the hardship I have been going through lately is strongly linked to the Zeitgeist all of us inevitably have to experience. You’ll have older people ramble to you how much worse life was back in their day (while trying to get those times back for some reason – make it make sense). Has their generation solved all the problems in the world yet? Didn’t think so.
While I cannot relate to many of the experiences those people have gone through, saying that today’s youth is lazy or soft is not just disrespectful – it is clearly very shortsighted and plain stupid.
We are currently on humanity’s third generation of digital natives. These people did not require library cards or cable TV in order to stay informed or educated. For the longest time, the Internet provided instant access to the world’s biggest knowledge base. Free of charge for most things, as long as you paid your dial-up or broadband bills.
Industry and employment evolved accordingly. New technologies had to be harnessed. The people who entered the digital age in their adult years will forever be behind due to the sheer difference in the amount of information they processed in their childhoods, in comparison to digital natives. Indeed it opened a window of opportunity for the youth – but that’s now rapidly closing.
Despite all the comfort we enjoy that the elderly complains about, as far as I know I still have to go to work in order to have a roof above my head and something in the fridge to eat. “Back in my day we didn’t have jobs like these” – fantastic, now AI is taking those from everyone as well. And it’s not like we humans will ever get those back.
The billionaire class will stop at nothing to automate their lifestyles to the extent us filthy proles are no longer required to exist in order to serve them. With the development of AI this is finally within reach for them. The industry is booming, governments write checks for AI subsidies worth billions of euros. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is worth a trillion US dollars.
Now that AI is everything people in business talk about, the stock market performance is completely detached from reality. Because where do you expect to get all the revenue that gets priced into all those valuations when there will be significantly fewer people in employment? You know, the people who are supposed to pay for and consume the services they provide?
The incoming market crash is going to be like nothing we or our ancestors have ever seen before, and we will all suffer for it. Well, not the ultrarich of course – they barely have to pay any taxes so they can keep doing all their hoarding in the meantime, just to buy up the rest of the world at a great discount once the economy falls apart again. And you won’t even notice.
And while we’re on the way to ruin, let’s take a look around ourselves. No need to read Technofeudalism for that.
Today I woke up, checked my phone to see if there are any breaking news about whatever war is currently happening – too many to count right now.
Fired up my TV to play some Tetris before work – just to see some ads on the homepage. Everything needs to be connected to Wi-Fi these days so I get to be a better consumer. I hope my paid online multiplayer subscription to play games I already bought is still valid.
That was a good game. Let me pull up Telegram for some drone strike footage from about a few hours ago. Whichever battlefield in the world you want to follow now has a live feed. By the way, did you know that Ukraine gamified drone combat so that for more kills you get points that can buy you new drones in return? Definitely not a dystopia we’re living in.
Now that I’ve enjoyed my matcha with artificial milk, time to get to work. I need to train Claude to gather insights from the meeting notes that Gemini kept making while recording me talking to other people during the week. Of course I’d give away my privacy for convenience! Can’t wait to read a PRD from a PM who decided to replace their intelligence with ChatGPT prompts.
I’ll let an AI talk to another AI while I browse a curated news feed on one of the social media platforms I still use to stay in touch with my loved ones. Aww, someone just posted an AI video of a dog giving birth to a cat. How adorable, I bet people over 50 love this! I wonder if any of them recently posted any AI edits of their relatives online without asking for their consent to use AI.
Of course I have zero doubts about the elderly’s media literacy in the social media age without having been digital natives, and would love them to keep voting in all kinds of elections. They will definitely read election programs of each candidate and not vote based on the fact whoever of those politicians shouts on Facebook the loudest. They better not hate as many minorities as possible!
Look at that, Spotify just posted a playlist of songs I listened to the most during my past 14 years of using it to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Mmm, teenage memories. I love my data being farmed for stuff like that, because that’s definitely the only way my data is ever being used.
Who’d want to research my other behaviour patterns based on data anyway? Definitely not Palantir! I’m sure their founder isn’t involved in any scandals either. Glad that we can trust the ultrarich with all the technology they keep funding. Anyway, time to wrap up the workday and get ready for the evening.
Hopefully the date whom I’m seeing tonight thanks to paying for a premium tier on Bumble doesn’t bail on me – it took too many days for the algorithm to finally show me to someone who thinks I’m worthy of their time for longer than a second. Turns out the app gave my photos and the bio a higher rating than before!
Anyway, you get the point. I can go on about how close we are getting to living in Blade Runner. Could have at least invented proper flying cars by now, but alas – instead I get to be a digital slave soon.
Can this course still be altered? Perhaps, but I’m afraid the trends are there to stay. How do you contain this kind of technology, now that everyone has access to some kind of computing device at a very low cost? The humankind’s digital age is certainly a blessing for many, yet the negative aspects of this time may soon overshadow the positives.
Are we as humans willing and able to stay in control? Should we? In the end, we’re still animals with emotions and biases, whereas machines aren’t that. Within my lifetime the homo sapiens will cease to be the world’s apex predator, and I’m afraid no one yet knows how we will be able to deal with this shift. As selfish of a thought for the humanity as it is, we better start planning.
We can keep droning on about the fact how much the technology changed the world around us. In the end one thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that, before any human being can start to thrive, they need to learn how to survive.