went for a walk in a bad mood thinking about how much we've ceded to ads. how much is destroyed either because it was less valuable than ads or because its value cratered as it became increasingly inundated with ads. How much time and money itself is wasted on ads. How fundamentally disconnected advertising is from letting people know whether they would like a product or service or how that product or service compares to others.
Then I got to thinking about the absurd amounts of processing power my phone has and about how, outside of faster network speed, it feels like there's nothing that makes it particularly nicer than the phone I had 5 or 10 years ago (which had a headphone jack, btw)—I'm still just text/voice chatting with friends and I'm still not particularly interested in watching video or playing games on it1. Then I walked by a kid talking on his watch like he's Dick Tracy2 and what are we even doing here? I do not doubt there are some nice things about smart watches but the ergonomics of talking on it seem worse (and the sound quality on both ends) and to say that is handsfree is the hollowest win imaginable.
And the thing about so much vaunted real or fake future tech (smart appliances, AR, touchscreen everything, flying cars, jet packs) is that it's either obviously shit outside the realm of a book or movie, or it's only useful in incredibly limited situations, or if you put an amount of money and energy into perfecting and supporting it that companies can't or won't spend. And yet, so much of our society requires this idea of progress completely separated from any idea of improvement so what can we do but have the courage to redesign everything every year?
Anyway, those are some thoughts that are arguably related
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Hell, as impressive as the apple's arm computers are, it's not like most of the improvements have meant much for what I do day-to-day. I do way more voice calls and some more screen-sharing than I used to but also I do most of that on my PC I built like 7 years ago.
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Like he's old enough to even understand what that means... Like I'm even old enough to understand what that means—the movie was already an anachronism and I was 2 when it came out.
And apologies to the OP if I'm grossly misinterpreting their phrase, but to me this is things like autonomous vehicles. It's a car, like you've already got, except during your commute you could maybe catch up on the newest streaming service offerings. You still have a commute, you still watch HBOMax or whatever, but now you don't have to hold a steering wheel. It's a Jetsons fantasy where we can imagine a robot maid and alien life but can't imagine major societal changes. And really, the problem is we've been sold a bill of goods where "progress" is technological and flashy. Progress doesn't and shouldn't rest on inventions and gadgets and patents. So yes, "we were promised flying cars" but flying cars aren't an improvement either, they're just Progress. The very idea of progress should make you ask "progress towards what?" and if there's no goal at the end of the tunnel, or the goal is trite and meaningless, it's not an improvement. And change isn't improvement, anyway, as we can all note looking at the state of tech and the internet today.