that's pretty much the thesis. you don't need to keep reading. it's nothing but depressing shit that won't help anyone. i'm sorry you saw this post but if you don't click read now, you can minimize the harm.
compare the goddamn whirlwind of any decade of the 20th century with now. from 1915 to 1925 - what, the vacuum cleaner was invented? people began to get electricity as something other than a novelty? fucking life changing. the 30s: the car became properly viable. the 40s: ww2 invented billions of new things that became Products. the 50s: meaningful plastics and color TV. the 60s: the fucking transistor, and cassette tapes. the 70s: computers, video cameras. the 80s: come the fuck on do we even need to discuss this. the 90s: computers in every house, the internet. the 2000s: MP3s and LCDs.
and then that's kinda it. you get past, say, 2005, and it starts to become really hard to name any new inventions
by 2006 we had jets and gene therapy and gaming laptops and mp3 players that stored our entire library and hybrid cars and cellphones that worked everywhere and could run programs and play music. oh sure, there was a huge leap forward when the iphone came out - a brief spurt of innovation in the early 2010s - but mostly it's just been "number go up."
there's very little that isn't "number go up." what really, truly new technology has been invented since 2005? something that we really didn't have before, that isn't just "what we had, but More." faster processors, more storage, higher resolution - no, i mean, name something you fundamentally could not do in 2005 that you can do now.
imagine learning for the first time that you could make "home movies." imagine learning for the first time that you can take a picture, then see a print 60 seconds later. imagine learning for the first time that you can take a picture, then send it to the other side of the country, or the planet, in seconds. imagine learning that you can hear any song you can imagine, instantly. imagine learning that you can watch any movie you want, instantly.
we had all those things by 2006. the numbers have just gone up. back then, it was 240p video over 3G; now it's 4K over LTE. it's the same experience. when each of those things was new, you shit yourself the first time you saw them. what has made you really go hog wild in the last 15 years? I don't just mean "yes, Intel has released The Next Chip, which is 20% better, as usual." I mean, when is the last time you saw something that you genuinely did not know was within our capacity as a species, yet was suddenly available to purchase in a store?
for me? since 2005, it's LTE on smartphones, and 3D printing. that's it. everything else - everything else in the world that I am aware of - is something we had in 2005. just with bigger numbers.
that is why silicon valley is a shitshow. that is why our society is crumbling. it's because we simply don't know what to do with ourselves anymore. we spent a century defining our existence as "the people with money try to invent the next thing; then, we all buy it; then, they use the money to invent the next thing." but inventions are over, we've invented every kind of thing, there's nothing left.
ignoring that VR is 50 years old, the fact that we have it now isn't remarkable or society-altering. 95% of people will never even try it, even given the opportunity. it's also something we could do in 1995. it was available if you wanted it; nobody wanted it because it was so limited. now it's less limited, but it'll be another 40 years, minimum, before it can replicate actual reality convincingly, so the overwhelming majority of people have no interest in it. it's neat, but it's just something we had with bigger numbers; big enough that it's now possible for people to enjoy at consumer budgets, but not novel.
i do not wish to discuss AI. never discuss AI with me, that rates a ban. but suffice to say: haha no. it is not going to change much, and it is yet another desperate, flailing refusal to admit that capital has no idea what to do next.
self driving cars are not happening within 30 years, if at all
we don't know what to do anymore. large parts of Industry still function. drywall manufacturers still make drywall; banks still make loans. the problem is, the purpose of drywall since it was invented was to make boxes to hold your technology, and the purpose of banks was to pay for the technology to be invented and for the little people to get loans to buy it. the whole system is breaking down because we invented everything, so the cycle is broken.
we are a culture based entirely on breathlessly awaiting new technology, but we finished technology. the end guy was hard. barring completely new forms of physics being discovered, we've made everything we're going to make, and now we are like soldiers with no war to fight. it's no surprise that the entire world is turning to dust.
i am unwilling to debate any element of this treatise. if you read it, that's your fault, you had your chance to opt out.
