My son read my old 1982 copy of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance", complete with my margin notes. He got a kick reading what "21 year old Dad" thought of the book. Prompted a lovely discussion!
Without being too nostalgic, I do lament that can happen with today's ebooks. But it could! (e.g. shared libraries, better note taking in ereaders, etc. stable file formats) #UX#Future
I prepared #food for the weekend and next week, so it's easier to eat properly when everything is ready. This is my #goal in the #future as well. I even bought these little boxes for this purpose. They don't take up much space in the freezer. #cooking#healthyliving#suomimastodon#finland Mäisky ruusukaalit (in #Finnish) are cooked Brussels sprouts that are flattened with a drinking glass and seasoned well and then fried in the oven until they are crispy.
The learning curve was steep but exciting. It brought me back to what I’ve been preaching for umpteen years: make your own web space the anchor of your actions!
I'm back with blogging and new plans believing in decentralised networking: https://www.cronenburg.net/blogging/@writers
We’ve heard time and again how generative AI would be great for art and creativity. But the reality is that it just spits out variations on things that already exist.
In September, I used Ursula Le Guin and Joseph Weizenbaum to argue against that future.
Only fools try to predict the future. You can read my predictions for 2023, or dig deep into my archives and rate me on how foolish I am. So here are my five predictions for 2024 AI Genocide It is obvious that Large Language Models are based on stolen material. I suspect that a lawsuit […]
They will refuse and claim that AGI / Sentience has been reached with their model (it hasn't) and that destroying it would be akin to genocide (it won't be). We'll probably see a stunt where OpenAI ask ChatGPT to take the stand and try to get it to argue for its life.
Elon Musk's run for President after Trump is disqualified (yes, I know) means he has less time to deal with Twitter. A renegade band of Twitter engineers quietly builds in ActivityPub support in the hope of salvaging the remains of the userbase. Some Mastodon admins pre-emptively ban the whole server, but most of us are happy to see our old friends again.
BSky tries valiantly with its weird not-quite-crypto protocol, but the momentum will be behind ActivityPub. There will either be an official bridge, or most server will use an unofficial one. Some Mastodon admins pre-emptively ban the whole server, but most of us are happy to see our old friends again.
The Internet is now fast enough. There is nothing meaningful you can do with a gigabit connection at home that can't be done with a 500Mbps connection. Similarly, the max speeds for 5G are irrelevant when you're streaming TV or on a video-call.
But coverage matters. Under pressure from Starlink and OneWeb, the UK begins to build out a proper broadband network. The UK's new Labour government imposes a Universal Service Obligation on fibre providers - or some other trickery - to force them to build out rather than competing over the same set of over-saturated customers.
The same is broadly true of mobile. After the Three/Vodafone merger and the O2/Virgin merger, there will be a greater emphasis on diversifying their mobile networks rather than paying for multiple transceivers to cover an identical area. The coverage may be only 4G - but most people won't care as long as it's good enough for TikTok.
Yes, Project Kangaroo is back! The streaming giants will coalesce around a "Spotify" sort of model. There's only 24 hours in the day, so there's a limit to the amount of content a person can watch. The people who want to watch endless re-runs of cheap filler like Friends will subsidise those who only watch the latest blockbusters.
Perhaps there will be a "Pay £X to watch this specific show in 4K" or "Stream this series a week early for £Y" but - I hope - studios will realise they're interchangeable to the viewing public.
This open access will also give a creative outlet to weird indie auteurs who can grab a tiny slice of the long tail without selling their souls.
With Apple (reluctantly) embracing USB-C, we'll see even more medical and quasi-medical gadgets being released which can plug into a phone. I don't think we'll see a full-on Tricoder, but plenty of diagnostic tools, ultrasound wands, and urine-analysis devices.
Someone like Theranos (only less fraudulent) will release a crappy plastic gizmo which takes a sample of your saliva and which uses the power of your phone to check for 17 different diseases - including a specific type of cancer.
Maybe the false negative rate will terrible. Probably it will send doctors crazy. There will absolutely be lawsuits abound. But everyone will know someone who's brother's girlfriend's mum used it to save her life.
The world will get worse. Maybe the politician you like will get elected, but so will a bunch of bastards. Any gains in peace will be offset by other twunt somewhere starting a war to bolster their ego. Any gains we make in cleaning the climate will be undone when some influencer is paid to tell people to fire their guns at communistic solar panels. A butterfly will flap its wings in Tokyo and hurricane will displace a million people. The next pandemic has already started, but no one will want to wear nipple-shields and we'll all die.
Many young children can immediately recognise and name cartoon or series characters or even car manufacturer symbols but can’t distinguish between an earthworm or a caterpillar.
This isn’t necessarily the parents‘ fault but a symptom of our culture which alienates young persons from contact with the natural world or lacks sufficient people and opportunities to show it to them.
Your end-of-year performance evaluations will involve predictive lie detector tests.
Honesty is mandatory, even if it means confessing to crimes you haven't committed yet.
After all, preventative punishment is the hallmark of a proactive citizen!
#Family#Politics#future
When the only thing we can agree is that my brother in law for sure deserves to fulfill his dream child and buy a acoustic piano for his brand new weekend home, despite never learned how to play.
Turns out Starship Troopers was originally a book, so that's pretty neat. I'm starting in on it right now. I've never watched the movie, but it's my understanding that it's somewhat of a comedy? This book certainly isn't. I guess I'll have to watch the movie after I'm done with the book. Pretty decent book so far. Not amazing, but worth it at this point.
In the final Disconnect Roundup of the year, I talk a bit about my visit to the Project Cybersyn exhibition in Santiago. Plus, plenty of recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed!
Silicon Valley billionaires are drawing a line: you’re either a techno-optimist who won’t question them or an enemy they’re ready to fight.
In his new manifesto, Marc Andreessen embraces faith and fascism to distract from the harms the tech industry has caused and justify the power and wealth of the tech elite. It shows why a renewed Luddite movement is absolutely necessary.