I’ve been on the Internet a long time - several years before “the web” was released to the world. In 1993 it was and it was small and it was fun. There were no corporations. No ads. No tracking. No billionaire tech bros. No “influencers” and social media. No bullshit.
It hasn’t been fun in quite awhile honestly, but that has accelerated rapidly with the release of LLMs and chatbots. It’s a whole new level of bullshit, grift, and graft. It is impossible to read the tech news and stay away from stories about AI. Forget the tech news, it is literally everywhere now and no place is immune. It’s a bizarre mass psychosis.
Before finishing this post I’ll say that I’m not trying to be “old man yelling at clouds”. What bothers me isn’t the technology, it’s people and their usual fashion of fucking up anything good, driven by people who can never seem to have enough. It always comes back to money. Social media? Money. Influencers? Money. “AI”? Even worse because of how much money and resources are being consumed in the pursuit of something not at all proven.
I’m old enough to know this is nothing new, but the level we’re seeing today would make the Robber Barons of the late 19th century blush.
I’m also not sure where that leaves me in all of this.