From: houseof.usher715@silomails.com   
      
   n0_m0d3m wrote:   
   > As we return to these hallowed grounds, I ask: Where do we go from here?   
   >   
   > The enemy isn't the foretold Great Firewall; it's the Great Algorithm   
   > shaping the feeds of billions. AI is pushing us from High Tech/Low Life   
   > straight into High Tech/No Life. Meanwhile, the tech-priests are already   
   > colonizing Mars, and they don't need us.   
   >   
   > When threads about vintage ThinkPads get more attention on /g/ than   
   > actual, useful dialogue, I can barely find the energy to seethe. If we   
   > genuinely want to revive the scene, let's start saying something new,   
   > arguing about opinions, and move on from comfy nostalgia.   
   >   
   > Are there any freaks left who can still see what's coming, or are we   
   > resigned to larping in the ruins?   
   >   
   > Full sentences are punk as fuck after all *8)   
   >   
   > ~m0d3m~   
      
   I recall the splendor of the ancient days of MySpace, which is where I   
   learned that style of ephemeral social media is tricksy and unhealthy.   
   Post-Google, I never fell for the videotube "recommendations", always   
   have had add-ons to modify the UI, or simply download videos. I have   
   also been aware of curated Big Google results forever, so I just use   
   other search engines.   
      
   I am not sure if the following is even appropriate here, but TL;DR: All   
   of this is just flash-in-the-pan dreck to be supplanted eventually.   
      
   I first took your words to mean something different, but I will still   
   lay out what I thought. My own vision of the future is that we are still   
   in the infancy of the possibilities of computing. At the very beginning   
   when computing reached the public sphere (I am thinking the 60's) there   
   were many possible paths forward. The path which industrialized society   
   took is only 1 of many. Computers could look and functino very   
   differently, nearly alien to the modern eye. This applies not only to   
   computers, but even the food industry, or anything which is   
   mass-produced. Everything could be very different.   
      
   Imagine if light bulbs were still those forever-lightbulbs. It wouldn't   
   be profitable! Only in a world where scarcity is extinct, will computers   
   and humans reach their full potential.   
      
   The current computer paradigm sucks, and I am going to go out on a limb   
   and say that 99% of people can't think outside of it, and I don't blame   
   them. We are still stuck inside our short mortal tenure on this planet,   
   trying to get-rich-quick and get out. Vocal whiners blame politicians   
   for their 4 selfish years, as if they themselves have not raped   
   eternity. Popular society has not been thinking long-term for decades.   
   We have built a house of cards on the foundation of sand. Like the   
   entire west coat of the US - doomed to be cataclysmically destroyed by   
   earthquake even though they could prepared. Entropy and mortality ruins   
   all things and forces blinders on the present moment. From TV   
   commercials to videotube ads. From programs on paper, to "apps". Just   
   within our lifetime we can see the evidence of decadence. The texts we   
   can read from Ancient Egypt talked about their own history, where they   
   admitted the were only standing on the shoulders of giants - that their   
   society at their present time was a only pale reflection of the glory of   
   the past - thousands of years before them! They hijacked the pyramids   
   and merely lived next to them like we might live next to ruins. Entropy   
   had deleted the skill of pyramid building from their culture. When they   
   tried to make new pyramids themselves, the new ones sucked.   
      
   When western conquerors went and installed modern infrastructure in   
   Africa or wherever, the local people used it. And when the conquerors   
   left, the locals kept using it... until it crumbled and fell into ruin.   
   The locals didn't know how to maintain it, they don't know how to do it   
   from scratch. Like giving an iPhone to Victorian England - it would mean   
   nothing and be useless. I just watched a video of an Indian dude   
   restoring an ancient Hindu site, and he admitted "dude we don't know how   
   they built it. We're only restoring this stuff as a facsimile with cheap   
   materials and cheap labor."   
      
   So it is now. My father always said that animals take the path of least   
   resistance. Modern people are coasting off of an ancient, outdated   
   paradigm, and only focusing on Now. There is no thought to innovate or   
   take a risk until Weak Men Create Hard Times. Nobody knows assembly   
   programming, nobody knows C, people only know how to "program"   
   applications for these toys called smartphones which make people so   
   dumb. The core skills have become extremely niche or even outdated.   
      
    >“I believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten   
   our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And   
   we live in a society that invests huge amounts of money and vast   
   quantities of energy in ensuring that we all stay lost. A society that   
   invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people   
   asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really   
   asking any of the questions.” -Graham Hancock   
   --   
   I✈︎NY   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)