We are, effectively, being fracked to death.
I like experimenting with AI tools, but as I mentioned in a recent post about the Claude Constitution, I’m not a huge fan of the governance behind them. I also get for those in the creative arts, and especially for those for whom AI has arrived midway through their career, the whole “innovation” feels like armageddon.
This post from Andrew Sempere “artist, designer, developer and internet old” starts off with a heartfelt note about how he is desperately looking for work, which lends a appropriately melancholy vibe to what follows. Having really struggled this time last year, both in terms of work and life in general, I really feel for him.
It’s worth reading in its entirety, but here’s an extended excerpt, because he’s not wrong. But what can we salvage from the ruins? What can we create together?
To the extent that any of these AIs “think” at all, it’s because the models have strip-mined the last two decades of internet conversation. The conversation that we used to have in public. All of the blog posts, commentary, free software and detailed debates, RFCs and white papers. Free documentation and APIs and Stack Overflow posts. And now, as far as we can tell, this collective generative activity has almost completely ceased to be.
We have stopped talking to each other on the open channels.
We don’t “need” to anymore.
We definitely don’t want to anymore.
The current moment is so incredibly extractive, it has converted every ounce of human care, kindness and creativity into a “model,” which we then burn as much fossil fuel as possible to convert into a subscription service. We are being asked to pay for a chopped-and-screwed memory of the time we used to live in a semi-functional society.
We are, effectively, being fracked to death. And this isn’t an impending collapse, it’s already happened, we’re just living out the consequences right now.
It’s not the internet that’s dead, it’s the entire tech industry and it wasn’t an accident, it was a murder to try and cash in on the life insurance money. We’re not into late-stage capitalism, we’re fully in The Jackpot, and I fear nothing will ever get any better than it was about two years ago, when we ingested the entire program into itself and then just… gave up… trading all of our living friends for their ghosts.
It seems increasingly likely that we’re locked in a death-cult-groundhog-day timeloop now, forever, remixing only hit-parade records from 2023 again and again and again and again and again until we’re convinced they’re new.
I almost miss the era when there was a shitty startup every week.
[…]
I have memories. Vivid ones, of living in a different country, a different city, a different planet. I look at screenshots and photographs of life from as little as 18 months ago and it becomes difficult to believe that future ever existed. I don’t even feel right in my body, nothing seems to work, everything previously solid seems damaged, unstable, treacherous and unreliable. Things have glitched, gone sideways, completely wrong timeline. I’m told I’m wrong, that things are fine, that this is normal. We’ve always been this way.
So this might be just old-man shit, but I think the word I’m looking for is: bereft.
Source & image: Feral Research