For me, I would choose computer viruses.
I’m not overly keen on the 15 seconds micro-content that sites like TikTok and YouTube (shorts) are pulling. It creates the most densely packed, quickly paced content I’ve seen and it feels like people are now addicted to quick bursts of info.
It feels like that type of content is doing to reduce people’s already awful attention span, I’ve already had mates who can’t read threads, articles and comments because it’s too slow, terrible
also, you can’t cover anything in depth in fifteen seconds. Worse by the time you have the lead and the “like me” bullshit out of the way you have what? five seconds of actual content? maybe enough time for a fortnight dance, or something. That’s about it.
I have to say, Vine was on to something with 6 seconds. Too short for anything nefarious so it was mostly creative new memes and humor.
Massively depends on the content/channel/algorithm though. My friend definitely uses TikTok as a dopamine dispenser for arguably mindless content. On the other hand I’ve gotten into a sort of mental health improvement/acknowledgment/acceptance of things type of TikTok where I feel like I’m taking a way a lot of small useful insights, even though the videos are only 30-60 seconds long. I keep a note on my phone with the takeaways I’ve had.
Definitely agree, I also agree with malware, but with the massive rise in ADHD diagnoses and the widespread use of these micro-content sites/aggregators it just push the issue further.
Worse test none of it is memorable. At least not to me.
Blockchain technology hasn’t contributed anything of lasting value, and too much money, energy, and good will has been burned by people trying.
Its most popular applications are cryptocurrencies, which are used for gambling, money laundering, and for collecting payments from ransomware victims. Someone once bought a pizza with them, but since that time their transactions have become too slow and their value too volatile to exchange them for anything so concrete.
Various attempts have been made to use blockchain technology for public or shared databases, but it turns out to be worse than all the other faster and much simpler existing solutions in that space.
Others have attempted to bolt it on to various business and social systems, but it hasn’t provided any practical benefit there either. It remains a slow and cumbersome alternative to every problem.
Its unique superpower is that it can be used to make contracts between parties that have no trust in one another and no social or legal system of enforcement, so long as your definition of a contract is sufficiently narrow, can be reduced to terms understood by the world’s slowest logic engine, and is perfectly encoded the first time around and doesn’t require any adjustment thereafter. If one or more of those conditions fail, you’ll find yourself turning to the social and legal systems of enforcement you thought you didn’t have.
Its most popular applications are cryptocurrencies, which are used for gambling, money laundering, and for collecting payments from ransomware victims
To be fair, you left out one of the most popular uses: scamming and grifting!
Someone once bought a pizza with them, but since that time their transactions have become too slow and their value too volatile to exchange them for anything so concrete.
I wish we could go back to the time when bitcoin was this crazy new currency and not a vessel for pump-and-dump schemes. It seems like such a cool idea, and I’d totally be on board with it due to the decentralization aspect (like I am with the fediverse) if it actually managed to be what it set out to be
It was never very suited as a currency, if by currency you mean a convenient medium of exchange. If by currency you mean a convenient medium of speculation and money laundering, I think it can be argued that was always the idea.
Well, technically, it is decent at being a currency even by your definition, just not in our society. I do think in something like a post apocalyptic world crypto would be a pretty good payment method, provided the technology worked to an extent where it would be possible to maintain.
I also refuse to believe it was invented to be speculative, I think it was basically a thought exercise to see if you could make a digital currency in a world where you can’t trust anyone.
Though the fact that right now it’s an unregulated currency that can be exchanged for regulated currency does allow for some pretty spectacular scams.
Data mining / big data / ads
I think it depends on the context though. Data mining of environmental sensors might yield valuable insights. Mining anonymized medical data could improve chances of catching a disease early, etc.
Agree on ads though. Nothing like having pharmaceutical ads stuffed down my throat while trying to watch a speedrun or whatever.
Utopia time: we take away ads, now how is content funded? Subscriptions?
Yes. Ads don’t pay that much anyway, Reddit makes something like $10 per user per year. That means that even with a $1 subscription per user they’d be ahead. It’s the same for Youtube celebrities, they make their money from merchandise, Patreon and sponsorship deals, Youtube pays only a few dollars per thousand views even in ideal circumstances, even if a video has millions of views, you might only make a few thousand off it, and how many million view videos can a person realistically make?
We could probably replace the entire ad industry with something like $10 monthly divided among whichever sites we want to support.
Also, I get the argument that some people can’t afford $10 because of where they are, but then the ads being served to those people aren’t bringing any money in either, so you can adjust the cost downward.
And small businesses die because they aren’t able to get the word that they exist out without advertising.
organic, word of mouth, grassroots, community building
My friends and I share cool places we find with each other all the time.
But wouldn’t that be an advertisement?
I think when people say ads, they mean paid for or non optional (like giant billboards) not just people talking about it because they are interested in it.
Social media recommendation algorithms. They are too good at showing people what they want to see. They are largely at fault for causing social media to devolve into echo chambers and radicalizing people.
Meth and other drugs designed to keep you awake longer so you can work more.
Meth was designed for Nazi Bundeswehr so they can fight longer. Should’ve been forgotten after the second World war.
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if downhill means living in comfortable house and not constantly having fear of not having food, i love downhill hahaha
Personalised marketing
worst thing that has ever existed
Sensational Advertising, and maybe just advertising in general. I would love to see what society would look like if people only used and got things because they wanted it, or because someone they talked to recommended they used it, instead of billions going to the most advance technologies and largest organizations in the world to manipulate people into buying more.
i hate that they just openly try to brainwash people, they dont see them as humans but as moneybags
Does social media count?
Do I take a part in it? Yes. Has it connected and brought many people closer? I would definitely agree.
However, I think there is a very negative aspect to it, especially towards mental health, that we are only beginning to realize fully.
definitely agree!
Plastic
That would be problematic, because the problem is not plastic itself, but its use. Plastic has allowed countless medical and scientific benefits, such as ureteral stents, stents for aneurysms, catheters… And these are just the examples that came to mind on the fly.
If I could go back in time I would keep plastic, but make it seem scary/dangerous due to how it never breaks down in the environment, and in turn hopefully cause regulation over how plastic should be produced, recycled, and disposed of before it became such a massive ubiquitous problem (micro plastics, pacific gyre, pollution, etc).
Seems like how slow-ass and inept the implementation of regulation has being going to be the main problem with all these techs. Bad intention people will always try to spun off the advancement in a money-grubbing, harmful way. Nothing is ever spared.
damn. it has ruined many things for sure, especially our sea
Electronic Surveillance. If it wasn’t for cameras and internet tracking, many forms of oppression would be significantly more difficult to enforce.
Computers. Or, more rightly, the mindless use thereof.
Advanced AI. It’s a job killer and the uses are truly dystopian. There is AI recently announced that can display someone’s thoughts on a monitor by reading their visual cortex. There are places in China where facial recognition checks if people are smiling before it allows them to proceed. Not to mention military uses straight out of a movie. There is no limit to the suffering it will bring.
I’d say AI is in a sort of weird teenage years of being not good enough to truly add value to human experiences but powerful enough to cause significant amounts of harm.
oh god, i love the current advancements but these seem truly psychotic. I hope that we will be the reality where the ai advancements create a positive impact into our society.
XaaS technology. Though I wouldn’t even consider it an advancement. Also convergence becoming mainstream. I may not give a crap about Unix philosophy but in some instances they are correct.
Why dont you like xaas? It just describes cloud computing…
Let me rephrase. I’m against taking previously paid applications and turning them into services, refusing to adhere to lifetime licenses and taking features out turning those behind paywalls. Filmora is an example of what I mean.
All for consumers specifically. I don’t care about enterprises.
Other examples off the top of my head are Photoshop and Office. It doesn’t seem like you can really “own” them anymore, at least not current versions.
At least Microsoft hasn’t come out and said its illegal to use old versions like Adobe did. That’s just unacceptable.
That sounds like SaaS specifically. In any case, I agree with you, it sucks that you don’t get to actually own a piece of software, even though I understand the benefit of a constant revenue stream for the developer so they can continue to push updates (and the second reason why they do it is probably preventing piracy, even though it’s still a bit hit or miss - with Adobe CC it’s still pretty easy, but Office now can’t be cracked IIRC).
I think the best middle ground would be to do what Sketch does with their Mac app or what Photoshop used to do, where you pay a flat fee for the app in its current version, get a few free updates on top and then after some time have to pay again to upgrade to a newer version.
I am in favour of that. Shame that its becoming a more and more rare business model.
Concrete. It is impossible to have any sort of modern civilization without concrete but you can still have education, division of labor, and a few of the things we enjoy in the modern world without ever becoming modern.
Concrete is ancient though. The Roman empire had concrete
What’s wrong with concrete though? I’ve never really looked into it before, am I missing something important?
Not sure if this is what the parent had in mind, but concrete is absolutely disastrous from an environmental impact perspective. Not only in the manufacturing process, which is quite bad, but the end result, too. Massive water system disruptions lead to deadly floods and erosion, which lead to further problems. Building massive water dams are among the most disruptive thing humans can do to a functional ecosystem.
There’s also the societal impact from car-centric city design and all of the negative effects associated with that.
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