The future used to be awesome because it was though by average people, scientists, writers, etc. even advertisers were catering for consumers and their hopes and dreams.
Once the future is being designed by CEOs of corporations the value-extracting machine creates the worst of possible futures.
We need to redistribute wealth back to the working class and let us decide a better future. With the current concentration of money and power in a few hands our only future is to repeat the middle ages.
Sometimes I fear that the vastly wealthy will only remember the social contracts that allowed them to become wealthy are two way contracts after the first few have been eaten.
They mistake the temporary shape of today's society for some unstoppable force of nature, and imagine their success to be proof of superiority. I hope they realize that neither are true before people become truly desperate.
All of the examples in the article are products from startups or corporations, though. I fail to see how more wealth redistribution would improve product quality.
I think with the advancement of LLM many of those AI prophecies have been fulfilled. I found it sad that I’m no longer interested in that future, though.
We moved from enthusiast hacking various stuff together to corporation selling your data and asking for subscription with devices you no longer own communicating only to their cloud, in the way they designed and for a limited period.
It's never been easier and more accessible to be an enthusiast hacking various stuff together though, from hardware to software. You don't have to rely on subscription services. Open-source software has never been better (see Blender, Kicad, Photopea). You can easily create custom software for your one-off needs using LLMs, and you don't have to rely on a bigco subscription either - pay API prices for open source models, or self-host. Run your own private cloud for your vacuum robot, reverse engineer your smart TV, deploy your own camera firmware...
I love digging those retro future concepts that echo so well with our times.
As a side note, and border topic, it reminds me of the "My Uncle" (Mon Oncle) sequence of the Villa Arpel from Jacques Tati (who had the finesse to observe the paradoxes of society's evolution).
The fountain that switches on when important people get in and switches off when house employees walk by (in order to economize water), the automatic garage door designed like no one would ever need any security switch, the geometric garden where the characters end up walking awkwardly.
ps: I remember seeing those ads in another article. FWIW.
I can still remember reading about voice controlled Smart Home Control in the early 1980's in Popular Science magazine. The system ran on an Altair 8080 I believe and it had both speech recognition and speech generation. It worked with those X-10 modules. They called it "Breslin" and looking back I find it amazing they got it to work at all.
The tone of those articles suggests the authors anticipated a very different economic environment, probably in the spirit of "as technical progress marches on, so does the quality of life". So the machines were foretold to organize parties and choose suitable wines.
In reality these 2 went in opposite directions, clearly the speed of tech progress was underestimated and the kind of future economy was wrongly predicted. But hey, these were leisure magazines, who'd take them seriously.
Quality of life worldwide has had the biggest increase in the history of humanity over the past 50 years due hundreds of millions, if not more, being lifted out of poverty. Its impossible to separate the role of technology from it.
The biggest change has not been technological, it has been in the attitudes of society. Optimism and enthusiasm have given way to pessimism and fear. I think people realized that if someone invented Star Trek replicators tomorrow and ended scarcity, the first thing people would replicate would be weapons to fight over the energy to power them.
We need something like Omni magazine to return. Something without the cynicism of Wired, but with sharp and stylish images that juxtapose the cool with the intellectual. The kind of thing that has slightly too cool booze ads and half naked people sitting next to interviews of Nobel prize winners and perhaps overly optimistic Science Fiction. We need dreams that are not just the seeds of new nightmares.
We usually get the future we dream of, and I'd like us all to start imagining it to be more like Star Trek and less like Black Mirror.
Be realistic - we've gone from "You, yes you, will be able to do an incredibly new and fun thing with Shiny New Technology™" to "You probably won't have a job or drinking water, your TV and phone are tracking you, all creative work is now worthless, the planet is on fire, AI may kill us all, but buy into our IPO anyway" in less than ten years.
The future used to be awesome because it was though by average people, scientists, writers, etc. even advertisers were catering for consumers and their hopes and dreams.
Once the future is being designed by CEOs of corporations the value-extracting machine creates the worst of possible futures.
We need to redistribute wealth back to the working class and let us decide a better future. With the current concentration of money and power in a few hands our only future is to repeat the middle ages.
Sometimes I fear that the vastly wealthy will only remember the social contracts that allowed them to become wealthy are two way contracts after the first few have been eaten.
They mistake the temporary shape of today's society for some unstoppable force of nature, and imagine their success to be proof of superiority. I hope they realize that neither are true before people become truly desperate.
All of the examples in the article are products from startups or corporations, though. I fail to see how more wealth redistribution would improve product quality.
What does one have to do with the other?
> With the current concentration of money and power in a few hands our only future is to repeat the middle ages.
Thiel's dream
I think with the advancement of LLM many of those AI prophecies have been fulfilled. I found it sad that I’m no longer interested in that future, though.
We moved from enthusiast hacking various stuff together to corporation selling your data and asking for subscription with devices you no longer own communicating only to their cloud, in the way they designed and for a limited period.
We got everything but we killed the fun.
It's never been easier and more accessible to be an enthusiast hacking various stuff together though, from hardware to software. You don't have to rely on subscription services. Open-source software has never been better (see Blender, Kicad, Photopea). You can easily create custom software for your one-off needs using LLMs, and you don't have to rely on a bigco subscription either - pay API prices for open source models, or self-host. Run your own private cloud for your vacuum robot, reverse engineer your smart TV, deploy your own camera firmware...
I love digging those retro future concepts that echo so well with our times.
As a side note, and border topic, it reminds me of the "My Uncle" (Mon Oncle) sequence of the Villa Arpel from Jacques Tati (who had the finesse to observe the paradoxes of society's evolution).
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuGA4ZNSS8c>
The fountain that switches on when important people get in and switches off when house employees walk by (in order to economize water), the automatic garage door designed like no one would ever need any security switch, the geometric garden where the characters end up walking awkwardly.
ps: I remember seeing those ads in another article. FWIW.
I can still remember reading about voice controlled Smart Home Control in the early 1980's in Popular Science magazine. The system ran on an Altair 8080 I believe and it had both speech recognition and speech generation. It worked with those X-10 modules. They called it "Breslin" and looking back I find it amazing they got it to work at all.
[1]: https://www.popsci.com/popular-science-breslin-home-computer...
Awesome! I love looking through old tech magazines and remembering how bright and promising the future looked in their pages!
I'd say that the future is still bright and promising! I'm sure people were scared of future tech just like some of us are today
Love reading old computer magazines. In particular MacWorld, MacUser, Linux Journal, etc.
The future ain’t what it used to be.
I want my computers to do my dishes but I guess it will do my art .
Some images are so heavily JPEGized that it hurts the eyes to look at them. Unfortunately it looks like the source scans from the IA are so...
The tone of those articles suggests the authors anticipated a very different economic environment, probably in the spirit of "as technical progress marches on, so does the quality of life". So the machines were foretold to organize parties and choose suitable wines.
In reality these 2 went in opposite directions, clearly the speed of tech progress was underestimated and the kind of future economy was wrongly predicted. But hey, these were leisure magazines, who'd take them seriously.
Quality of life worldwide has had the biggest increase in the history of humanity over the past 50 years due hundreds of millions, if not more, being lifted out of poverty. Its impossible to separate the role of technology from it.
The biggest change has not been technological, it has been in the attitudes of society. Optimism and enthusiasm have given way to pessimism and fear. I think people realized that if someone invented Star Trek replicators tomorrow and ended scarcity, the first thing people would replicate would be weapons to fight over the energy to power them.
We need something like Omni magazine to return. Something without the cynicism of Wired, but with sharp and stylish images that juxtapose the cool with the intellectual. The kind of thing that has slightly too cool booze ads and half naked people sitting next to interviews of Nobel prize winners and perhaps overly optimistic Science Fiction. We need dreams that are not just the seeds of new nightmares.
We usually get the future we dream of, and I'd like us all to start imagining it to be more like Star Trek and less like Black Mirror.
That must be why the birth rate is plunging.
Be realistic - we've gone from "You, yes you, will be able to do an incredibly new and fun thing with Shiny New Technology™" to "You probably won't have a job or drinking water, your TV and phone are tracking you, all creative work is now worthless, the planet is on fire, AI may kill us all, but buy into our IPO anyway" in less than ten years.
STILL HAVE NOT GOTTEN OUR OWN STORE WITHIN STAR WARS