He doesn't exactly paint the whole picture of a thousand points of data that now follow people around like the armies of flies that mob farm animals. It has become really alarming lately just how quickly and widespread one web search or product view on amazon becomes an annoying fly that accompanies you across EVERYTHING you touch, nagging you to get that thing? Remember that thing? You NEED THAT THING!
When the AI we interact with starts selling things to us, it's going to be a lot like a descent into mental illness. Pretty soon messages about "that thing" will be reverberating around in our heads because it gets shown to us- and told to us- over and over, all the time. Artificial OCD.
> "I think we might be in the era where seeing is not believing."
This is what I'm concluding as well. I don't know if that means there will be a backlash that favors simpler communication- in person, old-school methods, private blogs or what have you- or there will be a faction of people who realize this and abstain while the rest of the world go down the mass hallucination rabbit hole of a severly dystopian Matrix.
I am attracted to the design of books' covers, first, in used bookstores. I recently picked up an anthology of short stories by Bernard Malamoud (if his name sounds vaguely familiar, he wrote the story upon which the Robert Redford film "The Natural" was based), in a simply but beautifully bound book published in 1953. His works were published in the Atlantic and New Yorker and muliple other periodicals I'd never heard of or had forgotten. His language is absolutely beautiful. Expressive, yet economical. Malamoud was a man who thought about every word (as one would anyway, writing for periodicals), and at every phrase and clause, his work shows it. Reading this collection of short stories, unlike a lot of the mangled prose that passes for fiction nowadays, my mind felt like a hot knife slicing through butter. It has been years since I devoured a book in a single evening.
I mourn the death of this kind of writing. It's utterly unique but very accessible, though recognizing the economy and perfection of certain word choices requires some prior experience with reading truly good material. That is in shorter and shorter supply as time goes by.
And now I fear it will not only disappear altogether, cleverness of the ideas will fall out of fashion in favor of the mediocre sameness that will plague all writing soon.
I've seen this happen in person, to my grandmother. She hitched her identity to the man of the house, even signing checks "Mrs. grandad's name." She was the accountant of their farm along with housewife and cook and chicken tender. He was most of the muscle until he had to relinquish the work to their youngest son, who had moved out and into his own house. She was in relatively good health when grandad died at 76. She suddenly lost her identity, being alone in that farmhouse which she helped build and maintain, it was too full of ghosts to live alone, she moved in with the son. I never saw her smile after that. She died within months.
My great-grandmother was different. her husband died young. she had 50 more years of life after that. She gardened, she sewed, she pickled and canned. She established a strong personal identity and experienced evergreen personal growth. She was a happy woman, cackling all of the time when we'd visit. When she died at 95, it was a surprise, she seemed very alive and healthy shortly beforehand. She died in her sleep, no chronic diseases.
Makes me think that 32% might be traced to psychological/sociological factors.
It sounds like your grandma passed from a broken heart.
My mother in law lost her husband when she was in her early 60s, and I was worried that she would suffer the same fate as your grandma. She sold her house after a few years to escape the ghosts and moved into a condo near me. Her social schedule is jam-packed.
There is so much to be said about having your own identity, hobbies, and passions.
The person she spent her life with died. She could have just been sad and lonely over that, not some lack of "identity".
I've been married for over 30 years and we both have our own independent identities and successes (as well as shared ones). We are still very close and loving. Neither needs the other to live but after so long our emotional involvement with each other is as deep and foundational as the roots of a great tree. Losing her (or her me) would be utterly devastating and how we identify ourselves has nothing to do with it.
they don't look cool anymore. they are the eyes of skynet. I have prescriptions coming up and I have always bought ray bans. I won't anymore, I don't want anyone to think I am spying on them, because that's what they are, spy tools.
When the AI we interact with starts selling things to us, it's going to be a lot like a descent into mental illness. Pretty soon messages about "that thing" will be reverberating around in our heads because it gets shown to us- and told to us- over and over, all the time. Artificial OCD.