technology
People don’t really want innovation
People talk about innovation a whole lot, but what they are usually looking for is cheap wins and novelty. If you truly innovate, and change the way that people have to do things, expect mostly negative feedback. If you believe in what you’re doing, and know it will really improve things, then brace yourself for a long battle. (View Highlight)
I've been seeing this a lot with ChatGPT Twitter blowing up. Similar to the GPT-3 Twitter takeover that happened in 2020, we see a bunch of low effort "I solved business with AI guys, check out my sweet ass demo" videos taking over. Some of these fake companies will generate millions of dollars and quickly face the devil in the details that much of AI is still desperately shallow, especially when you need to deploy it in production. Most of them will fade into the Twitter nether like the last batch did (myself included!)
Even more sad, the truly innovative technologies like Embeddings fly under the radar because they aren't a cheap win.
Is this crazy?
Yes.
LinkedIn really flies under the radar as the social media platform that’s absolutely the most unhinged
Me, after deleting the 100th outbound email of the day
Ehrenberg’s book allows us to connect some big dots. The liberation of the individual from various identities, obligations, and allegiances in the 1960s gave a new flavor to our economic individualism. The economics of the right became infused with the moral fervor of the youthful left in a grand synthesis of liberation that gave us the figure of the bohemian entrepreneur as the exemplary human type. (Location 2567)
- No shoes ✅
- Ratty ass hoodie ✅
- $5 billion valuation ✅
Tech that provides obvious utility must first kill its hardest opponent: the status quo. Ridicule, skepticism, and apathy all take turns attempting to tear apart an idea and leave it in tatters. ^c8707a
Some unfortunate byproducts:
- when inventions do succeed it makes tech visionaries seems cooler than they are as people -- the idea of "being proven right" is an ichor that drives many inventors into the arms of ego or pride. akin to a holy conduit who can hear the word of God to the other members of society
- before an invention succeeds social leaders will grandstand to prevent any new inventions that challenge their incumbency
Arguably the single most graphic example of the telegraph’s superiority over conventional means of delivering messages was to come a few years later, in October 1861, with the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line across the United States to California. Before the line was completed, the only link between East and West was provided by the Pony Express, a mail delivery system involving horse and rider relays. Colorful characters like William ‘‘Buffalo Bill’’ Cody and ‘‘Pony Bob’’ Haslam took about 10 days to carry messages over the 1,800 miles between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento. But as soon as the telegraph line along the route was in place, messages could be sent instantly, and the Pony Express was closed down. (Location 689)
Technology isn’t destiny, no matter how inexorable its evolution may seem; the way its capabilities are used is as much a matter of cultural choice and historical accident as politics is, or fashion. (Location 11979)
Every tech product you use came out between 2000-2010. Nothing was built from 2010-2020. The culture was so broken. PMs, MBAs, SJWs, and entitlement.
But the culture is changing. Wild things will be built in the next 10 years. Are you in or out? (View Tweet)
False, Obsidian came out in 2019. GPT-3, UE5, AirPods, M1 processor,…
Live chat (Slack, Teams, etc.) sucks for important discussions. Thinking one line at a time lowers the quality of the discussion. Knee jerk rapid fire responses become the norm. Conversations that last weeks or even days get lost and context gets fuzzy. Threads scroll up into the past and are never seen again. Despite the “asychronous” claim, you have to keep a steady eye on it and reply in realtime or the conversation will move on without you. Anyone who takes the time to ponder and respond thoughtfully with context and explanation will find that they’re too late. If you go on vacation or even take a few hours of focused time for deep work, you come back to hundreds or thousands of messages. Often your only option is to declare chat room bankruptcy which means missing out on important discussions and big decisions. I’m not saying live chat is useless. It’s great at some things: In other words, live chat is for the things that can get lost. Rule of thumb: If a discussion will matter after today, don’t have it in a chat room. Check out Discource, Twist, Carrot, Threads, Basecamp, Flarum, or heck even GitHub issues. These tools exist for a reason. They solve a real problem. They encourage longer form responses rather than quick one liner replies. They show you a list of threads with titles for maximum skim-ability. They let you sort (by last comment, for example) and filter threads or archive them once a decision has been reached. They don’t show online/offline indicators or timezone notifications or “XYZ is typing…” because nobody expects a quick response anyway. Some of them even support multi-level (Reddit-style) threading, which can help if a lot of people are involved.
Live chat SUCKS for anything with a bit of substance. The call-and-response nature completely kneecaps trains of thought, and creates group brainstorms (which are proven highly ineffective) with depth levels of n=1 or n=n at most (threads with child comments).
The only comment systems I like support threads and even then there is always some additional cognitive load of understanding parent and child comment context.
Im sad inventors in modern era don’t play with the "elemental plane" as much — toying with electricity, or the elements directly. We've abstracted it all to software which has kneecapped hardware innovation leaving innovations like the M1 202301130214 to companies with a ton of resources like Apple.
Perhaps I'm jealous that I feel I can't invent anything interesting outside of 0s and 1s -- or perhaps a story or two.
frustrating to hear from people inside Meta who found the Quest 2 headsets so unreliable that they refused to use them for work or demo them for people outside the company. (View Highlight)
I'm optimistic that Reality Labs will create something worth using eventually, but I find it unlikely that cultural adoption will happen before Meta collapses -- especially when the builders of the tool aren't excited to share their prototypes with others to see what might stick.
Technology adoption curves eventually become obligation curves (^014052). What was true in the 19th century is just as accurate in the 21st.
Books explaining the construction and working of the cable were rushed out to capitalize on the sudden interest in all things telegraphic.[1] (Location 941)
telegraphy was regarded as an attractive profession, offering the hope of rapid social advancement and fueling the expansion of the middle class. Courses, books, and pamphlets teaching Morse code to beginners flourished. (Location 1588)
HOW TO MAKE $42.44 A DAY USING DOTS AND DASHES
-.. --- -.-. - --- .-…. / …. .- - . / - …… … / --- -. . / - .-… -.-. -.-
Morse Code Translator | Morse Code World
Tweets about chatgpt in 2023 lmao -- sell shovels!! ↩︎