I miss the Internet

This is exactly how Omnius takes power, requiring the Butlerian Jihad in Dune. The Titan Xerxes delegates too much managerial authority to his AI systems, and foomp, there it is.

Hey internet friends! Let's all get on Neocities! https://neocities.org/

Marvelous time it was (born 1988). I had such a site about action movies, and later about the Matrix. Humanity reached some peak in 1999 and then it all started falling apart.

Another excellent video. I repeatedly think of my fiancée's sociology professor and how he would very pointedly say in response to anyone who said something was 'good'— "Good for whom?" I've repeatedly come up against issues where AI summaries are not only incorrect, but the more disturbing implication - decide what is correct for you, removing the necessity (or even encouragement or option, at times) to analyze multiple sources and viewpoints to arrive at a meaningful conclusion. By what parameters are these sources chosen as the "correct" sources? It varies of course, but in my experience they're often chosen (in the case of GPT and Gemini) based on the volume of user input. Which, if that volume is incorrect... can become a big issue, quickly. The abhorrent decline in Google Doc's autocorrect feature is a shining example of this. Also - big bonus points for shouting out Encarta. I absolutely loved it!

Until this video, I did not realize you were in Canada. Cool. Maybe I've not been paying attention. I greatly enjoy your content and even slog through most of the LOTR stuff. I was almost addicted to Hamster Dance...was truly the first time I thought I might be, let's say, neurodivergent, before it was a thing. I have now found a ten-hour loop. Let's see if I am still. Many thanks.

While I don't miss the speed of dial-up and early cable internet, I do miss those rabbit holes I would go down. I think your comparison of the early internet to a library rings so true. The sense of learning and discovery was at your fingertips, you just had to look for it... and when I say "look for it," I mean put in effort. The thing you were circling around, which applies to technology as a whole, is the correlation of effort and connection. Take the humble mixed tape for instance (does anyone remember those?). There was real effort in making those, sometimes spending hours or even days making these creations. Sometimes they were mixed with a double tape player/recorder or a CD to tape player. In the extreme scenarios, you had to wait for the song to come on the radio and press record at the perfect time. I remember receiving my first mixed tape from a girl and knowing, with that single act, that she cared about me. Why? because making it happened in real time, there was no "download now" on the tape. She spent a lot of time curating this mix, and I treasured it dearly. I played it over and over again, and would think about why she chose each song. The songs were a window into her personality. The effort created a real connection. Think about how this is done today. You can simply send a playlist to someone on Spotify that took you a minute or two to curate. Will AI take this away in the future, and you just prompt "send my friend a playlist that they will like?" The effort is almost zero, and I would argue that the connection to the playlist will be weak as well. Anyway, that's enough of my yelling at clouds. I miss mixed tapes. I miss the internet of effort.

I think it was better to have the internet as an addition to an analog world. Instead of one rooted in it.

Hmmm, this reminded me of a conversation I had the other day, where we (the people I was speaking with and I) came to a place of "as soon the interest to extract monetary value enters a relational space, it creates an ever more fun-being-sucked-out feel over time." As such, maybe at some point you can turn to how we have all been "lulled" into the story that "money makes us happy." Whoever can successfully sell that story to people will get them to do all kinds of weird shit, whether it is ultimately good or not (speaking of agency...).

Bring back webrings! I know, it'll never happen. The other day Google suggested a canned reply to someone that made all these assumptions about what I would say - including my opinions and aphorisms. This really bothered me, not least because it was incorrect. I'd have been more disturbed had it been accurate, of course. But my dismay was due to the image I had afterwards. I saw a future where all communication was robots talking to robots, no human needed. Any opportunity for human connection was stamped out, and the only true interactions were with people in the same physical space. Then I realized to my horror that this was almost appealing to me in a nostalgic sort of way. Great video as always. You're the man now, dawg!

There's a lot of desk banging from our venerable host in today's video! And with good reason. I always tell people that I'd be truly happy if we went to a 1990s level of technology. Those were better days.

Please tell me "Is Salacious B Crumb capable of rational thought?" got added to the list of potential topics for future videos.