Loved your NYT piece—I think much of the “decline of the internet” genre can be explained by the fact that…millennials are older now, the novelty of instant online friendships and interminable online feuds isn’t as enchanting anymore (we may still enjoy them, but less so…we’ve done this 1,000 times already in the last decade). Internet sociability is changing, obviously, for the worse and better, but I think the disenchantment is only partially about structural things happening.
Also very much agree with the over-mystification of AI! Systems can have interesting emergent effects that are unprecedented and unexpected for their creators; that doesn’t make them magic, that just poses a challenge for people to understand them and then coherently explain them…
Loved your NYT piece—I think much of the “decline of the internet” genre can be explained by the fact that…millennials are older now, the novelty of instant online friendships and interminable online feuds isn’t as enchanting anymore (we may still enjoy them, but less so…we’ve done this 1,000 times already in the last decade). Internet sociability is changing, obviously, for the worse and better, but I think the disenchantment is only partially about structural things happening.
Also very much agree with the over-mystification of AI! Systems can have interesting emergent effects that are unprecedented and unexpected for their creators; that doesn’t make them magic, that just poses a challenge for people to understand them and then coherently explain them…