I think about that often … we are lucky.
For those of us just a bit older, we know a world before an internet and worldwide communications. We also saw it come in and take over the world.
I don’t like the details and what happened, how it happened or what went wrong … I just feel fascinated that I happened to be born when I was because I got to this unbelievable change.
It’s like being the generation that saw the world switch from horses to cars … or candles to electricity.
It’s a monumental shift in human civilization and we got to see the start of it. And I don’t mean just my generation, everyone reading this now is still living inside the infancy of the modern internet and communications. It will change so much more in the future. It may be good, it may be bad, it may be neither, it may be both … but it will definitely change and we’ll look back on this moment in time and either be nostalgic and think of it fondly and quaint … or remember when things were a lot better.
Honestly, the fact that I can just talk to people on the other side of the world with zero effort is wild
And you can share your cat memes with them!
And for no charge.
However, having had a voice chat for an hour this weekend with someone 200 miles away, I can tell you that 30 years ago it worked so much better it’s not even funny; it was just expensive.
My phone provider (Fi) gave me an internet connected call rather than use the cell voice network (proudly telling me it was encrypted). It was full of dropouts and there was a serious latency that really inhibited conversation. I switched to a few other options like WhatsApp and the audio quality improved but the latency did not, and even got worse. Young people may be barely aware that a 200 mile phone call had tiny latency - you would not know there was any - because there was a literal wire connection between each end and communication was at the speed of light. Even transatlantic calls had minimal latency unless it went by satellite.
Sure today we can do it with video, but frankly, for a chat, I don’t even see much benefit. I’d certainly choose voice-only if it meant zero latency, and sadly I seem to have chosen a mobile provider that does its best to prevent that.
Removed by mod
The latency thing drives me nut as well. It depends a lot on the provider though.
Microsoft Teams is the worst in my experience (though it has gotten better), with 1 full second of RTT not even being out of the norm.
Discord though? It’s great. They built it for gamers, who need to be able to give information quickly, and it shows. At work everybody is accidentally talking over everybody in Teams due to the latency, then you get in a discord call and it’s like you’re in the same room. Insane that latency does not factor much or at all in Microsoft’s KPIs.
Half? Fucking rich people bitching.
Are you being sarcastic or just how much are you paying for rent??
He’s being sarcastic because only rich people can afford four blueberries with the money left over after paying rent. The rest of us pay 90% of our paycheck for rent then starve because we don’t have enough money left to buy four blueberries.
I live near Austin, and home prices have tripled since 2019, driving more people to apartments while cities ban new apartment complexes.
I’ve been fortunate enough to get a few promotions and double my pay in the last 18 months, but with the increases in rent and other expenses I actually end up having about the same amount of disposable income as when I made half as much money, and rent is a higher percentage of my expenses than it was before my raises.
And I haven’t moved into a more expensive place. I’ve lived in the same place for a decade now.
My rent is $1500/month. I make about $1900 before taxes.
it’s funny cuz at first glance this looks like generic reddity sarcasm, but it made me think: while a lot of people paying half their wages to rent are in poverty, a lot of people with expensive homes are also probably living outside their means. all I know is my rent ain’t anywhere close to half
I have to stay on social media. Somewhere, there is injustice happening and only I can stop it.
Only I can stop the guy in my phone from saying “Only I matter!”
Sharing is caring
replace 3 of the 4 blueberries with actual drugs to cope with the sad from the little pocket computer for a fulfilling and short life lol
The only thing I live for is the gay people in my phone. They are everything to me. When I figure out how to let them out of the phone my life will be perfect.
Yeah, but- and stay with me here- what if those robots made a movie with superheroes in it that costs $1 billion to make and you could see it if you want to pay $20?
Or pay nothing in money but rather spend your time in learning FOSS which would be necessary to build a Matrix AI. This because if you ever trusted Closed Source Software than you deserve the inevitable suicide that I can guarentee it’s writers wrote upon you.
Removed by mod
For some reason I read this in the voice of Nacho Libre.
I get to lay in a bed by myself, all of my life. It’s fantastic!
I dont care about AI art, I set healthy boundaries with technology and find fulfillment elsewhere, and while income inequality sucks I’m grateful for what I have. You could call this gratitude bootlicking but I call this tweet “Moralizing Depression”.
You can do both.
You can be grateful for what you have while realizing that the current state of the world is bullshit.
Yeah, but I unironically believe that being alive in the 21st century is great and fantastic. I’m not sure people here feel that.
To be fair, the backlash comes from AI being a very real threat to many artistic fields that were already very hard to make a living in. What they have isn’t much, it’s hard to be grateful for less.
It also represents the first. Chance the common person has ever had to make their visions come to life.
If you look at art as an elitist tradition largely fuelled by the wealthy and supporting only a very, very small number of living artists, requiring a kind of professional leap of of faith that anyone who isn’t blood related to a wealthy person would be called stupid for making, then AI art doesn’t seem so scary anymore.
If everyone has the ability to create compelling images, audio, movies even, then we don’t need people to spend 4 years in art school and potentially the rest of their life breaking their backs trying to get someone else to notice their art, while contributing to society only as much as whatever job they’re forced to work while trying to make it contributes.
Few people who aren’t wealthy buy art. And most of the art they buy is from established artists. It’s an oppressive and classist status quo that were all worse off with, that will survive AI nonetheless as the rich place an even greater value on “authentic” art.
Who AI art is really going to hurt are the people who draw furries, sell prints at farmers markets of copyrighted characters, and create bland soulless corporate visual bullshit for a living. I guess that’s most artists, and yeah. It sucks for them, but stopping this train because Microsoft wants a photorealistic dog dick for their next logo ain’t happening.
If you look at art as an elitist tradition largely fuelled by the wealthy and supporting only a very, very small number of living artists, requiring a kind of professional leap of of faith that anyone who isn’t blood related to a wealthy person would be called stupid for making, then AI art doesn’t seem so scary anymore.
Well, I don’t look at it that way. Art is a creative tradition, one that every person is capable of realizing in some form or another (and should, for their own health). Artists are, by and large, common people, too. Millions of them have made that “professional leap of faith” without a safety net because they wanted to pursue their passion for art, not because they thought they might one day make millions off of their works.
I get that it’s really cool that people who haven’t dedicated their lives to art can now bring their visions to life. But I personally think it’s callous and unfair to call artists the greedy ones in this equation when they’ve, by and large, always been struggling to get by despite what they contribute to billion dollar industries and to society.
I also challenge that only the very wealthy buy art. That may have been true for much of our history, but the ability to sell copies of their art while retaining the original has given consumers much cheaper ways to enjoy art. And that’s not counting all of the art we get to view/listen to for free, even if it wasn’t made specifically for us. Patreon and similar sites have also created a great way for people to support and interact with the artists they love even if they aren’t wealthy. I think it’s fair to say that we’re living in the least classist era of art.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
jordan, @jordan_stratton
Being alive during this modern era is great. Robots are creating artistic soulless versions of people, I spend half my paycheck on rent and the other half on 4 blueberries, and I’m addicted to a little pocket computer that makes me sad everyday. Fantastic.
I might be in the minority here but I love my pocket computer. Never has it made me sad, and only has enhanced my life
People are definitely obsessed with their phone machines, but I just think mine is OK and I use it only in small durations as needed. I enjoy using Real Computers far more than the pocket sized ones.
A little bit of a selection bias though; he’s using the worst social network and you’re using the best one.
I mean the outside world is what makes me sad and my pocket computer helps me to escape from reality.
I’d start by abandoning xitter if I was him…
It’s pronounced “shitter” because it’s just Twitter but way shitter.
oh I’m aware how it’s pronounced 😉👍
The “fantastic” at the end is unneeded and ruins the composition.
Disagree. But glad you said so because that means you are not a soulless robot. Fantastic.
Implying humans have souls.
Not a great way to start.
Where I live… try 70% of your paycheck on rent. Heck, a lot of agencies and landlords won’t rent to someone like me unless I was earning £10k more.
