The Utopia of the Family Computer
mudmapmagazine.com
mudmapmagazine.com
I think the shift we've seen TV is something similar. When I was a kid, TV was viewed as an antisocial medium ("the boob tube"), but I have really fond memories of sitting with my family watching Quantum Leap or Growing Pains. Now that everyone has their own screen to watch TV, it seems the studios don't even bother trying to make shows that appeal to an entire family.
We focus so much on the media (tv/internet/video games/books) when ascribing value, but, as this article indicates, the physical nature of the delivery (shared living room appliance vs portable individual screen) makes a huge difference.
A lovely bit of AI slop.
Edit - This is not the first time I'm observing this. Could somebody explain to me why the comments which point out the discussed texts are AI generated are being frequently downvoted on Hacker News?
In the very same thread there is this apparently downvoted (as of now) comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47807528
Why is it so, is this really this community's stance on LLM-generated, mostly weak and empty writing?
But you're right that it is anything but a good piece of writing and it is genuinely strange to see people act otherwise.
> That kind of furniture organized more than just objects. It organized a relationship with technology. It suggested that the computer (and with it, the internet) was something used under particular conditions: seated, in that spot, for a certain amount of time. Something that was switched on and off, opened and closed.
It's making a nice point and one that I'm sure most of the people here do find appealing, it's an idea that I relate to myself. But the words used to make that point are bordering on nonsense.
It is prudent to assume there is a decent chance it is not a person acting otherwise (i.e. could be bots). Funny, because this was also a recent post:
The prose isn't good. It does read like AI slop.
But it invoked an insight and feeling in me that was novel and poignant and (I think) intended by the author.
That's why I called it lovely writing.
Yes, I know, but what motivated me to ask was that from my observations also less derisive comments raising AI point are prone to being downvoted. Like this comment I linked to was 'just asking a question'. And I saw others being more pleasant, with no different results.
Usually the LLM generated texts they are reacting to aren't IMO worthwhile - like in this case. Idk, I feel very surprised by how accepting of them others here seem to be (if measured by points system).
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
It was really truly bad enough when it was ~half the articles either being about AI directly or indirectly. Now it's that, plus half of it is written by Claude too.
What meaningful community is going to be left for these guidelines to protect?
Moderation needs to put their foot down in some cases, as a matter of necessity. Sometimes users need to put their foot down, too.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.
I don't agree with you. They are not at all like the examples you mentioned. Calling something "AI slop" signals that the writing either fails to raise any important point or, even when it raises a decent point, it is so repetitive it wastes time of readers. This is not only a style problem.
To put it in LLMish: It's not 'tangential to the content' – it's directly addressing (the lack of) the content.
If LLM worked perfectly we shouldn't have noticed the text was generated. I and others did. I feel it's important to point it out, if we don't want low-quality texts fully flooding us.
> By the end of 2026, 90% of the articles here are probably going to be AI slop, and it will be totally useless to complain about each and every one of them.
Using the policy you personally adopted it surely will be so. I don't think news aggregator comprised of junk information is something which should be embraced, so maybe reconsider your position?
the site not too long ago banned ai generated content. i don't know if they changed it but pointing out that something was AI would have been following/flagging the rule/violation
Don't be too surprised: there are literally comments that are just blatantly written by Claude on HN, which seem to be coming from human accounts that predate Claude. Which means that there are people here who, in trying to respond, actually ask Claude to basically do it for them. I find this utterly stunning and honestly, truly alarming. Even if the person behind the keyboard is technically alive, what exactly are they becoming? Are they even going to think for themselves, or will they just ask Claude what they're supposed to think from now on?
And as much as HN moderation has been genuinely pretty great at keeping the community under control with a relatively light touch, it's already too late. Dang and friends needed to do something much sooner, and they didn't. It literally doesn't matter what they do now, so there's no point in bugging them, not that I expect they would be interested in listening anyway.
I'm not going to make a lot of dramatic "I'm leaving Twitter" type comments, but I'm losing respect for HN's rules and guidelines the more I see this page overran with literal CRAP. And just so I can make my opinion clear, it's not crap because it's AI generated, it's crap because I can tell it's AI generated, full of fluff, cliches and a lack of substance.
It says a lot about the taste of the average person voting on HN that this is what we get now, and it fucking sucks because I don't really like any of the competing news aggregators either. I actually had to log in to post this comment because lately I've been staying logged out of HN and visiting less frequently now that I'm not sure what I get out of it.
At least I won't miss HN when the internet becomes an inaccessible hellscape in part due to AI crap outnumbering human posts 1000:1 and in part due to horrible legislation screaming ahead at breakneck speeds with literally no opposition from anybody.
Yes, exactly this.
If I notice it means your PhD-level 2027 ASI technology failed. Since when HN is a place for boasting about failed projects?
These comments are little more than a witch hunt. It is clear from the language being used: "it's obvious", rather than providing evidence. When people do provide evidence, it is in terms of "tells". In other words, bits of overused grammar that are common in LLM generated texts yet also exist in human written texts. It doesn't really prove their claims. Worse yet, it is also next to impossible to defend one's self from such claims.
None of this means that I want to spend my days reading LLM generated articles. I believe they pollute the Internet with yet another source of hollow writing. (LLMs are not the only guilty party here. Plenty of flesh and blood humans do the same.) They also further necessitate the use of LLMs for what I think is the one legitimate use, which is research. (Before you attack LLMs for hallucinating, it is worth noting that many, if not most, of the articles written by people demonstrate the same.) Finally, if I am interested in the output of an LLM, I would rather do it myself. At least then I would know what I am getting is LLM generated, rather than a misrepresentation. Plus it is easier to dig deeper if something seems to be out of kilter, either through further prompting or requesting sources.
Yet all of my distaste for LLM generated articles does not outweigh my distaste for the witch hunt.
As much as I agree with the point of the article, I keep getting tripped up that every second sentence is "It didn't X, it Y'ed".
I think it's repeated to form a stylistic device in the second paragraph, but then the shape is interspersed so much in the rest of the text that it reads like a clumsy first write.
It's definitely written by an AI. I understand that people use these same rhetoric devices but the word "mimic" is exactly right. They're not writing like humans, they're mimicking human writing in a way that feels extremely uncanny.
(Hey look, I did the thing too!)
I'm now having to deliberately re-word my emails and comments, spending additional time, to avoid being accused of being an LLM.
and it was not certainly unusual, in 90s kids could have already cheap ZX spectrum in their room which required TV, I don't really remember watching TV, but I remember playing Sim City on it
by the end of the 90s as teenager I've had my own TV with VCR so I could watch everything from record and skip ads this way, basically using ad blocker since 90s
Out of sight, out of mine - I think it's generally a good idea.
I'm still writting this now, from the couch. I fear how much screen time others waste.
I feel like this physicality and time-constraint is what really helped you use it (the computer/internet) as a tool to enrich one's life.
The introduction of the smart phone and the "always-on" internet that gave rise to a super-charged attention economy, tracking, engagement algorithms fuelling doom scrolls and unnecessary notifications avalanches has become a hostile internet of stress and anxiety.
Using the computer, or getting online required setting aside a block of time, and physically going to a desk (or library/computer lab). It didn't follow you when you were done, you shutdown the computer and went on with your life. There was a clear separation of online and irl, those identities weren't merged yet.
It was very task focused. Yeah, I still got on the family computer and just browsed around for an hour, but for the most part it was something I got on to do something specific, as a tool, not an extension of my daily life.
In my experience the difference was rather that a lot of internet users of this generation were radically pro-privacy, and very opposed to any centralized service (they were willing to teach you a lot about setting up your own internet applications, websites or web applications under the promise that you don't use a centralized web platform and you delete your accounts there).
sniff sniff... sniiiiiffffff...
Yes, I can definitely smell AI.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbw5KX9TaXY
I never experienced having just one computer for family use, but when internet finally came there was just one line for it and we had to limit our time and carefully coordinate when we got on. But for me that was also a time when computers were used for things other than online-stuff: programming, playing single-player games, drawing, or writing.
There was also a sense that the internet was a place: not a specific place in the house, but "out there", while your own computer was "in here" where your stuff lived. The UI affordances of the time reflected this. The first two icons on the desktop in Windows 95 were called "My Computer" and "Network Neighborhood", allowing you to access your own computer, and other computers nearby with shared files. When old browsers connected to the internet, the "throbber" in the upper right corner would animate. This was distinct from the animated hourglass cursor that indicated your computer was doing some sort of processing, and was specifically designed to indicate that stuff from "out there" was currently being transferred to your machine. Because "out there" was unknown, it was dangerous. It was 42nd Street at night in 90s NYC, and you didn't know who you were going to bump into or what you might find.
And then Steve Ballmer or somebody at Microsoft decided, you know what would be great? What if the browser was the OS, and everything on your machine were accessed just like it was online? One familiar interface for everything! That's why I still don't forgive Microsoft for its Windows 98 UI changes and browser integration. Not just monopoly and anticompetitive reasons, but because they blurred what I thought at the time to be an an extremely important distinction. To me it was a lot like what they were trying to do with making Windows 11 an "agentic OS": inviting danger to ordinary users and making it seem safe. (Geez, now I'm doing the thing.)
Today of course it doesn't matter. Today everything is online all the time. If an application runs on your computer or phone, it's usually still to interact with some online service, but to more closely monitor and constrain how this is done.
Also related and enjoyable: cafes with no/limited WiFi hours and riding the subway with no signal.
We mostly played games on it. It's really not fun playing games in the living room while everyone is around you doing other stuff.
It's like being the only one watching TV on the sofa while others are reading or working.
Hated the dialup, hated having to steal other users AOL passwords because my large family couldn't afford internet.
Hated, later, having to keylog the local libraries ISDN line because the provider offered a free national dial in number for "traveling".
The whole world of information available to become less ignorant and I can only use it for an hour a day.
As a below poverty line child with heart defects who was prohibited from sports and a whole slew of other things, what we have now is fucked up because we've allowed every interaction to become a dopamine casino and we've skinners boxed ourselves straight to hell.
This kind of nostalgia bait is actively harmful, there are clear patterns businesses based in america use and all that shit should be banned.
Forcing everyone to use a real Id is an evil, making skinners box patterns illegal is much easier.
I loved Juno email, I loved that rich people paid for the ads I easily ignored because I had a velcro TMNT wallet from a community free store but not a single dollar inside of it.