‘Tech’ culture has gotten very, very weird. It’s turned sour. It’s so far past the point where I no longer feel the joy and excitement and liberatory potential of computing. I’m not even that old. What happened?
It always had that edge. Maybe technology in general always has a somewhat pagan flavor to it (for example JPL/Jack Parsons). Its just becoming a bit more mainstream now due to AGI larping.
And yes, the company that owns this website has a lot to do with that. Just look at the borderline cult-like adoration for certain tools, or the uninformed comments by people who are clearly not SMEs in fields like medicine, aviation, or other critical fields about how AGI is right around the corner and will free us from the oh-so-sad fact that we have to interact with other human beings to live.
On the face of it, psychoanalyzing from afar, it makes perfect sense. Relatively asocial, unpopular smart kids who later grew to become kings of startup empires, who see human interaction as a net negative, who are quick to point out the fallibility of human intellect while simultaneously being incapable of acknowledging the fallibility of their computers which they have been glued to, who endlessly over-optimize and neuroticize and attempt to quantify human emotions and expressions which are famously unquantifiable and subjective, who see the intrinsic subjectivity of life as something uncomfortable and avoidable rather than something beautiful that we all must contend with, who were more than likely never regarded highly by their more conventional or perhaps less intelligent peers in primary or secondary school, who were never socialized properly, are now the kings of our new feudal realms. This industry promoted them to that position, and now we all must live with the consequences of that decision, for the better which decreases by the day, and the worse, which increases by every femtosecond.
Years ago I was close to disavowing technology and only doing the minimal effort needed to keep up with my job, because I'd gotten bored and disillusioned with it. Anything more than a small hobby project had accumulated too much complexity and busywork for me to feel excited about working on it. I suffered through it for the sake of the few things I cared about most, but it took its toll on me. I didn't have the infinite energy I may have had for my favorite projects in high school anymore.
But then this new wave of AI came along. First there was Copilot, and I was in awe not necessarily at its immediate practicality, but the potential it demonstrated. I felt the embers of passion tentatively peek their heads out from wherever I'd previously buried them.
Every new leap, computing became more and more rewarding again.
First general searches became incredibly easier to find the relevant bits I wanted from. I actually wanted to look things up again now that I didn't have to grok dozens of pages of Google or Stack Overflow. I got my custom home router configured the way I wanted it instead of giving up or settling for copying some known config that wasn't quite what I wanted, after a small amount of trial and error.
Then it became reasonably competent at simple but tedious tasks, at least 90% where the last 10% was easy to fix by hand. Enormous git conflict to slog through? Instead of staring at the screen feeling my heart sink and wandering off to bedrot instead, I felt excited at the prospect that I could instead command the computer to do it for me, and it was actually motivating to get that to work. Instead of feeling too exhausted and annoyed to keep working, I felt rewarded and refreshed.
Then it started writing entire code files, then entire features, then entire applications all on its own, with my guidance and input on architectural decisions and aesthetics. Performing entire FreeBSD upgrades while keeping custom kernel module packages working, fixing Gentoo systems with messed up USE flags and an otherwise intractable dependency hell to sift through, hell, even writing entire kernel patches to fix sleep mode and graphics problems I'd been having on my 2010 Macbook Pro with Gentoo installed. I feel something reminiscent of my memories of opening Christmas presents as a child when the AI is done making something I'm super excited for.
I'm eternally grateful for the current AI zeitgeist in the tech world. We're living in the best time so far in history to be into tech. And things like Conduit? How would you not be excited for something with so much potential to be made? Even if you don't like it, imagine what it could mean for people with communication disabilities, carpal tunnel, etc. I'd love to be able to just type with my thoughts, and sending them straight into an AI sounds awesome too.
If this is satanic then I don't want to go to heaven. I feel more joy, excitement, and liberatory potential in technology than I have at any point in my life. I even feel more liberated to learn more - without the tedium raising my cortisol and stealing my attention all day, I'm actually more inclined to do things like write code in vim on my VT320 or read over code there with no distractions or AI input. I've reaped great rewards from being able to think more clearly and at higher levels of abstraction, free of the bonds of bullshit and tedium, at peace in the knowledge that I will never have to shave a yak against my will ever again.