Something I will always love about walking around various different cities, towns, and villages, is getting to bask in all of the incredible local artwork that people create in all manner of different artistic mediums. Often times it's quite political as well - ranging from stickers, to murals, and even sculptures that compel you to stay awhile, and ponder. I always feel this renewed sense of the creativity and humanity that inhabits the human spirit, and I feel just how much thought, effort, time, and care, were poured into each and every one of these wonderful creations. The pure, raw and unfiltered expression of the human heart, mind, and soul, are truly something to behold - making the current assault from profit-obsessed cyberlibertarian charlatans all the more frustrating and worrisome.
This simple, yet well-articulated quote from you reflects my feelings on this perfectly:
"It’s no wonder we’ve stopped dreaming, the future is a nightmare."
The promise of future technological advancements and innovations used to excite us like nothing else, but now, I find myself fearing these new "advancements" and "innovations" due to the endless number of cascading ramifications the profit-motive often yields. Sam Altman of OpenAI famously said, "AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies created with serious machine learning." That's a pretty stark omission from one of the leading figures behind this fervent push to integrate AI into each and every facet of our lives, as you highlighted towards the start of this piece:
"The possibilities seemed endless. The internet was still a fairly new phenomenon and was fully open source — long before techno robber-barons found a way to commoditize it, steal it, squat on it; long before the attention economy made its way into every facet of our lives."
Despite having clear examples we can turn to for how to move forward with technology in a safe and responsible way, America and the western world insist on being the "only ones" to determine the future of such tech. Reminds me a bit about the American push to try and bully TikTok into selling it's ownership stake to an American company or group - it has to be the US who controls things, no one else!
I really love the call to action that you end on in this piece. Culture is just as pivotal to this fight as anything else, so hopefully we're able to get ourselves to a place where the people can unite against those who seek to rob us of not just our social and economic autonomy, but also our culture as well. Time to build that bold and imaginative liberation program that can remind us of a future we used to feel excited about dreaming about.
You're on a roll with these pieces Scarlet! Loved reading this one in particular, considering I come from an artistic background myself. I'm also sorry that my responses are so long lol. You put so much effort and thought into writing these, so I always aim to give you thoughtful responses in return.
Something I will always love about walking around various different cities, towns, and villages, is getting to bask in all of the incredible local artwork that people create in all manner of different artistic mediums. Often times it's quite political as well - ranging from stickers, to murals, and even sculptures that compel you to stay awhile, and ponder. I always feel this renewed sense of the creativity and humanity that inhabits the human spirit, and I feel just how much thought, effort, time, and care, were poured into each and every one of these wonderful creations. The pure, raw and unfiltered expression of the human heart, mind, and soul, are truly something to behold - making the current assault from profit-obsessed cyberlibertarian charlatans all the more frustrating and worrisome.
This simple, yet well-articulated quote from you reflects my feelings on this perfectly:
"It’s no wonder we’ve stopped dreaming, the future is a nightmare."
The promise of future technological advancements and innovations used to excite us like nothing else, but now, I find myself fearing these new "advancements" and "innovations" due to the endless number of cascading ramifications the profit-motive often yields. Sam Altman of OpenAI famously said, "AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies created with serious machine learning." That's a pretty stark omission from one of the leading figures behind this fervent push to integrate AI into each and every facet of our lives, as you highlighted towards the start of this piece:
"The possibilities seemed endless. The internet was still a fairly new phenomenon and was fully open source — long before techno robber-barons found a way to commoditize it, steal it, squat on it; long before the attention economy made its way into every facet of our lives."
Despite having clear examples we can turn to for how to move forward with technology in a safe and responsible way, America and the western world insist on being the "only ones" to determine the future of such tech. Reminds me a bit about the American push to try and bully TikTok into selling it's ownership stake to an American company or group - it has to be the US who controls things, no one else!
I really love the call to action that you end on in this piece. Culture is just as pivotal to this fight as anything else, so hopefully we're able to get ourselves to a place where the people can unite against those who seek to rob us of not just our social and economic autonomy, but also our culture as well. Time to build that bold and imaginative liberation program that can remind us of a future we used to feel excited about dreaming about.
You're on a roll with these pieces Scarlet! Loved reading this one in particular, considering I come from an artistic background myself. I'm also sorry that my responses are so long lol. You put so much effort and thought into writing these, so I always aim to give you thoughtful responses in return.
This is really good Scarlet 🙌