I had an arcos jukebox before the first iPod came out, every time they’d release a new version it’s big feature would be something my jukebox had always done. Except it didn’t have an awkward spinning selector wheel or celebrity endorsements.

I could connect it to the cd player and record the whole thing as mp3s, I think it even used to split the tracks automatically but I might be wrong. Plug it into usb and it’s a HDD ready to have anything copied to it without hassle… No need for shitty iTunes, no complaints about wav files and never found an MP3 it couldn’t play.

I remember thinking that surely people will realize over priced and feature limited products are an insult but no, the kids of the future I had so much hope for turned out to be gen z who care more about brand recognition than anyone ever before. I still think the feature rich generics will have their day, maybe generation alpha…

The reason they had more days off wasn’t so they could watch Netflix it was because to survive they needed to do a lot of long and heavy chores.

If you want to live the life of an illiterate subsistance farmer wearing rough jute clothes and drinking nasty ale made with dirty water and reed sugar then you can just do that.

That’s because no one pays attention to the huge developments in infrastructure or the amazing new technologies coming to market - e fuels like sequestered carbon jet fuel made from excess renewable power, and no it’s not a science fiction dream it’s happening now. Of course we should have more funding for these things but they are happening.

A huge part of that problem is that people resist even the slightest positive change, paper straws are fine but I bet there are people who like this post who also liked posts complaining about them - if we stopped organized sports and spent that half a trillion on transitioning local infrastructure or establishing carbon sequestration systems with productive use of captured carbon (e.g. building materials that get landfilled at eol) we could move much faster, but no one will give up a single football game to save the planet they’d rather bomb something and feel like a hero

I find it fascinating how different sections of society see the tech totally differently, a lot of people seem to think because it can’t do everything it can do nothing. I’ve been fascinated by ai for decades so to have finally cracked language comprehension feels like huge news because it opens so many other doors - especially in human usability of new tools.

We’re going to see a huge shift in how we use technology, I don’t think it will be long before we’re used to telling the computer what we want it to do - organising pictures, sorting inventory in a game, finding products in shops… Being able to actually tell it ‘i want a plug for my bath’ and not being offered electrical plugs, even being told ‘there are three main types as seen here, you will need to know the size of your plug hole to ensure the correct fit’

As the technology refines we’ll see it get increasingly reliable for things like legal and medical knowledge, even if it’s just referring people to doctors it could save a huge amount of lives.

It’s absolutely going to have as much effect on our lives as the internet’s development did, but I think a lot of people forget how significant that really was.