What books or articles have you read recently that fundamentally shifted the way you think about the world, and how you interact with it (work, social, play, whatever)?
What books or articles have you read recently that fundamentally shifted the way you think about the world, and how you interact with it (work, social, play, whatever)?
It wasn’t recent, but I remember being wide-eyed when I read Manna by Marshall Brain. But even then, I knew the optimistic half was very optimistic and… Yeah. Now it depresses me to think about it. In terms of worldview, it made me consider that optimism at least.
What’s the gist? Or, what did it change about your worldview?
Bearing in mind it came out in 2003? It basically predicted how the rich would try to use AI to replace as many of the working poor as possible. It was incredibly bleak, talking about how as the software and hardware advanced, more and more people’s job’s were destroyed and slowly people were rounded up into government housing projects. If memory serves, it was almost like a prison.
Then the main character/narrator gets to escape to Australia (which is kind of lol but I digress) where they used AI to create a utopian post-scarcity society, and it went over all the way you could use things like brain-interfacing chips to make life easy and wonderful; how people shared what resources they had so everyone had plenty. You could basically 3-D print yourself a house if you wanted.
Seeing how things have developed much more closely to one timeline than the other is very depressing. But it definitely woke me up to thoughts like “Tech is not inherently evil but can be used in very evil ways.” (Which feels like not much of a revelation but I was a teenager then, so it was a shock at the time.)
Oh yeah, that sounds like a trip.
As an Aussie, I approve.