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- Hacker News
- Masterclass in navel gazing
- > I believe most of this activity is a giant make-work project designed to keep us out of trouble and on the payroll while Asian robots churn out most of the physical things we really need...
Asian, yes. Robots, no (or at least not in the sense of the sci-fi image of one man in a factory whose only job is to press "start" at the beginning of the shift and "stop ad the end of the shift). We didn't abolish the labor, we reduced it a bit and moved it away from us.
[edit]
Productivity in Asia was even lower when this article was written (no date, but mentions that there are 800,000 computers on the internet).
by aidenn0 - (1992)by layer8
- > bytes which no one can chew, architecture no one can inhabit, and software which keeps no cold winter wind from anyone's bodies.
this hits hard.
hopefully we can start making physical stuff again & teaching kids how to do so.
by dzonga - An incredible, lucid, and beautiful depiction of the burgeoning, inchoate world of cyberspace at the time — voicing an anxiety that echoes even louder today:
What would John make of what’s unfolded since? Much as he envisioned and embraced, humanity poured its imagination, creativity, toil, and love into cyberspace — only for the machines to feed on it all and usher in a new, all-encompassing level of human obsolescence.We humans would be liberated into an Elysian condition of permanent leisure. We’d have nothing to do but hang out in our indestructible miracle-fiber jumpsuits and talk philosophy. Only it didn’t happen quite like that. The machines did get many of our physical jobs alright, but no one could quite figure out how to pay us for all that hanging out.by gricardo99 - His "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was the most unintentionally comical thing I read at the time. Like his lyrics and prose it was woefully pretentious & leaden. I also met him once. A more unpleasant, up his own ass, person I can barely recall.
- I think this was written in 1994 for this conference https://seclists.org/interesting-people/1994/Mar/64 , but I'm not 100% sure. It refers to "last summer's coup in the Soviet Union" which may also date it. Maybe it should have a (1994) in the title. Or, I don't know, maybe it's from even earlier? Some of the other pieces have nice dates at the bottom, like the Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace a bit over 30 years ago. EDIT: @karel-3d elsethread seems to think this one is (1998).by cb321
- Reading this essay brought tears to my eyes.
To me, the physical world is a realm permitted only to those with wealth. The author beautifully romanticizes the evaporation of tangible labor, but the physical labor I actually experienced meant unpaid, stolen wages. It meant working through the night, dozing off on the early morning subway until the very last stop, and enduring endless contempt, humiliation, and the toxic community that came with it.
I sought a new community in cyberspace, and the world claims that this space rewards you. But looking at it now, that structure also seems reserved for a very specific class. Especially with the advent of AI, it feels like the time I had left to learn and actually build something has run out.
Cyberspace, which I chose as an escape, is ultimately dominated by real-world capital. And if you want to catch up to the early settlers, there isn't much you can do as a citizen of the Third World. Between China's self-sustaining ecosystem and America's global standard, there is no place for me. The physical frontier is closed, and I arrived too late even for the cyber frontier.
Language barriers, capital, platforms—they form just another rigid hierarchy. To enter the open-source world, someone from the periphery must learn English, assimilate into its cultural nuances, and master programming languages that are inherently far more difficult to learn if your native tongue is not English. There are countless more gates to pass through, yet the seats are strictly limited.
This essay spoke of a free and open frontier, but for someone like me, it is merely standing outside a shining castle, longing for it, shouting for someone to open the gates. But I do not possess the skills that the people inside that castle desire and admire.
I have merely migrated from a physical colony to a digital one. How much longer can I be consumed like this? Sometimes, the inside of that castle—as seen on HN—looks so warm. But my reality is always cold. I simply envy those who were privileged enough to experience the 90s cyber-romanticism portrayed in this essay.
by jdw64