"Large armed forces will be vulnerable to small groups of determined militants."
No. Large forces can be even more determined when they want to be. What is already happening today and AI means much more of next week is ultra-panopticon.
There is "seeing like a state" but then there is also "failing to see like a state".
It will help if you imagine you are Xi Jinping or ask "WWXJD?" He / CCP has social technological and digital technological capabilities that just exploded in power, and he need never be worried again. "Small groups of determined militants? There's an app for that." Lots of people are very upset at the CCP. Zero groups of determined militants are able to do anything about it, and never will be able to ever again. Game over.
What was once the one-child policy and now a norm meant, "One Mouth, Six Pockets" for the two parents and four grandparents. What AI means is "One Billion People? One Trillion cameras!"
What AI means is infinite cheap scalability of security functions for which there is unlimited demand but for which the supply is currently limited only because until now these functions needed to be done by humans who are slow, unreliable, scarce, and expensive.
Every single human being, everywhere they go, and everything they say, write, or do will be tracked 24/7 - and they will all know it. The more you try to evade the tracking the more suspicious you become and the more surveillance efforts automatically throttled up to whatever degree necessary.
It is now and forever technically possible to reduce personal privacy of everyone below the point at which any conspiracy of any significance whatsoever could possibly be planned, organized, and executed. Game over.
-This- is the key inflection point for the future of all human interaction and relations.
With enough surveillance, a large number of "tragic human condition" problems are feasibly solved forever if the government wants them to be solved (which is an awkward position for conservatives), though a large number of classic ways humans had to deal with problems caused by the existing power structure are likewise permanently off the table, if the existing power structure wants them to be.
It will turn out to be the case that the post WWII strategic matter of the highest significance was to make sure you had as good a state as possible by 2024 when whatever condition it was in at the time was likely going to get locked in for a long time.
I see this resulting in a proliferation of prison gangs and the like. What gang would you consider joining and why? Why aren’t there more Asian prison gangs of note?
I served a one year stint in a correctional facility after being wrongly convicted of an inappropriate relationship with a farm animal. During that time, I was actively recruited by the Sindicato Tejano (the Texas Syndicate). A fun group of people, but it was the required lifetime commitment that ultimately left me searching for other opportunities.
Behold! You are (unusually) quite incorrect about small machine warfare. Large industrialized states (specifically China) will darken the skies with their ability to produce drones at scale in volumes far beyond everyone else. This in turn will allow them to conquer at scales far beyond everyone else. AI will allow them to then monitor and suppress dissent at scales far beyond today. The AI-powered drone panopticon will then allow them to establish Chinese Fasci-Communism as a universal ideology within the conquered areas and allow them to intrude on every aspect of everyone's lives except perhaps their internal monologue.
You are probably right that celebrities will be famous only in narrow realms.
I think the big corporations are building AI with the entire design built around being the ones to control it and bill it out to anyone who wants to use it.
AI requires both a lot of processing speed and energy, and powerful AI will need that at a scale beyond what an individual can afford.
Sure, they’ll allow us to have our own mini AI assistants, but they will actually not represent us and will represent the corporate interests that create them and will instead constantly be spying on us and also subtly trying to convince us of whatever narrative the people who control the AI want us to believe.
Try asking any of the current LLMs about anything medical and you’ll see that they are tuned to be completely pro big pharma. That’s just one example.
I was using an LLM to go over some recent paper that says regional banks are in much bigger trouble than seems obvious right now because of higher interest rates and CRE problems.
I asked the LLM about some ways to make a financial bet against regional banks (aside from obviously shorting strategies) and Claude flat out refused and said it was wrong to short banks.
When I pointed out that shorting stocks is a legal, reasonable, established and respected part of investing, it said oh yes, good point. But it still refused to budge on making even non shorting tactics to bet against banks.
Imagine carrying around a machine that can listen to every word you say and see everything you read and write and report back to the authorities efficiently about what it sees.
That is our current trajectory, in my opinion.
I hope we end up with real AI assistants that actually represent us as individuals, but I don’t see any of the big corporate or government interests allowing that to happen.
It seems to me that Arnold’s point would be better made in the first paragraph by comparing people over 60 in 1965 to people over 60 today (i.e. my guess about the age of Arnold’s audience). I would say the oldsters of 1965 knew more pop hits because of concentrated media; the Ed Sullivan Show itself probably did enough to establish Arnold’s point. So much for the apples, what about the oranges? Did under 25s in 1965 know more hits than under 25s now? I don’t know, but the answer seems relevant to the power of Arnold’s claim.
Sure it is. Many young people (and some older) today listen to very specific genre(s) of music. That wasn't even possible in the 60s, at least not nearly to this extent.
Let's assume that in 1965 youngsters would know the top 20 hits which would be different genres. ASK is arguing that technology/media fostered that knowledge of a common culture. Is there a top 20 now? Do youngsters know that list despite the undoubted interest in specific genres? I am just saying I have no idea if markets for music are segmented enough to foster a different result for the current cohort. Of course, you could change the measure by looking at a broad set of hits. Perhaps that would change things.
One of us isn't getting what the other is saying. Probably both. We are probably using different starting assumptions too. Not sure it's worth figuring it out.
Cultural atomization is an underappreciated feature of our present age. For in depth analyses of this as it pertains to music, I'd read Ted Gioia's Substack and watch Rick Beato's YouTube videos. Here is Rick Beato interviewing Ted Gioia, if you want an idea of their respective views on music and cultural atomization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibMd_Jx9daw
I don't think anyone can say it better than Lester Bangs did when Elvis died in 1977. He saw the future clearly.
“If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other’s objects of reverence. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse; I will say good-bye to you.”
“Love” did go out of style. This becomes obvious if you have Sirius XM in your car as my husband does. There are the 70son7, the yacht rock, classic vinyl, and The Bridge, which I think is entirely songs that have bridges, otherwise I’m not sure of the through-line.
And when I am driving and tired, I will say, no niche music - I want to listen to my childhood; and we’ll turn to one of the above and you cannot but fail to notice, those “mellow rock”-ers sang about Love about half the time.*
I am not sure the last time I heard a current pop (or rap or hip-hop or neo-whatever) song, where the word “love” figures. People “love” each other’s bodies, occasionally, I think.
*Of course, they especially went in for being Lovers and Friends in the 70s. We listened to one tune in which the guy earnestly promised he would always “like” her even if he did not love her anymore. Lol. So not trying to defend my thesis too hard, nor my terrible taste in road music.
This is a good time passer if you are riding with someone who’s exceptionally good at spotting who ripped off whom “not that it matters”. Not being musical I couldn’t hear “You Won’t See Me” in “Saturday in the Park” at first but finally had to yield though it seemed to me that chord progressions belong to the commons. On the other hand, “Golden Years” brought forward a pretty funny story about Bowie’s bandmates sniggering at him for a couple hours the first time he introduced it to them, and his finally saying why are you laughing at me? - culminating in their going, you really don’t hear it? And his coolly pretending he’d never heard of “On Broadway”. They then went to work un-“On Broadway”-ing it insofar as possible.
The Pill was as big a tech innovation that changed the culture as the internet, and also led to some fragmentation among women in sexual behavior and especially family-work trade-offs. Female domination of Universities is a pretty direct result of that tech.
Atomization of culture is clearly happening, in pop songs, movies, TV series, and sports, which was unmentioned yet remains important to millions. Like the recent US win over Pakistan.
.
.
.
In cricket. A sport known and played by more English speakers than (American) football, aka soccer.
With a huge rise in e-sports as well, like League of Legends, which I learned about and played with my kids. Or far less popular Track Mania, which one my son’s best friends has gone to France to play professionally.
I’d guess my 8 of 10 song recognition from 2023 is among the highest scorers here, but less than the 9 or 10 I’d mostly get from 1965 top 100. Yet that’s because I switched from playing LoL, poorly, to singing karaoke as a hobby, and I look for new songs that I like. Mostly on YouTube Premium (no ads thanks to a son’s gift). I’ve already sung Flowers (#3), as well as her newer Used To Be Young, in my off key but enthusiastic baritone. Few of the power pop / pop punk / punk & emo rock songs that I like to listen to are sung by baritones, but #1 & #8 are—those two pop country hits were the two I didn’t know.
The fragmentation extends into fashion, with the “Big Booty sexiness” like SZA has, being an alternative to “Skinny Big Tits” which was more dominant, with a new rise of “Just Slender”.
Reduced shared culture increases the importance of shared legal regime, and thus the culture war over imposition of leagal requirement limits to individual, fragmented, behavior.
Small drones are unlikely to change warfare so much as ai changes business.
"Reduced shared culture increases the importance of shared legal regime, and thus the culture war over imposition of legal requirement limits to individual, fragmented, behavior."
Re: "Two types of technological change produce inflection points. One type of change concerns the technology of communication. [... .] The other type concerns the technology of warfare."
A third type of technological change — technologies for contraception and reproduction — also produces inflection points.
The pill and new abortion technologies constituted a technology shock with profound cultural and demographic effects. It seems that new reproductive technologies are on the horizon; for example, gene-editing, designer babies, and perhaps even artificial wombs. A brave new world?
RE: "Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution."
In the USA, entitlements dwarf the tort system as a percentage of GDP. The internet says that Social Security is 5% of GDP, Medicare is 3% of GDP, and Medicaid is 2% of GDP; whereas the tort system is 2% of GDP. Entitlements are projected to grow much faster than GDP.
Is the thought that technology shock — AI, small-machine warfare, etc. — will splinter society enough to break down the welfare State?
Maybe AI contracts will replace some regs. But will the regulatory State fade away?
I think deep down we are all tired of this artificial and superficial life ... we live to work instead of work to live. The rat race.
globalization and industrialization have created an inhumane environment, we have lost our identity, individuality and our independence, relying on china for this and russia for that?
nature is at an extinction level ( more than 10 species are wiped out, every day.. gone forever..). Polar bears are next ...
We have forgotten that mother nature is the basis of all life... we poison it, we exploit it, we abuse it all in the name of greed.
we all can sense the wrongness of the money and consumerism treadmill and madness.
Working until you're 70, not having enough money for groceries, being medicated to death, institutions and systems have become a detriment to our existence.
The money mindset intead of the family minset...
It is soul crushing.
By now that reflects everywhere more and more. Plus the fear mongering and propaganda.
we all wish to return to a better existence.
We are not made for artificial anything.. not food, not intelligence nor relationships.
We are a part of nature and our survival depends on her.
We are in the hands of a few insane and rich people that hide behind corporations and conglomerates, mindless, ruthless, they seemingly have created a juggernaut and lost control. Global madness..
We need to get back to basics.
And we can only do that as a collective.
It is We The People, not them people.
The divisions are a way of keeping us weak. Class, race and even religion have separated us.
Only together will we have the power to change things.
"They" need us, we don't need them.
We will have to stop feeding "the machine", get off the treadmill. We can only do that by helping each other. In our comunities and grow from there.
Splinter groups will not be enough .. that is the probem actually.
Our choices will seal our fate.
So get off that couch, stop eating twinkeys, the next drink, taking more pills or buy more purses.. this will take some serious work.
.. that's why so many rather stay in their denial... hoping things will change.. the next president will make things better..
For over 50 years it has gotten worse and worse for us.
We have been voting for the lesser evil too long.
By now "they" can't even find a decent candidate anymore .. only criminals and degenarates.. it seems ... the corruption has come full circle and it shows.
I had a roommate in college who was a great admirer of birds. He said that when he got out of school, he was going to live in a tree because houses were artificial. I had to agree with him about the latter but I couldn't go along with his idea that artificial is automatically bad. Some is and some isn't. Knowing what is and what isn't? "Ay, there's the rub."
What is artificial food? Is flour artificial? It's processed wheat, with parts removed. Is bread doubly artificial, as it's one step removed from flour.
Almost every plant we eat is very different from its wild progenitors. It has been selectively bred for many, many generations. But is that "natural" because it's kind of mimicking nature, while GMOs are not?
Is it just a matter of newness? If some ancient American had come to you with a scrawny one inch cob of teosinte and asked for your help to make it bigger and more nutritious (which has resulted in today's maize), would you have said no because that would be artificial?
Is it just a matter of newness? It is said that most people prefer the music that was popular when they were young. Do we have a predilection to feel that things we grew up with are natural and things that we encounter later aren't?
"why are we paying extra for organic?" Because we have been taken in? I don't.
"all the artificial stuff" How far back do you want to go? Before telephones? Before television? Radio? Cars? Railroads? Agriculture? Cooking with fire?
I can't help thinking of the intellectual complaint about the slogan, "Make America Great Again." What exactly is this greatness that has been lost BUT CAN BE REGAINED?"
Depending on how you strict you want to be about artificial/unnatural, we have been artificial for our entire existence as a species.
I’m listening (again) to Orlando Figes’ ‘The Story of Russia’.
The importance of ideas, Byzantine - mongol - orthodox - , contrasts with the western, - Jewish - catholic - puritan.
Very well done. Especially highlights the profound impact of separating the physical king from the abstract office.
West did, Russia did not. Still doesn’t.
Abstract Jewish training - idolatry is the most wicked sin, with Byzantine tradition - idolatry is required.
Maybe we’re abandoning biblical advice to focus on abstract, invisible things (God, truth, morality) and only focus on physical (people, money, pleasure).
Russia never rejected the concept of the Czar as ‘little father’ of everyone. He owns everyone and everything.
Putin.
And now the west . . .
Is this a clue to the resurgence of anti-semitism?
I'm not sure about most of your claims, but your somewhat portentous announcement that the culture has "splintered" at this "social inflection point" makes me doubt it. As others have observed, our culture has been fragmenting for literally decades, long before Titanic. This ain't new.
"Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution. Instead, the standard way to develop contracts will be to. “have my AI negotiate with your AI.” The importance of reputation management will be sufficient to deter people from breaking contracts."
He describes China vs US/Europe in terms of a race for AI supremacy, with very different systems. China has virtues and downsides of being centralized, US has virtues and downsides of being decentralized. If the US decides to go centralized, and/or if China wins the arms race, we may not see government weakening.
(Marc and Ben reckon US needs to lean into our strengths. US/Europe may not as organized as a centralized system, but we can benefit from competition and market economy, have a much larger group of people make small decision to get to good outcomes. They also point out that in 2017, everyone thought China was ahead in AI, but was ahead in integrating their one AI into the government= once ChatGPT came out US was ahead. I think most of us reading AK as well would prefer more freedom, decentralization and are convinced it will lead to better outcomes for our society, no.
This reads like you are at the early stages of a Harold Innis-esque meta communication theory; a third "bias of communication." It will be interesting to watch you develop it.
On the matter of small machine warfare, I have to disagree. Electronic warfare is already ahead in this domain: the recent Iranian drone & missile barage directed at Israel was mostly defeated by EW, not by kinetic defenses.
"In the future, there will be no durable forms of collective mass identity."
Race. Stuff written in your genes is pretty durable. Not a future I would choose, but it seems like a real possibility, in the absence of other criteria to use for people to form groups and in a world where nations have kind of withered away. IE, if you live in a country that's 95% Asian, lets say, and that's been stable over a long period of time, then Asian-ness is pretty useless as a means for forming a group identity around, but if you live in a country that's 25% Asian, 25% white, 30% Hispanic, and 20% Other, it's a completely different story.
One more pessimistic note, though: I suspect you're probably right about the small machine warfare thing, but what are the odds this is neutralized to a large degree by technologically-enabled mass surveillance?
Race can splinter. For example, in Los Angeles, the Bloods and the Crips were rival black gangs. And each gang eventually enrolled also non-black members.
Race is perceptually salient, but durable artificial markers, such as tattoos can achieve comparable perceptual salience.
This is Tom Wolfe's point in "Back to Blood". Without confident and aggressive encouragement of assimilation, integration, and cultural convergence, blood (or class) becomes more, not less, important with more population diversification.
In general the left has been actively complaining about and trying to dissolve durable forms of collective mass identity for centuries except for (1) leftist political ideology, (2) "government is the only thing that we all belong to" / "the thing we do together".
The post-war turn in American progressive ideology reversed this old trend as matters involving class and wealth receded and matters involving group identity and status-ranking were emphasized, which was part of the Great Reconfiguration of American party politics starting in the late 50s and early 60s. The left's political formula changed into one which relies on making group identity as salient as possible and a source of pride for some groups or shame for others.
As an example, two or three generations ago most immigrants from Latin America (also the Mideast and other areas) were encouraged to fit in with the white mainstream, and to think of themselves as white, and indeed, they did tend to think of themselves that way. The effort to infuse them with a "Hispanic" group consciousness eventually succeeded to the point where it is now much more durable form of collective mass identity for them.
Inherent in what you wrote is that everyone is on grid. After writing my comments below, my prediction became that an increasing number will purposely limit their exposure to the grid, maybe to their overall detriment, maybe not.
"Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution. Instead, the standard way to develop contracts will be to. “have my AI negotiate with your AI.” "
I have no clue how AI developed contracts will help resolve disputes.
"The importance of reputation management will be sufficient to deter people from breaking contracts."
I have no clue why this would be more attainable in the future. It seems it would even go somewhat in the opposite direction as we become more fragmented, although the benefits of customer reviews may continue to increase. I suppose AI data collection could serve a similar purpose but I still don't see your prediction happening. Too many things in life will always be too fuzzy.
" For protection from criminals, people will turn to the equivalent of spam filters. We will subscribe to services that use AI to identify and block criminals."
Doesn't seem you speak of physical violence. As for crime via deception, I just don't see AI ending that. Might end some that is common today but I wouldn't be surprised if it is used as a tool in new crimes.
"Large armed forces will be vulnerable to small groups of determined militants."
No. Large forces can be even more determined when they want to be. What is already happening today and AI means much more of next week is ultra-panopticon.
There is "seeing like a state" but then there is also "failing to see like a state".
It will help if you imagine you are Xi Jinping or ask "WWXJD?" He / CCP has social technological and digital technological capabilities that just exploded in power, and he need never be worried again. "Small groups of determined militants? There's an app for that." Lots of people are very upset at the CCP. Zero groups of determined militants are able to do anything about it, and never will be able to ever again. Game over.
What was once the one-child policy and now a norm meant, "One Mouth, Six Pockets" for the two parents and four grandparents. What AI means is "One Billion People? One Trillion cameras!"
What AI means is infinite cheap scalability of security functions for which there is unlimited demand but for which the supply is currently limited only because until now these functions needed to be done by humans who are slow, unreliable, scarce, and expensive.
Every single human being, everywhere they go, and everything they say, write, or do will be tracked 24/7 - and they will all know it. The more you try to evade the tracking the more suspicious you become and the more surveillance efforts automatically throttled up to whatever degree necessary.
It is now and forever technically possible to reduce personal privacy of everyone below the point at which any conspiracy of any significance whatsoever could possibly be planned, organized, and executed. Game over.
-This- is the key inflection point for the future of all human interaction and relations.
With enough surveillance, a large number of "tragic human condition" problems are feasibly solved forever if the government wants them to be solved (which is an awkward position for conservatives), though a large number of classic ways humans had to deal with problems caused by the existing power structure are likewise permanently off the table, if the existing power structure wants them to be.
It will turn out to be the case that the post WWII strategic matter of the highest significance was to make sure you had as good a state as possible by 2024 when whatever condition it was in at the time was likely going to get locked in for a long time.
I see this resulting in a proliferation of prison gangs and the like. What gang would you consider joining and why? Why aren’t there more Asian prison gangs of note?
I served a one year stint in a correctional facility after being wrongly convicted of an inappropriate relationship with a farm animal. During that time, I was actively recruited by the Sindicato Tejano (the Texas Syndicate). A fun group of people, but it was the required lifetime commitment that ultimately left me searching for other opportunities.
Behold! You are (unusually) quite incorrect about small machine warfare. Large industrialized states (specifically China) will darken the skies with their ability to produce drones at scale in volumes far beyond everyone else. This in turn will allow them to conquer at scales far beyond everyone else. AI will allow them to then monitor and suppress dissent at scales far beyond today. The AI-powered drone panopticon will then allow them to establish Chinese Fasci-Communism as a universal ideology within the conquered areas and allow them to intrude on every aspect of everyone's lives except perhaps their internal monologue.
You are probably right that celebrities will be famous only in narrow realms.
I think the big corporations are building AI with the entire design built around being the ones to control it and bill it out to anyone who wants to use it.
AI requires both a lot of processing speed and energy, and powerful AI will need that at a scale beyond what an individual can afford.
Sure, they’ll allow us to have our own mini AI assistants, but they will actually not represent us and will represent the corporate interests that create them and will instead constantly be spying on us and also subtly trying to convince us of whatever narrative the people who control the AI want us to believe.
Try asking any of the current LLMs about anything medical and you’ll see that they are tuned to be completely pro big pharma. That’s just one example.
I was using an LLM to go over some recent paper that says regional banks are in much bigger trouble than seems obvious right now because of higher interest rates and CRE problems.
I asked the LLM about some ways to make a financial bet against regional banks (aside from obviously shorting strategies) and Claude flat out refused and said it was wrong to short banks.
When I pointed out that shorting stocks is a legal, reasonable, established and respected part of investing, it said oh yes, good point. But it still refused to budge on making even non shorting tactics to bet against banks.
Imagine carrying around a machine that can listen to every word you say and see everything you read and write and report back to the authorities efficiently about what it sees.
That is our current trajectory, in my opinion.
I hope we end up with real AI assistants that actually represent us as individuals, but I don’t see any of the big corporate or government interests allowing that to happen.
It seems to me that Arnold’s point would be better made in the first paragraph by comparing people over 60 in 1965 to people over 60 today (i.e. my guess about the age of Arnold’s audience). I would say the oldsters of 1965 knew more pop hits because of concentrated media; the Ed Sullivan Show itself probably did enough to establish Arnold’s point. So much for the apples, what about the oranges? Did under 25s in 1965 know more hits than under 25s now? I don’t know, but the answer seems relevant to the power of Arnold’s claim.
His example was deeply flawed even if his point was correct.
I think the point is accurate for oldsters; not so sure about the young.
Sure it is. Many young people (and some older) today listen to very specific genre(s) of music. That wasn't even possible in the 60s, at least not nearly to this extent.
Let's assume that in 1965 youngsters would know the top 20 hits which would be different genres. ASK is arguing that technology/media fostered that knowledge of a common culture. Is there a top 20 now? Do youngsters know that list despite the undoubted interest in specific genres? I am just saying I have no idea if markets for music are segmented enough to foster a different result for the current cohort. Of course, you could change the measure by looking at a broad set of hits. Perhaps that would change things.
One of us isn't getting what the other is saying. Probably both. We are probably using different starting assumptions too. Not sure it's worth figuring it out.
Cultural atomization is an underappreciated feature of our present age. For in depth analyses of this as it pertains to music, I'd read Ted Gioia's Substack and watch Rick Beato's YouTube videos. Here is Rick Beato interviewing Ted Gioia, if you want an idea of their respective views on music and cultural atomization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibMd_Jx9daw
Another example of cultural atomization is this exchange I had on Twitter with someone about a musician named Chappell: https://x.com/friedmandave/status/1800550789322260668
I don't think anyone can say it better than Lester Bangs did when Elvis died in 1977. He saw the future clearly.
“If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other’s objects of reverence. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse; I will say good-bye to you.”
“Love” did go out of style. This becomes obvious if you have Sirius XM in your car as my husband does. There are the 70son7, the yacht rock, classic vinyl, and The Bridge, which I think is entirely songs that have bridges, otherwise I’m not sure of the through-line.
And when I am driving and tired, I will say, no niche music - I want to listen to my childhood; and we’ll turn to one of the above and you cannot but fail to notice, those “mellow rock”-ers sang about Love about half the time.*
I am not sure the last time I heard a current pop (or rap or hip-hop or neo-whatever) song, where the word “love” figures. People “love” each other’s bodies, occasionally, I think.
*Of course, they especially went in for being Lovers and Friends in the 70s. We listened to one tune in which the guy earnestly promised he would always “like” her even if he did not love her anymore. Lol. So not trying to defend my thesis too hard, nor my terrible taste in road music.
This is a good time passer if you are riding with someone who’s exceptionally good at spotting who ripped off whom “not that it matters”. Not being musical I couldn’t hear “You Won’t See Me” in “Saturday in the Park” at first but finally had to yield though it seemed to me that chord progressions belong to the commons. On the other hand, “Golden Years” brought forward a pretty funny story about Bowie’s bandmates sniggering at him for a couple hours the first time he introduced it to them, and his finally saying why are you laughing at me? - culminating in their going, you really don’t hear it? And his coolly pretending he’d never heard of “On Broadway”. They then went to work un-“On Broadway”-ing it insofar as possible.
The Pill was as big a tech innovation that changed the culture as the internet, and also led to some fragmentation among women in sexual behavior and especially family-work trade-offs. Female domination of Universities is a pretty direct result of that tech.
Atomization of culture is clearly happening, in pop songs, movies, TV series, and sports, which was unmentioned yet remains important to millions. Like the recent US win over Pakistan.
.
.
.
In cricket. A sport known and played by more English speakers than (American) football, aka soccer.
https://www.reuters.com/sports/cricket/us-stun-pakistan-super-over-2024-06-06/
With a huge rise in e-sports as well, like League of Legends, which I learned about and played with my kids. Or far less popular Track Mania, which one my son’s best friends has gone to France to play professionally.
I’d guess my 8 of 10 song recognition from 2023 is among the highest scorers here, but less than the 9 or 10 I’d mostly get from 1965 top 100. Yet that’s because I switched from playing LoL, poorly, to singing karaoke as a hobby, and I look for new songs that I like. Mostly on YouTube Premium (no ads thanks to a son’s gift). I’ve already sung Flowers (#3), as well as her newer Used To Be Young, in my off key but enthusiastic baritone. Few of the power pop / pop punk / punk & emo rock songs that I like to listen to are sung by baritones, but #1 & #8 are—those two pop country hits were the two I didn’t know.
The fragmentation extends into fashion, with the “Big Booty sexiness” like SZA has, being an alternative to “Skinny Big Tits” which was more dominant, with a new rise of “Just Slender”.
Reduced shared culture increases the importance of shared legal regime, and thus the culture war over imposition of leagal requirement limits to individual, fragmented, behavior.
Small drones are unlikely to change warfare so much as ai changes business.
"Reduced shared culture increases the importance of shared legal regime, and thus the culture war over imposition of legal requirement limits to individual, fragmented, behavior."
That sounds right.
Re: "Two types of technological change produce inflection points. One type of change concerns the technology of communication. [... .] The other type concerns the technology of warfare."
A third type of technological change — technologies for contraception and reproduction — also produces inflection points.
The pill and new abortion technologies constituted a technology shock with profound cultural and demographic effects. It seems that new reproductive technologies are on the horizon; for example, gene-editing, designer babies, and perhaps even artificial wombs. A brave new world?
RE: "Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution."
In the USA, entitlements dwarf the tort system as a percentage of GDP. The internet says that Social Security is 5% of GDP, Medicare is 3% of GDP, and Medicaid is 2% of GDP; whereas the tort system is 2% of GDP. Entitlements are projected to grow much faster than GDP.
Is the thought that technology shock — AI, small-machine warfare, etc. — will splinter society enough to break down the welfare State?
Maybe AI contracts will replace some regs. But will the regulatory State fade away?
I think deep down we are all tired of this artificial and superficial life ... we live to work instead of work to live. The rat race.
globalization and industrialization have created an inhumane environment, we have lost our identity, individuality and our independence, relying on china for this and russia for that?
nature is at an extinction level ( more than 10 species are wiped out, every day.. gone forever..). Polar bears are next ...
We have forgotten that mother nature is the basis of all life... we poison it, we exploit it, we abuse it all in the name of greed.
we all can sense the wrongness of the money and consumerism treadmill and madness.
Working until you're 70, not having enough money for groceries, being medicated to death, institutions and systems have become a detriment to our existence.
The money mindset intead of the family minset...
It is soul crushing.
By now that reflects everywhere more and more. Plus the fear mongering and propaganda.
we all wish to return to a better existence.
We are not made for artificial anything.. not food, not intelligence nor relationships.
We are a part of nature and our survival depends on her.
We are in the hands of a few insane and rich people that hide behind corporations and conglomerates, mindless, ruthless, they seemingly have created a juggernaut and lost control. Global madness..
We need to get back to basics.
And we can only do that as a collective.
It is We The People, not them people.
The divisions are a way of keeping us weak. Class, race and even religion have separated us.
Only together will we have the power to change things.
"They" need us, we don't need them.
We will have to stop feeding "the machine", get off the treadmill. We can only do that by helping each other. In our comunities and grow from there.
Splinter groups will not be enough .. that is the probem actually.
Our choices will seal our fate.
So get off that couch, stop eating twinkeys, the next drink, taking more pills or buy more purses.. this will take some serious work.
.. that's why so many rather stay in their denial... hoping things will change.. the next president will make things better..
For over 50 years it has gotten worse and worse for us.
We have been voting for the lesser evil too long.
By now "they" can't even find a decent candidate anymore .. only criminals and degenarates.. it seems ... the corruption has come full circle and it shows.
"we all wish to return to a better existence."
What exactly was that better existence? Did it really exist?
Certainly the time before cell phones and all the artificial stuff ...
I had a roommate in college who was a great admirer of birds. He said that when he got out of school, he was going to live in a tree because houses were artificial. I had to agree with him about the latter but I couldn't go along with his idea that artificial is automatically bad. Some is and some isn't. Knowing what is and what isn't? "Ay, there's the rub."
LOL!
Artificial food is bad for one.. why are we paying extra for organic? And whats the rest? Plastic, GMO or just chemical?
Artificial lifestyle is bad .. when we forget that mother nature is the base of all life and kids think milk comes from Publix...
Artificial conversation like on social media, where everyone is perfect and pretends to be what they are not.
Artificial Intelligence is no match for human stupidity... lol
What is artificial food? Is flour artificial? It's processed wheat, with parts removed. Is bread doubly artificial, as it's one step removed from flour.
Almost every plant we eat is very different from its wild progenitors. It has been selectively bred for many, many generations. But is that "natural" because it's kind of mimicking nature, while GMOs are not?
Is it just a matter of newness? If some ancient American had come to you with a scrawny one inch cob of teosinte and asked for your help to make it bigger and more nutritious (which has resulted in today's maize), would you have said no because that would be artificial?
Is it just a matter of newness? It is said that most people prefer the music that was popular when they were young. Do we have a predilection to feel that things we grew up with are natural and things that we encounter later aren't?
"why are we paying extra for organic?" Because we have been taken in? I don't.
"all the artificial stuff" How far back do you want to go? Before telephones? Before television? Radio? Cars? Railroads? Agriculture? Cooking with fire?
I can't help thinking of the intellectual complaint about the slogan, "Make America Great Again." What exactly is this greatness that has been lost BUT CAN BE REGAINED?"
Depending on how you strict you want to be about artificial/unnatural, we have been artificial for our entire existence as a species.
Arnold
Always enjoy your work.
I’m listening (again) to Orlando Figes’ ‘The Story of Russia’.
The importance of ideas, Byzantine - mongol - orthodox - , contrasts with the western, - Jewish - catholic - puritan.
Very well done. Especially highlights the profound impact of separating the physical king from the abstract office.
West did, Russia did not. Still doesn’t.
Abstract Jewish training - idolatry is the most wicked sin, with Byzantine tradition - idolatry is required.
Maybe we’re abandoning biblical advice to focus on abstract, invisible things (God, truth, morality) and only focus on physical (people, money, pleasure).
Russia never rejected the concept of the Czar as ‘little father’ of everyone. He owns everyone and everything.
Putin.
And now the west . . .
Is this a clue to the resurgence of anti-semitism?
Thanks
Clay
I'm not sure about most of your claims, but your somewhat portentous announcement that the culture has "splintered" at this "social inflection point" makes me doubt it. As others have observed, our culture has been fragmenting for literally decades, long before Titanic. This ain't new.
"Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution. Instead, the standard way to develop contracts will be to. “have my AI negotiate with your AI.” The importance of reputation management will be sufficient to deter people from breaking contracts."
Interesting! Maybe, though I was recently listening to Marc Andreesen's case for open source AI vs centrally controlled. https://youtu.be/dX7d6bRJI9k?si=YsIxYk97vPppl4uu&t=4589.
He describes China vs US/Europe in terms of a race for AI supremacy, with very different systems. China has virtues and downsides of being centralized, US has virtues and downsides of being decentralized. If the US decides to go centralized, and/or if China wins the arms race, we may not see government weakening.
(Marc and Ben reckon US needs to lean into our strengths. US/Europe may not as organized as a centralized system, but we can benefit from competition and market economy, have a much larger group of people make small decision to get to good outcomes. They also point out that in 2017, everyone thought China was ahead in AI, but was ahead in integrating their one AI into the government= once ChatGPT came out US was ahead. I think most of us reading AK as well would prefer more freedom, decentralization and are convinced it will lead to better outcomes for our society, no.
No one knows and this speculation is hardly worthy.
This reads like you are at the early stages of a Harold Innis-esque meta communication theory; a third "bias of communication." It will be interesting to watch you develop it.
On the matter of small machine warfare, I have to disagree. Electronic warfare is already ahead in this domain: the recent Iranian drone & missile barage directed at Israel was mostly defeated by EW, not by kinetic defenses.
"In the future, there will be no durable forms of collective mass identity."
Race. Stuff written in your genes is pretty durable. Not a future I would choose, but it seems like a real possibility, in the absence of other criteria to use for people to form groups and in a world where nations have kind of withered away. IE, if you live in a country that's 95% Asian, lets say, and that's been stable over a long period of time, then Asian-ness is pretty useless as a means for forming a group identity around, but if you live in a country that's 25% Asian, 25% white, 30% Hispanic, and 20% Other, it's a completely different story.
One more pessimistic note, though: I suspect you're probably right about the small machine warfare thing, but what are the odds this is neutralized to a large degree by technologically-enabled mass surveillance?
Race can splinter. For example, in Los Angeles, the Bloods and the Crips were rival black gangs. And each gang eventually enrolled also non-black members.
Race is perceptually salient, but durable artificial markers, such as tattoos can achieve comparable perceptual salience.
This is Tom Wolfe's point in "Back to Blood". Without confident and aggressive encouragement of assimilation, integration, and cultural convergence, blood (or class) becomes more, not less, important with more population diversification.
In general the left has been actively complaining about and trying to dissolve durable forms of collective mass identity for centuries except for (1) leftist political ideology, (2) "government is the only thing that we all belong to" / "the thing we do together".
The post-war turn in American progressive ideology reversed this old trend as matters involving class and wealth receded and matters involving group identity and status-ranking were emphasized, which was part of the Great Reconfiguration of American party politics starting in the late 50s and early 60s. The left's political formula changed into one which relies on making group identity as salient as possible and a source of pride for some groups or shame for others.
As an example, two or three generations ago most immigrants from Latin America (also the Mideast and other areas) were encouraged to fit in with the white mainstream, and to think of themselves as white, and indeed, they did tend to think of themselves that way. The effort to infuse them with a "Hispanic" group consciousness eventually succeeded to the point where it is now much more durable form of collective mass identity for them.
Inherent in what you wrote is that everyone is on grid. After writing my comments below, my prediction became that an increasing number will purposely limit their exposure to the grid, maybe to their overall detriment, maybe not.
"Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution. Instead, the standard way to develop contracts will be to. “have my AI negotiate with your AI.” "
I have no clue how AI developed contracts will help resolve disputes.
"The importance of reputation management will be sufficient to deter people from breaking contracts."
I have no clue why this would be more attainable in the future. It seems it would even go somewhat in the opposite direction as we become more fragmented, although the benefits of customer reviews may continue to increase. I suppose AI data collection could serve a similar purpose but I still don't see your prediction happening. Too many things in life will always be too fuzzy.
" For protection from criminals, people will turn to the equivalent of spam filters. We will subscribe to services that use AI to identify and block criminals."
Doesn't seem you speak of physical violence. As for crime via deception, I just don't see AI ending that. Might end some that is common today but I wouldn't be surprised if it is used as a tool in new crimes.