Maybe that will happen in those giant urban nightmares they call cities. I moved out of the decaying concrete jungle (Escape From L.A.!) and have been living in small towns for the past decade. Here, live music is made every night, spilling out onto the boardwalk and carried by the wind to brighten and invigorate minds old and new. Real music is an art that will survive the AI apocalypse, and perhaps be the last echo of our civilization, spreading out into the cosmos long after we’re gone, and exchanting distant (alien) minds.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that technology is not point. It’s just a tool, like a magnifying glass. Stop focusing on the tech, you’re going to waste what little time you have here on Earth. People are the point. Relationships are the point. Feeling emotions and expressing them is the point.

I have worked in IT almost my entire life. I watched computers shrink from refrigerator size to watch size. I witnessed the birth of the internet, and watched it grow, increasing in size and complexity until it seemed to connect everything. I could have been a programmer, or database architect, or systems administrator. But no, I chose to stay in tech support because that is how I connect with other people. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had were when I was working under someone’s desk. I’ve seen ten thousand people in person struggle with tech problems that you and I would find trivial to solve. Are you saying that all those people, all those farmers, doctors, teachers, public defenders, artists, and parents deserve to be banished to the Phantom Zone because they can’t edit a PDF? Get the fuck outta here with that shallow thinking, and re-evaluate your life, and what is truly meaningful in it. May this conversation be the seed that helps you grow to your full and wonderful potential.

All my love, Biped # 117 Billion +1

Obama_awarding_Obama.gif 🏅

Well, just think about how pervasive cheap junk plastic (toys, food packaging, vehicles, furniture, etc) is in our society, yet there are tons of people who make or buy things made out of high quality materials like solid wood furniture or quality steel kitchen appliances. So, there will always be people who reject imitation and embrace originality (and you can find them at art festivals!)

Good question! I say yes, because a functioning society is formed from the combined knowledge, skills, and efforts of it’s unique and diverse constituents, each of whom have strengths and weaknesses. However, if one does not have technical aptitude, then they should not be in a position that decides or controls technology - there are plenty of other non-techy jobs they could do, like farming or fishing.

I would recommend going to some local art faires, it will soothe your anxiety about the future (of art). I bought a small oil-on-canvas painting of a sailboat at sunset from a young artist at a recent art faire, who was thrilled to talk about art and even tried to give me the painting for free. Creating art by hand is soul-satisfying, and rest assured, my friend, it will never be replaced my AI.

I think you and I are in that sweet sweet band of The Spectrum™ where we have heightened senses, intelligence, thirst for knowledge, ability to see things from unique perspectives, but without all the autistic screeching 😁

You’re right about tech nerds - I’m pretty sure most are borderline autistic, with a common trait of being far too literal in casual conversation. I (on the spectrum) spent a lot of time and effort conditioning myself to be more chill with neuro-norms. And it worked! I don’t get bent out of shape anymore discussing techy things with non-techy people, not do I correct them, because they are going to forget the technical details the second I turn away, but they will definitely remember (and dislike) the nerd who starting arguing over some trivial detail.

Email and Lemmy are both digital communication systems where people use personal computers connected to the internet to socialize across the world. To you, they are completely different. To my parents and most of my clients (boomers), they are one and the same. Is the Nintendo Switch the same as the Steam Deck? Hell no, I don’t even game, but I can rattle off a dozen differences between the two platforms. Yet, to those who are technologically illiterate (which is most Americans), they are one and the same. But I can understand your frustration, I had a Sega Genesis growing up, and my parents always called it a Nintendo, to which I would autistically shout “Moooom, it’s a Seg-AH GEN-esis, it’s totally different!”

I heard they survived the KT extinction event because 65,000,000 BC was a leap year 🐸

<rant> I work in IT, user support. I’ve seen so many users still using AOL, Yahoo or ISP email accounts that were created for them automatically; they can’t figure out basic things like setting up Gmail with MFA or downloading Outlook for work from the app store. More importantly, they just don’t care; their eyes glaze over the moment you mention something like encryption (hacker talk to them) or privacy (you must be hiding something). They cannot tell the difference between Firefox or Chrome (all browsers are Internet Explorer). And these people are college educated doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc without a clue how technology works. I’ve changed the Chrome or Firefox icon to Internet Explorer on thousands of computers because even after giving them tutorial after tutorial, as soon as I leave the site, they are clicking that damn blue E and loading up MSNBC… </rant>

I think you’re right, I encountered these once and ended up breaking them off at the surface because I couldn’t pull them through, even with vice grips. That looks like real wood too

Slowly going down. The learning curve is too steep for the general population (personal opinion, happy to debate).