I write things on my blog sometimes https://fasterandworse.com/

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • NASB, I had a jarring experience this morning watching Patrick Boyle’s latest video “Big Tech is Going Nuclear!” (not gonna link it) where 5 mins in he introduces the sponsor and it’s an AI presentation slide generator, which he said he used for the images in his video. This after he mentioned the data on generating one image using the same amount of energy as charging a smartphone. The thing is he seems careful to not mention that it is a gen ai product–he never says AI–rather a piece of software that helps making presentations.

    It kinda made me panic stop the video, like an instant “well, done with you” - not sure if he continued to make a joke of it or anything. I mean, I’m sure (I hope) he was given a lot of money for the spot, but damn! Just when I thought I had a foundational understanding of people







  • Hey, thanks!

    It’s interesting that you bring up the indie game developers because games—as software products—are such an interesting exception in my mind because they are games they have a concrete, and immovable, purpose built into them. Even though the game industry is by no means not-getting-shittier, it still depends on that core purpose being satisfied somewhat. I.e. being enjoyable to play. Also, games can’t benefit from the abstraction from the end-user by being B2B corporate subscription models. They are always(?) paid for by the person who is using them.

    This is another part of the larger post the above text is a sample of, that most of this purposeless software is optimised to be sold to people who will then impose it on their subordinates.

    You are right about the question “right, what can I do about it?” for sure! Pretty much all of my previous blog posts have had comments exactly like that. And…to be honest it’s a tough one for me. I feel like identifying reasons for the situation is exhausting for me, which I guess I resolve to it being hard work and then I wonder, is identifying problems the hard part or is solving problems the hard part, but then I always settle with the belief that they are two separate hard parts.

    I can honestly say I don’t know what can be done about these things because I’ve invested so little energy into thinking about that. That’s actually what I’ve been trying so hard to define design as being. The process that does that - as I am always careful to say, design isn’t “problem solving” but rather “purpose satisfying” because these things are addressed in a fluid nature.

    Am I making excuses for doing half the job of a critic? Perhaps… But I feel like I need to keep understanding the situation before I would feel comfortable throwing out ideas to address it, at least ideas that I would be confident enough in to put my name behind them.