alt Hacker News> comes out of the same mindset that has turned a neat technology into a banal hellscape for consumers and employees
I'm going to say up front that I'm not as familiar with this period of history as I should be, but -- would it be totally unfair to say the same of the "Industrial Revolution"?
I'm not gonna say they're equivalent by any means, but my understanding is the "Industrial Revolution" was hellish for many people. Maybe the mistake is the framing that "the revolution" or "the next big thing" is always a good thing?
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The public can't see any trains, electricity, concrete or glass windows, they see employment going away as workers and zero benefit as consumers.
Maybe AI enables great inventions in a decade, but for now the only appeal is that multinational corporations get to fire workers and everything's filled with slop. Of course they're not happy.
> the mistake is the framing that "the revolution" or "the next big thing" is always a good thing?
They are good things. If you were an adult, male aristocrat, yes, your untouched meadows and streams got tainted. If you were a woman you stopped dying in childbirth. If you think of infants as people, they stopped massively dying.
The Industrial Revolution was good. But it also required erecting the modern administrative state to manage. People had to soberly measure the problems, weigh the benefits and risks, and then invent new institutions and ways of thinking to accommodate the new world.