technology

New Tech Trends

This entry was posted in comics and tagged capitalism Silicon Valley social media technology on by
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Apple started selling their dumb goggles this week, so we’re being subjected to another round of hype trying to sell this garbage. Every “big idea” Silicon Valley’s tried to sell over the last decade or two has either been outright fraud (self-driving cars, Theranos, crypto, etc.) or just re-inventing something that already exists, but with middle-men to extract money from users and the people doing the real work (gig economy, rideshare, streaming, etc.).

I swear I’ll get off my “Capitalism Bad” kick next week.

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Sucky the A.I. Vacuum

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Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, or whatever you want to call it has practical applications. From sorting the Pentagon’s bloated budget to doing whatever it is middle managers do, it has its place. Creating original art is never going to be one. The whole enterprise involves lifting from the work of others and mushing them all together. And until there’s a chip that creates sentient inspiration, the results will always be derivative.

This won’t stop executives from using it to cut costs. The WGA knew this, and that’s why they held firm and guaranteed that AI works won’t ice out the writers. Most of pop culture is already a boring mix of stuff that already exists, and A.I. would only make it worse, much more quickly.

Anthropomorphizing terrible tech is now a recurring bit that started with this A.I comic and Cruisey the self-aware car. Let’s see if I’m the John Henry of ripping myself off and can beat the machines to running it into the ground.

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Wearable Tech Expo

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Things are still bad, and tech companies are still trying to make VR a thing, including Apple now. No matter how hard Silicon Valley tries, VR will always be a niche thing for nerds, just like comics that make fun of them. Even wearable tech has an upper limit of people willing to pair and charge all that shit, THEN strap it on. People wear pajamas to the grocery store for a reason.

Volunteers for Elon Musk’s brain chip are a whole other thing. And that thing’s a cult.

Actual bad things continued to happen in the world, but I needed a break. I’m starting to suspect following and commenting on everything terrible about our current dystopia might be making me less fun at parties.

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Smart Shaming Appliances

This entry was posted in comics and tagged labor poop joke technology on by
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I don’t have much to say about the Peloton discourse, but it did spark this idea, along with all the holiday ads for smart wifi-enabled garbage.

And a week with a poop joke and nothing involving politicians is a rare and wonderful thing for me. I used to do this kind of stuff all the time in Big Fat Whale, before the NYT made me a weekly current events guy. Not that it’s easy to ignore the awful things going on, but everyone needs a break now and then.

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