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345 results for “tedivm”
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By the way, @lonseidman, who is using this exact “Save free TV” slogan in the modern day for an #ATSC30 campaign, makes a cameo in this.
https://tedium.co/2023/11/03/california-save-free-tv-ballot-initiative-history/
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Nice read about #FeedBurner, and the eternal flame if provided to the #Web via #RSS.
https://tedium.co/2017/11/14/google-feedburner-rss-history/
BTW -- our #URIBurner service [1] was coined after (and inspired by) FeedBurner, but with a focus on simplifying #LinkedData usage via proxyURIs that bring #hyperlink-based unambiguous entity naming to all :)
Links:
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The shift to #Slot1 by #Intel and then its abandonment after the #Pentium3 #CPU stopped me from upgrading Lucifer 😢:
"Socket To Me", Tedium (https://tedium.co/2023/04/15/processor-socket-history/).
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Harmonicade is a High-Scoring MIDI controller - When [KOOP Instruments] started learning the piano, he wasn’t prepared for the tedium of learning ... more: https://hackaday.com/2020/01/29/harmonicade-is-a-high-scoring-midi-controller/ #microcontrollers #midicontroller #musicalhacks #teensy3.6 #sanwa #db25 #midi
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CW: Irma Vep, film / series
Rewatched the 1996 film #IrmaVep (still adore it) and then the HBO series pilot. What am I missing? I cannot see watching any more, it was so dull and promising only more tedium. Obviously I'm missing #MaggieCheung and the gorgeous chaotic 90s vibes. But why does this series have such glowing reviews?! How could Vikander hold a candle to MC?! Why use 8 hours when 95 minutes was so brilliant?
:blobfoxfacepalm:
#film #television #cinemastodon @television -
Bring A Hack Is Back this Thursday! - As the pandemic edges further into its second year, the tedium of life under lockd... - https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/bring-a-hack-is-back-this-thursday/ #bringahack #pandemic #remote #cons
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Bill Medley is back! The best singer of the "'Unchained' melody" is paired with Jennifer Warnes.
And - gosh - it's drunken karaoke between the sales director and the gruff bloke from accounts.
"I've had the time of my life" is overplayed to tedium; this performance strips away the pomp and leaves a little charm
Filmed for the CBS version of #TOTP, and shown on 23 October; performances by Kiss and Jellybean from the same ep also appeared over here.
#BillMedley #JenniferWarnes -
By the way, @lonseidman, who is using this exact “Save free TV” slogan in the modern day for an #ATSC30 campaign, makes a cameo in this.
https://tedium.co/2023/11/03/california-save-free-tv-ballot-initiative-history/
-
By the way, @lonseidman, who is using this exact “Save free TV” slogan in the modern day for an #ATSC30 campaign, makes a cameo in this.
https://tedium.co/2023/11/03/california-save-free-tv-ballot-initiative-history/
-
By the way, @lonseidman, who is using this exact “Save free TV” slogan in the modern day for an #ATSC30 campaign, makes a cameo in this.
https://tedium.co/2023/11/03/california-save-free-tv-ballot-initiative-history/
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It is by design!
Search is limited to 4 types:#Hashtags
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User URLs
Post URLshttps://midrange.tedium.co/issues/how-mastodon-search-works/
Follow up to 5 tags in pinned col:
1 Enable ‚Advanced Web Interface‘
2 Search tag, click result of tag search, that will appear on the column further on the right side
3 Then click icon in column top right —> Settings —> +Pin
4 Include additional tags for this column#Fediverse
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#TwitterMigration
#TwitterExodusie: my neuro watch col:
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Part 7 of Andrew Whitehouse's
moving, unforgettable narrative on growing up with #adhd, ANDREW AND THE MAGIC GIVEASHITOMETER."Sources of Tedium."
Possibly the funniest chapter in the book. He's a gifted writer...not just a retired rock'n'roll frontman.
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🎥 oh. well now that i know how to do it, i'm just going to have to do it again, but with a wee bit more planning and added tedium. and maybe a bottle of something. #oneword
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What an awesome obituary for MTV News.
#MTV #MTVnews #media #Journalism #news'News of the Monoculture' by
@ernie https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16115883/mtv-news-remembrance -
I would best describe this #NRA speech by @GovChrisSununu as pablum. A great example of meaningless throwaway pablum. Bromides. Nothing. Nothingness @nra #Indianapolis #ponderous #tedium #pablum
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I would best describe this #NRA speech by @GovChrisSununu as pablum. A great example of meaningless throwaway pablum. Bromides. Nothing. Nothingness @nra #Indianapolis #ponderous #tedium #pablum
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Part 7 of Andrew Whitehouse's
moving, unforgettable narrative on growing up with #adhd, ANDREW AND THE MAGIC GIVEASHITOMETER."Sources of Tedium."
Possibly the funniest chapter in the book. He's a gifted writer...not just a retired rock'n'roll frontman.
-
Part 7 of Andrew Whitehouse's
moving, unforgettable narrative on growing up with #adhd, ANDREW AND THE MAGIC GIVEASHITOMETER."Sources of Tedium."
Possibly the funniest chapter in the book. He's a gifted writer...not just a retired rock'n'roll frontman.
-
Part 7 of Andrew Whitehouse's
moving, unforgettable narrative on growing up with #adhd, ANDREW AND THE MAGIC GIVEASHITOMETER."Sources of Tedium."
Possibly the funniest chapter in the book. He's a gifted writer...not just a retired rock'n'roll frontman.
-
Part 7 of Andrew Whitehouse's
moving, unforgettable narrative on growing up with #adhd, ANDREW AND THE MAGIC GIVEASHITOMETER."Sources of Tedium."
Possibly the funniest chapter in the book. He's a gifted writer...not just a retired rock'n'roll frontman.
-
The shift to #Slot1 by #Intel and then its abandonment after the #Pentium3 #CPU stopped me from upgrading Lucifer 😢:
"Socket To Me", Tedium (https://tedium.co/2023/04/15/processor-socket-history/).
-
The shift to #Slot1 by #Intel and then its abandonment after the #Pentium3 #CPU stopped me from upgrading Lucifer 😢:
"Socket To Me", Tedium (https://tedium.co/2023/04/15/processor-socket-history/).
-
It is by design!
Search is limited to 4 types:#Hashtags
Usernames
User URLs
Post URLshttps://midrange.tedium.co/issues/how-mastodon-search-works/
Follow up to 5 tags in pinned col:
1 Enable ‚Advanced Web Interface‘
2 Search tag, click result of tag search, that will appear on the column further on the right side
3 Then click icon in column top right —> Settings —> +Pin
4 Include additional tags for this column#Fediverse
#Newbieverse
#FediTips
#MastodonHelp
#TwitterMigration
#TwitterExodusie: my neuro watch col:
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It is by design!
Search is limited to 4 types:#Hashtags
Usernames
User URLs
Post URLshttps://midrange.tedium.co/issues/how-mastodon-search-works/
Follow up to 5 tags in pinned col:
1 Enable ‚Advanced Web Interface‘
2 Search tag, click result of tag search, that will appear on the column further on the right side
3 Then click icon in column top right —> Settings —> +Pin
4 Include additional tags for this column#Fediverse
#Newbieverse
#FediTips
#MastodonHelp
#TwitterMigration
#TwitterExodusie: my neuro watch col:
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It is by design!
Search is limited to 4 types:#Hashtags
Usernames
User URLs
Post URLshttps://midrange.tedium.co/issues/how-mastodon-search-works/
Follow up to 5 tags in pinned col:
1 Enable ‚Advanced Web Interface‘
2 Search tag, click result of tag search, that will appear on the column further on the right side
3 Then click icon in column top right —> Settings —> +Pin
4 Include additional tags for this column#Fediverse
#Newbieverse
#FediTips
#MastodonHelp
#TwitterMigration
#TwitterExodusie: my neuro watch col:
-
It is by design!
Search is limited to 4 types:#Hashtags
Usernames
User URLs
Post URLshttps://midrange.tedium.co/issues/how-mastodon-search-works/
Follow up to 5 tags in pinned col:
1 Enable ‚Advanced Web Interface‘
2 Search tag, click result of tag search, that will appear on the column further on the right side
3 Then click icon in column top right —> Settings —> +Pin
4 Include additional tags for this column#Fediverse
#Newbieverse
#FediTips
#MastodonHelp
#TwitterMigration
#TwitterExodusie: my neuro watch col:
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Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade: Brilliant Update of 1997 Classic ☄️
It took us much longer than expected to get to the Final Fantasy VII Remake (Intergrade). A big update by Square Enix of the legendary FFVII on the PlayStation, it’s a fan favourite from the series and its epic themes were ideal for a big overhaul.
Remake launched in 2020 as an action role-playing game, at first on PS4 before making its way to the PC. Finally, in January 2026, there were ports for the Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles.
We got the Switch 2 version and happily dove on it. What we found was a heavily cinematic idealised title, but one that can often be a wonder (even if it occasionally mires itself in some AAA tedium).
The Emotive Sweep of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uv3Zd6LO8s?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=723&h=407]Squaresoft launched Final Fantasy VII in 1997. The company became Square Enix in 2003 after merging with the developer Enix. Even though the FF series continues to this day, the peak years are considered the SNES outings and then FFVII on the PlayStation.
As FFVII is one of our favourite games. We first got to play it on the PC port in 1998 and fell in love with it.
As an RPG, its epic story and dramatic characters, amazing soundtrack, and everything else just swept us along with the whole shingdig. Although the original’s blocky graphics show their age, they have a real charm to them.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utVE4aUKYuY?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=723&h=407]Once the news of the long-awaited remake was announce, we were worried Square would do AAA trope stuff for the sake of graphics snobs who wanted a graphical overhaul.
However, Final Fantasy VII Remake is much more than just a graphics update. It’s a very impressive reimagining of the original story, with new arcs, complexities, game mechanics, and characterisation. Frankly, within hours we were swept along with it all and think the remake is a total triumph. A magnificent beast!
FFVII Remake Overhauls (and improves) the Iconic Narrative
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOA5GwRcBks?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=723&h=407]The great thing Square has done here is do much more than modernise the graphics. The dev has also given the genuinely brilliant, emotive story a big update and expanded on the concepts of the 1997 original.
Some of the updates are subtle, others major, but on the whole these are all very well done. And show that Remake is much more than a pandering to graphics snobs wailing about a lack of 60fps.
As pretty as the game now looks, what kept us coming back to Remake night after night for three hour runs is that story.
The Remake is a trilogy, with the second installment launched in February 2024, and the third outing is due for release in 2026 or 2027. This first outing focusses in on what’s about a one to three hour segment in the original game, where players are in the radical eco-terrorist movement AVALANCHE.
In the metropolis city of Midgar, you take control of the mercenary Cloud Strife. He’s hired as a one-off to blow up a reactor in the megacorporation of Shinra. He’s initially just out for money, but soon gets drawn into a sprawling story of love, loss, grief, and environmental collapse.
For us, that was our favourite bit of the original game. The opening hour is magnificent.
For Remake, the entire first installment is an expansion of Cloud’s time in Midgar. Brilliant! A full 30 hours or so of that opening segment, so there’s nothing to complain about from us.
It’s genuinely one of the best video game narratives out there. We’ve been critical of video game narratives in general on Professional Moron, mainly in modern AAA games as they’re often so poorly done. AAA games are like having to watch a terrible movie.
But FFVII Remake Intergrade is largely a big success. It helps that the story from 30 years ago was already there, but the expansions of plot and themes are done intelligently and with great compassion.
Central to that is Cloud’s friendship with a young lady called Aerith, a brilliant human being who stands as a beacon of light amongst the economic collapse and corruption of Shinra.
The CRUNCH of the Gameplay and Those Melancholic Moments
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elBvGD9qujk?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=723&h=407]The original FFVII merged a combat system alongside the deep and emotive storyline, plus a genuine sense of melancholia. It’s a game about capitalism destroying the world, with the head of Shinra a cold and calculating psychopath.
Away from the story, which is what drives the game, Remake offers a fleshed out combat system. Square Enix has been great here and offered all sorts of difficulty settings to accommodate for different playing types.
Before you begin, you can set things to be super tough or super easy. It’s really welcoming and allows everyone to experience the game the way they want to (something devs like Team Cherry need to keep in mind).
Combat is good fun, but can get a bit repetitive. Plus, the gameplay experience is surprisingly linear, alongside some of the more tedious AAA game tropes added into the mix. Mainly in the form of side quests, which are just the usual “I’ve lost several chickens, go and collect the chickens” filler. For us, it added little to the experience other than fleshing out the game length artificially.
Some of the dialogue and voice acting can be cringeworthy, too, but the whole it’s well done. Even the comically oversexualised Tifa, in the most revealing outfit imaginable, has a clearly defined character. She’s a great human being, compassionate and confident.
Players are also always encouraged, led by Square Enix at regular turns, to just stop and bask in life’s moments.
Its philosophical in that reach, expecting you to think of your own existence and sense of mortality. FFVII is about several very brave people putting their precious lives to one side in the name of something greater.
As the player, you’re very much part of that. Living out the dramatic experience.
And the glorious thing about Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade? This is part one of a trilogy. The game fully deserves this treatment, a masterpiece of gaming modernised in the best possible way.
And a Nod to FFVII Remake’s Musical Overhaul
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zboO7UCUE8?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=723&h=407]On a final note, we’ve done a full feature on Final Fantasy VII Remake’s soundtrack. Remake offers a big reimagining of the original 1997 score, updated by the composers Masashi Hamauzu and Mitsuto Suzuki.
The composer for the 1997 original score, Nobuo Uematsu, made one contribution. Otherwise, the work includes new arrangements of his brilliant work 30 years ago.
Credit to the team and what they’ve done here, faithfully recreating classic old pieces whilst fleshing out the main soundtrack with new compositions. It’s a vast score, too, with over 150 pieces and totalling eight hours in length. Square Enix’s official soundtrack release is a seven CD set!
They weren’t messing around with this whole project. Everyone involved put in maximum effort to build on the legacy of the original and from the music to the core gameplay, everything is rather magnificent.
#FinalFantasy #FinalFantasyVII #FinalFantasyVIIRemake #FinalFantasyVIIRemakeIntergrade #gaming #Lifestyle #RetroGaming #RPG #SquareEnix #VideoGames -
“Always look on the bright side of life”*…
The estimable economic historian Louis Hyman has been engaged in an on-going “friendly debate” with his equally-estimable friend and Johns Hopkins colleague Rama Chellappa on “what AI means”…
… As I see this debate, this question of our age, there are two main questions that history can shed some light on.
- Is AI a complement or a substitute for labor? That is, will it increase demand for and the productivity of workers, or decrease it?
- Will AI be controlled by the few or be accessible to the many?
A Complement or a Substitute?
Consider a some of the most important technologies of the past 200 years.
When I am asked about what automation might look like, I inevitably discuss agriculture. Roughly all of our ancestors were farmers and approximately none of us today are. Yet we still eat bread made from wheat. That shift is possible because of automation.
The mechanical thresher, used to process wheat, was a substitute for the most backbreaking work of the harvest. But it also enabled more land to be cultivated, and that land was cultivated more efficiently, allowing for greater harvests. Mechanization of the farm, like the thresher, turned the American Midwest into the breadbasket of the world.
Those displaced farmers found work on railroads, moving all that. And those jobs, according to people at the time, were a kind of liberation from the raw animal labor of threshing. On net, it created demand for more workers at better wages in work more fit for people than beasts. For those that remained farmers, they found other higher-value work to be done. On a farm, there is always more work to do.
The failure, then and now, is to think farmers were only threshers. That was one part of their jobs. Today, our work, for most people, is also a bundle of tasks. Workers then and now could and can focus on parts of their job that are of higher value. And in a new economy, new tasks in new industries will be created. Many of the jobs that we do today (web designer, UI expert) were simply unimaginable in 1850. That is a good thing.
Consider now the assembly line. I’m sure you all know about the staggering increases in productivity that come from the division of labor. If you take my class in industrial history, you would learn deeply about the story of the automobile. With the assembly line, and no other change in technology, car assembly went from 12 and a half hours to about 30 minutes (once they worked out the kinks). Did this reduce the demand for workers? No. It reduced the price of cars. And that increased the demand for workers, who eventually could demand even higher wages through unionization.
It is important here to realize that better tools don’t make us get paid worse. They generally make us get paid more. Why? Because the tool, without the person, is useless. Even for today’s most cutting-edge AIs, that is true. It can code, but it can only code what I imagine it to code. It can draw, but only what I imagine it to draw. That is true for AIs as it was true for the thresher.
So, I would offer that AI will create more growth, more abundance. In the long run, all growth comes from higher productivity.
I would add one more piece to this story. Economic inequality has worsened since roughly 1970. It has worsened, therefore, not in the industrial era, but the digital era. I have argued elsewhere that this happened because for decades we did not use computers as tools of automation but as glorified typewriters (and then as televisions). Our productivity did not increase, especially to justify the expense of computers. Economists have debated for decades now over the lack of increase in productivity that came with the “digital age” of computing, but it is simple. We don’t use them as computers. Now we can.
For the first time now, normal people with their normal problems can use their computers to solve and automate their problems. AI can write code. AI can automate their tedium. The digital age did not bring any gains because it had no yet arrived. We were living through the last gasp of the industrial economy.
It is now here.
This technology will unleash unimaginable productivity gains. It will level the playing field between coders and the rest of us. Coders will lose their jobs, to be sure, but for the rest of us, the bundle of workplace tasks will become much better.
And truthfully, the demand for real computer scientists will probably increase in the era of vibe-coding. Computer science itself is a bundle of skills, of which coding is just one. The more important skill – software and data architecture – will only increase in demand as the usefulness of software expands…
[Hyman goes on to explore the dangers of monopolization (which, for reasons he explains, he believes are overstated); the future of softward (which, he believes, will skew to open-sorce), and of hardware (which, he believes will not be a bottleneck). He concludes…]
… Put together we come to a very different picture of what the digital age will be. The industrial age required massive investments to build the factories to make the products that were in demand. In the digital age, in contrast, the factories to build digital products will be made by the AI on your laptop. That is not inequality. That is equality.
The physical products of the Fordist industrial age were made for the mass market. In contrast, the digital products of the post-fordist digital age will be long-tail products. I don’t need to make mass market products; I can make them for a small niche, or just for myself.
Rather than fostering inequality, AI, then, is a great equalizer. To make products for a global market you don’t need a billion-dollar factory. You just need a laptop. That is astonishing.
That said, it will not be all sunshine and rainbows. Will AI solve the inequities of capitalism or its reliance on externalities as a source of primitive accumulation? Probably not.
But at the same time, AI is not a normal technology in that it has the potential to radically undermine many of the tendencies to concentrate capital that we have seen in the industrial age. We have been automated out of work before, that is nothing new, but it has always concentrated capital in the hands of the few. For the first time, there is potentially an alternative path forward.
AI will bring the digital age out of the hands of the coders. AI will not widen the gap—it will bridge it. Its ubiquity will mean that AI will be a tool that nearly all of us will be able to use in our daily work, which will make ordinary people more productive and prosperous…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Hooray! Post-Fordism Is Finally Here!“
Even as Hyman’s message is reassuring in the context of the flood of jeremiads in which we’re awash, it’s worth remembering that eerily-similar points were made a couple of decades ago about the threat/promise of digital publishing/commerce. Given the then-current conditions and then-plausible futures, those predictions might have come true… but in the event, they didn’t pan out as projected. That said, things are changing, so maybe this time things are different?
(Image above: source)
* song (by Eric Idle) from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian
###
As we resolve to remain rosy, we might send productive birthday greetings to Andrew Meikle; he was born on this date in 1719. A Scottish millwright, he invented the threshing machine (for removing the husks from grain, as mentioned above). One of the key developments of the British Agricultural Revolution in the late 18th century., it was also one of the main causes of the Swing Riots— an 1830 uprising by English and Scottish agricultural workers protesting agricultural mechanization and harsh working conditions.
Threshing machine, invented by Andrew Meikle (source) #agriculture #AI #AndrewMeikle #artificialIntelligence #business #culture #economics #emplyment #Fordism #history #LongTail #LouisHyman #politics #SwingRiots #threshingMachine #work - Is AI a complement or a substitute for labor? That is, will it increase demand for and the productivity of workers, or decrease it?
-
“Always look on the bright side of life”*…
The estimable economic historian Louis Hyman has been engaged in an on-going “friendly debate” with his equally-estimable friend and Johns Hopkins colleague Rama Chellappa on “what AI means”…
… As I see this debate, this question of our age, there are two main questions that history can shed some light on.
- Is AI a complement or a substitute for labor? That is, will it increase demand for and the productivity of workers, or decrease it?
- Will AI be controlled by the few or be accessible to the many?
A Complement or a Substitute?
Consider a some of the most important technologies of the past 200 years.
When I am asked about what automation might look like, I inevitably discuss agriculture. Roughly all of our ancestors were farmers and approximately none of us today are. Yet we still eat bread made from wheat. That shift is possible because of automation.
The mechanical thresher, used to process wheat, was a substitute for the most backbreaking work of the harvest. But it also enabled more land to be cultivated, and that land was cultivated more efficiently, allowing for greater harvests. Mechanization of the farm, like the thresher, turned the American Midwest into the breadbasket of the world.
Those displaced farmers found work on railroads, moving all that. And those jobs, according to people at the time, were a kind of liberation from the raw animal labor of threshing. On net, it created demand for more workers at better wages in work more fit for people than beasts. For those that remained farmers, they found other higher-value work to be done. On a farm, there is always more work to do.
The failure, then and now, is to think farmers were only threshers. That was one part of their jobs. Today, our work, for most people, is also a bundle of tasks. Workers then and now could and can focus on parts of their job that are of higher value. And in a new economy, new tasks in new industries will be created. Many of the jobs that we do today (web designer, UI expert) were simply unimaginable in 1850. That is a good thing.
Consider now the assembly line. I’m sure you all know about the staggering increases in productivity that come from the division of labor. If you take my class in industrial history, you would learn deeply about the story of the automobile. With the assembly line, and no other change in technology, car assembly went from 12 and a half hours to about 30 minutes (once they worked out the kinks). Did this reduce the demand for workers? No. It reduced the price of cars. And that increased the demand for workers, who eventually could demand even higher wages through unionization.
It is important here to realize that better tools don’t make us get paid worse. They generally make us get paid more. Why? Because the tool, without the person, is useless. Even for today’s most cutting-edge AIs, that is true. It can code, but it can only code what I imagine it to code. It can draw, but only what I imagine it to draw. That is true for AIs as it was true for the thresher.
So, I would offer that AI will create more growth, more abundance. In the long run, all growth comes from higher productivity.
I would add one more piece to this story. Economic inequality has worsened since roughly 1970. It has worsened, therefore, not in the industrial era, but the digital era. I have argued elsewhere that this happened because for decades we did not use computers as tools of automation but as glorified typewriters (and then as televisions). Our productivity did not increase, especially to justify the expense of computers. Economists have debated for decades now over the lack of increase in productivity that came with the “digital age” of computing, but it is simple. We don’t use them as computers. Now we can.
For the first time now, normal people with their normal problems can use their computers to solve and automate their problems. AI can write code. AI can automate their tedium. The digital age did not bring any gains because it had no yet arrived. We were living through the last gasp of the industrial economy.
It is now here.
This technology will unleash unimaginable productivity gains. It will level the playing field between coders and the rest of us. Coders will lose their jobs, to be sure, but for the rest of us, the bundle of workplace tasks will become much better.
And truthfully, the demand for real computer scientists will probably increase in the era of vibe-coding. Computer science itself is a bundle of skills, of which coding is just one. The more important skill – software and data architecture – will only increase in demand as the usefulness of software expands…
[Hyman goes on to explore the dangers of monopolization (which, for reasons he explains, he believes are overstated); the future of softward (which, he believes, will skew to open-sorce), and of hardware (which, he believes will not be a bottleneck). He concludes…]
… Put together we come to a very different picture of what the digital age will be. The industrial age required massive investments to build the factories to make the products that were in demand. In the digital age, in contrast, the factories to build digital products will be made by the AI on your laptop. That is not inequality. That is equality.
The physical products of the Fordist industrial age were made for the mass market. In contrast, the digital products of the post-fordist digital age will be long-tail products. I don’t need to make mass market products; I can make them for a small niche, or just for myself.
Rather than fostering inequality, AI, then, is a great equalizer. To make products for a global market you don’t need a billion-dollar factory. You just need a laptop. That is astonishing.
That said, it will not be all sunshine and rainbows. Will AI solve the inequities of capitalism or its reliance on externalities as a source of primitive accumulation? Probably not.
But at the same time, AI is not a normal technology in that it has the potential to radically undermine many of the tendencies to concentrate capital that we have seen in the industrial age. We have been automated out of work before, that is nothing new, but it has always concentrated capital in the hands of the few. For the first time, there is potentially an alternative path forward.
AI will bring the digital age out of the hands of the coders. AI will not widen the gap—it will bridge it. Its ubiquity will mean that AI will be a tool that nearly all of us will be able to use in our daily work, which will make ordinary people more productive and prosperous…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Hooray! Post-Fordism Is Finally Here!“
Even as Hyman’s message is reassuring in the context of the flood of jeremiads in which we’re awash, it’s worth remembering that eerily-similar points were made a couple of decades ago about the threat/promise of digital publishing/commerce. Given the then-current conditions and then-plausible futures, those predictions might have come true… but in the event, they didn’t pan out as projected. That said, things are changing, so maybe this time things are different?
(Image above: source)
* song (by Eric Idle) from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian
###
As we resolve to remain rosy, we might send productive birthday greetings to Andrew Meikle; he was born on this date in 1719. A Scottish millwright, he invented the threshing machine (for removing the husks from grain, as mentioned above). One of the key developments of the British Agricultural Revolution in the late 18th century., it was also one of the main causes of the Swing Riots— an 1830 uprising by English and Scottish agricultural workers protesting agricultural mechanization and harsh working conditions.
Threshing machine, invented by Andrew Meikle (source) #agriculture #AI #AndrewMeikle #artificialIntelligence #business #culture #economics #Fordism #history #LongTail #LouisHyman #politics #SwingRiots #threshingMachine #work - Is AI a complement or a substitute for labor? That is, will it increase demand for and the productivity of workers, or decrease it?
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“Always look on the bright side of life”*…
The estimable economic historian Louis Hyman has been engaged in an on-going “friendly debate” with his equally-estimable friend and Johns Hopkins colleague Rama Chellappa on “what AI means”…
… As I see this debate, this question of our age, there are two main questions that history can shed some light on.
- Is AI a complement or a substitute for labor? That is, will it increase demand for and the productivity of workers, or decrease it?
- Will AI be controlled by the few or be accessible to the many?
A Complement or a Substitute?
Consider a some of the most important technologies of the past 200 years.
When I am asked about what automation might look like, I inevitably discuss agriculture. Roughly all of our ancestors were farmers and approximately none of us today are. Yet we still eat bread made from wheat. That shift is possible because of automation.
The mechanical thresher, used to process wheat, was a substitute for the most backbreaking work of the harvest. But it also enabled more land to be cultivated, and that land was cultivated more efficiently, allowing for greater harvests. Mechanization of the farm, like the thresher, turned the American Midwest into the breadbasket of the world.
Those displaced farmers found work on railroads, moving all that. And those jobs, according to people at the time, were a kind of liberation from the raw animal labor of threshing. On net, it created demand for more workers at better wages in work more fit for people than beasts. For those that remained farmers, they found other higher-value work to be done. On a farm, there is always more work to do.
The failure, then and now, is to think farmers were only threshers. That was one part of their jobs. Today, our work, for most people, is also a bundle of tasks. Workers then and now could and can focus on parts of their job that are of higher value. And in a new economy, new tasks in new industries will be created. Many of the jobs that we do today (web designer, UI expert) were simply unimaginable in 1850. That is a good thing.
Consider now the assembly line. I’m sure you all know about the staggering increases in productivity that come from the division of labor. If you take my class in industrial history, you would learn deeply about the story of the automobile. With the assembly line, and no other change in technology, car assembly went from 12 and a half hours to about 30 minutes (once they worked out the kinks). Did this reduce the demand for workers? No. It reduced the price of cars. And that increased the demand for workers, who eventually could demand even higher wages through unionization.
It is important here to realize that better tools don’t make us get paid worse. They generally make us get paid more. Why? Because the tool, without the person, is useless. Even for today’s most cutting-edge AIs, that is true. It can code, but it can only code what I imagine it to code. It can draw, but only what I imagine it to draw. That is true for AIs as it was true for the thresher.
So, I would offer that AI will create more growth, more abundance. In the long run, all growth comes from higher productivity.
I would add one more piece to this story. Economic inequality has worsened since roughly 1970. It has worsened, therefore, not in the industrial era, but the digital era. I have argued elsewhere that this happened because for decades we did not use computers as tools of automation but as glorified typewriters (and then as televisions). Our productivity did not increase, especially to justify the expense of computers. Economists have debated for decades now over the lack of increase in productivity that came with the “digital age” of computing, but it is simple. We don’t use them as computers. Now we can.
For the first time now, normal people with their normal problems can use their computers to solve and automate their problems. AI can write code. AI can automate their tedium. The digital age did not bring any gains because it had no yet arrived. We were living through the last gasp of the industrial economy.
It is now here.
This technology will unleash unimaginable productivity gains. It will level the playing field between coders and the rest of us. Coders will lose their jobs, to be sure, but for the rest of us, the bundle of workplace tasks will become much better.
And truthfully, the demand for real computer scientists will probably increase in the era of vibe-coding. Computer science itself is a bundle of skills, of which coding is just one. The more important skill – software and data architecture – will only increase in demand as the usefulness of software expands…
[Hyman goes on to explore the dangers of monopolization (which, for reasons he explains, he believes are overstated); the future of softward (which, he believes, will skew to open-sorce), and of hardware (which, he believes will not be a bottleneck). He concludes…]
… Put together we come to a very different picture of what the digital age will be. The industrial age required massive investments to build the factories to make the products that were in demand. In the digital age, in contrast, the factories to build digital products will be made by the AI on your laptop. That is not inequality. That is equality.
The physical products of the Fordist industrial age were made for the mass market. In contrast, the digital products of the post-fordist digital age will be long-tail products. I don’t need to make mass market products; I can make them for a small niche, or just for myself.
Rather than fostering inequality, AI, then, is a great equalizer. To make products for a global market you don’t need a billion-dollar factory. You just need a laptop. That is astonishing.
That said, it will not be all sunshine and rainbows. Will AI solve the inequities of capitalism or its reliance on externalities as a source of primitive accumulation? Probably not.
But at the same time, AI is not a normal technology in that it has the potential to radically undermine many of the tendencies to concentrate capital that we have seen in the industrial age. We have been automated out of work before, that is nothing new, but it has always concentrated capital in the hands of the few. For the first time, there is potentially an alternative path forward.
AI will bring the digital age out of the hands of the coders. AI will not widen the gap—it will bridge it. Its ubiquity will mean that AI will be a tool that nearly all of us will be able to use in our daily work, which will make ordinary people more productive and prosperous…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Hooray! Post-Fordism Is Finally Here!“
Even as Hyman’s message is reassuring in the context of the flood of jeremiads in which we’re awash, it’s worth remembering that eerily-similar points were made a couple of decades ago about the threat/promise of digital publishing/commerce. Given the then-current conditions and then-plausible futures, those predictions might have come true… but in the event, they didn’t pan out as projected. That said, things are changing, so maybe this time things are different?
(Image above: source)
* song (by Eric Idle) from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian
###
As we resolve to remain rosy, we might send productive birthday greetings to Andrew Meikle; he was born on this date in 1719. A Scottish millwright, he invented the threshing machine (for removing the husks from grain, as mentioned above). One of the key developments of the British Agricultural Revolution in the late 18th century., it was also one of the main causes of the Swing Riots— an 1830 uprising by English and Scottish agricultural workers protesting agricultural mechanization and harsh working conditions.
Threshing machine, invented by Andrew Meikle (source) #agriculture #AI #AndrewMeikle #artificialIntelligence #business #culture #economics #Fordism #history #LongTail #LouisHyman #politics #SwingRiots #threshingMachine #work - Is AI a complement or a substitute for labor? That is, will it increase demand for and the productivity of workers, or decrease it?