Ha. A passing line from the always good Wendy Chun,

everyone is now speculating about the web 3.0, the semantic web

Chun, W. H. K. (2008) ‘The enduring ephemeral, or the future is a memory.’ Critical inquiry, 35(1) pp. 148–171.

Well, that definition didnt take last; in many ways, the web has dissolved into mere carrier for platforms. The term got trampled on by know-nothing¹ tech bros.

Web 3.0 now, as we all know, is where the bitcoin grifters that haven’t made the AI jump went to establish some federated bamboozlement there to separate the gullible from their money. Maybe that will wind up soon and we can get back to an actual web again eh

“Olson” on PDP-1 using 1962 Harmony Compiler. I don’t like linking to YouTube, but here we are; this is breathtaking, a late 1990s song played on a late 1950s computer, 75 years later by the original creator of the music playback hack, Peter Samson. The colours of the machinery, the base elements of computation exposed before circuit boards came to be, the design aesthetics arranged perfectly, the oscilloscope display, layers of nostalgia for things that predated but shaped me passing by as Joe’s punched tape passes by at the end of the film, an elegy to DEC

Just remembering how horrified everyone was about the idea of a one world government the past few decades and how we accidentally now have one made of private US corporations run by kids too oblivious to think they’re fascists because they hire someone to buy their used trainers

I grew up fascinated by arcade games; this has been a life-long fascination with programmatic digital systems. I was always fascinated by games and tactile user interfaces, and portable games were how I would eliminate commutes; games represented an apex of technologies, media production, and experiences working together to entertain. But now my idle time is consumed by networked writing, social media posts; the evidence of others’ experience. I dreamed of my c64 receiving messages from others in the 1980s, that the machine would cease to be a solitary space and permit in the textural changes from another mind, responding to a shared reality, even if only a few words. Now it consumed hours of my day.

In other words, the Trump administration is increasingly gambling the future of the American economy on AI. If they’re right, the US will capture the dual rewards of both coding the tools of the next economic revolution and owning the infrastructure that runs it. If they’re wrong, the US will be left with a bunch of distressed assets and will have dramatically underinvested in the projects that actually mattered. The large tariff exemption for computers is distorting the American economy in ways that could reshape the long-run future of the country.

Interesting take on the role of AI, AI materiality, waste and future economic bubbles. For me, this is an accelerated hype bubble that naturally flows from NFTs and Crypto, and unlike the Web bubble already precludes new entrants - other than Chinese players.

Finished reading: Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher 📚

80 pages of great critique, dedicated to say get fucked OFSTED

There really is nothing else to do other than make short-term sacrifices of the few to prevent the losses of the far greater, longer-term majority: Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future - Avoiding a Ghastly Future