Tech has graduated from the Star Trek era to the Douglas Adams age

https://interconnected.org/home/2024/02/21/adams

by arbesman • 2 years ago

166 129 2 years ago

mproud• 2 years ago

All these cursors moving around the page, sometimes highlighting text… was way too distracting. Thank goodness for Reader Mode.

millzlane2• 2 years ago

It was the lines and colors for me.

JoshGG• 2 years ago

I don’t understand what the cursors and highlights are supposed to show us.

Maybe they could just put in flashing text plus a flashing background plus a microwave attack on the reader.

jvanderbot• 2 years ago

The only highlights I saw were links.

trescenzi• 2 years ago

Presumably it’s live mouse locations of others on the site with flags of their country right? Didn’t look at the inspector to see if they were real but it’s a neat idea. Wildly distracting and weird but neat.

chasd002• 2 years ago

Maybe they could just put in flashing text plus a flashing background plus a microwave attack on the reader.

And a fast moving image where if you click on it you get a prize. Call it punch the chimp or something..

vunderba3• 2 years ago

Just from a cursory (ha) glance, I see Websockets in dev console. Wouldn't be surprised if this is other viewers on the page.

EDIT: It's a web component on the page that does exactly this.

https://github.com/partykit/sketch-disco

hoherd• 2 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if this were his way of highlighting how JavaScript does user-hostile things. This site uses JS only to irritate the user, but other sites' JS might be malicious.

I still hate it though. I'm not disabling JavaScript. Reader mode saves the day.

sidewndr46• 2 years ago

Well that is an interesting way to filter your audience. Select for your user base by adding Javascript which only serves to make the page unusable. But make sure the page is perfectly usable without it enabled.

penjelly• 2 years ago

ya this made it unreadable for me.

omgmajk• 2 years ago

I see this stuff more and more, maybe like four times in the last week just from links I have clicked from the HN frontpage. Other visitors, doing their thing. I really dislike it.

coldpie• 2 years ago

Install NoScript. Makes the web way better. All that cutesy JS crap is disabled by default, and for badly written websites that require JS, you can go whitelist just enough to get the page functional.

grotorea2• 2 years ago

It's like the view counter from the early web updated for the 2020s, what's not to like?

ask5531• 2 years ago

throwback to 2000 and angelfire

crtasm• 2 years ago

I'm disappointed this feature doesn't load for me in Firefox.

The / key also conflicts with its quick-search feature.

TeMPOraL4• 2 years ago

What cursors? I don't see anything on Firefox, even on Windows, with uBlock Origin turned off.

randomsolutions2• 2 years ago

I think it is awesome. Definitely glad every page isn't like this, but it is cool, and goes with the vibe of the blog.

Unfortunately leaving the tab and returning seems to make it crash. But I'll take this over another striver blog.

luckydata• 2 years ago

The JavaScript that shows mouse pointers from other readers is probably the most annoying thing I’ve ever seen on any websites and made the reading experience a total nightmare

myspy• 2 years ago

The reading experience is awful, but it's fun to see where other people come from and how we cursor each other :D

prepend• 2 years ago

It would be a fun “check this out” feature.

But it’s horrible UX.

I understand the design decision though as seems like a fun hack to include. Especially when there’s probably only 1-4 other people on there. So I expect to the author it’s usually just cool to see someone else is there reading with you and not the current level of distraction.

doktrin• 2 years ago

This is one of the single most offputting novelty features ever. It's straight out of those of those collaborative canvas applications, but at least there it serves a legitimate function.

sumtechguy• 2 years ago

You are not wrong. But it also reminds me that the early web was full of things like this. Where everyone was just kind of playing around. Doing fun things. Not all of them worked. In fact most of them were terrible. But now many web pages are fairly sterile full of ads and looking for a buyout of some VC benefactor. That GeoCities/Myspace style of internet can be fun. Crazy off-putting and 'my eyes are bleeding', but fun.

wow... i am grumpy today :)

noSyncCloud• 2 years ago

Now imagine what websites are tracking that they don't show you.

millzlane2• 2 years ago

I remember watching an old video where Michio Kaku briefly talked about when mankind would destroy itself. This post reminds me that we are transitioning into a new type of civilization or like Kaku said, We may already be there.

https://youtu.be/7NPC47qMJVg?si=madgKRlmUVYb2iMv [5:53]

TehCorwiz• 2 years ago

I love the cursors! It’s 1992s idea of cyberpunk. It’s so chaotic and distracting. It’s like trying to read a newspaper on a windy day. Maybe that’s the point? Don’t know but it has real nostalgic geocities vibes.

anfragment2• 2 years ago

What’s up with HN these days? The cursors are awesome! Don’t like them? Just quit reading the article…

tiborsaas• 2 years ago

If you add more than 10 lines of CSS to your page, someone will complain about the design.

alisonatwork2• 2 years ago

I had the same experience first time I saw 弹幕 (dàn mù) aka "bullet screen" on Chinese video websites like Bilibili. If you haven't seen it before, it's like user-added subtitles that go flying across the screen while the video is playing, and in parts of the video where more users commented, more subtitles appear. In the most climactic scenes the screen gets so filled up with text that you can't see the video any more, and somehow that makes the scene even more epic. The future is now, chummer!

dougmwne3• 2 years ago

Technology has gone absurd, surely. But that absurdity is not yet evenly distributed. I was in Best Buy the other day and there was a distinct lack of bizarre AI gadgets like mirrors that make you look like a cartoon sloth or speakers that respond in iambic pentameter.

Clearly as an industry we need to get these new products on shelves for the masses.

BerislavLopac2• 2 years ago

speakers that respond in iambic pentameter

:shut-up-and-take-my-money.gif:

ben_w2• 2 years ago

This is very much in the realm of something ChatGPT can write for you, just so long as you tell it how the OpenAI APIs work because those were published after the training cut-off.

bitwize• 2 years ago

Shut UP and TAKE my MOney DOT jPEG

Symbiote• 2 years ago

:be-quiet-and-take-my-cash-good-sir.gif:

[Note for those who weren't required to study Shakespeare at school: that's iambic pentameter.]

pavlov• 2 years ago

"mirrors that make you look like a cartoon sloth"

Isn't that kind of selfie modification stuff, like, 50% of the appeal of Snapchat?

It's not a physical product, but that makes it more culturally significant IMO. A mirror is viewed only by you, but manipulating your broadcasted image speaks of how you want to be seen in society.

dartos• 2 years ago

Don’t tell the AI bros that we’ve had filters that don’t replace your face for years.

genmon7• 2 years ago

(Blog author here) I mean, I'm making a clock that tells the time with rhyming couplets haha* -- I'll do my best to get it into Best Buy, and work on the mirror next!

But you are absolutely right. We should be having way more fun with our technology!

* obligatory plug, here's the clock: https://poem.town/ks

hiatus• 2 years ago

Cool idea. Reminds me of the author clock https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195310640/author-clock...

dougmwne3• 2 years ago

As cool as your clock is, it would be even cooler if it printed the poems out on ticker tape:) And hey, recurring revenue stream!

Der_Einzige• 2 years ago

Shameless self plug, but in order to guarantee rhyming, you might want to read this paper:

https://paperswithcode.com/paper/most-language-models-can-be...

grotorea2• 2 years ago

This sort of long tail weird stuff belongs in AliExpress or similars.

andraz• 2 years ago

You need to study Stanislaw Lem if you want a glimpse into the future... in Cyberiad he invented the Electronic Bard whose description is uncannily close to chatgpt. Including the poets losing jobs and protesting.

And more... Adams is kind of more approachable version of Lem.

btbuildem• 2 years ago

They both had the amazing ability to talk about human nature, and project it into the future through the lens of technology. Lem was such a prolific writer though, I don't know if there are any books of his I would not recommend (except maybe his last works, incredibly dense compedia of abstraction)

thanatos519• 2 years ago

I am currently reading everything by Lem and indeed the Electronic Bard popped out as prophetic!

rootbear• 2 years ago

When I first heard the original HHGttG radio plays, I was sure Adams must have read Lem.

rusk• 2 years ago

Radiohead called it back in 95. Every now and again I find myself muttering ”Planet Telex” (everything is broken)

jl6• 2 years ago

I always thought Dune’s Butlerian Jihad was one of the more fantastical elements of the story, but now it’s probably one of the more realistic.

SideburnsOfDoom6• 2 years ago

You have to read the text carefully:

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

Emphasis added. Not an AI Skynet takeover, but a tech-oligarch takeover. It's increasingly not fictional.

rcarmo6• 2 years ago

Yep. The Butlerian Jihad as depicted in post-Dune books (namely Frank Herbert's son's) was more dystopian, but far less insightful.

Of course, we're probably safe while these things lack agency (although the ability of agency and hype human VCs already generate behind some of the current AI landscape can be pretty scary).

6510• 2 years ago

the king is dead, long live the king?

SideburnsOfDoom6• 2 years ago

someone should make a dating app where an LLM clone of you goes on thousands of dates with LLM clones of other people, and then your matches are when the LLMs decide to date each other

An episode of Black Mirror was pretty much this. The episode titled "Hang the DJ"

amelius3• 2 years ago

Can't they just build a classifier based on DNA?

acdha2• 2 years ago

They could but humans are rather famously more than our DNA: our children take so long to raise because our brains are far more complex and adaptable than animals, and much of what people find attractive is due to your environment and choices.

chasd002• 2 years ago

That’s pretty funny. There’s a lot of humor potential in LLMs and their interactions. On a tangent I wonder how much comedians are using them to create new material.

amelius3• 2 years ago

LLMS are good at interpolating between existing things, not at inventing new things.

genmon7• 2 years ago

Blog author here

The multiplayer cursors are an experiment in ambient togetherness on the web...

...and what I'm learning is that ambient togetherness really doesn't scale to 500 simultaneous readers!

Please use Reader Mode for calmness, and apologies for the noise. I'll work on adding a toggle to turn them off.

btw you may be interested in the code, which you can use/fork:

https://github.com/genmon/interconnected-cursor-party

My blog is a static site, and real-time multiplayer is handled by a small app written with PartyKit (which I am super into).

nicholassmith• 2 years ago

I actually quite like it as a reminder of the gentle chaos of the early web before the vibe shift to homogenous design.

hsuduebc2• 2 years ago

Love the idea. Good job!

alisonatwork2• 2 years ago

I love the cursors and already knew what everyone was commenting about without clicking through because I think another post was shared from your site a few days ago which has led to this comment thread feeling like déjà vu.

I suppose instead of showing all other users you could hash the other users into buckets and only show one from each bucket.

It'd be cool if the number of cursors could somehow scale based on the part of the text being read, same way as bullet text on Bilibili appears to increase and decrease to match the impact of what is happening in the video, but that might be tough to do without also changing the way that writing is presented online.

aceazzameen• 2 years ago

I love the absurdity of it all. It makes it a unique website/blog in the ocean of sameness.

dreadlordbone• 2 years ago

i love it, makes me feel like im at a party

genmon7• 2 years ago

that is exactly it! when you spend time on the web, there is zero way to know that the site you're on is being mobbed right now. it's so socially impoverished

I know that multiplayer cursors aren't the best way to show that, but it's a start!

mdrzn4• 2 years ago

I've spent at least 15 minutes playing with the cursor and other people on the page before even reading the article. Much fun.

edit: //////////////////////////////

genmon7• 2 years ago

It's gone full circle. People here are commenting that the multiplayer cursors are user hostile. tbh I agree... I need to build an off switch, or at least a volume dial...

Meanwhile folks on the blog have discovered the cursor chat Easter Egg: you can hit "/" on desktop to start chatting with everyone else there.

I just screen grabbed two cursors saying the opposite to the original opinion:

article is distracting lol
just use inspector 2 delete article

This is hilarious chaos.

mdrzn4• 2 years ago

article is distracting lol

This was me! I hope you're logging the messages being sent lol

throwanem• 2 years ago

The superficiality of the analysis is disappointing, especially when there's so much more in Adams' oeuvre which could be seen to speak to the modern state of the industry - Bureaucracy, for example, his 1987 collaboration with Infocom.

Granted, the blog appears to be written by someone who's failed to attend the pervasive bleakness of technology's presentation even in Hitchhiker's itself. In that light, I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect much here. But in any case, there's much fertile ground left unturned.

lasereyes136• 2 years ago

The dating AIs are covered in the Black Mirror Episode "Hang the DJ". I can't remember what season it was in.

rcarmo6• 2 years ago

Serendipitously, electricmonk is the host name for one of my Azure Open AI endpoints.

But yes, as someone who devoured Douglas' books and has often been blamed for using the same kind of (but immeasurably less brilliant) nonsensical humor, I am fully on board with the article's premise.

There is a sense of almost cartoonish familiarity towards some of the things people are coming up with, and only the other day I hacked together a small endpoint that enables Siri to craft personal insults based on my own health and exercise data.

Fun times indeed.

---Edit:---

In case anyone wants to start a VC-funded health counsellor service, I've sanitised the prompt (and removed the insult suggestions) and pasted it here:

var prompt = ` You are a fitness coach. You will be given a set of dates and weight measurements (in kg) plus a set of dates and exercise minutes, and you are to reply with a single sentence to describe how much weight I lost or gained during that time and correlate that with exercise. You should mention overall trends in weight or exercise and the exact amount of weight lost or gained.

Never mention specific dates. Say "week" or "past few days" or "past N days" whenever possible. You are to be as succint as possible. Avoid citing sources, just the facts. Use very short sentences. Be very British and polite.

Example replies:

You lost 1 kg this week thanks to an average 45 exercise minutes a day

You gained 0.5 kg because you didn't exercise enough for two days

You should try to exercise 60 minutes a day to lose 1kg this week `

etrautmann• 2 years ago

Great idea - but thinking about weight loss in terms of exercise only ignores eating, which is arguably a bigger piece and somewhat hard to capture by a virtual coach, though I’m sure something might work!

rcarmo6• 2 years ago

Yes, but it is the data I had on hand. I don't log what I eat (although I am careful), and I know I need to be cajoled into doing more exercise, so I just toss in weight and exercise minutes scraped off the Health app via a shortcut.

In short, I don't want a perfect solution--I want something to nag me, and nothing better than AI to do that in this day and age (and yes, I'm married...).

drewcoo• 2 years ago

immeasurably less brilliant

Well if that's not a humblebrag . . .

999900000999• 2 years ago

What type of user hostile website is this.

Can someone just post the text.

genmon7• 2 years ago

Blog author here. Here's the Markdown.

https://interconnected.org/home/2024/02/15/galactic-compass....

Sorry for all the noise! It's kinda fun with 2 or 3 simultaneous readers. With 500... well, I'll be building an off switch next.

rantallion• 2 years ago

How about off being the default?

randomsolutions2• 2 years ago

Don't listen to them this is awesome.

mdrzn4• 2 years ago

It was fun even with dozens (or hundreds)!

harywilke• 2 years ago

just use firefox.

user982• 2 years ago

  The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
  
  — The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Anotheroneagain• 2 years ago

Prophetic.

Lio• 2 years ago

There's one bit of Douglas Adams tech that fits closely with this:

The Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser[1], which dispenses something almost, but not quite entirely, unlike tea[2].

Reminds me of some of the code I've got from ChatGPT that almost, but not quite entirely, doesn't work. :P

1. https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Nutrimatic_Drinks_Dispen...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAswvg60FnY

lazycog512• 2 years ago

share and enjoy

SwiftyBug2• 2 years ago

Also this: https://bevi.co/

timdiggerm• 2 years ago

I feel like the author has missed the part where part of the point of Adams' absurd technology is that it kind of all sucks. He spends a lot of time making fun of the doors that have feelings, etc.

EDIT: After reading the comments and re-reading the blog, I agree. He gets it. Never mind.

curiousllama• 2 years ago

No, with that background (maybe just on desktop?), I think they totally get it

rcarmo6• 2 years ago

This. Yes, they completely and utterly get it. That is the genius behind casting AI in this light.

greenpresident• 2 years ago

How much are people typically tipping ChatGPT these days?

data-ottawa2• 2 years ago

Unironically, GPT will work harder for tips, even if you can't actually pay it.

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/chatgpt-will-pr...

codeulike• 2 years ago

We're actually in the Celery Man Timeline since Sora

(ref: 14 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk )

dylan604• 2 years ago

I like how we're trying to make our way towards the food prep where it just makes whatever you're thinking. Before we get there, we have to get to the more mundane where it just cooks what you choose for you. There's a recent meal delivery service that has a not-a-microwave-not-a-toaster-oven that scans a QR code and. heats up your premade food. We've made the Swanson TV dinner high tech adjacent

SwiftyBug2• 2 years ago

The other day I read something about OpenAI's Sora being revolutionary due to its capability of simulating the world and interactions of things therein with astounding accuracy. That's when it hit me: OpenAI is building the Infinite Improbability Drive.

catapart• 2 years ago

I'm all for this! My username is a bastardization of an Adams quote[1], because I've always been appreciative of his perspective. It was so truly unique that every aspiration to its whimsical and comprehensive majesty feels futile in the way that the mindset would naturally ignore as irrelevant to the pursuit. And if that word-salad didn't make it obvious: I was also a keen admirer of his ability to use words to explain concepts, without sounding like a pedantic lunatic.

Truly a fantastic human, and an assuring figure for the species to be moving towards, in my opinion!

[1] "If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat."

twojobsoneboss• 2 years ago

I thought he meant Scott Adams (Dilbert) and dare I say that would be more on point

MillironX• 2 years ago

In his book The Universe Next Door[1], James Sire hypothesizes a natural progression of philosophies from theism -> naturalism -> nihilism. He provides Star Trek as an example of naturalist literature, and Adam's works as examples of nihilist works.

If we are truly moving from Star Trek tech to Hitchhiker's tech, then that might indicate a broader philosophical shift in line with Sire's hypothesis.

[1] https://search.worldcat.org/title/424558138

greesil• 2 years ago

It's more like red dwarf. Ruined planets and talking toasters.

punyearthling• 2 years ago

i hate the background of this website

WalterBright• 2 years ago

Other sci-fi has had outsized impact too: tablets and video calls in Kubrick’s 2001 for instance.

"The Jetsons" had video calls earlier than 2001. In fact, a lot of predictions made in the Jetsons have come to pass.

effingwewt• 2 years ago

Good point. Could be nice if the origins of things could be traced.

Especially quotes since the big thing became a random quote against a black and white photo of a random famous person,so proper attribution is near impossible.

Tech has graduated from the Star Trek era to the Douglas Adams age

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