True Virtual, Techlash, Internet in the '90s
How about three miniposts instead of one post (Daddy was out late last night)
A Return to the ‘90s Internet
There has been quite a lot of chatter about how the modern AI revolution will be as much of a tech game changer as the Internet was in the ‘90s. You would think someone would hit on the parallel between the actual experience of using AI chatbots and surfing the web in the ‘90s.
To be more plain, simple and clear: it really wasn’t until the early ‘00s that most people thought about making online content. Yes, people created things and posted them online in the 90s. But the understanding was that you had to buy a domain and build an ugly Geocities website. Most people were content just searching for cool things online and/or chatting on AIM.
The AI space primarily seems to involve an intimate relationship between the AI and the user. OK, so people make deepfake Biden vids for the lulz and throw them on social. These are the modern Geocities people. Most are content just interacting with the AI for their own pleasure.
I am truly surprised more people (other than me) do not see one of the few definite futures in an otherwise cloudy crystal ball: AI truly is the end of social. Kids in the future will look at users who made their own content the way we look at geeks who used to code or build their own computers even. Cool, but what do you have to show for it? In the ‘90s, the excitement of being online had as much to do, if not more to do, with communicating with your computer, as it did with connecting with people worldwide. Before the online revolution, computers primarily ran programs. These floppy disks had truly limited options. Unless of course you were a computer geek who could bypass the boundaries. But most kids just played Ghostbusters on the Commodore for that reason only. Something else? Take out the Ghostbusters disk, blow on a different floppy disk you had in a paper sleeve near the monitor, run the word processing disk and write your essay for English class. So the excitement of the ‘90s was primarily about freedom. You could look up Ghostbusters, word processors, girls…your imagination was your limit now.
It makes sense that the search space is so interested in AI; this sort of exploration that happened in the heady early days of search is now happening again with AI chatbots. Just like ‘90s search, there are clear limits to AI interactions. But the novelty has far from worn off. Unlike the ‘90s, any cyber utopianism is met with skepticism now. But, for the first time in decades, we may enjoy an Internet without discourse on content, SEO optimization or influencer brands.
A Techlash Timeline
As exciting and frightening as AI may be, there is also a general sense of disappointment in how the Web in general turned out. This Substack article is only the latest of many drilling down on how the Web has turned into an ugly, cluttered space. AI may be too new for a techlash, but already you see some saying that generative AI is boring because of how efficient and smart it is.
Of course, this isn’t the first techlash:
19th Century: As soon as the Industrial Age started to pick up steam, Romantic poets and French bohemians were the first to establish a culture of technological skepticism. The Romantics like Shelley and Thoreau had a back-to-nature philosophy that ran through much of their letters. The bohemians may not have outwardly protested industrialization, but they abhorred the new bourgeois audience that the new age opened up for them. At the mercy of the culture industry marketplace, many bohemians preferred drinking and dying in the gutter. A cliche was born.
1930s: Greenwich Village in the ‘30s was bursting with folk music. The music of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly at hootenannys throughout the town were the soundtrack for hot takes on how radio led to fascist mass delusion and how advertising was a hollow industry. The War of the Worlds hysteria and the rise of Hitler led to decades of skepticism against broadcast media in academia.
1960s: In the beginning of the ‘60s, folk was massive. Over time, mass media skepticism that belonged to the ‘30s intelligentsia and the ‘50s beatniks became mainstream. Kids dropped acid and tuned out advertising messages, preferring to play in the park and eventually move to communes. A decade that began with the pastoral folk style ended with the pastoral cosmic country style of Gram Parsons as well as Crosby Stills and Nash and a newly country-fried Grateful Dead.
1990s: The ‘80s were overrun by video games and synths. But in the early ‘90s, the alternative rock movement led to a clear, unmistakable backlash against synth pop. Yes you still heard synthesizers, but the understanding is you heard this in a Michael Bolton song at TJ Maxx. The cool, hip sound was played with real drummers and pianos. MTV Unplugged tested pop musicians’ mettle to see if they could hold their own without technical wizardry. It was short lived though. The mid to late 90s were seized by the currents of the Internet and techno.
2010s: The difference between vinyl appreciation in the ‘00s and in the ‘10s was that in the ‘00s it was primarily a hobby for hipsters. But in the ‘10s, demand for non-digital records reached such a high that supply could not keep up with demand.
True Virtual
When Mark Zuckerberg brought up the metaverse in late 2021, it did not scan as a great idea. We were already cooped up because of lockdown. We wanted to be out. We did not want anymore online anything. Let alone an office meeting in virtual reality.
The faulty assumption of the metaverse, from Zuckerberg to Fortnite to Roblox, was that the virtual space would expand and we would want to connect with others. One of the many lessons we learned from the past few months with the generative AI revolution: people prefer virtual people to virtual places.
Now that the stage is set for interactions with generative AI personalities, a virtual space to communicate with all these different personalities makes a lot more sense. Again, most people see the web with a 2.0 lens still. The worst part of the web has turned out to be other people. Or, at least other people who are mindless slaves to the robot algorithm god. Cut out the middle man. Just give the dam bot his own show already.
Perhaps a postfame economy makes more sense from this angle; we will still have fame but it won’t be for people. It will be for AI personalities. Which makes no sense until we look at Mario, Luigi, and all the other interactive superstars from the ‘80s. How big were these celebrities? “In 1982, the arcade video game industry reached its peak, generating $8 billion in quarters, equivalent to over $18.5 billion in 2011, surpassing the annual gross revenue of both pop music ($4 billion) and Hollywood films ($3 billion) combined at that time.” I would bet on a very similar cratering of the influencer/social media world by AI. As I’ve said time and again, this could lead to great things artistically. Fame whores may run to karaoke bars while those who really create something will create it not for money, but because they are possessed, like Roy Neary obsessively recreating Devil’s Tower out of mashed potatoes in Close Encounters. These counter cultural artists, playing in the park if necessary, will potentially be the most vital creative movement since the ‘60s.