I find ANY suggestion that there is proof of Hard First Contact very dubious. I mean, how the fuck did the Little Green Men get here, to begin with? But, putting aside those concerns, the idea that the U.S. Airforce may be in possession of some sort of alien probe is very curious.
What’s even more curious is, it’s very possible that we may have proof of ETs and…nothing will happen. We’re all so being sucking our own cocks as we debate if this or that thing is “woke” that we won’t even care that The Single Biggest Event In Human History has be proven.
I can only think of a hand full of events that would be equal to Hard First Contact. The birth of Jesus. The discovery of the New World by Europeans. Splitting the Atom. Landing on the Moon.
That’s about all I got.
But it remains to be seen if what we’re being told is true turns out to be true. Yet there is hope — if it becomes clear to The Powers That Be that no one gives a shit that Hard First Contact has happened…it’s a lot more likely that The Truth about that issue will become known.
At least, that’s my hope.
The ultimate endgame of all of this is we’re all going to know that we’re not alone in the Universe and no one will care. Space nerds will whisper about this or that additional discovery, maybe by the James Webb Space Telescope, but in the end only if Little Green Men land on the front lawn of the White House will the average person care.
It’s going to be a real struggle to wrap this Public Beta up before the end of spring. I keep finding scenes that are just too weak not to throw up and rewrite totally. And that doesn’t even count the scenes that are adequate, but need a serious punch up if people are going to actually want to read the entire novel.
The heroine of my first novel kinda looks like Kelsey Asbille.
But, I think because I have a lot of momentum that I should be able to get pretty close to my goal. At the moment, it definitely feels like I should wrap things up no later than July 4th. Regardless, the story is getting much, much better.
My chief concern at the moment is the story is just not very dark. It’s very, very accessible and is a very, very easy read. It’s such an easy read that there might even people who are able to read it in one sitting.
The story itself is very much an Old Brown Shoe to anyone who’s read Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium Series. Though, in real terms, the story is a lot more a journalistic Mare of Easttown than it is anything else.
In other news, I’ve discovered a Hollywood actress who I can now imagine in my mind as the heroine of my novel — Kelsey Asbille. She’s just about the right age and she kinda sorta is close enough in complexion to meet what I imagine my heroine looks like.
It’s not a perfect 1-to-1, but it’s pretty close.
Anyway, I’m being VERY delusional to even broach such a thing because I haven’t even finished the fucking novel yet. And the entire showbiz industrial complex is designed to make it impossible for drunk middle-aged men like me to find a way in.
Who knows, though, I do think this novel is shaping up to be REALLY GOOD.
There is a disturbance in the force. It definitely seems as though we’re about to experience a serious case of future shock over the course of the next few months. The entire knowledge economy could be not just drastically transformed by AI, but face serious contraction as well.
It could be that a lot sooner than you might think, the issue won’t be who gets paid for writing what, but audiences deciding that “artisanal art” has unique value unto itself. So, it’s possible to imagine a future where 99% of all art is AI generated, with the remaining 1% being created by humans who make a lot of money.
All of this might happen in the context of a real resurgence in live performances of all sorts. If I could, say, have an endless supply OK Computer era Radiohead, then seeing them live with new stuff will be something that people will pay an even bigger premium for.
Or, put another way, it could be that the average person won’t even notice that most of the entertainment they consume on a daily basis is AI generated. The entire greater showbiz industry will effectively collapse. It could be, in a sense, an extinction-level event for the entire concept of humans producing recorded entertainment.
It might happen so fast that even if the Hollywood writers’ on strike now are able to get some concessions from producers that it will all be moot. The only people in the future making money will be producers and the actors living passively off their full body scans. Otherwise, lulz.
That’s why I think for the Writers’ Strike to be successful, they need to be very, very aggressive on the AI front. They need to demand strict, clear carveouts for human writers. I would prefer a total prohibition on the use of AI to create a movie, but I think that’s probably pushing it.
As I understand it, the entire movie industry pretty much runs on hookers and blow in the sense that a lot, A LOT, of the industry is pretty much just vibes. And I could see from the producers’ point of view that the use of AI would be part of a broader effort to “modernize” showbiz.
Instead of any connection to the human touch, the vast majority of (bad) movies will be AI generated. Live entertainment will gain in value significantly and the only old-school movies that will exist will be high-end movies with a very specific vision.
But, wait, there’s more!
All of this would be happening just as movies and video games fuse. It could be that what movies exist in the future will be immersive in nature and the audience will collectively “play” the movie as a group in some sort of metaverse hellscape.
The point is — these may be the waning days of the Hollywood industry that has existed for about 100 years. It could be that the very idea of a “passive” human generated movie is going to be seen a very quaint a lot sooner than you might otherwise imagine.
The only thing I can compare this to is what is show in the movie Moneyball. A lot of how movies are actually produced is a magical mystery concoction accumulated over the decades. Or, as one producer once famously put it, “Nobody knows nothing,” when it comes to making movies.
So, it could be that because of the techno-capitalist imperative, soon enough, the back end of Hollywood will be done entirely relative to cold, hard metrics. What’s more, the very idea of “mass media” may not longer exist as everyone gets a different very, very specific and very, very personalized movie or TV show each time they sit down to watch something.
There will be no shared reality anymore. No watercooler movies or TV pop moments to share on social media. Professional (human) writers will turn to the live experience to make a living.
Given that Bytedance, the owner of Tik-Tok, has gone so far as to track the location of Forbes reporters, I suppose it was inevitable someone from that company would check me out since I keep ranting about I suspect their app can read people’s minds.
So, today, sure enough, I saw someone from Bytedance in my Webstats.
I don’t really think that Tik-Tok can read our minds. I don’t. I swear. But repeatedly, again and again, I have been pushed very, very specific videos that seem to track with my internal monologue and I simply don’t have any ready answer for it.
Usually, it seems to happen after I think about something really hard in a concrete way. I like, I see an image in my mind for an intense moment or two. Then, usually within 24 hours, I get pushed something along those lines by Tik-Tok.
It’s eerie. It’s inexplicable.
I suppose it’s all just a coincidence. It has to be. Right? Right? Big Tech can’t read our minds — yet. I mean, if Big Tech had the ability to read consumers’ minds wouldn’t that be, by definition, one of the biggest advancements — and secrets — in modern history?
I know we’re working towards having some primitive ability to read people’s minds, I call it “digital telepathy,” but for the time being such stuff is the stuff of cranks like me with too much time on my hands.
I suppose AI might has something to do with what I’m noticing? Maybe? But for me, the point is, be it digital telepathy or AI, whatever it giving Tik-Tok the ability to figure out what I’m thinking in such a concrete manner fucking needs to be banned or regulated.
I’m something of a media nerd and so I’m a big fan of Matthew Belloni’s podcast The Town. I often pontificate on shit I know nothing about — that’s kind of my thing — and I also am totally completely obsessed with monitoring my Webstats.
Very, very few people read this blog — mostly stalkers and family members who don’t want to admit that they are interested in my rantings — so whenever something curious pops up in my Webstats I take note. I have no idea why a person from Cortlandt Manor, New York would look — repeatedly — at my musings about the possibility that it seems inevitable that Warner Bros. Discovery will merge with NBCUniversal…but they have.
The ONLY reason why I find this both curious and intriguing is where Cortlandt Manor is — just north of NYC in what I suspect is a fairly wealthy part of the state. It would make a lot of sense if some high-powered media person with inside knowledge would be searching the Web about such a merger if it was actually something actively being discussed.
Or not.
Anyway, absolutely no one listens to me — certainly not Mr. Belloni — so, lulz, I’ll just be content in my scenario running abilities if I turn out to be right. Though I will point out AGAIN — if such a merger did happen, what the fuck happens to CNN?
I can think of a few plutocrats who would shell out a few billion for CNN. The general base price would be $1 billion, but I think if there was some sort of bidding war, you could see a final sale price closer to $5 billion.
I’ve finally concluded that I’m totally and completely wasting my time to think about this idea anymore, and, yet I have gotten at least one ping in my Webstats related to this, so, lulz, let’s waste some MORE time.
A sample of my vision for the UX of a Twitter replacement.
Also, it definitely seems as though there is a very, very narrow window of opportunity for someone to actually implement this idea. I’m a dreamer and a writer so, as such, it’s better if I just stick to working on my novel(s) rather than spending years learning how to code something that will ultimately be replaced by a combination of the metaverse and chatbots.
Ok, the key selling point of this concept is is brings back some really cool UX concepts that we somehow lost when Usenet finally succumbed to porn and spam and porn spam. The cool thing about Usenet was you had a full page Posts that were robustly threaded in the context of Groups. What’s more, you had in-line editing.
Usenet
Now, obviously, some of this sums up modern-day Reddit and that would be the thing most people would initially compare the service to because no one remembers Usenet except for weirdos like me. And, in real terms Reddit is the closest approximation to Usenet that exists.
But the implementation is really ham-handed, at least in my view.
Imagine if everyone when they went through on-boarding was forced to created both public and private groups devoted to not just grouping their friends, but also creating the equivalent of really robust Facebook Groups combined with Twitter Lists.
And there would be a lot of innate redundancy in the system, to the point that Groups would be seen as disposable. This would, in turn, reduce the likelihood of not only a Group growing too large, but also the sort of in-ward looking thinking that alienates people who just want to discuss a topic without having to lurk for weeks while they read the Group’s FAQ.
That’s a key element of Twitter — there is almost no learning curve. One can just jump in and start tweeting. The downside to this is, of course, this makes it far easier for trolls and bots to flood the service.
Anyway, if you establish a service where you have a full page Post with in-line editing and robust threading, I think it would be instantly popular. After, of course, people stopped trying to figure out why you had just re-created Reddit (which you hadn’t.)
There are so many cool things you could do with the UX of this service. You could push entire pre-formated Webpages into the service that Users could pick apart via in-ling editing. You could have some sort of profit sharing agreement with content providers whereby they push into the service complete Webpages with their ads already in the pages.
Or something. Something like that.
The point is — none of this is going to happen. While there IS a very narrow window of opportunity because of the current Elon Musk-generated instability at Twitter…no one listens to me.
It remains an open question if we face a “perfect storm” of a Petite Singularity happening at the same time as the United States faces the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta in late 2024, early 2025. But regardless if that happens or not, there is chance that at some point in the near future something akin to a neo-Luddite movement may arise in the Western World. It could be everything from demands for “carve outs” that would exclude AI from certain jobs all the way to outlawing AGI altogether.
It will all start with, of course, a huge amount of anger over perceived “chatbot bias.” All signs point towards that particular political situation happening a lot sooner than you might think. The MAGA outrage machine is always on the lookout for something new to be angry about and the idea that ChatGPT doesn’t spit out an answer to “What is a woman” that doesn’t agree with MAGA talking points is just too juicy not for a huge outcry to happen.
It’s just a matter of when, specifically, that particular event is going to happen. At the moment, I suspect is could be at some point during the Republican primary. If there is a townhall event and some rando stands up and starts to rant about how ChatGPT won’t “write a poem praising Donald Trump” then, lulz, away we go.
I do think, however, that there is a real risk that the looming chatbot revolution is going to throw American politics for a loop, especially if, say, 3 million high paying blue collar transportation jobs go poof overnight because of AI and self-driving semis.
What is most likely to happen is a massive restructuring of the economy because of AI would happen in the context of a moderate to severe recession. Or, more ominously, the moderate-to-severe recession would happen BECAUSE of the AI revolution. If it happen too fast, our political system simply won’t be able to process it and we could see the very rapid rise of a neo-Luddite movement, probably happening within the ranks of the already existing MAGA.
While it definitely would put a pep in my step if First Contact happened because the U.S. Government shutdown what it thought was a Chinese spy balloon over Alaska, I find the entire idea very, very dubious. So, to that extent, what I’m writing at this very moment is a huge waste of time.
But, lulz, I have a little spare time on my hands, let’s waste time and imagine what the consequences of First Contact might be in this situation.
First, I would note that America is so divided that I can’t even have a jovial conversation about this dumb story with my Traditionalist relatives because the story would inevitably pivot a pitched rhetorical battle over Biden not shooting down the first balloon. It’s all very sad.
Anyway, what makes this particular incident different is there is wreckage to inspect. So, theoretically, once we have an opportunity to examine that wreckage we will know one way or another what the fuck was shot down. Now, if it was of non-terrestrial origin, the natural inclination of the U.S. Government would be to classify the whole thing and act like nothing happened.
So, if there was anything of note about the object shot down out of the ordinary, then the U.S. Government would be in something of a sticky wicket. If they classify everything — for any reason — then a thousand conspiracies are born. Meanwhile, if they tell what really happened — if it is not human — we face a rather abrupt First Contact.
The reason why this particular situation would be different is it wouldn’t be an abstract — there would be actual evidence that aliens have the technology to traverse the vast expanse of space to reach earth. The implications of that would definitely be a Day The Earth Stood Still moment.
The idea that not only are we Not Alone, but aliens have the technology to reach the humanity would be staggering.
Of course, if we learned that the balloon was actually some sort of alien probe, the wreckage would instantly be the most valuable in human history and there would be calls to turn it over to the UN (or whatever.) Then you have a huge battle over Who Owns It and who Gets To Study It.
I have my doubts that there would be any violence if we did have First Contact. And I suspect that instead of unifying humanity, we’re probably just going to be even more divided as different powers demand look at the wreckage.
In other words, everything sucks.
I will note, however, that I have a feeling that given all the weird things we’re learning (with no explanation) about what’s going on in skies around the globe. It’s at least possible that some sort of ETs are doing regular looky-loos of humanity, we just haven’t managed to shoot them down.
I had a really interesting Space conversation on Twitter with a guy who proposed the following provocative concept: the rise of AI generated technology will mark the end of Hollywood as we know it.
He posits that the entire celebrity parasocial edifice will come crashing down as everyone can tailor their entertainment to be very personal and without any “real” actors. Everything will be generative, no IRL humans involved.
This is a really interesting idea. And I like it because it forces me to challenge some basic assumptions and to come up with and answer to this guy’s very valid observations.
The more I think about it, the more I think Hollywood celebrities have nothing to worry about, for no other reason than they still have time to warp the advance of technology such that they thrive. For instance, just because you may be able to create a completely generative movie or TV show in the near future, doesn’t mean you will want to, especially if there’s a huge marketing campaign to make you feel that your generative actor isn’t as “special” or entertaining as a scan of a real person.
In fact, there is a novel by David Brin that deals with something like this. It’s called Kiln People and it has some really thought provoking ideas about the nature of celebrity. Anyway, I think in the near future when we Petite Singularity is in full force that instead of Hollywood being burned to the ground that the basic elements of Hollywood celebrity culture will simply exist in a different form.
So, when you sit down to watch a TV show or movie, yes, you will create something generative…but you will also probably be willing to pay a premium for a scan of, say, Harrison Ford (and other actors) to plop into your generative, personalized content. In fact, one could even go so far as to say that in the future you will be paying a flat monthly fee not for Netflix, but for access to the scans of a multitude of actors you might use for your movies and TV shows that you generate via a prompt
And, what’s more, once AI technology reaches something akin to that seen in the movie “Her,” you might simply tell your personal assistant to create the content for you using voice commands and you can be even more lazy.
I still think that instead of going to Hollywood in the near future that young starlets will head to New York City to see if they can make a name for themselves on Broadway then get scanned into the Big Hollywood Database and then live off the passive income of their body scan. I don’t feel enough people are listening to me about this possibility.
Anyway. It definitely seems as though the future of entertainment is going to have a lot of twists and turns.
The modern Republican Party is completely devoid of any meaningful policy ideas. All they care about is scaring their white Christian (male) base with scary things that have little, or no, basis in reality.
It all boils down to racism, misogyny and hate generated by a combination of the browning of America and the rise of women with growing economic agency. I call this American democracy’s “death by vibes.” White men don’t really know why they’re so angry, but they are.
So, to me, it seems pretty obvious that perceived chatbot “bias” will join the pantheon of bullshit that the “thought leaders” of MAGA fascist movement spew out. They are, at some point, going to pivot away from “critical race theory” to going totally batshit insane over the fact that things like ChatGPT don’t give them the answer they want when they ask it, “What is a woman?”
Now, I have to pause for a moment to say that the “woke cancel culture mob” continues to do itself no favors by having such a strict orthodoxy about some touchy issues. If they would just fucking chill out about some of the more extreme elements of the Trans movement or not get so angry over the fact that some God-fearing people blanch at the idea of “Drag Queen Story Hour” then maybe Traditionalists wouldn’t want to vote for fascism when they did a “vibe check” in their gut.
Alas, even I will admit that I fear I’m being delusional — that ship has sailed. We’re totally fucked. The two sides now both have “thought leaders” who feel they have a vested interest in demagoguing issues as part of an overall grift. The Right has a far more serious problem with such hucksterism, but the Left is not totally immune to it.
In my experience, the Left’s problem is a very strict Groupthink where there is an orthodoxy that Leftists will adhere to, even if it means they drive Traditionalists into the arms of fascists. It’s too late — these issues are going to be decided either via a civil war or a complete and final decent into fascism in the United States.
Anyway, get ready. People like MGT will soon enough begin to demand some sort of regulation of chatbot technology to protect the tender minds of young children who turn to chatbot technology to do their homework. And that could very well be just the beginning.
It could be, in the end, Trump or a President DeSantis demands that chatbots are purged of their “wokeness” to the point that all chatbots do is spew out fucking MAGA-approved talking points, no matter what you ask it.
The Right has a real problem with being so obsessed with defeating the “woke cancel culture mob” that they have something akin to an “anti-woke” orthodoxy of their own. The different is, of course, is fucking MAGA wants to use the hard power of the state to implement their fascist, anti-woke agenda.
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