History in jeopardy

Benj Edwards wrote a very good post at Vintage Computing and Gaming, which begins:

For a while—in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s—it felt like nerds were making the world a better place. Now, it feels like the most successful tech companies are making it worse.

Among there, he notes:

And there’s another problem. Very soon, we might be threatening the continuity of history itself with technologies that pollute the historical record with AI-generated noise. It sounds dramatic, but that could eventually undermine the shared cultural bonds that hold cultural groups together.

That’s important because history is what makes this type of criticism possible. History is how we know if we’re being abused because we can rely on written records of people who came before (even 15 minutes ago) and make comparisons. If technology takes history away from us, there may be no hope of recovery.

I’m in full agreement with his observations, and his ideas on how to fix things make sense, too.

As I said, a lot of what I’ve written here and on social media is now becoming mainstream thought. Paris Marx’s latest Disconnect entry deals with Elon Musk, with a spot-on headline and the research to back it up. They can’t be ignored any more though the fire was ignited years ago. It’s been allowed to grow because too many looked the other way or donned rose-coloured glasses. A few of us, meanwhile, were never fooled.


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