mvu.one

Oh shit, American politicians also seem to be taking too many hints from dystopian literature.

Someone should really talk to these people.

I swear to god these tech CEOs are reading dystopian cyberpunk novels as if they're instruction booklets.

Maybe if we start writing decent utopian solarpunk stories now the next generation of tech CEOs won't be trying to jam the lower class into VR headsets to spend their jobless days vying for crypto assets to brag about on hypergram while their vitals and sweat samples are mined for sellable data.

Thoughts: Collision Conference

I went to the opening day of "Collision Conference 2022"; I had a free ticket and it was labelled as a tech conference so I was excited to meet some fellow nerds.

Things I learned:

• It doesn't matter if crypto crashes, so long as the applications of crypto continue to be useful
• No aforementioned useful applications were brought forward
• "Leaders" in tech seem to think they have important ideas to share, yet not a whole lot of value was said in any talk I attended
• There's a lot of problems with ethics in tech, and people seem more eager to complain about them than offer actionable ideas on how to solve them
• Jimmy Wales is capable of making a public appearance without asking the audience for a small contribution to Wikipedia
• The goal for a tech startup is to become a viral unicorn, (and here's some vague tips for getting there based on the one time it happened to us!)

It felt like browsing twitter but everyone was in-person; I left more jaded than I went in.

The floor was fun, however! For every 4 new registered crypto market apps there was someone there to legitimately just sell their product or make their pitch. A whole lot of excited young people that were super friendly and seemed to be having a great time. I also managed to have some interesting conversations with a few older developers working on philanthropic or passion projects which was super refreshing after the soulless talks.

If I were someone with a startup or marketable idea, I'm sure this conference would have held a lot of value with so many big names were there and chance to interface with them. As a critical observer without much skin in the game it was just a confirmation of the vapidity of the industry. (Not the geniuses powering the industry, but the companies themselves).

Takeaway: Tech really feels quite rotten and scummy, where it used to feel shiny and bold and empowering. (Not exactly a revelation).

I know that a lot of it is me turning into an old cynical greybeard, but I feel that as tech has grown to power it's become just as evil and self-satisfied as the non-tech giants before it. I'm not surprised, but disappointed; as dour as I seem I really was hoping for a hopeful message or two in all of this.

That said, there's still clearly very passionate developers and designers and product companies out there shining in the dark, like an ecosystem of happy wildlife co-existing in a massive landfill. They deserve to live in a forest instead of a dump, but perhaps with food and shelter so plentiful in the trash there's no incentive to change the way things are.

Thoughts: Keeping Notes

I've recently taken to keeping notes of all the media I consume that contains storylines or concepts I want to remember.

My process is as follows:

1. Consume media only in amounts small enough to remember stuff clearly. (1 hour audiobook or a few chapters reading)
2. Take point-form notes of plot and ideas in a written physical journal (I use little journals, and am partial to the Traveler's Notebooks)
3. At a later time (usually when I fill out a notebook) move these notes to a long-term digital journal. At this time I'll usually also do retrospective or a small review of the media in question.

This has had a lot of benefits! I'm spending more time thinking about the media I consume, and try to take smaller bites of media so I don't over-saturate my memory.

With such big backlogs, I can't be spending all my time re-experiencing things, and I'm finding this process has helped greatly reduce backlog anxiety for me, while increasing my patience and enjoyment with the media I consume.

I'm in love with redbean (v2 just released!) + fullmoon. Both of these developers are wildly talented.

I need to get better at Lua!

Book Thoughts: Perhaps the Stars

Finished "Perhaps the Stars", the last book in the "Terra Ignotia" tetralogy by Ada Palmer; what a wild ride that whole series was!

I enjoyed the first two books significantly more than the second two, but the series was well worth finishing.

The first book convinced me to read a collection of Voltaire's short stories, now I feel a strong urge to try the Iliad...

I buy domain names like I buy fancy notebooks.

Destined to sit forever unused on a shelf.

Wouldn't want to waste them on something stupid, after all.

Very impressed with how quickly one can set up a static site on Netlify.