Note: The cover image is a still from the film ‘Office Space’ a 1999 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mike Judge.

The Past

About 25 years ago I was sat in a pub with a couple of friends and we were looking at my latest purchase; a digital camera.

One of them opined that digitisation would bring about the death of film photography.

I saw things differently; that we would see boutique printing, that film developing would become an art, a craft to be honed.

Now, we have online services selling USB uploaded digital prints, with taglines like ‘your phone is where photos go to die’ and I wonder which one of us was right.

More History

Back when I was at school we were taught that the Luddites were bone headed vandals who just loved smashing up stuff.

This wasn’t exactly true.

They were pro union, anti child slavery reformers wanting an increased minimum wage and better working conditions.

Turns out they weren’t exactly ‘anti-technology’ more ‘anti-treating people like shit’.

They were also looked down on by the Government supporting middle class and put down by the military of the day.

The Present

Essentially, right now, the Internet is shit

Google searches are shit.

Browsers are becoming data harvesting machines.

(Browsers have always been the delivery vehicle for malware and viruses but at least the driver wasn’t involved.)

AI nonsense is fucking everywhere.

Y-combinator ‘successes’ stories and continued founder adulation, with (but not excluding):

  • Uber, and its ‘surge pricing’

  • Airbnb helping devastate economies in pretty, rural villages

  • DoorDash and Gusto fuelling the gig economy

  • Twitch and the proliferation of streamers (that schoolchildren want to grow up to become)

I’m not even going to get into the subjects of; influencers of various persuasions, the ‘manosphere’ or incel culture.

The Future

A new Browser war

Someone will create a browser or way of searching the Internet that only returns results from the pre-AI slop era..

A bit like how Geiger counters have to made using low-background steel; pre-atomic blast metal usually found in ships sunk pre WWII as it contains no radioactive impurities that would hinder radiation detection.

Ad revenues will fall, will Google?

One of the biggest budgets in any Company or Brand that create or sell something lies with the the Marketing Departments.

Marketing Departments send money to Marketing Companies like Google (and Meta) for their Pay per Click (PPC) campaigns.

MoneybagsMarketingExecs will very quickly get fed up with AI slop usurping their paid for rankings.

Google will lose ad revenue.

Will Google die?

Probably not.

They’ll carry on selling your data to Governments around the world via shady data brokers.

We will see the rise of AI advertising

That other AI slop generator, Meta are already trying to cut MoneybagsMarketingExec out of their money supply chain by pivoting to AI ads (because they know best what appeases their algorithm).

Meta are producing these AI ads and selling them (because they know best what appeases their algorithm).

These ads will be sold to MoneybagsMarketingExecs Boss who will wonder what MoneybagsMarketingExec is being paid for.

AI ads, tailored to appease an AI algorithm, marketed on feeds populated by bots.

It’s an ouroboros of shit.

AI disruptors will become the norm

Similar to how SSH tarpits trap and consume the remote resources of an attacker, AI honeypots exist to trap a scraper in a labyrinth of useless pages.

Cloudflare is already doing this so it’s only a matter of time before a smaller project is viable for the self hoster.

It’ll be like a glacier, slow but inevitable and on a personal level.

A human approach to how we use devices.

Sending a text to a single person rather than a group.

Using the pocket supercomputer to talk to someone rather than communicating digitally.

Sending postcards when on holiday rather than updating social media.

I dunno, maybe even writing a letter or two.

Sounds Radical ?

Good, it should.