TechTakes

Crypto NG+ AI% Speedrun (no skips)

Thinking about it, the public and spectacular failure of NFTs probably helped AI with speedrunning its rise and fall (mainly its fall), for two reasons.

First, it crippled technological determinism (which Unserious Academic interrogated in depth BTW) as a concept. Before that, it was generally assumed whatever new crap the tech industry came up with with would inevitably become a part of daily life, for better or for worse.

The NFT craze, by publicly and spectacularly failing despite a heavy push from Silicon Valley, showed the public that it was possible to beat Silicon Valley and prevent the future it wants from coming to pass, that resistance against them is anything but futile.

Second, the NFT craze's failure publicly humiliated the tech industry, as NFTs became a pop-culture punchline and supporting NFTs became a public mark of shame for anyone involved. If crippling technological determinism made it cool to resist Silicon Valley, then the public humiliation of NFTs helped make it uncool to support SV, a trend which I feel has helped amplify emnity against AI.

I would 100% watch a promptchud yeet himself through a wall

It's also just less effective this time around. Everyone's afraid of being poor, capitalism as it exists functions based on that, so there's a strong emotion that gets people wrapped up with the NFT hype train.

It's a lot less convincing to go "Have fun being as productive as you are right now, loser.", at least without also going mask off and sounding like a supervillain.