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pharos92 7 hours ago

It seems like at every technological step, we're sold the dream and delivered the meme. We always end up with the worst possible combination of players, ideas and outcomes; with the promise of what the said technology delivers in terms of additional freedom or free time never realised. How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?

dlenski 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's "socializing the losses and privatizing the gains"… but now alarmingly supercharged well beyond purely financial realms, and into really basic and fundamental matters of individual physical autonomy and liberty.

xg15 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?

Having any kind of agency in those things would be a start.

If <FAANG bigcorp of your choice> announces with great fanfare "We're building this totally awesome new technology that will make everything better! And the best thing? You won't have to do anything, we will auto-update all your devices/accounts/etc with it for free! Trust us!", then whether you personally believe their enthusiastic predictions or not doesn't really matter a lot - you will get it anyway, unless you spend a lot of energy to deliberately avoid the new technology.

whynotmaybe 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ever read 1984?

Who wins at the end?

ramuel 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Winston, obviously. He left behind his free-thinking and became unwavering to Big Brother. Truly a winner

dylan604 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?

ctoth 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The story here is that a FedRAMP-authorized system had 53MB of Vite dev source maps exposed on a production government endpoint. That's not "sold the dream, delivered the meme," that's a specific auditable compliance failure. Meanwhile a fintech engineer explaining that this is all standard legally-mandated KYC infrastructure got flagged to death. The interesting question isn't whether technology betrays us, it's why US law requires this surveillance apparatus in the first place and why the security assessment apparently missed checking for /vite-dev/ on a government system.

Also every technological step? Ever? Really? This wouldn't happen to be typed on a computer from a climate-controlled room on a nice global network or anything?

cthalupa 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Except it wasn't a production endpoint and there's no actual security risk in having source maps available. It's more annoying to read source code that has been minified, but if a security professional tells you that minifying source code is something that increases security, you should be wondering what other bullshit they've pedaled you.

I'm not a fan of persona and have gone out of my way to not provide my details to them even before this, and I really dislike Thiel, but... let's be honest about the stuff we're complaining about.

nehal3m 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All these memes are burning through our natural reserves at an ever increasing rate so it will crumble when the bread baskets fail anyway.

asdfman123 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's already crumbling. That's why we have AI-powered fascism in the first place. Society destabilizes and a significant fraction of the population says "perhaps authoritarianism is a good thing." It's never worth it, though.

ferguess_k 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From my understanding, we are pretty close to a Dystopian world where all elites of a certain group collaborate to run a Super Leviathan. We still gotta choose our flavors, which may not be feasible in maybe 5-10 years when those leviathans clash into each other.

measurablefunc 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp covers it pretty well I think.

GolfPopper an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Likewise, thank you for the recommendation. I obviously haven't read Goliath's Curse yet, but it seems like Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988) might also be interesting for the same readers.

ferguess_k 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks for the recommendation.

dylan604 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not like this is surprising, there have been plenty of sci-fi books/movies that have predicted this very thing. How many movies have the haves lived above ground/off planet, while the have nots have lived underground or stuck on a apocalyptic planet.

This is just furthering the previous history. Currently, the lords have just been able to keep the serfs appeased to a longer extent. Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.

ferguess_k 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think they are going to rise up this time. Maybe laying down flat is more realistic.

measurablefunc 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This time is different. The global system is not going to fall apart like isolated kingdoms in the past.

GolfPopper an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It will instead eventually fall apart in more thoroughly destructive ways. But not until it does a possibly-unrecoverably (at least in the medium term) amount of damage to civilization, humanity, and life on Earth first.

measurablefunc 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

I agree but my point was that it will not be like any previous collapse.

dylan604 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You seem very confident. This seems to imply you feel the haves will know when to leave enough on the table for the have nots to still feel like they are a part of the haves. I'm not so confident in that.

atmavatar 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Far more likely is that we head back to a feudal era where data mining tech is used to identify and eliminate potential rabble-rousers. Once enough production is automated, all remaining have-nots are exterminated.

neuralRiot 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The weak link is that for “the haves” to have, the “have -nots” are needed. To have or to not is just a comparison, a millionaire needs the poor to be rich and to feel special otherwise when everyone is special nobody is.

measurablefunc 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

People in technologically advanced societies have more than enough & the people who are not as advanced can not do anything that will have any effect on the people who own the fighter jets, missiles, robot factories, & "internet" satellites. The current system has no historical precedent. It is very close to an almost perfect panopticon w/ an associated media & police apparatus to keep everyone docile & complacent. Like I said, this time is different.

trinsic2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yep. There is too much infrastructure now. Its going to take a lot for this to end.

neuralRiot 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“ Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting – Haruki Murakami”

mistrial9 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.

this is a completely "WEIRD" outlook.. more than half of humanity has no illusions about "proletarians" they do not even discuss it that way

source: born and raised WEIRD

storus 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that's a natural outcome of a model where sociopaths climb to the top, with a layer of sycophants beneath them that shield normal workers from perceiving the amount of depravity going on at the top which would make them unable to continue and tank the business. AI might remove the reliance on regular folks and give sociopaths direct execution of all ideas they have without any moral opposition, and that would explain a lot of the rush for AI everywhere we see nowadays.

nemooperans 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is the part that doesn't get enough attention. The historical check on concentrated power wasn't just democracy or law — it was that executing any large-scale agenda required thousands of people who could refuse, drag their feet, or leak. AI doesn't just automate tasks — it removes the human friction that was always an informal veto on the worst ideas.

The surveillance apparatus isn't new. What's new is that you need fewer people with moral objections in the loop to operate it.

asdfman123 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would be careful with this kind of reasoning, because it suggests corruption within a corporate model is inevitable, giving it implicit permission to continue existing. It's not inevitable.

6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
vpShane 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Birds of a flock crap on everybody together.

> How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?

I wouldn't call this much of a society if people's eyes are open.

What's that song name, they don't care about us?