> comes out of the same mindset that has turned a neat technology into a banal hellscape for consumers and employees

I'm going to say up front that I'm not as familiar with this period of history as I should be, but -- would it be totally unfair to say the same of the "Industrial Revolution"?

I'm not gonna say they're equivalent by any means, but my understanding is the "Industrial Revolution" was hellish for many people. Maybe the mistake is the framing that "the revolution" or "the next big thing" is always a good thing?

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> the mistake is the framing that "the revolution" or "the next big thing" is always a good thing?

They are good things. If you were an adult, male aristocrat, yes, your untouched meadows and streams got tainted. If you were a woman you stopped dying in childbirth. If you think of infants as people, they stopped massively dying.

The Industrial Revolution was good. But it also required erecting the modern administrative state to manage. People had to soberly measure the problems, weigh the benefits and risks, and then invent new institutions and ways of thinking to accommodate the new world.

	▲	setopt 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It was good on a long time scale, but I think the parent poster refers to the short term. If I recall correctly, during the early Industrial Revolution the average life span decreased, child mortality went through the roof, and malnutrition meant adults lost their teeth in their early 20s at best. That was… worse. It took time for the revolution to become a net-positive for the average person (which I certainly wouldn’t dispute).
	▲	cjs_ac 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> They are good things. If you were an adult, male aristocrat, yes, your untouched meadows and streams got tainted. If you were a woman you stopped dying in childbirth. If you think of infants as people, they stopped massively dying. That happened in the Second Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution was much less comfortable for both workers (who were given much worse working conditions) and the aristocracy (whose landholdings were much less valuable) - it was the middle class who benefited. > The Industrial Revolution was good. The outcomes of the Industrial Revolutions were good. The experience of living through those revolutions was mixed.

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torben-friis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The public can't see any trains, electricity, concrete or glass windows, they see employment going away as workers and zero benefit as consumers.

Maybe AI enables great inventions in a decade, but for now the only appeal is that multinational corporations get to fire workers and everything's filled with slop. Of course they're not happy.