Good essay Sam. I must respectfully disagree that the era of software is coming to an end. Perhaps it will in the most public-facing, socially integrated applications. Software is so vastly integrated into every single level of every single operating system that it will never be removed. And why would it? Computers run virtually everything we rely on—and software runs those computers. It would take a grid-down, apocalyptic event to rid the world of this level of systems integration. Perhaps that possibility could signal the end of the software era.
I've always fantasized, somewhat self-destructively, of a large enough solar flare to blast away all of the digital worlds we've built up for ourselves. Remember way back when there was the big blackout in NYC, and how people largely came together? It's a nice idea, at least, but on a grand scale, people with power are notoriously bad at relinquishing it, and to your point, there's nothing more power in this era than software.
Thanks Dee. I guess I mean that 'software' as the driver of growth may be coming to an end. The analogy is to the Industrial Revolution. All the artifacts of industrialization are here - and are the underpinning 'infrastructure' of all our lives - but when was the last time anybody looked for innovation from ConEdison? The era of 'hardware' seemed to have hit the end of some growth curve - and I'm contending that software is doing so as well. People looking to generate growth will need to look for it in different domains.
I've made the joke that I keep expecting each generation of youth to go neo-Amish: "The only 'net you need is a fishing net." But that keeps not happening because I have zero skill in cultural prediction.
It seems to me like the slow emigration from cities back to the countryside might actually allow this to happen. In Paris, where I live, there's a consistent, admittedly middle-class dream not to go to the suburbs, but back to nature where you don't need a car to walk to the village bakery. Cities seem to be anathema to allowing for a real sense of nature and the nature of time. But once we're out of 'em, the fishing net doth reign! I'm allergic to fish though. Shite.
The last time I ate salmon my ears turned into a red baby elephant’s and my lips Angelina Jolie’s. I had already had two whiskeys but went for a Benadryl anyway, in hopes that I’d be able to make a date. I’ll never forget my tranquilized nap, or how hard my friend laughed when I asked him, “be honest: do I look good enough to go on a date.”
I had a really interesting experience a couple of years ago when I drove into Amish country without knowing in advance where I was going - and I had the distinct impression that the Amish were so much happier than their "English" neighbors. The Amish just looked really healthy, had good complexion, were close to the land, etc, and everybody around them (this was in Pennsylvania) was sallow, MAGA-ish, seemed really embittered. I finished that trip ready for an Amish revival!
I’ve been perplexed since ppl started paying real dollars to buy digital crops in FarmVille. The idea of the future you envision in which we waste our lives experimenting with multiple digital personalities leads me to despair. Maybe instead of compulsory military service, we should institute compulsory farm work.
I dig it. I'm currently staying at the lovely miniature farm of Substack's own Feasts and Fables, which means having a small garden that can feed a small family, and apple / fig / plum trees to inspire autumnal pies.
The move from Hardware to Software shows in the way the economy is now dependent on the top 20% (white collar professionals) and the stock market is dependent on 7 companies. The bottom 50% are really hurting and more and more are being wrung out. After unions finally made robust gains in the 20th century, the middle class was a pretty secure place to be.
That rampant inequality is a real problem and I think that's right - that it's an extension of the logic of software. Yanis Varoufakis' Technofeudalism is a really smart (and sobering) account of the structure of this new era.
The vast power of machine learning, AI, digital surveillance, social credit, and digital technology will lead to a digital gulag and Neo-feudalism, and there will be no ‘collective bargaining’ mechanism, shared identity, or force multiplier that will permit a negotiation between plebs and overlords.
Great essay. Thanks. I have been rewatching American musicals from the early 1950s. I last saw many of them back in the 1970s. They communicate an underlying fear and a desperate cynicism that is barely glossed over by their vivid technicolour and bright veneers. I did not perceive this in my younger years. It parallels the ‘disillusionment and torpor’ you write about in our society today.
Then came the 1960s.
I have no idea what way the rise of individualised computer technology will continue to change our lives. What I have experienced is that younger family members, those who have been raised with computer games and social media as their informing social peer structures have all suffered heinous mental and emotional fallout. The most severe needing hospitalisation for months after cyber bullying pushed them into suicidal self starvation.
Of course they will probably all eventually be dismissed as necessary collateral damage to the present God of technological progress, just as the Luddites are most often remembered for being on the wrong side of history. However, I would like to think sacrificing the best and most sensitive of our children for the sake of pension protecting tech hedge funds will be recognised as an insane zero sum game.
We urgently need to begin to reform the way we all think from the philosophical ground up.
When you say that "everybody" thinks social media is getting worse, you prove that the circle of your acquaintance and the breadth of your reading is very narrow. You prove the same when you say resistance to AI is hardening. There is a small coterie of "new Amish" substackers who tell each other this stuff constantly, but I think social media has gotten better over the years, especially Facebook now that they've integrated video. The stock market agrees with me: the stock of Meta has been on a tear and is at new highs. The number of people who are integrating AI into their work is similarly mushrooming, and that growth is expected to continue into the future. The age of software has hardly begun. https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/ai-statistics
Well, that may be. But I am far from convinced that social media has "gotten better." Facebook strikes me as a dead zone at the moment. Twitter has self-immolated. I'm pretty persuaded by Cory Doctorow's argument of how all this took place.
In an eloquent way you've described the decline of the american empire although I'm not sure you meant to. In our previous discussions you've aways been very pro-america project as a beacon but somehow this piece seems less sure of itself. That's not a bad thing if true. The decline is already baked in. Not that this means collapse but hopefully a reconnection to the overall human project of "progress" long since lost inside the misallocated idea of american "exceptionalism". A propaganda ploy at best and a ridiculous parody at worst. Are you starting to see the light of a shared humanity regardless of affiliation?
Those are hard questions Paul! I guess I'm pro-America only and entirely for the reason that I'm American - and have a vested interest in thinking well of my country and culture. I guess that I primarily see America's role in the world right now in terms of the "force protection umbrella," which is a different set of considerations from what I'm talking about here. You're right of course that American military might, as well as dollar diplomacy, etc, rests on economic power, and that rests ultimately on America's 'software' revolution. If that gives out, so do a lot of other things as well. But at this point in the conversation I'm out of my depth. I just have the sense that something is about to happen in terms of the driving mechanism of "growth" - but how that plays out specifically and how that affects geopolitics is beyond me.
As someone who is big into judicious stewardship of my own resources – and eternally frustrated and sometimes despairing of our collective lack of such stewardship despite leaps of knowledge and innovation that reinforces the message and points out ways to fix the mess ( summarily ignored by entrenched interests) – stewardship is a highly underrated and financially sustainable activity. We really do have to get over the economic “growth” paradigm that demands a very great deal of market and personal failure via duplication and specialization, and try to work out a new paradigm called “flux.” This is not a staggeringly large shift. Things go through periods of growth/ascendancy and decline, and worthy things, as well as inevitable things (like, winter follow fall, and human holidays cycle along these grooves), come around again in recognizable forms. A flux paradigm is one more forgiving of people left out of previous zeitgeist/market waves and gets them back on the ride – that’s not something we do now, losers stay losers except the individuals and small groups that radically bootstrap or grift back into relevancy again.
We def have to stop saying “growth” when we mean “wellbeing for some (but we’ll pretend everyone)” or “standard of living” which may not be raising the bottom, but the top, or some other national/regional/corporate status metric (hey everyone loves 10, 12, 18% but really, we’re usually talking in terms of 2 or 3%, which is either inflation from liberated money from where sectors are successful, or else natural increase).
There’s already a lot being papered over by “growth” that deserves to see the light, if the viewers have the maturity to understand and temerity to do something with or about it. We all have the potential for many possible kinds of work, and we’re precluded, by conventional procurement and hiring practices, from being “multi” practitioners, and it’s almost as difficult to be sequential practitioners, so we’re obligate dependents on specialist careers and sectors that rise and fall. But it would do us all well to set a new paradigm where we recognize growth as really being flux, and treating it in a more healthy way.
Good essay Sam. I must respectfully disagree that the era of software is coming to an end. Perhaps it will in the most public-facing, socially integrated applications. Software is so vastly integrated into every single level of every single operating system that it will never be removed. And why would it? Computers run virtually everything we rely on—and software runs those computers. It would take a grid-down, apocalyptic event to rid the world of this level of systems integration. Perhaps that possibility could signal the end of the software era.
I've always fantasized, somewhat self-destructively, of a large enough solar flare to blast away all of the digital worlds we've built up for ourselves. Remember way back when there was the big blackout in NYC, and how people largely came together? It's a nice idea, at least, but on a grand scale, people with power are notoriously bad at relinquishing it, and to your point, there's nothing more power in this era than software.
Thanks Dee. I guess I mean that 'software' as the driver of growth may be coming to an end. The analogy is to the Industrial Revolution. All the artifacts of industrialization are here - and are the underpinning 'infrastructure' of all our lives - but when was the last time anybody looked for innovation from ConEdison? The era of 'hardware' seemed to have hit the end of some growth curve - and I'm contending that software is doing so as well. People looking to generate growth will need to look for it in different domains.
In that context I don’t disagree. Thanks for clarifying Sam.
I've made the joke that I keep expecting each generation of youth to go neo-Amish: "The only 'net you need is a fishing net." But that keeps not happening because I have zero skill in cultural prediction.
It seems to me like the slow emigration from cities back to the countryside might actually allow this to happen. In Paris, where I live, there's a consistent, admittedly middle-class dream not to go to the suburbs, but back to nature where you don't need a car to walk to the village bakery. Cities seem to be anathema to allowing for a real sense of nature and the nature of time. But once we're out of 'em, the fishing net doth reign! I'm allergic to fish though. Shite.
Oh, no, allergic to fish! So there's no salmon in your diet! Damn!
The last time I ate salmon my ears turned into a red baby elephant’s and my lips Angelina Jolie’s. I had already had two whiskeys but went for a Benadryl anyway, in hopes that I’d be able to make a date. I’ll never forget my tranquilized nap, or how hard my friend laughed when I asked him, “be honest: do I look good enough to go on a date.”
Hahahahaha
I had a really interesting experience a couple of years ago when I drove into Amish country without knowing in advance where I was going - and I had the distinct impression that the Amish were so much happier than their "English" neighbors. The Amish just looked really healthy, had good complexion, were close to the land, etc, and everybody around them (this was in Pennsylvania) was sallow, MAGA-ish, seemed really embittered. I finished that trip ready for an Amish revival!
calloused hands = happy hearts?
I’ve been perplexed since ppl started paying real dollars to buy digital crops in FarmVille. The idea of the future you envision in which we waste our lives experimenting with multiple digital personalities leads me to despair. Maybe instead of compulsory military service, we should institute compulsory farm work.
Love this idea. I also wonder what work on a super-farm would look like.
I’m thinking a thousand points of farm, not megaliths.
I dig it. I'm currently staying at the lovely miniature farm of Substack's own Feasts and Fables, which means having a small garden that can feed a small family, and apple / fig / plum trees to inspire autumnal pies.
Sounds amazing Samuel!
I'm not saying the FarmVille future is a good idea! But I do have the feeling that that's where the logic of "growth" would lead.
Of course. Understood. Still terrified at the prospect.
The move from Hardware to Software shows in the way the economy is now dependent on the top 20% (white collar professionals) and the stock market is dependent on 7 companies. The bottom 50% are really hurting and more and more are being wrung out. After unions finally made robust gains in the 20th century, the middle class was a pretty secure place to be.
That rampant inequality is a real problem and I think that's right - that it's an extension of the logic of software. Yanis Varoufakis' Technofeudalism is a really smart (and sobering) account of the structure of this new era.
The vast power of machine learning, AI, digital surveillance, social credit, and digital technology will lead to a digital gulag and Neo-feudalism, and there will be no ‘collective bargaining’ mechanism, shared identity, or force multiplier that will permit a negotiation between plebs and overlords.
"Neo-feudalism" is right.
Great essay. Thanks. I have been rewatching American musicals from the early 1950s. I last saw many of them back in the 1970s. They communicate an underlying fear and a desperate cynicism that is barely glossed over by their vivid technicolour and bright veneers. I did not perceive this in my younger years. It parallels the ‘disillusionment and torpor’ you write about in our society today.
Then came the 1960s.
I have no idea what way the rise of individualised computer technology will continue to change our lives. What I have experienced is that younger family members, those who have been raised with computer games and social media as their informing social peer structures have all suffered heinous mental and emotional fallout. The most severe needing hospitalisation for months after cyber bullying pushed them into suicidal self starvation.
Of course they will probably all eventually be dismissed as necessary collateral damage to the present God of technological progress, just as the Luddites are most often remembered for being on the wrong side of history. However, I would like to think sacrificing the best and most sensitive of our children for the sake of pension protecting tech hedge funds will be recognised as an insane zero sum game.
We urgently need to begin to reform the way we all think from the philosophical ground up.
That mental health crisis for young people is really awful - and I think I'm continuing to underestimate how severe it truly is. Thanks Monnina.
When you say that "everybody" thinks social media is getting worse, you prove that the circle of your acquaintance and the breadth of your reading is very narrow. You prove the same when you say resistance to AI is hardening. There is a small coterie of "new Amish" substackers who tell each other this stuff constantly, but I think social media has gotten better over the years, especially Facebook now that they've integrated video. The stock market agrees with me: the stock of Meta has been on a tear and is at new highs. The number of people who are integrating AI into their work is similarly mushrooming, and that growth is expected to continue into the future. The age of software has hardly begun. https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/ai-statistics
Well, that may be. But I am far from convinced that social media has "gotten better." Facebook strikes me as a dead zone at the moment. Twitter has self-immolated. I'm pretty persuaded by Cory Doctorow's argument of how all this took place.
In an eloquent way you've described the decline of the american empire although I'm not sure you meant to. In our previous discussions you've aways been very pro-america project as a beacon but somehow this piece seems less sure of itself. That's not a bad thing if true. The decline is already baked in. Not that this means collapse but hopefully a reconnection to the overall human project of "progress" long since lost inside the misallocated idea of american "exceptionalism". A propaganda ploy at best and a ridiculous parody at worst. Are you starting to see the light of a shared humanity regardless of affiliation?
Those are hard questions Paul! I guess I'm pro-America only and entirely for the reason that I'm American - and have a vested interest in thinking well of my country and culture. I guess that I primarily see America's role in the world right now in terms of the "force protection umbrella," which is a different set of considerations from what I'm talking about here. You're right of course that American military might, as well as dollar diplomacy, etc, rests on economic power, and that rests ultimately on America's 'software' revolution. If that gives out, so do a lot of other things as well. But at this point in the conversation I'm out of my depth. I just have the sense that something is about to happen in terms of the driving mechanism of "growth" - but how that plays out specifically and how that affects geopolitics is beyond me.
Nice post! Sums up the current moment well. Also due credit for a John Le Carre/TINKER TAILOR/Toby Esterhase riff
Lol thanks. There's more where that came from!
As someone who is big into judicious stewardship of my own resources – and eternally frustrated and sometimes despairing of our collective lack of such stewardship despite leaps of knowledge and innovation that reinforces the message and points out ways to fix the mess ( summarily ignored by entrenched interests) – stewardship is a highly underrated and financially sustainable activity. We really do have to get over the economic “growth” paradigm that demands a very great deal of market and personal failure via duplication and specialization, and try to work out a new paradigm called “flux.” This is not a staggeringly large shift. Things go through periods of growth/ascendancy and decline, and worthy things, as well as inevitable things (like, winter follow fall, and human holidays cycle along these grooves), come around again in recognizable forms. A flux paradigm is one more forgiving of people left out of previous zeitgeist/market waves and gets them back on the ride – that’s not something we do now, losers stay losers except the individuals and small groups that radically bootstrap or grift back into relevancy again.
We def have to stop saying “growth” when we mean “wellbeing for some (but we’ll pretend everyone)” or “standard of living” which may not be raising the bottom, but the top, or some other national/regional/corporate status metric (hey everyone loves 10, 12, 18% but really, we’re usually talking in terms of 2 or 3%, which is either inflation from liberated money from where sectors are successful, or else natural increase).
There’s already a lot being papered over by “growth” that deserves to see the light, if the viewers have the maturity to understand and temerity to do something with or about it. We all have the potential for many possible kinds of work, and we’re precluded, by conventional procurement and hiring practices, from being “multi” practitioners, and it’s almost as difficult to be sequential practitioners, so we’re obligate dependents on specialist careers and sectors that rise and fall. But it would do us all well to set a new paradigm where we recognize growth as really being flux, and treating it in a more healthy way.