Post B4SELCdysNO04F2fCK by BillySmith@social.coop
(DIR) More posts by BillySmith@social.coop
(DIR) Post #B4SEKYBDJubkZRH7o0 by blog@shkspr.mobi
2026-03-20T12:34:02Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
I'm OK being left behind, thanks!https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/im-ok-being-left-behind-thanks/Many years ago, someone tried to get me into cryptocurrencies. "They're the future of money!" they said. I replied saying that I'd rather wait until they were more useful, less volatile, easier to use, and utterly reliable."You don't want to get left behind, do you?" They countered.That struck me as a bizarre sentiment. What is there to be left behind from? If BitCoin (or whatever) is going to liberate us all from economic drudgery, what's the point of "getting in early"? It'll still be there tomorrow and I can join the journey whenever it is sensible for me.Part of the crypto grift was telling people to "Have Fun Staying Poor". That weaponisation of FOMO was an insidious way to get people to drop their scepticism.I feel the same way about the current crop of AI tools. I've tried a bunch of them. Some are good. Most are a bit shit. Few are useful to me as they are now. I'm utterly content to wait until their hype has been realised. Why should I invest in learning the equivalent of WordStar for DOS when Google Docs is coming any-day-now?If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours.I didn't use Git when it first came out. Once it was stable and jobs began demanding it, I picked it up. Might I be 7% more effective if I'd suffered through the early years? Maybe. But so what? I could just as easily have wasted my time learning something which never took off.I wrote my MSc on The Metaverse. Learning to built VR stuff was fun, but a complete waste of time. There was precisely zero utility in having gotten in early.Perhaps there are some things for which it is sensible to be on the cutting edge. I took part in a vaccine trial because I thought it might personally benefit me and, hopefully, humanity.But I'm struggling to think of anyone who has earned anything more than bragging rights by being first. Some early investors made money - but an equal and opposite number lost money. For every HTML 2.0 you might have tried, you were just as likely to have got stuck in the dead-end of Flash.There are a 16,000 new lives being born every hour. They're all starting with a fairly blank slate. Are you genuinely saying that they'll all be left behind because they didn't learn your technology in utero?No. That's obviously nonsense.It is 100% OK to wait and see if something is actually useful.#AI #crypto #future #technology
(DIR) Post #B4SEKmkp8JPXlw2lFo by Infrapink@mastodon.ie
2026-03-20T13:38:34Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@blog A little while ago I gave a presentation on AI at my job, where I explained in detail exactly why it's useless. A manager who has a sentiment similar to yours asked how I would respond to "But we can't be left behind!" I managed to quip "It's perfectly fine to be left behind when everybody else is running towards a cliff".
(DIR) Post #B4SEKnfBkkUuakPm6q by FandaSin@social.linux.pizza
2026-03-20T14:12:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blog Lately I'm enjoying JOMO - "Joy of missing out" on so many things.So anytime anyone tries FOMO on me, I'm "I'll be reading book while you enjoy you [insert your MUST TRY poison of choice]".
(DIR) Post #B4SEKsalQcvfsTNoPI by DarkOptimism@mstdn.social
2026-03-20T14:20:54Z
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@blog Highly recommend #BrettScott's exceptional piece on this:https://www.asomo.co/p/tech-doesnt-make-our-lives-easier
(DIR) Post #B4SEKwTSzhT7v002aW by ASprinkleofSage@mastodon.social
2026-03-20T14:34:40Z
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@blog schrödinger's ai is extremely easy to use and utterly intuitive but also if you dont start using it now now now youll get left behind!
(DIR) Post #B4SEKzmMhtMuATrfxg by semitones@tiny.tilde.website
2026-03-20T15:16:08Z
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@blog Also by using them you're a participating in their theft of writers and artists' work so there's that too.
(DIR) Post #B4SEL5iKdnhuZi1XVY by numodular@c.im
2026-03-20T15:37:17Z
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@blog Here's some sustainable math:If an opposite doesn't have a minimum Phi/Pi root in a middle range; it's 'brief art'.Soft money/value has to have long-term rooting in middle Hard metrics, in order to avoid wild swings that lack the mitigating, stabilizing middle - especially when you consider the vast use of money in local~global value systems.See: Value Theory, Systems Theory, Set Theory
(DIR) Post #B4SEL6KcLSKeURw7BQ by vicarvernon@mastodon.me.uk
2026-03-20T15:17:43Z
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@blog there's a reason the cutting edge of something, say technology, is often called the bleeding edge. It's far too often expensive and hurts.
(DIR) Post #B4SELCdysNO04F2fCK by BillySmith@social.coop
2026-03-20T15:10:46Z
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@blog One mentor told me that working in technology means that you are always having to guess which new technology will take off, and which will crash. Wait till it hits the commodity end of the hype cycle and, while you won't win the lottery, you won't lose as you didn't play. :D