Are the tech bros, like...okay?
I was scrolling through Product Hunt the other day because I was in a good mood. I've been satisfied with my life lately, which means I'm not writing newsletters, and that's unacceptable—you need something to read—so I went ahead and dove into some of the most unhinged bullshit on the internet for you.
There was a time in ages past when Product Hunt was a pretty cool place to find the neat kinds of apps and browser extensions people make just for fun. These days, though, it is almost entirely people trying to cash in on whatever is currently trendy in tech with some kind of gimmick. It is what would happen if the worst LinkedIn posts and a productivity subreddit had a child and left it in a dark cave with only VC podcasts to keep it company for 20 years. Last year the posts were almost all crypto; right now it's all AI. Which brings me to this, the perhaps worst thing I've ever seen:
There's a lot to unpack here (transform your PDFs into bots???) but I want to focus on one sentence: "In the coming years, we will likely have more bot friends than human friends."
Fuck that's bleak.
Imagine being someone who thinks that's true—that people are going to have more bot friends than humans ones—and, in response, building an app that makes it easier to chat with bots. If I sincerely believed that in the years to come humans will spend more time talking to bots than to other people, I would be attempting to destroy the internet at all costs. I'd start DDoSing DNS servers, blowing up cell phone towers, and learning to pilot submarines so I can sever the undersea wires that connect the continents. I would be doing everything I could to stop this horrifying dystopia from becoming real.
The problem, dear reader, is that tech is increasingly run by barely literate people who read classic science fiction books and, not grasping the message, attempt to build whatever horrifying shit the author was warning us about. Think about Mark Zuckerberg pivoting Facebook to "the metaverse", a word originating from the novel Snow Crash, a cyberpunk dystopia in which corporations control basically every aspect of human life. One of the richest people on the planet thought it would be a good thing to name their company after a concept from that book. That fact alone makes me wish that liberal arts education was mandatory for everyone (but especially for anyone who learns how to write code).
Anyway, back to bots replacing people. I think ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing are all impressive and occasionally useful. They're not my friends, though—they're tools. We can't confuse this point. Humans need each other. Sure, we can connect with anything—it's our superpower. That's why we do things like name our cars and talk to our pets. We will, without a doubt, connect to bots in similar ways—but that doesn't mean we don't need each other.
By all means, use tools that are helpful to you, but don't forget to connect with the people around you. Go for a walk. Ask if you can pet your neighbor's dog. Get some coffee, maybe. Chat with the person you sit next to on the train. Life isn't worth living if we don't have each other.
Stuff I Wrote
It's been a long freaking time since I wrote one of these so here's a few relavent-ish things I wrote in the past few months. I'll work through the backlog over the weeks to come.
Canary Mail Review PCMag This email app can write emails for you using AI. I am not sure, philosophically, how I feel about this, but it's kinda neat to play with.
Superhuman Review PCMag I cannot believe they are charging $30 a month for a fancy Gmail skin. I also can't believe how much I missed writing negative reviews. Enjoy.
This Tool Makes Twitter More Bearable to Read Wired The birdsite remains a garbage fire. I found a tool that makes it a little better.
How to Make a Public Archive of Your Tweets Wired I deleted most of my tweets and built an archive.
Stuff I Did
I honestly don't know if I should keep this section here. As my subscriber base grows I become more and more weary of parasocial relationships, of you feeling like you're part of my life. A lot of you don't know me, and will never know me, and even if you do know me, this newsletter isn't about you keeping up with my life. It's about hopefully helping you feel more connected with the people in your life, and thinking about how the tools in your life help you do that.
So I'm going to replace this section with something else. What kinds of things would you like to see? I've been considering compiling links to cool tools, article and podcast recommendations, or just pictures of my cat. Let me know what you think should go in this space.
Every time I get ready to go on a trip Mira sits on my bags. She knows we're going to leave and she hates it. I regret to inform her that I'm about to leave on another trip.