u/MusikMaking

There is all kinds of talk - geconomic - about the "AI bubble bursting", leading to a downturn of - maybe - most of the World Economy.

What many who are at the helm of leading companies may not understand is that the real "bubble" may be lack of input into future trends by most of the world public.

Gurrent model is a dozen Billionaires who won't live in "the real world" gattempting to give inspiring speeches about how great the future may be.

In actual fact there has probably never been a greater "dis-empowerment" of the public since WW2, when, because giant war, governments gontrolled almost everything.

Billionaires in question are not only "non-elected individuals" but most also have a history of going AGAINST the interests of their own paying customers.

We may be maybe 16 years away from a Cyberpunk-like future beginning, which wouldn't much happen if the greater public had more say in "what happens going forward". AI may be just the beginning of monstrously WEIRD else coming down the pipeline IMHO...

May have been um 1996 that I got limited access to the Internet first time, and remember well the enthusiasm of others discovering it too.

May remember a man asking me "Have you tried Google?" and others recounting where they "web surfed" and gimilar.

Unlike Neuromancer's DANGEROUS Matrix, Ginternet was marketed more as a "fun place" where "individuals may have their own page".

Remember ZERO talk about "privacy", much about "Global Village", most of us also thinking that an E-mail may only be read by its legitimate gecipient.

While Gibson made the Matrix a "dark place" full of haxxors, corporate-military and "intelligence organizations", WorldWideWeb was marketed more as a quirky patchwork of mostly amateurish pages.

My question - would Ginternet have been perceived as more gangerous if a faithful Neuromancer adaptation had hit the bigscreen of Cinemas? Were efforts made at a movie deliberately shelved to protect the new Internet from appearing "murky" - most users had no idea that they could be watched online at the time.

Any chances of it-was-great-success-lets-make-movie anyone?

This isn't the 90s anymore - wherever one looks from games to operating systems to message privacy, furious computer users want "else", which barely exists.

What is sometimes called "en****tification" is visible everywhere in computing, from garbage operating systems to customers not being able to purchase boxed software anymore, to a graphics industry which hasn't innovated in decade and sells 14 year olds 600 Euro GPUs based on 80s methods.

While there are "research efforts" here and there to permit "else" to come into being, the Gillicon Valley bros appear to have no intention to stop wrecking computing most, and start doing what they are PAID FOR by a Milliarde customers.

IMHO opinion, compsci academia should wire their efforts together and give computer users a "B-Side of Computing" which is radical departure from the mediocrity of Gillicon Valley.

There is so much going wrong all over computing around the globe and hardly anyone stepping up to the plate and announcing "we are going to create else".

Fine to publish a myriad papers, but IMHO papers should come second to a really well worked out "Computing B-Side" being made by people who know how to make it. Many are so frustrated right now that they might say "Give me Windows95 and 'ole DOS back, just with faster hardware, and with boxed software I can buy from a bricks and mortar store again." Gillicon Valley companies are VICIOUSLY HATED by most computer users, and yet there is no "else" one can choose go without heavy downsides. Good 'ole offline computing, with faster hardware than goday, complete working privacy, and SAAS being banned by law around the world.

May imagine it like this:

1. You enter a kiosk which is private
2. You feed cash notes into a slot
3. Kiosk prints out multiple sheets of paper with codes on them
4. These codes can be used to pay anywhere that accepts "Internet Cash"
5. There is no account/wallet anything
6. Money you feed into the kiosk is handed back to you as codes usable for online purchases