Hacker News with Generative AI: Society

Efficiency Without Morality Is Tyranny (seekingsignal.substack.com)
Sedation is the felt symptom; technocracy is the operating system generating the disease.
Philosophy, Ethics, Society, Technology
15 points by herbertl 31 days ago | 1 comments
The Network State (thenetworkstate.com)
Technology has enabled us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to start new cities, or even new countries?
Technology, Governance, Society
11 points by dp-hackernews 32 days ago | 3 comments
The Imaginary 16-Bit Amiga Games of Suzanne Treister (suzannetreister.net)
From the mid to late 1980s I spent a lot of time hanging around videogame arcades in London. I started to think about the games, their structures, their objectives, their themes, their addictiveness. I started to consider their cultural subtexts, antecedents, the effect they may have on society and how they might develop and connect to other mechanisms, developments and fantasies or projections of the future.
Art, Games, Technology, Culture, Society
21 points by erickhill 39 days ago | 1 comments
What we in the open world are messing up in trying to compete with big tech (berthub.eu)
Our societies and governments now largely run on American proprietary big-tech platforms. Many of us want to decrease this dependency, or even end it altogether.
Open Source, Big Tech, Government, Society
14 points by rpgbr 39 days ago | 0 comments
What we in the open world are messing up in trying to compete with big tech (berthub.eu)
Our societies and governments now largely run on American proprietary big-tech platforms. Many of us want to decrease this dependency, or even end it altogether.
Open Source, Technology, Big Tech, Politics, Society
17 points by pabs3 40 days ago | 2 comments
Quoting Neal Stephenson (simonwillison.net)
Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. [...] Today, quite suddenly, billions of people have access to AI systems that provide augmentations, and inflict amputations, far more substantial than anything McLuhan could have imagined. This is the main thing I worry about currently as far as AI is concerned.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Society, Culture
6 points by mdp2021 40 days ago | 3 comments
We told young people that degrees were their ticket.It's become a great betrayal (theguardian.com)
With the labour market declining and AI a threat to entry-level jobs, graduates have been sold a lie. It’s no wonder they’re angry
Education, Employment, Artificial Intelligence, Society
9 points by pseudolus 43 days ago | 5 comments
Our narrative prison (aeon.co)
How is it that we live in an era of apparently unprecedented choice and yet almost every film and TV series, as well as a good many plays and novels, have exactly the same plot?
Media, Storytelling, Culture, Society, Philosophy
184 points by anarbadalov 44 days ago | 143 comments
Are We Living in a Time of Cultural Collapse? (honest-broker.com)
Many articles have been written about me over the years. But I’ve never been hit with an opening sentence like the one published on Monday by The Atlantic.
Culture, Society, Media, Opinion
7 points by pseudolus 51 days ago | 0 comments
2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future (wikipedia.org)
2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future is a 1981 book by Princeton physicist Gerard K. O'Neill. The book is an attempt to predict the social and technological state of humanity 100 years in the future.
Future, Technology, Society, Books
3 points by zeristor 56 days ago | 0 comments
The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat SIM City (2010) (vice.com)
I’m English, but when I was twelve I lived in North Carolina and went to an inner-city school a bit like that one in The Wire. I only have two memories of that time.
Culture, Society, Biography, Childhood
99 points by Tomte 56 days ago | 25 comments
The AI Apocalypse Happened–We Just Didn't Notice (substack.com)
Artificial Intelligence, Society, Technology, Future
4 points by MitiaHiers 59 days ago | 0 comments
Reality Check (wheresyoured.at)
I'm sick and god-damn tired of this! I have written tens of thousands of words about this and still, to this day, people are babbling about the "AI revolution" as the sky rains blood and crevices open in the Earth, dragging houses and cars and domesticated animals into their maws. Things are astronomically fucked outside, yet the tech media continues to tell me to get my swimming trunks and take a nice long dip in the pool.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Society, Media
129 points by elorant 60 days ago | 106 comments
What we get when male fitness standards clash with female preferences (nataliaantonova.substack.com)
And this is what we get when male fitness standards clash with female preferences.
Gender, Fitness, Relationships, Preferences, Society
26 points by robarr 61 days ago | 21 comments
An Age of Extinction Is Coming (nytimes.com)
Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete. But the age of digital revolution — the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence — threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It’s forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a “bottleneck” — a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs and peoples with extinction.
Technology, Society, Artificial Intelligence, Extinction, Cultural Change
9 points by tigerlily 64 days ago | 1 comments
Are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence? (theguardian.com)
Recent research suggests our brain power is in decline. Is offloading our cognitive work to AI driving this trend?
Artificial Intelligence, Human Intelligence, Research, Technology, Society
68 points by topaz0 68 days ago | 82 comments
An Age of Extinction Is Coming (nytimes.com)
Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete.
Technology, Society, Future, Extinction
8 points by martialg 68 days ago | 1 comments
Banned Books List 2025 (pen.org)
What books are banned in 2025? Thousands of titles have been removed from public schools across the country.
Book Censorship, Education, Literature, Society
12 points by jruohonen 69 days ago | 7 comments
The 'freaky and unpleasant' world when video games leak into the physical realm (bbc.com)
Video games are the biggest form of entertainment in the world, but sometimes they bleed into people's lives offline in surprising and disturbing ways.
Video Games, Entertainment, Technology, Society, Culture
29 points by l3x 69 days ago | 53 comments
Come with Me If You Want to Survive an Age of Extinction (nytimes.com)
Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete. But the age of digital revolution — the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence — threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It’s forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a “bottleneck” — a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs and peoples with extinction.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Culture, Extinction, Society
9 points by chucksmash 69 days ago | 2 comments
We're Raising Kids to Prefer AI over People–and No One's Noticing (substack.com)
Artificial Intelligence, Children, Society
46 points by softchaos 72 days ago | 79 comments
Make Something Heavy (workingtheorys.com)
We're creating more than ever, but it weighs nothing.
Art, Creation, Meaning, Society
4 points by theturtletalks 73 days ago | 2 comments
The Old World Is Dead (spacedino.net)
The Old World is Dead.
Culture, Philosophy, Society
20 points by kayge 74 days ago | 1 comments
The End of Children (newyorker.com)
Societies do collapse, sometimes suddenly. Nevertheless, prophets of doom might keep in mind that their darkest predictions have been, on the whole, a little premature.
Society, Predictions, Collapse
22 points by mefengl 77 days ago | 6 comments
Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future (theguardian.com)
Black Mirror is more than science fiction – its stories about modernity have become akin to science folklore, shaping our collective view of technology and the future.
Science Fiction, Television, Technology, Future, Society
176 points by magoghm 78 days ago | 174 comments
The Modern Struggle Is Fighting Weaponized Addiction (2020) (nav.al)
The modern struggle is really about individuals—disconnected from their tribe, religion and cultural networks—who are trying to stand up to all these addictions that have been weaponized: alcohol, drugs, pornography, processed foods, news media, Internet, social media and video games.
Addiction, Technology, Culture, Society
39 points by HiPHInch 81 days ago | 16 comments
China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers (msn.com)
“Let’s not blame science fiction for this,” he said. “It’s not science fiction that’s causing this kind of sociopathy.”
Science Fiction, Literature, Society
5 points by walterbell 83 days ago | 1 comments
Cashless society drives drop in children swallowing coins, researchers say (independent.co.uk)
The shift away from using coins has fuelled a drop in children needing surgery to remove objects they have swallowed or stuck up their noses, research suggests.
Health, Society, Trends, Children, Research
11 points by bookofjoe 84 days ago | 20 comments
Captured: How Silicon Valley is building a future we never chose (codastory.com)
AI’s prophets speak of the technology with religious fervor. And they expect us all to become believers.
Silicon Valley, Artificial Intelligence, Future, Society, Technology
6 points by defrost 85 days ago | 2 comments
Six unsettling thoughts Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO, has about AI (npr.org)
Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, is thinking about artificial intelligence – how it interacts with humans, and how it may reshape democracy. Or replace it.
Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Society, Democracy
12 points by bookofjoe 89 days ago | 1 comments