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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
The AI Apocalypse Happened–We Just Didn't Notice (substack.com)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Banned Books List 2025 (pen.org)
What books are banned in 2025? Thousands of titles have been removed from public schools across the country.
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.
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.
We're Raising Kids to Prefer AI over People–and No One's Noticing (substack.com)
Make Something Heavy (workingtheorys.com)
We're creating more than ever, but it weighs nothing.
The Old World Is Dead (spacedino.net)
The Old World is Dead.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.