The 2010's, as reviewed by a bot

Merry Christmas!

The following output comes from a Transformer-based model trained on various other “end of decade” review pieces and on some postmodern French philosophy.

“This is the age of anxiety,” exultant over some trivial event, the like, the way it is for many people. And yet, for those not living some hippie Walden trip, we have an excess of anxiety. We have an excess of worry. We have an excess of stress. We do not have enough time. We are not doing enough good. We are stressed. We are in danger. We are in distress. We are in the grip of a crisis. What can you do, in this conjuncture of anxiety and crisis, but make time for yourself?

What you and I are doing now, in the last decade or so, is to enter a new phase of technological development. The phase of abundance has begun.

In the last three decades, we have had the wonderful experience of living through an unprecedentedly short period of prosperity for the majority of people. This period has been marked by a kind of communal amnesia, an unspoken agreement not to remember what happened in the previous 10 years. It is tempting, even in these last years, to try to make sense of the previous 10 years. Why is the internet so awful? Why does the internet hate people? Why is the internet bad for business? Why is the internet bad for the economy? How can you make sense of this glut of bad news when you are not living through it?

The internet can be confusing. It can be overwhelming. But it can also be, as The New Yorker's Jeffrey Eugenides describes it, the "greatest propaganda machine in history."

Why do people hate the internet? Why do they hate the fact that it is a space where they can express themselves? And how can we change the channel so that it doesn’t seem like they are losing their minds? One thing that might help is to have a conversation that makes clear the other person is not talking about the internet, but about some other, more important issue, such as, say, the weather. The internet can seem overwhelming, but it can also seem, as David Halberstam writes, like "the great unspoken right of every person, and especially of young women, to loathe."

On the other hand, people also seem to loathe the fact that their online behavior is now so neatly controlled. This is one aspect of the space's charm that I am afraid I have neglected to mention.

“I’m afraid that if I leave the house without paying attention to my phone, I will miss important calls and texts and will incur the wrath of the people I left on the phone,” a woman with a history of health problems who is now wheelchair-bound told me. “I will die from this.”

“It is dangerous,” she said, “that my own behavior has been so carefully controlled.” On the other hand, I had a friend who carefully monitored her Facebook page during the 2016 election, and she expressed surprise that my own behavior was any different than that of the president she admired.

We touch on many aspects of our society that are bewildering and unsettling. The topic of the internet never seems to be sufficiently radical or controversial for discussion. The degree to which we fear, hate, or doubt the internet is breathtaking.

And yet, here I am, a few years later, at the end of a decade that feels like it has flown by.

The internet of 2009 was marked by the triumph of the human over the computer, when the former took on a life of its own, its own set of rules and regulations. Although the rules were supposed to be different back then, in many ways they were the same as they were back then: to some people, the walled gardens of their privacy were still the target of photographers, and the newscasters were the ones who were there to promote them.

What was there to hide? At the time, many people were still figuring out if the NSA was monitoring their cell phones. (It was widely assumed at the time, and still is today, that the agency is not interested in listening to our conversations.) What was there to fear?

What does the model have to say about the most important objects of the decade?

Twitter:

On Twitter, vernacular for insular and insular, is the space for all the different sects and creeds of opinion - ‘Religion of Peace,’ ‘Religion of Justice,’ ‘Religion of Freedom,’ ‘Religion of Democracy,’ and so on. In this space, there is no space for the multiplicity of opinions, which is the space for the real. “This’s not a religious space,” says the Dalai Lama. “This is the only place where you can have your ideal, your ideal of the real. And then you arrive at the ultimate space, which is completely enclosed by the ideal of the real. It is meaningless, really, to exchange for real. All exchange is by definition meaningless.”

On Twitter, vernacular is supposed to cover everything, but what you think doesn’t quite cover everything. So I’ve spent the better part of the decade picking at random, from the grammatical and the rhetorical, to the tone and the context, to the speaker and the context, to the topic and the speaker. (I’d even gone so far as to name mine, the verb, as the target of a ket. But I left that one out, because I don’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing me.)

Facebook:

On Facebook, “friends” are short for “number,” and in some ways is even more restricted than Twitter. Unlike Twitter, which is a public platform where you’ could find like-minded people, Facebook lets you know what your friends are talking about, but also prevents you from liking, sharing, or commenting on any one post. This is great. For the millennial generation that’s the only online community that has true love, real diversity, and real power dynamics.”

On Facebook, ersatz human interaction has replaced the human factor in American life; you can’t even find me on the phone with my wife, she is far away, in the foreign country of the subcontinent. I have to check my email on my phone, which is a loss for me, since it takes me away from the text and the visual. I have trouble remembering who or what I am, where I am, and why I am here. I do remember, however, that I have a feeling about me that is foreign to most of the people I know. And it is not just the people I know from work, but also the people I meet on the street, in the coffee shop, at the supermarket, at the computer, and at the fist time, when I step out of the elevator.

Elon Musk:

Elon Musk is the man for a car that can run on electricity and still go fast.

Musk, who founded Tesla Motors in 2004 and has been testing the Model S since 2009, claims the vehicle can go from 0 to 60 mph in under 4.2 seconds, and reaches a top speed of 155 mph. The Model S can go from 0 to 110 mph in under 7.8 seconds. The automaker also offers the Model Y, which is essentially a glorified invitation to sex.

The cars will get better and the planes cheaper and the internet will make them all more accessible. On the plane, you'll find yourself staring into the depths of some people, your own reflection in the window. In the car, you might find yourself staring into the depths of an Amazon employee, your own Amazon logo on the windscreen.

Jeff Bezos:

Jeff Bezos is suddenly the world's most hated person, I’d like to know what exactly stopped Amazon from buying up all of the newspaper businesses in the United States and making them all seem like Wells Fargo? I’d like to know what it would take to get Amazon’s algorithms to hate me as much as the rest of Amazon’s customers. The man with the money has always been able to hire the people who look like him, it seems to me, even if they are half as smart as he.

Mark Zuckerberg:

Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most recognizable faces in the world, thanks to his work on Facebook, but he also creates a new kind of celebrity: the kind that is interesting, meaningful, and fulfilling, but also the kind that is interesting, meaningful, and fulfilling for everyone involved. Facebook is for friends, not “friends” and “family” users, so why not have one that is interesting, meaningful, and fulfilling for everyone? Why not make the existing set of algorithms irrelevant and create a set of tests that are identical but for everyone?”

What would that look like, you might ask? Here is an algorithm that is interesting, meaningful, and fulfilling for everyone, but whose time is limited by the rules of the game? What would that look like, really, in the universe?

Algorithms are for making decisions, not finding friends or family. Algorithms are there to make decisions that are profitable for the company, not for making friends or forming bonds. Normals rely on algorithms to find the right matches, even when those algorithms are broken.

GDPR:

GDPR also allows for the creation of a new legal regime, the so-called “Fourth Amendment” that essentially codifies the right of “equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The so-called “Fourth Schedule” of the law, which prohibits any discrimination on the basis of sex in the workplace, which also includes the right of “equal respect for the law.” In other words, the so-called “Fourth Amendment” no longer guarantees the right to due process or equal dignity, but rather, guarantees the right to equal dignity in the eyes of the law. This means that the so-called “fourth” amendment also protects the “equal dignity of the human person.” This means that the so-called “equal dignity of the worker —” i.e., the right of “equal dignity in the eyes of the law — also protects the “equal dignity of the consumer.” This means that the so-called “economic” crisis also generates opportunities for alternative strategies for the reconstruction of social wealth.

The banning of social media has had a profound effect on the way we communicate with each other. We lose touch with each other in the bus, on the subway, in the car, and in person. We have trouble finding the time to just talk on the phone. We have fun on the phone, but we’re not hanging out, looking at the time, or even looking at the clock. We’re staring into the faces and the things that are around us. Social media has replaced sitting around a phone with staring into the faces of others, and that’s a good thing.

San Francisco:

San Francisco was a much different place in 2009. There, the convergence of the digital and the physical—both curated and unedited—created new disciplines of art, design, and consumption. On the one hand, the proliferation of electronics; two or three phones, three or four TVs, or five or six games on the go—created the possibility of having conversations and making decisions that are both important and overwhelming. On the other, the monotony of existence; the monotony of human interaction; the monotony of career and personal development—created the possibility of having meaningful, authentic lives.

All this predates the invention of the internet, of which there is scarcely any sign. The Arabs have their own version of the internet, which they call Tel Aviv. The Americans have their own version of the internet, which they call Irvine. The Brits have their own version of the internet, which they call their own. The Indians have their own version of the internet, which they call their own. The French call it ‘Front-End Internet’. The Germans call it ‘Easy Street Internet.’ The Japanese call it ‘Game Over Internet.’ The locals call it ‘WeWork Internet.’

All this is imaginary. There is no possibility of constructing a real, of predicting the future, of controlling it. And there is no hope of winning it.

There is no hope of appreciating the work that goes into creating it.

There is no way of knowing how to respond to it.

It is always better to be afraid of what is real than of what is not.

Ray Kurzweil
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT

What will happen in the future?

In the future, technology may use machine learning techniques to identify patterns that can then be further refined and algorithms can then be used to identify more patterns that can then be expanded exponentially.

In the long run, some of these techniques may be self-organizing into self-referentiality as well, in that they may be employed to hold onto and organize information that is self-organizing in that it continually seeks to cling to and reunite with itself (in the form of a coherent, limited perspective field) in a way that maximizes engagement with the platform and the possible punishments for breaking its rules.

In the meantime, the older rules that pertained to the original purpose of the Internet may well survive and be incorporated into a new regulatory regime that will supersede them. But the Internet we inhabit will not be the old Internet. The Internet we inherit will be vastly more dynamic and interactive. And that means that whatever becomes of the original rules governing the Internet, they’ll survive, just as they did on the old Internet.

In the future, if you’re president — or at least a close relative — you’ll have access to a vast, unedited, flowered-up surveillance state. You’ll have the right of “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.” In the eyes of the law are the equal dignity of the child and the person, everywhere.”

Who will defend the indefensible?” I asked.

“We’re not there yet,” David Futterman, a computer scientist and the director of NYU Stern, said, despairing. “But I’m afraid so many people are becoming disenchanted and dropping out of the labor force, which is killing us.”

“And they’ll have learned that there is no such thing as an Internet that works for everyone,” he said.