Archive: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/p1mI7
When Amazon.com Inc. executives took the stage last month in New York to announce an artificially intelligent Alexa, there was a conspicuous absence: no flashy new gadget to accompany the souped-up voice assistant.
Amazon isn’t unusual in this regard. After a years-long explosion of high-end laptops, foldable smart phones and voice-activated everything, big tech companies have entered the artificial intelligence age with little new hardware.
If the gadget development scene isn’t entirely dead, “it’s napping,” said Liam Pingree, an engineer with a doctorate in materials science who led teams at Amazon, Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.
Pingree and other hardware veterans decry a lack of risk-taking in hardware as tech companies pour billions of dollars into massive bets on artificial intelligence software. The industry is banking on a future where AI tools create novel sources of revenue, and, if history is any guide, new products can fuel customer adoption. Smartphones created an app ecosystem, and the personal computer helped popularize the internet.
People that lived through 60s-2000s have seen technology explode and change their lives significantly for the better every couple of years. By comparison last 10 years have been especially rough except for solar panels and batteries maybe but it’s China that benefits from this mostly. The article suggests it’s the AI that drains industry from resources but I’d say the problem is deeper. Yes, we’re wasting resources at a fad but there’s also a point where things can’t be commoditised unless people get more wealthy and that has been going pretty bad as well. I don’t want the next iPhone. I want the next microwave or a car that I can afford.
I’m not one to disagree with blaming capitalism lol. I was watching something recently about how millennials grew up with techno optimism, and I feel like we’re seeing the results of that. Millennials wanting tech to solve everything and grew up being into gadgets as a concept rather than a product, and the new generation so subsumed by tech that it really ceases to be tech. Like the way indoor plumbing or even electricity isn’t really seen as tech anymore, even though it really revolutionized our lifestyles. I think there’s some warranted backlash to tech (cottagecore/trad living) and the way it has atomized everyone, and I’m not sure people are as excited about it anymore. Price is definitely an issue, but I really think that tech is failing to fulfill us, and people are seeing that on some level (all this is also somewhat attributable to capitalism).