this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Honestly, for me, young me had no fucking clue how bad tech could be for the world just physically. The massive power draw, the massive water consumption, I'm sure there are nestle level employee and child abuse situations to boot.
Noone ever talked about the cost of fucking anything. Just blinders all the way until it crashes and we tally the victims and how much money was lost or it cost to fix it.
The one thing the Crypto bros did was show everyone how absurd this all really could be, and all for less than nothing.
I agree.
It's very cool to have a personal computer that can play music, display pictures, play videos, render scenes in POV-Ray, so on. But I don't think I need a new one every year, I don't think I'd need anything as performant as what I have (not considering network effects), and I'd be happy to use a year 2003 (or even 1993, with dedicated chips Amiga-style one can make it usable for playing video and music too) performance PC with modern power efficiency.
I don't think there's any need to press for building machines able of doing even more of mostly useless work.
And about hidden costs of that power efficiency too - making modern chips is so complex that the production is more centralized than that of intercontinental ballistic missiles. That means rot in the society that only shows itself when it's too late, like with any overcentralization.
So maybe power efficiency doesn't have to be quite modern, ha-ha.
Overcentralization applies to other things in that industry too, I think I just wanted to add it to your list of hidden costs.