zlacker

>>tablet+(OP)
This happened with the introduction of smartphones too. Every slashdot post had a haughty and upvoted ‘why would i want such a thing!!!’.

It was obviously huge. You could see it taking off. Yet a lot of people proudly displayed ignorance and backed each other up on it to the point that discussion around the topic was often drowned out by the opposition to change. Now today it takes minutes of playing with ai coding agents to realise that it’s extremely useful and going to be similarly huge.

Resistance to change is not a virtue!

>>Anothe+a4
I still think smartphones are a huge negative to humanity. They improve a narrow case: having access to ephemeral knowledge. Nobody writes articles or does deep knowledge work with smartphones.

My position with the AI is almost the same. It is overall a net negative for cognitive abilities of people. Moreover I do think all AI companies need to pay fair licensing cost to all authors and train their models to accurately cite the sources. If they want more data for free, they need to propose copyright changes retroactively invalidating everything older than 50 years and also do the legwork for limiting software IP to 5 to 10 years.

>>okanat+s8
Agreed. Smartphones are portable, mobile computers that suck at every single aspect of being, and working as, a computer, except for mobility. They are not powerful, they are not general purpose, they are not ergonimic, they do not respect user freedom or privacy. Use such a mobile device only when you can't avoid it (i.e., when you are on the road -- when mobility is the single most important priority), and at no other time.

>>Mofpof+Kr
Smartphones are pure consumption machines, in this regard they are more Cocaine than Caffeine. They brought pleasure at an extreme cost. Their worst crime, imo, os the destruction of human relationships brought about by "social" media.