Look, Another AI Browser

To be sure, a browser that retains a representation of every word you read on it, constantly synthesizing a profile on your preferences, using that profile to filter everything you see through a lens that consistently enforces and limits the worldview of a snapshot-of-you - all with a level of data retention that would be controversial for Google but that OpenAI's users will happily opt into, that Palantir and its government clients are likely salivating over, and that is fertile ground for a new generation of ads that bypass pesky things like third-party cookie restrictions - must be exciting to many!

It's just not exciting to me.

Man, I miss the old days, seeing new tech come out and not immediately wondering how the worst parts of our industry are going to turn it into the torment nexus.

I remember the optimism:

Google is launched and it is web directories but…better. It takes a decade to become a monolithic ad-tech company but all is not lost yet, until it becomes the face of enshittification of the entire internet another decade on.

Facebook is launched and it’s this cool way to keep in touch with your friends until that too becomes a monolithic ad-tech company a decade later, and soon after becomes the face of enshittification of social media as a whole, lowering the bar on civility to a subterranean level.

Ditto for Amazon and the enshittification of online retail. And Microsoft with.. whatever the hell you call Windows these days.

What took 10, 20, even 30 years to show up as being bad for society now takes just a couple of years, maybe even less than that. Maybe even straight away.

It’s like the stagnation of Asimov’s Galactic Empire. A bunch of crusty old tech companies, too big to change.

So much modern tech is just about capture and extraction, not actually empowering the end user. It's as if guitar companies found a way to make more money in claiming royalties on musicians' work instead of building good guitars.