*Tinfoil hat on*
I doubt it's a coincidence that the last 10, 15 years things like cryptocurrencies, "metaverse", "AI" are becoming popular, just as "lines" in the computing industry flatten: as the computer has been perfected, an _economy of waste_ is created to sustain appetite for growth.
Computers (phones, tablets &c are computers) have become longer term investments; even if you have abundant money, the latest devices aren't necessarily upgrades that bring anything new to the table. We've _done_ computing, we finished it back in 2010s mostly.
That's a plateau in demand for new devices, or it would be, w/o the saviour of computing wastage industry. Cryptocurrency wastes storage and processors, "AI" wastes memory and processors, "metaverse", ads, cloud etc waste networking bandwidth. So we use much more computing resources than we need.
Computing wastage also inflates the income of fossil fuel industry. Its useless activities and the infrastructure to support all that is powered--where it's not pure speculation and is actually built out--frequently by dirty electricity.
I think that explains a lot about govt & corpo interest esp in "AI" right now. It's a growth driver. It's a line mover upper. It's a conduit of money to an otherwise stagnating tech and dirty energy sector.
*Tinfoil hat off*
