I find it oddly comforting that tech corporations are now straight up advertising their vision of dystopian individualism where all your friends have been replaced by their chatbot.
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Sy Taffel
@sy@mastodon.nz
mastodon 4.7.2Digital Ecologies, Infrastructures and Degrowth | Automation and Creativity | Postcapitalism and Political Ecology | Postgrowth computing.
Senior Lecturer in media studies and co-director of the Political Ecology Research Centre at Massey University, Aotearoa.
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Joined October 30, 2022
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'Meta, Google and Microsoft have all baked [generative AI] deep into their systems,” Joshi says. “I see this all as very much part of the tactic of trying to embed these systems into society and instil dependency in a fashion similar to the growth of single-use plastics in the 1970s.”
Opting out can be a “meaningful act of resistance”, Joshi says. “It’s partly about not creating that energy demand but mostly about being part of broad collective action against [a] corrosive, harmful industry.”'
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/13/ai-datacentres-environmental-impacts
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
'A postgrowth future isn’t anti-technology, anti-digital or anti-progress. It asks us to take seriously the scientific evidence that seven of nine planetary boundaries have been overshot, and to recognise that this will have catastrophic societal impacts if radical action isn’t taken.
Whereas business-as-usual approaches hope technological solutions will allow globalised capitalism to endure while little meaningfully changes, a postgrowth digital future demands changing social and technological relationships to make people’s lives fairer, more enjoyable, more equitable and more sustainable.'
https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2026/06/04/how-can-tech-make-the-planet-better-not-worse/
'An extortionate purchase price, justified by longevity the software is engineered to foreclose. A repair system priced like craftsmanship and run like a chicken processor. Or Amazon. Environmental piety from the high altar, e-waste from the loading dock. A recruitment strategy that runs through the school gate. And underneath it all, the quiet contempt of a company that fought right-to-repair for years, while our own Productivity Commission was politely pointing out that Australians deserve choices Apple’s serialised parts are built to deny, before discovering, with the zeal of the converted, that repairability made a lovely press release.'
#apple #tech #repair #sustainabilityhttps://michaelwest.com.au/it-just-works-until-it-doesnt-inside-apples-planned-obsolescence/
Replying to
@fritzoids@mas.to some kind of techbro pyramid scheme involving bitcoin?
Perhaps it's surprisingly perceptive advertising that recognises AI mostly appeals to sociopaths who systematically alienate themselves from others with their shitty behaviour?
Replying to
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social Happy to pass on the slides from this talk if it'd be of any help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKoszquvQQ4
Replying to
@ana_valdi@mastodon.social Thanks for organising this... It was an amazing day full of wonderful, detailed and insightful presentations and it was really inspiring to see so many passionate, smart and talented people really driving research in this area forwards in brilliant directions! Thanks so much for inviting me to come along.
Replying to
@y2k38@mastodon.social oops, yes you're absolutely right, Galaxy AI and galaxy.ai aren't the same thing.
Replying to
@jjesse@infosec.exchange @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social The correct analogy would be if Apple and Samsung decided to cut off security updates for old devices to try and force people to upgrade their phones.
Don't get me wrong, the annual upgrade cycle and the perceived obsolescence it propagates is bad... But refusing to fix critical security vulnerabilities for hundreds of millions of computers in the hope that those people will upgrade to Windows 11 is far worse.
And remember, Win10 was advertised as 'the last version of windows' by Microsoft a decade ago, so people bought it expecting it to continue to be updated.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows
Replying to
@jjesse@infosec.exchange @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social If you really can't understand the problem with 400 million computers - many of which can't run windows 11 - losing access to security updates after MS marketed win10 as having perpetual support, I can't help you.
Replying to
@jasonkoebler@mastodon.social and Microsoft doing this on international e-waste day was pretty on the nose