In contrast to aesthetics, the functional world will likely be regularly turned upside down. Happenings:
Item 1 - The world of crypto seems to be falling apart. Crypto coins and tokens and what-have-you are dropping like flies and losing people billions of dollars in the process. You may have heard about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and his FTX crypto exchange and related Alameda hedge fund and all the financial shenanigans that went on around them. If not, to put it succinctly, SBF set up a crypto token and an exchange for trading it and convinced people that it was safe and backed up by actual assets of value except it kind of wasn't and as soon as people started to suspect that it everything went boom. Now he's trying to convince everyone that it was all an accident and an oversight and he never intended to defraud anyone. The story has been given a boost by lurid tales of polyamorous relationships among the principal players.
The best in-depth and ongoing analysis is coming from Twitter user Autism Capital if you have the time and stomach to wade through it. There are a bunch of great summaries in Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter. There is little of value at traditional news sites -- maybe this interview with SBF at Vox.
You needn't concern yourself with the details. The point is suspicion and cynicism is rising in the crypto community and this especially high profile crash is dragging a lot of folks down with it, the bulk of them deservedly. This is a huge come-to-Jesus moment for crypto. The above mentioned Levine believes that cryptos are painfully relearning lessons that traditional finance learned and codified long ago. This aligns with my view. My guess is that whatever is left standing after the shakeout might be stuff of enduring value. But the truly wacko stuff peaked a while back and will likely turn to dust -- poor Justin Beiber's $1.3M bored ape NFT was recently valued at $70K.
The alternate view is that crypto and blockchain technologies are, and always have been, a solution in search of a problem, and the whole thing is just the madness of crowds; a modern-day tulip mania.
A third view is that crypto has real value, but only to secretive, nefarious activities.
I still don't own any. I once tried to set up an account on the biggest, most reliable crypto exchange and I was stymied by their buggy software. I'm grateful for that now, but once the shakeout is over I will likely try again.
Item 2 - How about ChatGPT, have you heard of that? ChatGPT is a chatbot. You know what a chatbot is, right? ChatGPT however, is not your run-of-the-mill brain-dead customer support bot. It is backed by a super-sophisticated artificial intelligence. You can ask it remarkably complex questions and it will respond with coherent and relevant answers -- mostly. Here is a twitter thread with some of the most interesting results and commentary. People have speculated this as the thing that puts Google out of business. That's highly unlikely, Google is well aware that this sort of thing is coming. That said, asking a question of ChatGPT will very often give you better results than a Google search. It does best in areas where it has been trained on a large body of work, or where there is a clear objective answer.
For example, let's say I needed to file paperwork for a building permit in Washtenaw County. A question to ChatGPT would probably give me a fairly comprehensive answer with the names and contact information for agencies, the names of the forms, the expected time involved, and even share common experiences of others. Google would give me links to uncountable sites where if I was diligent enough I could get that information. Also lots of ads. Similarly, if I was to ask ChatGPT "I am a 62 year old man who is 5'10 and 180 lbs., give me a diet that will help me lose 10 pounds in three months." It would do exactly that, based on its reading of nutritional and fitness information. One software developer has made the statement that he intends to pair-program with ChatGPT from now on. This has implications for many careers and industries. Can I ask it for weekly workouts and dump my personal trainer? Can I ask it how to sue somebody and skip the lawyer?
ChatGPT does less well on more nebulous topics, occasionally outright failing. Still, it's a huge step forward, with the potential to disrupt a lot of stuff.
ChatGPT is available to anyone…in theory. You can set up an account at the above website, if you time it right. Every time I've visited I've been told it's too busy, please try again later. You can experience the future, but you'll need to wait in line.
Item 3 - related to both the above, Tyler Cowen laments that Twitter is now the best place for news. He's not wrong. Twitter is great, but you have to carefully manage it.
Item 4 - More artificial intelligence in images. Stable Diffusion is an AI product that will accept a written prompt from you and create an image. Here are some samples. Truly remarkable and fascinating, if not quite so disruptive.
