Rants // New Year’s Resolution for 2024 – Less Algorithm, More Human

Currently Playing: Chung Kuo by Vangelis via Deck Chair #4: “Beautiful Burnout” by Ivo Petrov

Time to expand on something that I said just now on Bluesky. Bsky, while good, doesn’t allow for longform writing – not yet anyway…but I digress.

Shortly before the end of 2023 I read an interestingly article from Rolling Stone – one called The Internet is About to Get Weird Again. To give you a summary, Internet in 2024 is going to be closer to the way it was in 2000s. Meaning less corporate control, less dependency on algorithms and more room for individual/human. For my part I found it a bit too optimistic of a long-term view.  But what if? What if somehow we’ll be able to wrestle the control out of big corporate hands and give it back to people?

If that’s the case, I’m definitely all for it. And here’s why – I believe that humans and deeply and inherently flawed on every level. Where tech companies see it as a problem to solved via endless apps, I see it as something to be accepted and cherished. All those endless attempts to quantize human behavior and turn it into a dataset to be sold to advertisers down the road might be of huge benefit to tech, but little benefit to us. What if, instead, we let go of the idea of perfection and start working on creating more handmade playlists, ways to help others in need etc etc etc?

Now none of those things might bring in any money, at least not right away or ever. But the idea of art of anything else being justified only after a massive sale is as deeply problematic as the idea of AI / algorithm replacing artists. Similarly, the idea of judging human personality by the amount of money one makes is also laughable. Wealth isn’t always correlated with good decisions – sometimes quite the opposite (a certain South African billionaire who shall not be named comes to mind).

So let it be written and let it be told. While striving to be better is good, striving for perfection isn’t – there’s simply no such thing. It doesn’t exist, no matter how much marketing and tech companies insist otherwise. For that reason I say this – I’m on board with the idea of bringing back human and letting go of algorithms, no matter how perfect those may seem.