LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Technoromanticism” by lsusr


Listen Later

Imagine you were born in 2007. The Internet has always existed. Facebook has always existed. Google has always existed. Smartphones have always existed.

By the time you became old enough to social media, social media had already evolved from "truly social" to "superintelligent hostile optimization system working tirelessly to grab your attention and mind control you via brainrot, ragebait, and parasocial relationships". By the time you were old enough to drive, all new cars had annoying touchscreen interfaces designed as if their purpose was to distract you and crash the car. Screens don't even advance. There's no point in building a display with higher resolution than a retina display. Instead, the Corporate Overlords managing the software arbitrarily change up the user interfaces of your software just as soon as you start to like the old interface.

The blogosphere is unheard of, by which I mean you have literally never heard of it. You don't know what a blog is or how they work. "Media" means YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok. Hosting your own website is unheard of too. You don't know that the first webcomic artists managed their own physical servers—or even what a real server is—everything is in the [...]

---

Outline:

(03:03) Retro Tech

(07:25) Technological Responsibility

---

First published:

December 21st, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NnGyLEsyHi4ArfbDb/technoromanticism

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

112,936 Listeners

Astral Codex Ten Podcast by Jeremiah

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

132 Listeners

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat by New York Times Opinion

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

7,283 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

541 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,372 Listeners

AI Article Readings by Readings of great articles in AI voices

AI Article Readings

4 Listeners

Doom Debates by Liron Shapira

Doom Debates

14 Listeners

LessWrong posts by zvi by zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi

2 Listeners