The US is using 40% renewables, China a bit more, many smaller countries are testing 100% renewable days, ozone was mostly fixed iirc. Progress may be slow, but to say it’s not happening is factually very false.
All probably true, but all the technological progress has done little to change the fact that we continue to destroy the world we live in with our eyes open. This is my point: technology is generally not used for the good of humanity, but for monetary gain. If we wanted to, the world could be a better place, but we don’t use our resources that way - they are not managed by the general public, but by people who don’t have the good of humanity in mind. I think the Internet is a good example of this: Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the www protocol, didn’t earn a cent from a patent or something like that - he was just interested in scientific exchange at the time. In my opinion, that’s a true hero, not Steve Jobs (he was a great businessman tho).
The prisoners’ dilemma explains why people prefer personal profit over benefitting mankind.
This is a very pessimistic view, and with a fallacy. The fallacy is to consider that greed will always win and yadayada. The fact is that it is a product of liberalism, it makes states resign from doing things to the profit of companies. Even in liberal countries liberalism is being contested though, and power countries are opposing it (for better or worse).
Internet is still there. And in some places, it won true victories against liberalism, like in Europe where net neutrality did won some battles and big Internet companies are being contained, if only to fight US espionage.
My opinion is that Internet companies are incapable of sustaining their tools, because they’re too greedy to provide a good service long term. Free solutions will appear, and ultimately they will prevail. Lemmy is a example that is at a baby stage yet. Most of the innovation and infrastructure relies on free softwares today. It’s just in the background. Computer and Internet technologies are still in their infancy, it will evolve.
In Europe, legislation is like this because it was enforced by institutions (meaning the state(s)). This is an achievement of a still halfway functional democracy. The source is myself, a European. However, I can also tell you that things like the GDPR don’t actually matter in practice. I am also the source, who has implemented both tracking and corresponding opt-in solutions for several companies - nobody gives a fuck; neither the companies nor the institutions. It is actually more expensive to comply with the legislation: There are no adequate penalties whatsoever. If you hear in America that meta/facebook had to pay a substancial fine, you can assume that meta/facebook has gained that many times over from the infringement. Greed rules the world, I’m afraid. That’s the reason for my pessimism and also one of the reasons why I think the merits of neoliberalism are a fairy tale.
Before any Americans get upset at this comment, keep in mind that liberal ≠ progressive for much of the world.
40% renewables for electricity.
Not to make perfect be the enemy of good, or to poo-poo that progress…but electricity is only 1/3 of GHG. And demand for electricity goes up with the move towards EVs, so while we take the energy out of the “transportation” column, we put it into the “electricity” column, at a 60% discount.
Thats…good. It’s progress. But it’s honestly such a baby-step in the grand scheme. We should be using green energy and EVs exclusively by now, and significantly cut down on meat and dairy consumption. We should be a lot further by now.
I blame Nader, the hanging chads, and Bush v. Gore…but mostly Nader. Had he not run in 2000, the majority of his voters, particularly in FL, would’ve voted for Gore. Nader got 97,488 votes in FL. Bush won by five hundred and thirty seven votes. That…the spoiler effect that resulted from an idealist candidate (and the shortfalls of FPTP, not to mention electoral college), is making perfect the enemy of good.
The same could also have been said of NH, by the way. 22,198 votes for Nader, Bush won by a margin of a third of that. Either FLs 25 or NHs 4 EC votes would’ve flipped the election and the course of history.
Also the rate of change is accelerating.
No sign of slowing down yet. Except maybe for wind but hopefully floating comes into its own in the next couple of years.
It was meant for porn en now the biggest part of it is porn. I’d say a success.
I don’t think the biggest part of the internet is porn. There’s a LOT of porn and a few really big porn sites, but I don’t think they hold a candle to social media and shopping.
I found this link that has porn being #s 14 and 15. It was actually hard to find recent data that included porn at all. I think some counters were too embarrassed to admit porn existed.
As far a I know the porn industry has actualy driven innovation in various web-technologies including streaming, e-commerce, VR…and now probably AI, I guess.
I’ve been saying this for years. The internet was better when you had to be a little bit more intelligent than the average person to access it.
Back when you needed knowledge of computers and software, modems, anti-virus, hardware etc, it kind of meant you needed a brain in your head to gain access. I’m not saying that made the internet an overtly-intelligent space, but it was more intelligent and measured than it is today.
As soon a smart phones and data plans entered the game, you could be as dumb as a second coat of paint and gain access with a single button. That opened the flood gates for the stupid. Now the stupid are here en mass and internet is just a dumpster fire full of retards.
It’s almost as if something gets infinitely worse once the masses adopt it
I recently played the video game Hypnospace Outlaw and one of the things that stuck out was there was a set of five “subverses” of sorts about nerd culture, and the parent company that runs Hypnospace wanted to get more of that sweet ad money, so they consolidated them into one space, and put it on a slower server. And when you visited these pages, they were noticeably slower compared to the new “sports” space which they did to chase that sweet new customer retention money, all in the leadup of, well, see for yourself (major spoilers).
What do you want? Do you want the internet to be for academics again? Because we’re past that. The moment you have to put a monetary value to something, it becomes about seeking monetary value either to 1) keep it going or 2) keep it going and make a bit of cream on top. This is how the world works now. I hate it, but i’m not pining for the old days either. The cycle continues from Geocities, to Social Media, to the Fediverse, and probably the Metaverse after that.
