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 [...]

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Outline:

(03:03) Retro Tech

(07:25) Technological Responsibility

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First published:
December 21st, 2025

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

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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“Technoromanticism” by lsusr

LessWrong (30+ Karma)