Post #2013464

2026-04-16 17:15 UTC

I just remember it wasn&#39;t that long ago when &quot;nerds are going to turn mushrooms into thinking computers and we&#39;ll have solar panels that store energy by crystalizing salt&quot; was like, kind of normal to expect to come out of tech, in the near future. Like folk had this idea that someone in some garage was gonna turn out some tech that would solve some real problem. Now folk simultaneously don&#39;t believe such a thing can happen, feel smug for that wisdom, *AND* rely on exactly that happening sometime soon so that their own means of living doesn&#39;t collapse under energy and resource scracity. It&#39;s super weird! In my circles, we legit talk about growing aluminium time crystals for biohacking, and that&#39;s not even the werirdest shit we talk about, by far. So many of you are very very normal, and it just seems weird because &quot;normal&quot; has become such a prevalent thing.

Replies (1)

@emsenn@kolektiva.social 2026-04-16 17:18

Like in the 90s and early 2000s it was just kind of a given that at some point, computers would stop being silicon and start being something else. The *only* survivor of that seems to be contemporary quantum computing, and it is... very much the "silicon-y" type of computing. Folk still share photos of solarpunk futures but don't understand: the research universities that were, 10, 20 years ago, funding these experimental computer designs? Stopped. And the tech employees who used to get enough extra salary to play around with these ideas in their garage? They don't have that wealth anymore. Even *if* the dominant society could invent things that save us from itself, it is no longer allocating resources toward anything that even vaguely resembles that effort. And I think the lack of investment hasn't really sunk in as meaning there's no real possibility of the thing occuring, becuase well, in order for things to occur, energy has to move.

Open ##3230813