After the Internet

What Hacker News says

1. jauntywundrkindSep 2026
   > And to ensure that humans remain in control of the future and are not left behind by unchecked progress, brought about by an alien intellect exceeding our own.

   Is there any place there is any evidence of AI being so useful or hopeful or good, anywhere other than code? As a reading machine it is impressive but it's judgement is not alien, it's just not good. IMO.

   Does the title leap out anlt anyone else? James Martin's After the Internet: Alien Intelligence (2001) was an incredibly fun read, about expert systems and AI being inscrutable weird new varieties of intelligence, that familiarity would recognize one moment and be freaked out about/alien the next. I owe a re-read given how often I cite it, to recheck, but, I feel so primed from a much younger me having had that experience so long ago.

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2. rektideJul 2022
   Democracy/democratization isn't just about open access, open tools. A republic can leave much in the hands of it's representatives, but there still has to be some underlying conversancy that's possible.

   Reading it back in the day, After the Internet: Alien Intelligence (James Martin, 2000) was an interesting book about expert systems that increasingly because unintelligible, became alien to humanity as a whole & it's specific makers. I increasingly feel like we know less & less about these models, what they are, what they do. We can experiment & open access, but the project of democratization involves bestowing real agency on people, on deciding where to go, and I don't feel like there's a coherent causality we can play with & learn about & explore & understand here. Democracy has to be about more than pulling levers & seeing what pre-baked associations the machine spits out.

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3. jauntywundrkindOct 2023
   I got a good accidental brush with Moravec's Paradox in James Martin's After the Internet: Alien Intelligence (2001), which talked about how coming systems would be unrecognizable bizarre expert systems, with seemingly super powered capabilities. That stuck with me so much, for such a long time, and it almost never felt like a good or great thing; too much ability to let it control & define us, without being able to understand the forces at play or how they were being deployed.

   I far prefer Personal Computing values, such as Engelbart's mission to Augment Intellect, to make the operators smarter, more aware, to make them into a better expert. I believe so much in our powers of intuition & intellect, and trying to amplify that seems like the worthy cause of our time.

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