Yeah, I’ll got for that. Specifically, Disco Janet, I think.
Make no mistake, we’ll all have digital personal information assistants before the end of this century, except for a few hold-outs like Ulfrieda and the Amish. You’ll need them, to order your shopping, pay for parking and road access (probably the smartCar itself would do that for you, but you have to then pay into the smartCar’s personal account), read the news and published literature, watch entertainment and play games, and so on and on.
The big problem is that your personal assistant could be co-opted by external interests - if you are a Republican, you’ll only get news from Fox or the equivalent; if you are an anti-vaxxer you’ll only get conspiracy theories, and so on. Truth-checking will be subject to a million interpretations. Or perhaps the truth-checking services will themselves be subject to regulation by government or some sort of independent bodies, to ensure they give fair and balanced opinions. Truth-checker-checkers, if you will.
Who then will check the truth-checker-checkers?
Even the Amish have to deal with new tech. With more Amish (they have large families) and less available farmland every year more of them are having to take jobs with the “English”, which means phones and computers on the job (which is OK, as long as it’s just for job requirements). In recent years when I’ve taken Amtrak the Amish, like the rest of us, have had to deal with technology around that - last time I was in Union Station in Chicago a couple of Amish were giving an impromptu lesson on some station Amtrak scheduling and ticket purchasing kiosks to some first time English riders.
Where they seem to be able to stave things off is in their personal home lives. Not all of their personal lives, just the home life. When they have to interact with the outside world (and that does come up from time to time) they, too, have to deal with the unwilling imposition of the new upon them.
Even so, I try to apply some of their principals to my life. I am, of course, more tech-using than the Amish but I don’t adopt things just because they’re new. I want tech to work for me, not the other way around (stop laughing, you know what I mean). I try not to add things to my life without thinking first about their necessity and whether or not they actually add to my life or not.
Don’t think most people understand how the Amish actually live. Sure, they have an agrarian ideal, but a lot of them work factory or retail jobs these days because they have more Amish than farmland. Also, they don’t object to medical science (even if quite a few of them are into home remedies). If someone Amish needs advanced, modern medical care they can get it. Among other things, the Amish have been known to do things like pay cash up front for an organ transplant. They don’t object to life-saving technology.
On the other hand, they don’t automatically go for it, either - not all Amish will opt for aggressive cancer treatment like chemo. This can be an alien notion to people who have the idea that you MUST battle cancer with absolutely everything until the very bitter end.
Unless you were referring to something else?
Not that I’m an expert on the Amish. I live near to some of them, and have done a little research, but people think they’re like and what they actually are like are often two different things.
I don’t know about you, but a reassuring slogan such as, oh, say, “Don’t Be Evil” would be more than enough to satisfy me.
I’m certainly no expert on Amish living habits. Your info is certainly better than mine on this topic.
I was simply suggesting that the low yield and high labor component of their style of agriculture would, if universally adopted, result in insufficient food to feed most of humanity. And certainly insufficient US-grown food to feed most of US-based humanity.
I’ll accept as given your comment that the Amish collectively work in decent numbers in some peripheral aspects of the modern economy.
I suggest that if everyone else adopted the same general set of attitudes and employment possibilities, sort of as exemplified by @Ulfreida, then real quickly the technologically advanced society upon which we depend would collapse for all the jobs not being done, all the expertise not being gained, and frankly, the sheer number of people being diverted into agriculture work to make non-mechanized farming possible.
We’d snap back to 1800 or 1750 economics, tech, and labor deployment very rapidly. And hence back to the economic carrying capacity of that era.
Well put.
I am surprised how many people are unwilling to have one under any condition. I suppose this will change if Apple Intelligence becomes a killer app. For me, I want it to be capable of deciding which notifications I need to see. Hopefully it’ll know to hide Doordash notifications offering me 10% off my next order or whatever.
That would be perfectly fine with me, but we’d need about 300 million less people.
I don’t think the Amish farm yields are particularly low, per acre. What is strikingly low is their capitalization. They replace million dollar climate-controlled combines driven by one guy whose kids all move to the city, with big families and work horses and relatively simple machines. It’s just a different, more sustainable, model. But of course nothing to do with AI.