A lot of the fake controversy over bad reviews of the AI Pin seems to be rooted in a tech culture gulf between normal people, who want something to work if they pay $700 for it, and techbros who wore Google Glass on the first day and think being on the cutting edge is its own point.
/2 So you’ve got weirdo cultists like Vassalo who think you MUST beta test high tech and that criticizing it is like making fun of a toddler for not being able to walk straight vs. normal people who would like for it to do something worthwhile.
How much is just that tech capitalists don’t know the difference between journalism and advertising, and therefore see critical press as an uncouth violation of the social contract?
"I'm sorry, you expect to buy a fully tested, final form product that works and works well?! You fucking plebe, you goddamned Luddite. You simple peasant!"
Non-consensually datamining public social settings for targeted ad development and other uses that surely never occurred to executives who’d seen a season or more of Silicon Valley
I don’t say all of the results of the “test” were positive.
Once immediate public outcry for face-worn cameras died down, there was certainly an explosion of new tech that took advantage of the shifted window of public norms.
As in “obvious someone has a camera attached to their face.”
Conversations among the general public (more than just privacy advocates) happened more—at the time—because the cameras were immediately visible to the public. It brought some good changes to org and local policies.
No. A lot of the anger came from people not realizing they were being filmed, and then suddenly realizing it. It was designed to be stealthy. Guess what users often did when they realized the little red light could get them yelled at or thrown out of a social space.
Tech reviewer here. I obviously don't have to say "first, do no harm" is NOT an ethos to follow when offering consumer buying advice that includes warning people against spending money on things that don't work.
It's no consumer or journalist's duty to coddle developing technology.
You'd think that perhaps, just maybe a reasonable person might understand that point. A beta tester and an early adopter are not the same thing. For a beta tester it's their JOB to root out obvious issues and report them. An early adopter is a customer who purchased a product that should, yes, work.
The frustrating thing is I genuinely think that there is value in having a population of eager beta testers for products! One of the small benefits of having an upper-middle-class is they act to subsidize development of technologies and drive prices down
But those beta testers shouldn't be expected to pay $700 for the product. Maybe pass it out to employees and some volunteers to work out the bugs.
Or sell it for a lot less.
Might get dragged for this, but I think the truth is somewhere in between. Vassalo's post is silly, but I've bought very clearly labeled beta projects from indie companies without the expectation that it works well, which I would never drag for not working. $700 is a lot though...
I don't think you're totally wrong, but when (e.g.) I buy a video game on Steam that's still in beta it is labeled that way. Thus ChatGPT in its first form was a fun beta toy, while that thing NYC has been using is dangerous nonsense.
For sure. The labeling of betas and letting users know what sorts of issues they might run into is very important. If there's no warning of that sort I think reviewers should do their worst.
I paid more than this in today's dollars for a smartphone & I would fight anyone who mocked it, because it did the thing I needed it to do
had it NOT done that thing, even with limitations & bugs I duly reported to Handspring (makers of the PalmPilot & then the Treo 600) I'd have returned it mad
I don't think its the amount of subscribers Marques has that makes people like Vassalo feel that saying something doesn't work or doesn't live up to the hype is unethical, hmm I just cant put my finger on it
I usually try to avoid armchair psychologizing, but it is hard to ignore the confluence of certain techbros rightward lurch and the desires of both techbros and traditional conservatives to not just do what they want, but be congratulated for it.
"The right of adulation" seems to be the collalition
One vendor was selling the exact same variety of cucumbers at two different prices. "Why is this one twice the price?", the merchant was asked. "They came on higher quality mules" was the answer.
Only judge a technology by how it solves problems, not by what technological attributes it has.
I like product reviews. If a product is shit, then I wanna know before I buy. However, if a reviewer is sponsored by the company, I'd rely on more than their review because it may be biased.
There's honestly such a weird disconnect between these views
I think the general public would probably be OK with this kind of crap if they were open that it was a beta model and that you're testing the product for them (leaving aside the price they're asking)
The TechBronies assume that the purpose of life is beta testing until humans can fully integrate hardware into their biology or discover tangible awareness of the universal game matrix in which we exist.....
THAT OR..
um ... getting on the "list" for stuff
It's like the old open source software saw about "free as in speech vs. free as in beer." They want the market to be free of regulation and oversight, but adoration and profit should be mandatory at all times.
Adoration and profit *for them*, of course.
They are utterly incapable of accepting systems that don't prioritize them (or at least people they identify with).
