Three Eras of Tech

We're in the third era or phase of the tech industry.

Phase one was the CPU phase. That was in the 70s and 80s maybe into the early 90s. A couple of companies packaged up CPUs and microcontrollers so it was cheap and easy to put them everywhere. One great example of that is electronic fuel injection: those systems replaced a clunky mechanical control system for a car engine with a computer, sensors, and a electro-mechanical devices. It improved fuel economy and reduced tail-pipe emissions, plus it made cars more reliable. That was a huge improvement. The same sort of thing happened in hundreds of other applications. The real return on investment in the CPU phase was large.

Phase two was the networking era which was in the 90s til today. In that era we got the internet, and data centers, and wireless networks, etc... In that era the newer tech replaced and cannibalized older methods of moving information around. The internet replaced newspapers, radio, TV for example. The real return on investment is much lower than phase one, and the "real world", quality of life improvements are murkier. Social media for example, is probably a net negative.

Phase three is the datacenter AI era. I think the tech industry believes "AI" models are like CPUs in Phase one, it's a universal tool. However, unlike a CPU that consumes a few watts of power to operate, some AI model might take kilowatts to operate to do something that's kind of useless. The tech industry wants to proliferate the AI models, but there's not enough resources to do it.

Unfortunately, as each phase of the tech industry unfolded there's been a corresponding move by governments and similar institutions toward an autocratic model in the western world. A corporation or new technology doesn't really have to provide a real benefit to customers or anyone, it just enacts a plan. The government will put taxpayers and ratepayers on the hook to shift and build resources for the tech industry.

There will be a huge real loss in quality of life, purchasing power of the dollar, autonomy, etc... to build a bunch of shitty datacenters to do nonsense badly.