AI is not and cannot be search. Search is dead and has been for a few years now. Search has seemingly been subsumed into the LLM monster, considering how "fuzzy" queries have become (probably because they're not hitting the search algorithm without being massaged by "something else"). Significant portions of the web have been purged from Google's index, which means that neither Gemini nor Search can present those pages to users.
When people say "search is dead", I feel like you and I live on different planets.
If I have an idea of what I want, Google search works great. On the rare occasion I don't know the specific thing I'm looking for, Gemini points the way.
It had never ever been easier for me to find what I'm looking for on the internet, since 1993-1994.
I do wonder how much browser, location, and language plays into this.
I believed these sorts of statements a few years ago, but not anymore. Results were hit-and-miss enough to give the benefit-of-the-doubt. They're now so bad that I assume bad faith, either on the part of the speaker or Google.
It's also wrong to think that company performance has anything to do with stock prices nowadays, anyway. Look at Oracle, supposedly an established company with a predictable runway for future earnings, jumping 40% (40%!) and then shedding that jump over the following months.
Or... wait for it... Gamestop. Not just what happened in 2021. What happened in 2024. What's happening now. (Compare its market cap to its cash, and then how it compares to competitors, and then price-to-earnings, and then again to competitors).
Look at the market as-a-whole. Falling earnings, stock prices going up.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that iRobot was simply just marked for death. Any company not named Apple that is manufacturing in China, Wall Street has decided that they're going to face headwinds from IP theft and competitors backed by the full faith and force of the Chinese Communist Party, and they get busy squeezing every ounce of value out, potential be damned (because, as far as traders and shareholders are concerned, such companies already are).
Ironically, China has also proven that you can't easily import expertise. At best, you can "steal" it over a long period of being the current industrial center's gopher.
Amazon, Netflix, et al. flew domestic crews to Europe to train their crews how to work. This wasn't unusual, because a lot of movies filmed on-location overseas. Nobody questions that. Par for the course.
Except they trained local crews how to do everything - they trained their replacements in person. And now there are no US domestic crew flights to Europe and Asia.
The logical conclusion of the scenario being floated here is that if enough workers resist their own exploitation, the "job creators" will take their capital and go... somewhere. And then there will be no jobs.
(Obviously I'm being facetious. There will, of course, be jobs. And also, a lot of capital owners sitting on the sidelines, debt payments incoming with no income stream.)
>Mastroianni’s explanation is that the weirdos and freaks who actually move culture forward with new music and books and movies and genres of art have disappeared, potentially because life is just so comfortable and high-quality now that it nudges people against risk-taking.
Feels like it's the opposite. Things are so precarious that risk-taking becomes out-of-the-question.
There's been a cultural de-emphasis on risk-taking, too. Millennials went to college not because it was seen as a risky bet on gaining the skills and knowledge to change the world, but because it was supposed to be a reliable way to earn lucrative credentials. Now that we know college actually is quite risky, what do Zoomers do? Stop attending.
An interesting angle: look at the closure and consolidation in the thrill-seeking industry (theme parks, extreme sports, etc.). Those were a staple of the American recreation diet as a reflection and reinforcement of our penchant for seeking the novel and scary and visceral. Regional facilities are closing, and what's left are too expensive for most families to go to. A lot of Americans are being taught that risk isn't for them.
On the other hand, you do have the rise of sports betting... So maybe we're still being sold a kind of risk, but only the safe, addictive kind that always makes the house money.
This is a good rundown of (the history of) the appeal, particularly to male viewers. I hesitate to call the melodrama "incidental", though, as the female viewers it drew in were the ones who saved the franchise (per Tomino) when it initially failed to take off. The creators recognized where their bread was being buttered, which is why so many series in the franchise (including the ones most grounded in some semblance of mechanical and military knowledge) end up centering around either love stories or a troupe of unusually handsome young men.
That was half the equation; the other half being the transition from toy-based to model-based merchandising, as you said, which drew back in the male fans.
The Expanse has been called, "The closest thing that we're going to get to a live-action Gundam series," in the past. And it's certainly better in a lot of ways. You do have to thank Gundam (and Alien) for dragging us out of the John Carter Valley (which OG Star Trek certainly fell into quite often).
It's over. Sorry.
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