The arc of technology is ever forward — smaller, faster, cheaper. Ephemeralization. That’s the word Bucky Fuller coined to describe the phenomenon of technologically increasing productivity.
I know I’ve written about Fuller a few times. 
There is no doubt he was a genius and one of the key visionaries of the unfolding technology-driven metamorphosis of humanity. This post and recursive link is dedicated to Fuller: BLOG EX MACHINA.
As you probably know the rate of innovation and advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) has increased significantly in recent years. My own writings on the subject can be found in the “Let Us Reason Together” series on this website (part 1, part 2, part 3). So for this particular entry I thought I’d invite a few NLP models to weigh in with their own ideas on technologically increasing productivity.
The idea here is simple: Test a few online text completion models with the same prompt and compare the results. The ‘prompt’ in this case is the first paragraph of this blog post. Using those words to seed to models, leaving all other configurable settings at their default values, below please find the results.
From Sassbook, one of several sites that actually sells “Intelligent software applications,” some of which would ostensibly automate and create written content:
The arc of technology is ever forward -- smaller, faster, cheaper. Ephemeralization. That's the word Bucky Fuller coined to describe the phenomenon of technologically increasing productivity. No longer are you stuck in what the job market is telling you to go. You can now go where your work is. Work wherever you like. And as the article points out, you don't need to have a degree to be a good team player or a leader. If you are a team leader, go to work and be great. Because that's what your skills are really all about. They are about communication, management, leadership, teamwork, being a team. Being a great team member means being great at everything you do. Now, if you want to lead your team and work from your home office, good luck. Don't come to us to complain. -Bucky
Hmmmm. Given the seed paragraph I’m not sure if their “state of the art” AI article writing software actually grokked the direction or magnitude of the thought vector in question. Sassbook doesn’t list the model type or versions in use — just “state of the art artificial intelligence technologies.” But for a mere $50 per month for the full blown set of applications and features, their words ex machina may very well provide value in some quarters.
By contract, EleutherAI, a site hosting a model called GPT-J-6B, gives us this:
The arc of technology is ever forward -- smaller, faster, cheaper. Ephemeralization. That's the word Bucky Fuller coined to describe the phenomenon of technologically increasing productivity. The result is a culture of abundance where we are no longer constrained by scarcity. As a result, we have a lot of extra time to consume stuff.
The only problem is that most people aren't as productive as we are -- they are stuck in jobs that are not fulfilling. Because we don't have the free time to enjoy the benefits of our productivity, we are growing increasingly unhappy with our lives. There is a desperate need for a solution. That's where the sharing economy comes in. It is an ideology that encourages us to share our time and resources with people who need it.
Now this is getting interesting. Both sites took a turn in a different direction from the initial seed. Sassbook’s engine decided to drift into work-from-home matters, whereas EleutherAI’s model took productivity increases as the lead into the sharing economy. Both of those topics might have been implied by the idea of increasing rates of productivity. But neither, strictly speaking, stayed on topic.
Of the online models I tested the demo from Adam King‘s site InferKit.com was the most awesome.
The arc of technology is ever forward -- smaller, faster, cheaper. Ephemeralization. That's the word Bucky Fuller coined to describe the phenomenon of technologically increasing productivity. Fuller referred to it as the "destructive efficiency." In the 50s, we were using the term "evolution." By the 70s, "software." And by the 80s, "information technology." As we've gotten more connected, we've gotten less connected.
(PRNewsfoto/Continental Interactive)
But let's go back to Ephemeralization. What exactly does that mean? How is it different than the Ethernet cable that connects your phone to your computer? How is it different than the iPhone, in which you're connecting one device to the other, with an opening in the middle, like a Skype window? It's more than that. It's more than plug and play, in which you plug something in and a few minutes later, it's connected.
Ephemeralization involves the ephemeralization of the actual hardware itself. That's the ephemerality of time itself. One second, the information is here. The next, it's gone. Ephemeralization is a state in which you don't use the material, but the information.
Adam’s model stayed very much on topic, expanded on the topic and actually quoted Fuller in the process. Although the magic is also “state of the art,” whatever that might mean in this era of runaway innovation, the results speak for themselves. Adam’s site does reference Transformers, which one might infer. For my money, the InferKit premium service at $60 per month is far and away the best choice if blog ex machina is something you’d like to engage.
Alas I remained old school. I shall continue to pen these epistles, fingers pressing keys, until my own personal Upload twin is hatched.
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