Join 📚 Kevin's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Kevin's read, .
[Q3] ONCE SOLD BY THE GIRL SCOUTS UNDER THE NAME “SAVANNAH SMILES,” **THIS LEMON COOKIE** PICTURED ABOVE SOUNDS LIKE IT’S MORE REFRESHING THAN OTHERS
ZINGER
Correct answers
COOLER
Unnamed Document
Google Docs
The Tralfamadorians, according to Salo, manufactured each other.
No one knew for certain how the first machine had come into being.
The legend was this: Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines.
They weren’t dependable.
They weren’t efficient.
They weren’t predictable.
They weren’t durable.
And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.
These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was.
And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.
And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it.
This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes.
But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough.
So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be.
The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else.
And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying.
So they turned that job over to the machines, too.
And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."
The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut
You likely know what this means
even if you don’t know it in those words.
The hype cycle, as defined by Gartner, [which tracks it](https://www.gartner.com/en/chat/gartner-hype-cycle),
is that series of cyclical events
that happens around nearly all emerging technologies:
the breakthrough,
the “peak of inflated expectations,”
the disillusionment,
the period of actual serviceable uses of the tech,
and the time when it’s adopted.
That pinnacle is the groan time,
the moment Justin Bieber drops more than $1 million
on an NFT.
The moment Facebook buys Oculus.
The moment the bodega starts taking bitcoin
and you know you’ll never be able to escape this thing,
whatever it is.
This Is the Worst Part of the AI Hype Cycle
Angela Watercutter
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise