Pessimists Archive Newsletter | Substack

The Inspiration for Dune's Butlerian Jidhad

Pessimists Archive

Mar 9

Hear Article Reading: DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES Listen now (10 min) | 1863 Letter to an Editor from Samuel Butler

Pessimists Archive

Mar 9

Welcome to REDUNDANT, a project by Pessimists Archive exploring the history of fears about technological unemployment. We will be publishing 10 posts for the last 10 decades exploring fears of automation. This introductory post gives a short - but by no means comprehensive …

Pessimists Archive

and

Mar 22

Typewritten love letters were called the most “cold-blooded, mechanical, unromantic production imaginable"

Pessimists Archive

Feb 14

📏 Breaking the Rules Concern about Chat-GPT kicked off the year with NYC School District blocking it on school computers. This brought to mind protests…

Jan 15

The article "The Typewriter in Social Correspondence" published in 1898, argues that the use of typewriters for personal correspondence will become more…

Jan 13

This article - written in 1984 - discusses the decline in popularity of the slide rule and its replacement by electronic calculators and computers. The…

Jan 8

Banning Smartphones, Social Media and AI Like ChatGPT is Stupid

Jan 5

190 years ago a guy had a nightmare about the 21st Century

Jan 3

Virtues of today - like reading books and cycling - were considered vices in the past.

Dec 31, 2022

A recent episode of the Ezra Klein Show about our relationship to time mentioned an ancient quote lamenting sun dials. After some Googling, we found it…

Dec 13, 2022

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Sep 29, 2022

Pessimists Archive Newsletter

Fears about old things when they were new

Pessimists Archive Newsletter

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