On September 4th, 2024, I published my 100th issue of Tech Time by Tim. In that newsletter, I excitedly wrote the following:
“Welcome to Tech Time By Tim #100. As befits such a milestone, this is by far the lengthiest, most jam-packed issue of the newsletter to date!”
In fact, it was so long and jam-packed that Substack buckled under the weight, and LinkedIn choked on just a part of it. LinkedIn didn’t even try. The Year That Was (TYTW) would be EVEN BIGGER than that unless I made some changes. And so I did!
This year’s issue of the TYTW is much more streamlined and robust. This also represents the year’s efforts to make my content more concise, intuitive, and accessible for everyone. Speaking of everyone, I started contributing to two more newsletters this year. One is still being internally tested, the other is a design newsletter that you can find here.
The name of said design newsletter is still subject to change, but it’s called SuperCurrents at the time of writing. Why is it still subject to change? Well, because we also finalized a merger this year into the new technology and brand experience company Hypersolid.
As for personal milestones this year, aside from a touching celebration at the office for my 100th issue milestone, the outpouring of appreciation and support I received from readers also continues to warm my heart. It is both emotionally uplifting, and extremely helpful in keeping my heating costs down for the winter.
Table Of Contents
For your convenience, I’ve included a table of contents here, right at the top. See what items interest you and feel free to read this special edition of the newsletter however you want. Whether you binge it in one go or take your (tech) time with it over multiple sessions, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
2024 At A Glance
A quick relatively robust overview of the general ‘vibe’ and flow of events over the course of 2024. I recommend starting here in general, but this section is especially useful for those short on time but eager to know my general sentiments for the year.
SuperCurrents Sample – The Algorithmic Aesthetic
This sample is comprised of the final chapters and conclusion of my Algorithmic Aesthetic essay from SuperCurrents. I’m quite proud of the entire essay still, but this last part best encapsulates 2024. It also conveniently lets me keep the wordcount nice and robust.
I’ve adapted it slightly to improve readability in this trimmed down form, as well as adding some content based off of my knowledge as of November. The item was originally from August. Do give the full version a read if it piques your curiosity. I still feel like ‘The Algorithmic Aesthetic’ best conveys where we’ve come from, presently are, and where we’re headed with regards to our relationship with technology.
Audiovisuals
I get it, not everyone likes written content. And for those people, I’ve opted to embed some of my favourite podcast and video content from the past year. It’s hard to find really novel and thought provoking stuff in an endless expanse of options, so hopefully this carefully curated list has something that will inspire and inform the way my own newsletter (hopefully!) does.
I’ve added some brief commentary for each item outlining why I think each choice is cool and worth your time. Also, since you won’t be having any Tech Time for some weeks, I thought I’d at least leave you with more than enough content to bridge the gap!
The year 2024 at a glance
Since I overhauled my ‘At A Glance’ for last year, I thought why not use this format for ‘The Year That Was’ as well? I felt confident enough to do so after receiving a great deal of wonderful feedback about the ease of reference and improved overall accessibility of this year’s newsletter offerings.
So rather than a greatest hits approach, I decided to make an essay. I hereby present to you my sentiments on 2024…At A Glance!
2024 was a really weird and contradictory year. On the one hand, many disasters both natural and man made happened. We had the solo-dev backs carrying the Open Source software world on their finally break. We had open corporate warfare between the biggest titans of practically every industry.
We had so much war in 2024. Both military ground wars, cyber wars, a frankly absurd amount of corporate warfare. And well, I guess with all of that violence everywhere it was inevitable that the delicate bubble of AI as a product would burst.
The sunk cost fallacy is a hell of a drug though, so investors doubled down. They also bought literally and proverbial tons of gold, and why is crypto still around? For the love of… Yes, things were quite heated all around, including on our thermometers. There were record temperatures, record storms, droughts, floods, you name it.
And oh yeah, some of the largest cyber security incidents in history. A few got prevented, a few spread across the entire world like digital oil spills that promptly caught fire. Took months to put the worst ones out. Trade wars, we had trade wars! You get a trade war, you get a trade war, everyone’s at trade war! That…sounds pretty apocalyptic doesn’t it? Well yeah, but did you know that the appeal of apocalyptic fiction isn’t actually everyone dying? It’s actually about how brightly and beautifully the human spirit shines when contrasted against the dark clouds of adversity looming overhead.
This was also the case for 2024. And that’s why it was such a weird and contradictory year. One of the best words I can find for our previous pre-apocalyptic state of affairs would be ‘Indolence.’ For those not as comfortable with academic English. I’ll explain the term real quick:
Indolence results from the luxury position of being so safe and secure that you no longer have to make an effort to get what you want. It means that there’s no reason to risk failure, because your continued success is assured through simple momentum. Keep going the way you are going, and you’ll won’t have to engage with any hard, scary, or annoying things.
That was a few years ago, this is now. More and more people are waking up from their indolence induced stupor to the harsh, painful reality that we’ve made quite a mess of things as a society. There’s still plenty lost in the sweet dream of infinite growth and zero accountability, but you only really need like 25% of a population to enact meaningful change. So I like our odds. Our odds of going “Apocolypse Now Wait a Damn Minute.”
We may be forced to fight for survival again, bot literally and figuratively based on where we are and how high up the societal ladder we live. But it’s a fight we can win. And people feel that they believe that. More and more members of the public see the latest buzzy product refresh and go “well that’s a bit rubbish isn’t it? I think I’ll skip my hardware refresh this year.”
More and more policy makers are making at times clumsy, but earnest efforts to truly protect people from the more egregious shenanigans of certain large entities. Europe has been the most pronounced, but the efforts of US, Chinese, Indian, and other regulators around the world shouldn’t be disregarded either.
...But I'm Proud of you all
The motivating ideologies and priorities may be suspect at times, but there’s a passion and desire for positive change again. The core intent of ‘we want to protect ourselves and our loved ones from tech going awry’ is genuine. It’s been a running joke for decades how hollow slogans like “don’t be evil” ring when the rubber meets the climate change melted road.
But now people are asking ‘What would and would not constitute evil? How would we ensure the evil remains properly contained under such circumstances? If we know what we consider the threshold, how do we meaningfully implement effective checks and balances against evil?’
In other good news, there were almost as many promising new medical developments as there were wars. There’s both a more practical timeline element to this, but also a philosophical shift towards treating causes instead of just monetizing symptoms.
Even if they hurt, more and more of us are prepared to undergo the necessary procedures. I call this cynical optimism. The world may be a bit buggered and on fire, but at least this makes more people wonder whether it might be a good idea to go and put that fire out. Even if they might not want to, what matters is that a critical mass of people do the right thing.
What matters is that a critical mass of people proactively participate in deciding what is and isn’t right. Oh hey look that’s how democracy is supposed to work isn’t it? Some of us may need a little more time than others, but don’t worry US, I still believe in you as well.
The key takeaway from 2024 at a glance then is that yeah, a ton of really dark, really bad things happen and continue to happen. But more and more of us have stopped pretending they don’t. More and more of us have started divesting from the idea that so many things just aren’t ‘our’ problem. They are our problem which means we also have the power to solve them. And I believe that 2025 will be quite a rocky road still, but at least one headed towards a better future for us all.
Supercurrents sample
The Algorithmic Aesthetic
The Age Of Airspace
Welcome To Airspace
In a 2016 article for The Verge, Kyle Chayka coins the term ‘airspace’ to describe the homogenisation of taste brought on by a sense of aesthetics cultivated and reinforced by the algorithms constantly shaping what people see and engage with.…
Over the course of the 2010’s algorithmic aesthetics such as airspace went beyond their dominion of all facets of digital life, they also began majorly impacting and reshaping our material world. Or to put it another way, “the places we go and how we behave in areas of our lives that didn’t heretofore seem so digital.” (Chayka, 2016).
Chayka exemplifies this by charting the rise of the housing rental service Airbnb.
Airspace Example by Chayka, 2016
Chayka defined airspace as a phenomenon where “as an affluent, self-selecting group of people move through spaces linked by technology, particular sensibilities spread, and these small pockets of geography grow to resemble one another.” (Chayka, 2016).
The most important characteristic of airspace is that it overcame socio-cultural barriers which had heretofore separated the world’s different cultures. You could go anywhere in the world now and find the same identical coffee shop or rental apartment.
The (A)Iconicity Of The Sparkle ✨ emoji
How AI Stole the ✨Sparkles ✨ Emoji
It is under these circumstances, that AI companies began using the sparkle emoji as a unified visual signifier of AI features and functionality in late 2023. Between 2016 and 2022, people had started to gradually grow frustrated and apprehensive towards social media, craving the return of a sense of control and agency within their digital lives. The ideal amongst some designers and users became “features should be within easy reach when the user wants them, but never forced upon them.”
The sparkle ✨ emoji is there in the modern UI to tempt users to engage with the developer’s AI functionalities whilst at the same time ensuring that users feel it is their choice to do so. It promises AI that’s fun, magical, and innovative, rather than invasive, obtuse, and inconvenient.
But why this emoji, of the hundreds of other potential choices that could have been made? Tech Journalist David Imel traces the initial rise to prominence for the sparkle ✨ emoji to 2021, showing its relative popularity compared to the other most used emoji at the time via an infographic:
Infographic about the sparkle ✨ emoji ’s rise to prominence, Imel, 2024
Digging deeper, he then traces the origins of the sparkle ✨ emoji back to the first set of 176 emoji created in 1997 by Shigetaka Kurita, for NTT DoCoMo. Kurita needed to make every pixel count on the cramped, low resolution flip phone screens he had to work with at the time. As he notes to Imel in an interview, the name ‘emoji’ arose from that desire to express ‘electronic emotions’ which is how we got the constituent parts ‘e’ and ‘moji.’
Kurita explains that he used Japanese Manga as inspiration. “There is already a culture of using symbols to represent emotion in Japan, so we chose emotions that are often represented.” (Kurita to Imel, 2023) Whilst Kurita is initially surprised when Imel explains to him how the sparkle ✨ emoji has been co-opted by western AI companies, rather than taking offence, Kurita is instead amused.
Memes, The DNA of Design!
He then goes on to answer that earlier ‘but why?’ question for us. It would have been too hard for AI companies to make a brand new icon stick because it has no inherent meaning attached to it, no socio-cultural context for users to intuitively grasp a hold of. If a design isn’t comfortable or intuitive enough, users won’t accept it.
In Kurita ’s own words, the “role of emoji is to represent preexisting things, making new emoji for AI might just feel like a corporate Logo.” (Kurita to Imel, 2023) Taking the sparkle ✨ emoji instead of making something from scratch saves not just one company, but all of them from having to reinvent the proverbial wheel. Everyone gets to benefit from the trained association amongst users.
This process of AI companies essentially taking the existing meaning and context of the sparkle ✨ emoji and changing it into something new is called ‘memetic mutation.’ Memetic mutation basically applies Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to memes, meaning they adapt and evolve over time to better adapt to their environment.
Memes in this case likely don’t mean what you think they do though! Believe it or not, the original definition of ‘meme’ was first conceptualised by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
Dawkins was rather obtuse about it, but later interpretations saw memes as living, evolving structures akin to ideological viruses or DNA. Incidentally, that’s also how we got hilariously unhinged yet technically accurate pop-culture gems such as ‘memes! The DNA of the soul!’
It’s a bit confusing, but this duel role as virus and DNA is how the original version of the meme functioned. Like DNA it encodes and proliferates data. Like a virus, a meme is contagious. It can spread via ideas, behaviours, and styles which people imitate from one another.
Thanks to the iconic nature and recognisability of this emoji, that aesthetic can reach every person, from every culture, via intuitive understanding built up over years of collective context and meaning.
So, to conclude, ‘AI is a meme, and the sparkle ✨ emoji has become the vector through which it spreads across socio-cultural divides.’ Becoming sparkly is the most recent mutation of the algorithmic aesthetic. It will most certainly not be the last.
For now though, the 4 major mutations we discussed are the Xerox Start, Infinite Scroll, Airspace, and most recently, native AI integration into the smartphone. We’re still in the middle of that 4th one now. As I do some November updates to this original essay from August, all that’s really changed is that the mobile apps are more robust. There’s some desktop apps to bridge the gaps between AI assistants and deeper ecosystem integration, but we’ve still got a ways to go.
Mutations Of The Algorithmic Aesthetic, 2024
As we were slowly but surely all individually steered towards the same stylistic choices resistance to this homogeneity gradually rose as well. I believe a great deal of the controversies around AI at present are a part of this still ongoing reckoning with our desires for uniformity on the one hand, and our craving for self-expression and individuality on the other hand.
As a result, there’s an inherent duality to the ‘AI sparkle’ ✨ emoji. It is meant to be universally recognisable and intuitive, yet the current design vanguard are each attempting to find their own way to preserve what Imel calls the “‘look over here’ and a ‘little bit of magic’”(Imel, 2023) effect which made this particular emoji so appealing for companies to use in the first place.
You can see that in the way that Apple is promoting their loosely ChatGPT adjacent Apple Intelligence log, the way Gemini’s mobile app is a singular more pronounced star, and how Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity’s apps reflect more familiar productivity iconography instead.
Practically speaking, AI is a burger menu for the modern age. Whatever features you want or need, you can have AI provide them, but you must never mistake them for your entire product. AI is unironically a bit of a meme at this point.
And it’s also another mutation of our shared algorithmic aesthetic. Algorithms need design, they need to be presented in a way that makes sense to users and appeals to their sensibilities. What will those sensibilities be? A taste for hamburger menus, an infinite scroll, one cozy room that follows you across the world, or perhaps…something we’ve never seen before? I’m excited to find out.
Audiovisuals
Comfy Viewing Installation Guide:
Please, undertake the following steps before starting on this list. This list is for my less tech savvy readers. We’re making major pushes for greater accessibility at Hypersolid, and this is my digital accessibility tutorial.
It is for people that want to watch stuff in peace without an obnoxious 400% volume ad blowing their head off every minute or so with similarly excessive visual stimuli that may or may not trigger an epileptic fit.
This guide not only works on Windows and MacOS, it also works on Android phones. So if you prefer listening, you can turn your screen off or walk away and enjoy (almost) each video as if it were a podcast or audiobook.
If you’re an iOS user well…, sorry. Apple doesn’t like it when people block ads because it also makes money from those. All browsers on iOS are forced to use Apple’s tools, and those tools do not support uBlock origin. If you wanted to know where Google got the idea to kill plugins through incompatibility from, here’s the smoking gun.
Advanced readers can skip straight past to my recommendation list. Anyways, the tutorial:
- Download Firefox and immediately open the settings menu that can be found in the upper right corner’s hamburger menu (three lines below each other). The express purpose of this guide is to stop your YouTube experience from being audiovisual hell on earth. If Firefox asks you to make it the default browser and you don’t want to, that’s perfectly fine. You can refuse.
- Go to the little hourglass that says search and change your default search from Google to Duck Duck Go. The name is stupid, and the functionality isn’t the best. But at least your email inbox won’t be full of ads about random bullshit you likely didn’t even search for. Those mails are because Google assumes a whole lot in the background when you let it do whatever it wants with you and your data. If we were to include a whole detour to cover Google account data hygiene this would be an entire newsletter unto itself, so that’ll just have to be what it is for now.
- Navigate to the privacy & security tab next, this is the little lock icon on the left side menu within settings. Scroll until you see the options to turn on ‘tell web sites not to sell or share my data’ and ‘send websites ‘Do Not Track’ requests. If they are already checked, yay! These are important to prevent YouTube from figuring out how to get around uBlock by profiling you via other avenues.
- Near the very bottom of this same menu you’ll find Firefox data collection and use. Uncheck Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla and then in the Web Site Advertising Preferences directly below, you will uncheck Allow web sites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement. There is no such thing as ‘privacy preserving’ ad measurement. Targeting you as precisely as possible is the entire point of surveillance advertising. Don’t let anyone do that.
- At the left bottom of the screen is a small jigsaw puzzle piece. It has Extensions & Themes written next to it. That’s where we’re going next.
- You will install the following extensions: uBlock Origin, Enhancer for YouTube, and SponsorBlock for YouTube.
- Get your favourite snack, a nice beverage, and settle into your favourite seat.
- Enjoy and marvel at the glorious miracle of engineering and human creative expression that is ‘YouTube without AdTech’s constant assault on your senses and sensibilities.’
The Video List:
I’ve put this list in alphabetical order, not in order of preference. All of these are well worth your time, so pick whatever strikes your fancy.
Asianometry:
Detailed yet accessible explanations of some of the most important technological developments and historical context. Mostly focused on Asia, but not always.
- Why brain-like computers are hard LINK
- How optical fibre connected the world LINK
- The birth of Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry LINK
- The Birth of SQL & The Relational Database LINK
- ASML’s High-NA Lithography: A 2024 Update LINK
- The Transistor That Won The World LINK
- The First Neural Networks LINK
- The Hazardous Life Of An Undersea Cable LINK
- Why Wafer Bonding Is The Future LINK
Bobby Fingers:
Have you ever watched a man painstakingly recreate a billionaire’s face as a boat? No? Would you like to…?
- Jeff Bezos Rowing Boat (audio only not recommended) LINK
Code Monkey:
A very capable and hardworking maker of in-depth Unity tutorials. His recently released C# course also happens to be a great reference point for those trying to understand certain elements of this coding language.
- Free nearly 13 hour long C# Video Course LINK
Coffeezilla:
An investigative journalist that goes after fraud cases in the tech industry. People who tried to stop him from doing this have historically regretted the attempt.
ContraPoints:
A maker of highly theatrical video essays on pop-culture, sociology, and camp. The Witch Trials of JK Rowling specifically focuses on the phenomenon of whether it is morally right or wrong to enjoy media created by problematic figures.
- The Witch Trials of JK Rowling LINK
Daryl Talks Games:
A psychology based approach to game analyses. Not only are they well structured and put together, they’re also quite educational.
- Why Your Body Rejects Popular Games LINK
- Video Game Megastructures That Make You Feel Temporary LINK
Digital Foundry:
This channel focuses on highly detailed technical analyses of gaming software and hardware. For this year, I specifically chose their series of tests of Apple hardware, which now has the power necessary to run high-end games and emulators on mobile devices with few compromises.
- Mobile Gaming Face-Off: Nintendo Switch vs Apple iPhone 15 Pro LINK
- Retro Emulation on iPhone/iOS Tested: The Floodgates Have Opened LINK
- iPad Pro: Apple M4 Review Can It Handle Triple-A Games? LINK
- Bazzite Steam OS For Windows Handhelds – IS It A Gamechanger? LINK
Eurothug4000:
A content creator that focuses on covering obscure or niche horror games. She’s very good at her chosen niche and very comprehensive without
Jay The Author:
Actually a perfect example of the central thesis of 2024. That things can be very dire, and that it might seem as if the darkness will swallow you now more than ever…but that adversity also fosters a greater appreciation for beauty and renewed drive to meaningfully connect with other people. Jay’s short but sweet video about his ‘Dear Stranger’ project is also a preciously rare example of tasteful and well considered product placement. It’s possible people!
- The Dear Stranger Project LINK
Fireship:
Sassy nerd explains quickly and accessibly what he thinks about some of the most prominent nerd events of the year. I’ve picked his coverage of AI and cybersecurity events in particular because he excels at making complex topics easy to get a basic understanding of.
- Intel CUDA in 100 Seconds LINK
- The .XZ Hack LINK
- Microsoft Total Recall LINK
- Lol Apple Intelligence Is Dumb LINK
- Real Mean Test In Production (Please Don’t) LINK
- Oh Hai Marc LINK
- Claude Has Taken Control Of My Computer LINK
- D-LINK Nuked LINK
Jacob Geller:
Does long-form philosophical analyses of video games. Geller’s style is to slowly but patiently lay out his arguments and build upon them over the course of the video. This makes it possible to easily follow his complex chains of thought without feeling overwhelmed.
- Three Specific Kinds Of Terror LINK
- Pinocchio Is A Story About Art And God LINK
- Games That Hide Their Own Sequels LINK
JerryRigEverything:
Breaks expensive stuff so you can see just how it’s made and just how much effort companies put into ensuring you can’t repair your own property.
Particularly noteworthy this year were his breakdown of the S24 Ultra, Vision Pro… and literally shooting a car with an anti-materiel rifle just to see if it was truly bulletproof or not.
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra – Things Will Never Be The Same LINK
- Be Gentle With the Apple Vision Pro – ITS PLASTIC! LINK
- Is The Cybertruck Actually Bulletproof? LINK
Moon Channel:
An eloquent lawyer explains complex legal and societal frameworks and power relations. Particular highlights this year was explaining the Korean culture wars, how and why Nintendo killed Switch Emulator Yuzu, and the proxy war between Nintendo and Sony via viral summer hit Palworld.
- Gacha Games Gender War Pt 1 LINK
- Gacha Games Gender War Pt 2 LINK
- A Yuzu Post-Mortem LINK
- It’s A Palworld After All! A Lawyer Explains Nintendo v. Palworld LINK
NeverKnowsBest:
Hey kid, wanna learn some history? Because this channel gives detailed chronological overviews of the development of video game genres.
- The Entire History Of RPG’s LINK
- Baldur’s Gate 3 – An In-depth Critique LINK
- The Entire History of Japanese RPG’s LINK
Noah Caldwell-Gervais:
Noah Caldwell-Gervais is kind of like a media surgeon, slowly and methodically dissecting and analysing mostly video game franchises. He breaks them down into smaller and smaller parts until the core is revealed. This dissection process is equal parts informative and entertaining.
- How Many Clicks Does It Take To Get To The Centre Of Diablo? LINK
Super Eyepatch Wolf:
Irish Man with imposter syndrome spirals into madness about a constantly changing cavalcade of hyper fixations. I’m not Irish, but the rest are pretty relatable for me. Very high production values and a gripping narrative voice set Super Eyepatch Wolf apart in the crowded space of general pop-culture video essays.
- The Bizarre World Of Fake Video Games LINK
- Social Anxiety Horror LINK
- The Complete Implosion Of Riverdale LINK
The Cinema Cartography:
A more academic channel focusing on the minutia of cinematography. Not for the academically faint of heart, but extremely rewarding for the patient and curious.
- Video Games Deserve Better LINK
- The Golden Age Of Japanese Cinema LINK
- The Aesthetics of Love LINK
- The Aesthetic of Violence (don’t watch with kids or a weak stomach) LINK
The Verge:
This was supposed to be a somewhat clickbaity video to capitalise in the massive hype surrounding the Vision Pro. Instead it ended up being one of the most ringing indictments against the loneliness epidemic brought on by hyper-consumerism.
- The Apple Vision Pro Review LINK
VaatiVidya:
One of the best video game lore hunters gives a 6.5 hour long, excruciatingly detailed breakdown on one of the best pieces of anti-war media in years. Particularly relevant in the age of advanced drone warfare.
- Armored Lore The Entire Story of Armored Core 6 (buy and play this first!) LINK
One more thing
I find myself in the convenient position of wishing Dutch readers a happy Sinterklaas, every reader a happy and peaceful December, and I very much look forward to what the new year will bring us.
As noted last week, I may publish the occasional little ‘Timpulsive’ experiment on Substack, but the mainline Tech Time by Tim newsletter will return in 2025 with my ‘The Year That Will Be’ special edition.
Tim Groot, Tech Time by Tim author
