Everything Is Television(derekthompson.org)
derekthompson.org
Everything Is Television
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-everything-became-television
3 comments
I think humans are information-eaters, basically. Short-form video is a highly efficient way to consume information.
This reinforces a big question for me about the AI bubble which is - is there actual growth here? If it’s television, then it’s just pulling eyes and ad dollars from existing - television.
Like the phone made it so you could watch television on the bus, and made ad target more granular. Does AI grow that pot? Or just reallocate existing attention/$. AI video generation feels like a feature of Tik Tok, not a competitor.
ChatGPT grows eyeballs by expanding the amount of time spent on tools during work hours. Coding agents are in addition to time spent with an IDE. But other consumer purposes?
Like the phone made it so you could watch television on the bus, and made ad target more granular. Does AI grow that pot? Or just reallocate existing attention/$. AI video generation feels like a feature of Tik Tok, not a competitor.
ChatGPT grows eyeballs by expanding the amount of time spent on tools during work hours. Coding agents are in addition to time spent with an IDE. But other consumer purposes?
So far, video generation amounts to a cheaper way to produce television.