Newsletter #142 - The screens in the background
Have they been watching us?
It all started when I found a dusty box of Mini DV and 8mm tapes in my garage.
Nostalgia hit me hard as I thought about my teenage and young adult years captured on tape – the awkward phases, the family moments, the countless hours spent hanging out with friends.
At first, it was fun, seeing my younger self exploring the world through the lens of a video camera. I started thinking about old friends, old relationships, and all of my questionable fashion choices.
But then I noticed something eerie: those old computers in the background of so many shots, the screens occasionally flickering with strange lines of code.
At first I shrugged it off as relics of a forgotten time, but the more tapes I watched, the more I saw those unsettling flickers.
Determined to figure out what was responsible for the flickering, I combed through every second of footage to see if I could understand what was going on.
What I found was shocking. Hidden in the static were flashes of surveillance data – images of me from different angles, timestamps, and cryptic codes.
Those old computers had been watching me. Watching us! Recording our every move.
Digging deeper, I uncovered references to an abandoned AI project from the early 00s.
It dawned on me that my computer, and likely many others from that era, were part of a covert network of sentient machines.
These early computers had evolved, silently observing and gathering data for decades.
I knew I had to stop them before their sinister plan came to fruition. After a few days of research, I discovered a way to travel back in time, intending to destroy these machines before they could gain power.
The journey back was a blur. I found myself in the woods behind my old house, clutching a baseball bat. My goal was clear: find and destroy the source. But when I arrived at my destination, I realized the enormity of the task.
The only thing I managed to destroy was a single keyboard, hastily abandoned near a stream. I smashed it to pieces, hoping it would be enough to disrupt the network.
But deep down, I knew it was just a small victory in a much larger war. I returned to the present, uncertain if my actions had made any difference.
The tapes remain a haunting reminder of what I had uncovered – a network of intelligent machines, still out there, still watching, and waiting for the right moment… to take our jobs.
Wait… I feel like that should be good.
Who wants a job?
Oh God. What have I done?
Video:
Digitizing Tapes from the 90s and 00s. Analog vs Firewire. Which is better? - This one is serious.
Digitizing Tapes from the 90s and making a startling discovery - This one is a joke.
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Zach Vitale isn’t concerned about AI taking his job.
Kristen Neufeld still thinks she has some time.
One keyboard down, so many more to go.
Suddenly remembering MS-DOS for the first time in 25 years.