Signal to Noise Report
Money Dysmorphia, Toxic Waste, Electricity shortages, Attention Loss... and more headlines from the bright, unnerving world of today.
The Signal to Noise Report collects headlines to illustrate humanity’s move into what is beginning to resemble a hybrid species: The Jetsons meets Blade Runner. The idea being that we have a proclivity to accept (with glee) whatever new techno gizmos are shoved at us, yet rarely question their purpose and/or their long-term effects on our health and sanity.
Nearly half of young adults have ‘money dysmorphia,’ survey finds. Here are the symptoms
A new term, “money dysmorphia,” aims to describe the distorted view of one’s finances that nearly one-third, or 29%, of Americans say they now experience, according to a recent report by Credit Karma, often from comparing their financial situation to others’ and feeling inadequate.
“Money dysmorphia is kind of like today’s version of keeping up with the Joneses,” said Courtney Alev, consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma.
Not surprisingly, money dysmorphia is even more prevalent among younger generations, according to Credit Karma. Roughly 43% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials struggle with comparisons to others and feel behind financially.
Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power
Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.
In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.
Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.
The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft’s own environmental reports reveal these immense problems: As the company has built more platforms for generative A.I., its resource consumption has skyrocketed. In 2022, the company’s use of both water and electricity increased by one-third, its largest uptick ever…
Whatever “generative” A.I. generates, one thing it certainly creates is e-waste—already one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world—as it drives server and chip design innovation, leaving a phenomenal amount of used equipment in its wake. That doesn’t sound as terrible as sapping our energy grid or draining our drinking water supplies, but it’s just as bad: Some 70 percent of the toxic waste in landfills is e-waste. It pollutes food and water and causes air pollution to nearby communities.
The Battle for Attention: How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
“Consumers’ span of attention is now believed to be less than eight seconds,” Raja Rajamannar, the chief marketing officer of Mastercard, a Dentsu client, told me. “That is less than the attention span of a goldfish.”
At Dentsu, as elsewhere, the aim has become to get more from these shrinking slivers—an endeavor some outsiders liken to fracking, the process used to force lingering pockets of fossil fuels out of the earth. When I asked whether these efforts would dissipate people’s focus further, Castle said that optimizing would result in ads being even more precisely tailored to entice their audiences. “As attention measurement matures, things will fall by the wayside and we can eliminate some of the waste,” she said.
AI feels like the future, but #Ballie feels just like home.
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Ned Mudd resides in Alabama where he engages in interspecies communication, rock collecting, and frequent cloud watching. He is the author of The Adventures of Dink and DVD (a space age comedy). Some of Ned’s best friends are raccoons.
oh my!