I think the analogy with hot water is a really good one. However, I’d like to point out that our desire for more hot water has been growing since we discovered how to do it, and is still growing by leaps and bounds to this day.

The author focused on showers and dishes, but left out industrial uses. Power plants are just a lot of hot water, and the desire for more did not peak like home hot water heater size did. Even if we have hit information saturation, we’re nowhere near saturation on the quality of that information.

And just like our increasing desire for more hot water on the back end, to give us better end products (phones, computers, electric cars, energy efficient heat pumps), our desire for more compute on the back end, for higher quality information to our selves, will continue to increase.

Especially if we actually reduce our consumption. I don’t know about y’all, but I’d much rather my news feed be less cluttered, and more focused on my genuine desires instead of trying to use me with rigged engagement. I’d much rather know about the important things in my friends and neighbors lives that I can help with in some way (from a need I can fill, to simple praise and congratulations), first and foremost.

I do get these this now, by engaging with them directly, but I’d also like my tech to make us better at this, instead of getting in the way. This will take more compute, not less.

Also, I don’t want to give this information to a greedy Corp for “processing” and exploitation. To do this in a trustless and anonymous way that protects me, or to do this locally, will take even more compute.

So, maybe one day we’ll have enough hot water, and maybe one day we’ll have enough information processing capacity, but I don’t see that day happening in my lifetime.

We really have hit the final form for many technologies. I remember the reviewer, Marques Brownlee saying that we’ve reached “peak” smartphone. Our devices are now in their final form, with only small tweaks from year to year, like better batteries, faster chips, more ram. But the interface, dimensions, etc. are set.

Very much like a car gets better mileage or safety features, but the underlying tech hit its peak and the most recent change for automobiles was the emergence of the SUV in the 1990s, a generation ago.

AI is peak internet search. Instead of searching for a page, giving that page traffic and funding it through ads or affiliates, AI destroys the source by copying and starving the website of traffic. The search becomes an encyclopedia of information delivered as if written by a person. Nice for a quick question, even good enough to write that essay you’ve been putting off. But not good enough to build a new electrical grid and drain the local aquifer.