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- Hacker News
- Echoing others here, but I think part of it is that a lot of the new tech is designed to make things worse.
If I think about new tech, all the examples that immediately spring to mind are negative ones: surveillance cameras, AI-enabled spam & propaganda, autonomous weaponry.
The less flashy advances tend to be harder to get excited about, and they're also often negative. My computers get more expensive, but they also collect more data on me, and it's harder to get one without a bunch of unwanted features.
People used to be excited about new tech because it was exciting and aspirational; I think we've lost a lot of that.
by Planktonne - I still get excited by the sheer power of current and upcoming tech
It may be the same stuff we had 20 years ago, but the specs!
What was a supercomputer before is now just a component in a datacenter, one of 72 per rack.
by deflator - I am not part of the group being polled (firmly ensconced in middle age), but I feel the opposite. Yes, the AI roll out has been shambolic to say the least, and it can also be annoyingly intrusive. On the plus side, AI is allowing me to take on projects that I would never have bothered in the past because the learning curve would have been too arduous. I am currently reverse engineering an embedded system going in there with a multimeter and logic analyzer. It is a lot of fun and I am learning a ton. If you told me five years ago that I would eventually be taking on such a project, I would not have believed you. On the job side, a lot of what I do involves troubleshooting (e.g., looking at reams of logs), and there too AI has been a boon. So, yes, actually excited about where things are going (with some misgivings).
- High quality eBikes are pretty amazing: I have nearly 4000 miles on one of ours, and nearly all of those are replacing car trips around town, including most of our grocery shopping.
While not revolutionary - they're kind of an incremental improvement - I'm pretty impressed by all the things a cheap Chromebook can do.
by davidw - I feel the same way. I think the difference is that new tech used to be an improvement to your life. New tech is there simply to suck life (your attention) and money away from you.
There are exceptions of course, But the general trend is worrying.
by pbohun - I've been playing Project Zomboid with my friends. It's an isometric survival game set in 1993 in a fictional area around Louisville, Kentucky. It has VHS tapes, TV and radio broadcasts, ham radio, CDs, and landlines in it. So far in my playing experience, there's no real internet component.
There's some sort of disease outbreak that turns people into zombies and society starts to collapse. Eventually things like the power grid and water/sewage infrastructure break down. Food rots. Gasoline runs out. It's basically guaranteed that you and your teammates will die in this game.
Even after living through a pandemic and all of the shit that came with it, and despite the grim atmosphere of the game, I still miss the time period that this game symbolized. I know I was only a child during the 90s and the era had its real problems, but there were good things about it and the state of technology at the time that have gotten worse in the decades since.
It was a time when media was a physical good and had meaning, when there wasn't a constant deluge of information, when my attention was less valuable than advertisers have made it today, and there was, at least for the majority of society, a shared informational reality.
That's all gone and there are massively powerful interests working to make sure it stays gone.
by lenerdenator - I do agree it feels different but there is still a lot of interesting and exciting tech innovation. OP is about the same age as me so my list will be from my lifetime.
* Lithium batteries. They are one of the most important innovations of our generation. They are so much better than NiCads and lead acid batteries. Much of today's important tech, like mobile phones, wouldn't be possible without them.
* Solar panels went from a novelty to something that we can put on our homes with a positive ROI in a short time.
* EVs. If you haven't been in one go take a test drive. The prices are still too high, at least in the US, but Chinese innovation are pushing that down.
* Driving automation such as radar cruise, lane assist, and other autonomous driving features.
* Digital media, streaming or self hosted. Yes streaming services peaked 10+ years ago but the innovation is there. Having a small server in a closet hosting hundreds of 4k videos is quite an innovation compared to VHS.
* Home automation. It was previously limited to wired devices for the rich. Now anyone can put together complex self-hosted home automation with inexpensive Zigbee/ZWave devices and a Raspberry Pi hosting Home Assistant.
* Hobby electronics have become far more accessible and inexpensive. Arduino, raspberry pi, etc.
* SDRs radically changed radio technology.
* FDM/3D printing.
* Other CNC manufacturing became accessible to hobbyists.
* Bluetooth
* WiFi
* Progress in machine learning / AI, invention of LLMs
by driverdan - I remember my grandparents making this exact same complaint: All of the new technologies during their younger years were amazing and improved the world. All of the technologies that came along in their later years were only complicating life after they had settled into comfortable routines.
In my hobbies and other real world activities I cross paths with people in their 20s a lot. It’s really refreshing to see their excitement about new technologies and the future, contrasted with all the cynicism you get when you spend time in places with a lot of jaded adults who wish the world would stop changing.
I think it’s natural to wish that technology would pause right at the point in your life and career where you’ve got it all figured out and lose your appetite for new things. It feels good to be on top of it all and feel like your knowledge, routines, and career skills are never going to go out of style. It feels uncomfortable when the world continues to change after you’ve settled into something familiar and routine.
by Aurornis