While not revolutionary - they're kind of an incremental improvement - I'm pretty impressed by all the things a cheap Chromebook can do.
Had I known I were going to be getting rid of my car, an e-bike would have definitely been a better value. I feel lucky that things worked out the way that they did though - having both an e-scooter and an acoustic bike has been great!
How accurate did the endless news reports about your generation feel when you were young?
There are exceptions of course, But the general trend is worrying.
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.
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.
Then, about 7 years ago I realized that for the first time, I was more or less happy with the tech in my life. My computer was good, I liked my phone, my tablet, and my ereader. I had a good TV and stereo I used all the time. The appliances in my home are reliable and work well. The tools I use in my garage and yard are all fine. With Android Auto or Car Play (I've used both) even my car felt like it had crossed some threshold of being good enough that I didn't really have the itch for something better.
I had been working full time for 30ish years and had accumulated a lot of stuff that makes my life better and there really isn't much more that I want and certainly nothing that I need. When Christmas rolls around and people want gift ideas for me, it's hard for me to think of things. My favorite thing in the world is to have a few days off and no plans or commitments and I can sort drill bits, change my guitar strings, watch a movie, or take a nap.
I used to read sci fi for the wonder, but now I read it with dread, for Chekov's Gun is a Torment Nexus, and if you introduce a Torment Nexus in Act 1 of a sci fi dystopia, it will be fired IRL by act 3.
Deeper lurks a more chilling question: what, on a dying planet run by fascists, should I do with my time?
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.
My grandfathers both benefited greatly from new technology of their times like hearing aids and various cardiac interventions.
I don’t like a TV reporting analytics either, but if we’re looking at technological advancements as a whole that seems like small potatoes.
Self-driving cars are an additive technology, and there is certainly a place for them, but they should be at best (like all cars) your 3rd or maybe even 4th best option for daily activities.
Poor driving isn't limited to drunks or boomers.
Your comment just made me think about the whole self-driving car thing as an extension of the car-centric thinking of the US (and how car-centricity is essentially anti-social, but that's beside the point), and now even the US is losing the car race to China, but it will maintain it's car-centric philosophy based on momentum rather than practicality. Could public transport be a national security priority? (mostly tongue in cheek, but just a smidge not).
Think about all the fun wifi, zigbee, matter devices that you can play with (if you are inclined).
Meshtastic and LoRa is a great toy to play with.
The kitchen is full of interesting things, Sous Vide is great, the air fryer is... interesting and useful.
Lots of people love their robot vacuum
LED strip lighting has gone from nerdy to high design and has interesting features now.
Those "VCR" and "iPhone" moments are rare. There is a lot of practical innovations that make my life better and I would be hard pressed to give up.
Those kitchen advances never feel like advances to me though. Maybe I'm over simplifying it, but I'm tired of "needing" yet another box that gets hot. I am pretty sure an air fryer is just a small convection oven.
You can take my panini press from my cold dead hands though.
It's still exciting (and has always been) for the young'uns.
Just like films, music, or even sports, there are eras of a certain paradigm or aesthetic. What we consider the 'peak' is always evaluated in retrospect or in comparison to a previous peak. Neurologically, humans are naturally predisposed to evaluate the world in terms of "how much pleasure" an activity gives, and when you experience "more pleasure" (for example, riding a fast rollercoaster vs. a slow one) then the previous experience is often discarded or treated as inferior. In some cases that's true, but, by and large, these comparisons are again purely psychic in nature.
What you viewed as more exciting was an age where advertising didn't cheapen your experiences. Overexposure/stimulation as a means of advertising, co-opted with combining social media with advertising to a startling degree is the true culprit behind what you're seeing, and as a captive audience, like the prisoners in Plato's cave, you are unable to look away...
I’m 29 so I guess I just barely qualify haha. But overall, I agree with your writing and can say as a technologist myself, I also rarely get excited about new technology - nor do my peers.
There are occasional exceptions though. Near the beginning of this current GenAI revolution, I was frequently excited. Watching that SpaceX rocket land back on earth had me on the edge of my seat. I also recently bought AirPods and found the conversation awareness feature to be incredible. Similarly, I got my first fitness tracker and find it mind blowing how much it can measure by just zapping my wrist with light.
It's like when you get a new smartphone and you baby it for those first couple weeks until, bam, it falls and gets a ding in it. Then after a brief sense of loss, you suddenly see it as a tool with utility and a lifespan. I think that's where you want to be with material things and technology.
And btw, by and large, this happens to every feeling, not just excitement from technological innovation.
you still need to work; still need a job.
With all this new technology that does things for us, there will be new things that need doing in order that we can pay for the things that do the old things for us.
I still find this a jarring thought.
every era brought something truly novel to the table. but then something changed mid 2010s. and it's not entirely megacorps' fault. it's also us customers. we didn't want to pay. and thus the business model that promotes enshittified services were born and now we have to live with it.
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.
i'm 24. I think that improvements in tech nowadays mostly involve the hobbyist of any niche, while the general public is ever more satisfied with what already exists.
sd to hd to full hd was cool, full hd to 1440p i can see the difference, at 4k yes but it is not so big. Miniled is something people won't really care about imho (and they can already go very bright, i'm only waiting for more minileds to be integrated in monitors before changing mine).
Audio, well, most people will be satisfied with cheap razer/gaming/bose/whatever headphones are there. Sure anc is cool if you're in a noisy environment quite often
Bikes, well at 24yo i'm not really knowledgeable to say whether a bianchi that costs more than a motorbike is worth the upgrade from an older model... but ebikes are kinda nice even for people outside of the cycling world
However, what has happened with audio and video - and a change that i can perceive -, is the prices of things (not cpu/gpu related, for obvious reasons) coming down. oleds were so espensive ten years ago, now they are not. 4k minileds monitor are as expensive now as my regular non miniled 1440p va monitor from ~4/5 years ago. Hifiman has (permanently) slashed the prices of its headphones more than once over the years. It is not exciting as new tech but it is "just" nice
p.s. wifi printers are a pain in the ass much more than cable printes, and for llms i am kinda happy with them, i'll give you that, they're a godsend for studying; i'm less excited about the idea they'll replace most workers
* Putting down the throttle of my first BEV was magic (a rented ID3 Pro rented, it's not even performing like mad, but RWD gets it done). I laughed manically and in tears until arriving at home. Even laid back acceleration is still fun. ICE cars have become boring to me.
* The first time generating a longer working script with ChatGPT in its early incarnation was great! Correcting a broken web app by a junior dev with the help of Claude and ChatGPT was also crazy the first time.
* Letting the drone of my brother in law start and land from my hand, making incredible camera moves by pushing a few buttons was surreal.
* Hearing the first sounds of my mobile with Dolby Atmos was also like hallucinating. These tiny speakers have become unbelievable good for media consumption.
* Playing a recent e-piano that even mimics damper and co-vibrating strings. The improvements in tactile and acoustic experience are subtle but great
* I cannot wait to test a tone3000 neural amp modeling thingy -- the first time I heard a Kemper and tested even the basic Pod Go was also great.
* First picture of a laser projector: blown away. Next level of sharp picture.
...
So, I don't know what you're talking about.
For the most part though it's not that new tech isn't cool but as I get older, parts of life which seemed mundane as a kid or young man aren't quite so mundane anymore. As a teenager it seemed like family and loved ones were just there and part of the normal background. With years I see those moments with loved ones as precious, finite, and what it's all about. Tech is neat and sometimes very neat ... but it isn't what it's all about.
You don't.
there are still new things and fun tech, don't give up!
During the first watershed, it solves an actual problem + improves the lives of those who adopt it.
During the second watershed, it gets institutionalized and the technology shifts into something that requires people serve it rather than serving those it’s intended to help.
His examples are all old technologies like modern medicine, non party line wired phones, the radio, etc. but the ideas fit the shape of the technological advances we’re seeing in our lifetimes as well.
It’s a personal feeling. Once you get comfortable with the way the world is, you start wishing it would stop changing.
Your grandparents complaint is essentially that "github is good, but writing tests, and using CI/CD is too abstract and complicated". Which is fair, especially if you aren't talking about something for intelligent people in specific. Compare ordering milk with a milkman vs. the modern way. Previously the loop was
1. call milkman 2. get milk & pay for next milk
now it can be a number of various paths (all of which are correct, confusingly!) to get milk delivered to one's door. Too much abstraction is no longer serving as a means of replacing work at this point, and managing the abstraction becomes a form of work.
That's the real complaint. Happy 2 hear ur thoughts about this 1.
As a birthday gift, my mother tried to give them a lifetime cable subscription so they could see what they were missing. When the technician from the cable company showed up at their door, my grandmother stared at him through a slit in the blinds and refused to let him in or otherwise acknowledge him. I pitied them, and we joked behind their backs about how stuck in their ways they were. (Writing this as an adult, I can't imagine why my mom would insist on trying to give them a gift that they had overtly rejected.)
Years later, my grandparents gave in to cable. We were right: they did enjoy watching more Big 12 football. But they also enjoyed watching endless hours of Fox News. They became increasingly isolated, paranoid, and overtly racist. I won't blame 100% of this change on Fox News, but their transition toward hate absolutely poisoned their relationships with most of the family. I don't think that's exactly what my grandmother expected when she refused the cable man on her birthday, but she was still right.
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Computers also was one of them. But modern media boxes are not exciting. Microcontrollers though, are still exciting.
niek_pas•33m ago
I know a lot of people have a troubled relationship to their phone, but this is really surprising to me. Would I want to go back to a world where I can't conveniently contact people, navigate the world, look up anything I want to know in an second, and set timers by yelling at the air rather than getting sticky foccacia dough in the cracks of my egg timer? Not even a little bit.
The last time I personally felt the excitement the author describes was probably with the announcement of Apple Vision Pro, but unfortunately that product went nowhere.
throwatdem12311•29m ago
All other apps work though.
Best of both worlds.
weakfish•26m ago
BLKNSLVR•25m ago
I know it's mainly in jest, but this always strikes me as an odd example of 'high tech'. It feels like a 'first you create the universe' solution to using an egg timer with doughy fingers. Egg timers are simple devices that clean easy and can handle dough transfer. They are (or perhaps only 'were ') built as fit for purpose.
Yes, it's just an extra thing the 'high tech' can do, but damn it's an awful example of the (reached) potential of high tech.
A better example could be:
I can ask the air to buy me a big mac and have it paid for and delivered to my house within 30 minutes all while I'm changing a nappy and putting the baby to bed. There's a whole stack of systems needing to communicate to make that thing happen.