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Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

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Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#121

Post by randcraw »

qprofyeh wrote: post #32

Look around, we are living the dream. For example: we are streaming unlimited music, tv shows and movies to all our devices. Flying drones for aerial footage. Home automation for a few bucks. Tech isn't boring, we are oversaturated.

We're not just supersaturated; we're shaped by tech more than we shape it. Tech has become essential and inescapable. You can't fully participate in today's world without a smartphone. That phone and its underlying contacts, media, interfaces and databases are the world. Tech has become yet another necessary mainstream commodity, like electricity or plumbing. Nobody gets excited by those anymore, either.

Today, everyone expects to be able to contact you anywhere anytime. That's an mind-blowingly different way to live than before smartphones. (I'm a mid-boomer. The pre-electronic world I was born into is SO long gone.)

Smartphones are by far a bigger change than the other computer-based tech watersheds that came before -- the arrival of PCs (especially since they weren't networked until 1990), or the arrival of online info (web) which was accessible only by PCs, ca 1995. Only 10 years after that, the arrival of smartphones and social networks changed the definition of "tech" to be a state of mind: "being online, connected, and accessible all the time". Now we're used to it, so it's lost its charm. In fact, it's probably true that tech has become more annoying or addictive than fun. Who wants to dance to tunes dominated by trillion dollar mass-manipulative corporations?

That's why tech is no longer cool. Today's New New Thing isn't changing your life anymore. Not in a good way, anyway.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#123

Post by coldpie »

t-3 wrote: post #60
davidn20 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue smartphones are one of the best all-in-one devices for creating...most people just don't use it that way.

I'm genuinely intrigued, because I seethe with rage just trying to use the keyboard and guestures on smartphones and I can't really imagine trying to actually code or write or sketch on it.

With zero video editing experience, I recently shot and edited a 7 minute video of myself playing guitar, entirely on my iPhone. I was pretty surprised how well it worked. Yeah there were some UI warts (editing text, like you say...), and I wouldn't want to work that way for any serious work, but it really did lower the barrier for a complete noob in a way that finding/buying some PC video editing suite couldn't.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#124

Post by blablabla123 »

I'm also wondering about this myself. I also used to check Tom's Hardware, had a subscription to Technology Review and was amazed by almost everything in there.

In fact I had also been working for some time on actually cool tech and was looking forward to go into the office as early as possible and stay late. But as I "progressed" I worked on more and more boring problems and products. The by far most exciting tech is what I use in my free time.

Also it seems that only a small fraction of tech products nowadays are driven by tech geeks.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#125

Post by jdrc »

When people made enough money and stopped having problems they needed to solve. When they shifted their attention to bolstering the reign of the incumbents. When they tell each other to job hop instead of starting something new.

There's also this thing that tech is sanitized for "idiots first" because apparently if you don't appeal to billions you're a failure

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#126

Post by nicoburns »

rob74 wrote: post #67
gilbetron wrote: post #13

It's an age thing - the dreams you had when you were younger didn't turn into reality - dreams usually don't. Or at least, not as you expect it. Tech is still really cool, compared to decades ago. But we have so much of it and it is everywhere, that we re-calibrate and think that all this amazing, cool tech is boring. You can get a 3D printer for a few hundred bucks, build it yourself, build a better 3d printer, get…

I agree that it's partly an age thing, but I also agree that the times have been more exciting in the past technology-wise. I grew up as a eighties tech geek kid. I learned BASIC on a SHARP programmable calculator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1403 ), then moved on to an Atari 800, then to an Amiga, and finally to a PC. Each of these machines was orders of magnitude more capable than the previous one - you…

> technological progress is still going on, but it's more "your smartphone can now do what your desktop PC did 20 years ago, or your laptop did 10 years ago"

In terms of tech that would excite a geeky kid, I think it's more like "you can now buy a $1 microcontroller that's as powerful as desktop PC from 30 years ago". Which is pretty exciting as it means you can throw computing power at all sorts of real world automated which wasn't feasible for a hobbyist before.

TL;DR The modern equivalent of a programmable calculator is an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi not a smartphone.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#128

Post by jart »

autoexec wrote: post #62

For me it was when tech no longer served me and my interests. Anything tech does for me these days is usually just a means to get me to use it so that someone else can collect data, push ads, or control me. There's rarely a product or service that doesn't have some hidden cost or give someone else power over you. Cars have internet, but track your location, can listen in on your conversations, and optional features o…

Does anyone remember what it was like growing up in the 90's when people would pay $100/month for television that was 33% ads? Life was miserable before most of us had Internet access. I think there's simply no comparison. Also does anyone remember what it was like back then trying to sell software? I remember back in 2003 whenever I wrote a piece of software, for every guy who paid me $20 via paypal for it, there'd be ten guys on cracker forums geeking out trying to unravel my protection schemes like a puzzle to be solved. I'm honestly shocked tech has an economy at all considering our industry gives everything away for free. Think about how much leverage industries like health care hold over people's lives, cause bankruptcies, and then compare that to tech products collecting usage analytics. Once again, there's simply on comparison. The tech industry is absolutely the most benevolent force for good these last few decades. And for what it's worth, there's always FOSS which is not only free but maximally respects your privacy even more. Support the people building it. These are all choices we simply didn't have in the past.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#129

Post by wirthjason »

Limitations and constraints matter. Technology is often the most fun when you have to be creative to solve a problem. My first programming was on TI-85 calculator in high school circa 1995 making crappy games. There wasn’t even a proper keyboard, just the number keys and plethora of other scientific keys.

Now JavaScript and other web technologies have made it so easy to build full blown games in the browser. Ironically because it’s less constrained it’s harder to make something good.

When everyone has access to technology creativity matters more. I like Nintendo’s philosophy, find cheap off the shelf technology and make something fun. Because they are not competing in a graphics arms race they focus on gameplay. The goal is “fun” not “technology.”

I echo other comments about age factoring in. When tech is a thing to play with its fun, when it’s work it’s not fun. We all have that inner child inside, the challenge is finding ways to bring it out.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#130

Post by BlargMcLarg »

xnorswap wrote: post #92
supernovae wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still get indy games year over year that take the industry by storm. factorio, stardew valley, undertale, don’t starve, super hot, goat simulator, cup head, rocket league, kerbal space program and so many others. heck steam, Sony and Microsoft are competing to distribute this IP and open it up across platforms and it’s never been better.

All of those games you've mentioned are at least 5 years old now, many coming up to a decade old if you count their early access. There was a golden age of indie gaming 5-10 years ago, but it does feel like that has passed somewhat.

Golden age was more around the time of Thomas Was Alone, Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, Binding of Isaac etc. There was a low barrier to entry, but also a low saturation. One good piece of polish or gimmick was enough to hook people. This was also around the time many of the titles mentioned by GP got initial backing and before people got extremely skeptical of crowdfunding games.

Since then the market has gotten way more saturated. Games have gotten way higher demands on all three fronts of polish (gameplay, audio, visual). If not a roguelike / player-generated content game / simple loop, lack of content is even more killer (which is why so many indies are either arcade, sims or roguelikes, compared to AAA games). Even several of the titles mentioned in the comments would rather come out with sequels building upon their success or games highly similar to what they made before, than experiment. Most indies I checked who deviated too far from their big hit (devs from Castle Crashers, Deathroad to Canada, Binding of Isaac) had nowhere near the same level of success. Not too bad considering they can coast by just off of their main hit's success, but it does illustrate the lack of moderate success.

Or you can try make a big hit with a meme game (anime optional) and be forgotten in the next 2-5 years.

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