201–210 of 367 posts
* Virtual/Mixed Reality platforms pre-mainstream and growing.
* Massive advances in machine learning AND
* No corresponding advance towards AGI
* Huge power and flexibility available via cloud and containerisation.
Tech is as cool and as open to opportunity - using the facilities and exploiting the gaps in things like the above - to the small scale and independent developer as it's ever been IMO.
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…
The tech industry on the other hand, is increasingly a source of disillusionment. Over the last few years we've seen so many of the exciting companies that emerged in the early 2000s drop the facade of user-centricity and switch from providing value to extracting value at the expense of users. It's gotten to the point where I feel deeply uncomfortable depending on closed source software (and SaaS in general) for anything important, as it feels like it's only a matter of time until the users get screwed over.
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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…
> Each of these machines was orders of magnitude more capable than the previous one - you don't have that anymore nowadays. As you mention, computers can become "orders of magnitude more capable" simply by shrinking to a smaller form factor. We're about to have smartphones that are fully usable as computers, or smart watches that you can run free OS's and homebrew applications on. > Then in the late 90s there was the…
He talks about functionality. Not power. Yes, computers are more powerful now. But the point is that old computers were way more flexible and "powerful" in an usability sense. New computers are full of arbitrary (and natural (1)) barriers to stop you from having full control of your pocket CPU.
(1) The natural additional barrier is also complexity. Early computers were simple. Some hobbyist could write a system from scratch just by having some knowledge about computers and electronics. Now you have a lot more factors, an OS, a plethora of drivers and a browser that's closer to a VM than a HTML parser.
> There's still plenty of projects trying to do that kind of thing. Big Tech social media is only the most popular part of the Internet, you're mostly free to ignore it if you like.
You are right. But that kind of connection is disappointing to our 20 year old geek self. We (naively) wanted more people to become computer literates. Instead, we got algorithms and fake news.
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It's definitely an age thing. Don't get me wrong, I know OP feeling all too well. But, it's like complaining about how the music I grew with was the best music. It's more likely the curiosity in you die, rather than the world running out of stuff to be curious about.
I don't think so. There are waves throughout history where, at times, it's the Wild West and the opportunities and possibilities abound. One such time was when the Internet had become a global backbone, hardware prices were racing to the bottom, we were seeing new display (LCD) technology, battery tech.... But then Corporations happened. Ads moved in to dominate the web, dollar-chasing sites (also often corporate) dr…
Some tinkerers do it because they just enjoy the tinkering but for most I think it's a combination of enjoying it some while also getting some tangible benefits out of it. When any device you could easily DIY is available off the shelf, the cost-benefit changes. You have hard DIY left, but not easy tinkering for moderate gains.
There's a good Douglas Adams quote that explains this; 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. 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. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things. Apply thi…
I've also written about half-a-dozen apps that somebody later took and made into a super cool startup. I don't say that to brag. Ideas are cheap. Execution intelligence is where it's at.
I mention the apps I've written because you really have to establish more context if you're going to lament about tech's coolness death. Is tech not cool anymore? Or is it just not cool to you? I feel like I've written a bunch of cool stuff over the years. It's always been cool to me, for whatever that's worth.
Given that setup, I will answer using my own definition of cool. Software ate the world, and that was awesome. It also had a bunch of side-effects nobody wanted to think about, and that sucked. But because it ate the world, ie became an integral part of human existence, tech became incestuous. It's so prevalent in our daily experience that it became impossible to talk about what might be cool or not.
We ended up with a bifurcation. Path A talks about tech only in terms of people creating and sharing content with one another, whether that's a cat pic or instructions to use CPR to save lives. Path B is just concerned with mechanics regardless of impact: how do we set up that identity server template in kubernetes?
I find the endgame of both sides of this bifurcation to be extremely boring. I can solve most tech problems I'm given using tech. Yay. I can explore creating interesting content in various genres given some rando platform. Also yay. But at some point along both of those paths, it seemed like it became a race to the bottom. It all devolved into mindless, manipulative crap. Even if I became a rock star on the tech path or the content path, so what? There'd be a million new folks coming along next year doing it better, and in 50 years nobody would care.
I decided that to me, it was the visceral feeling of integrating tech with creativity that brought the most life satisfaction. That's the feeling I got when I was writing my first apps for a local business at 16. It was the feeling I had architecting big systems that took off and still provide value. You can't separate one path from the other and expect any sort of long-term satisfaction. At least I never could.
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…
Every generation is doomed to discover that.
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Are you crazy? I'm from '79, so probably a bit younger than you. We can now buy an Arduino board for the price of a computer game, and make a flying drone. Even with a small camera or some sensors if you want. Or create some small robots with all the motors and sensors that you want, custom 3d printed. My son is now 13 and doing STEM. I only wish I had access to all the things that they can now do for cheap, especial…
Well yes, but flying drones are not exciting when everybody can build/buy one.
At the same time, hardware vendors stopped taking risks in developing their own consumer products. It was easier to slap Android on an MP3 player or a watch or a TV instead of developing your own UI and interaction patterns.
> Gadgets are a snoozfest. Programming languages and frameworks seem to be running in circles.
3d printing, arduino, nodemcu, rust? I'd say we are at the golden age of gadgets. The stuff we can create today seems limitless.
I still cannot get over how much I like programming microcontrollers with rust. I took it as a hobby and ended up with some real products.
I have some lora modems in my desk that I'm constantly eyeing and I cannot wait for some free time to start playing with those.