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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?

#211

Post by ddaalluu2 »

dvh1990 wrote: post #197
koonsolo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you're not interested in tech but in tech no one else has.

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

#212

Post by rowanG077 »

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 disagree that it's just an age thing. At least Software is moving steadfastly to a dystopia. This wasn't yet apparent 15-20 years ago. Watching Software is just depressing where it's clear it casts quite a large shadow over Humanity.

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

#213

Post by jdmichal »

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 had a thought the other day. Our house didn't have a fridge, so we had to buy one when we moved in. We plugged it in one day about 7 years ago and haven't touched it since. So here's a machine that has been keeping our foodstuffs cold with 100% uptime for 7 years, and we just don't even think about it.

I'm also old enough to remember when cell phones became a thing, and then when smart phones became the thing after that. The fact that the thing in my pocket could simultaneously emulate several copies of the computer I had as a kid, while running on a battery? And I can talk to people and access the internet from anywhere? This is amazing stuff, and again we just don't even think about it anymore. Like, I fiddled around programming with my TI-84 and TI-92, but that's nothing compared to the capabilities of this smartphone.

And, speaking of which, don't even get me started on the internet. The fact is that I don't even remember what it's like to not have a thing in my pocket that can answer pretty much any question I have, whenever and wherever I have it.

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

#214

Post by lolsal »

> Today's startups are solving the most boring problems imaginable. Gadgets are a snoozfest. Programming languages and frameworks seem to be running in circles.

I'm guessing you have become numb to what is exciting - we're advancing majorly in energy storage, virtual reality is still growing, the M1 chip is freaking amazing, GPUs are getting insane, the watch on my wrist has an EKG, self-driving cars, drones are a commodity these days ... What did you have in mind?

That all says nothing about mRNA vaccines and other insane medical tech that has sprouted up in the last decade.

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

#216

Post by bogomipz »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #68

In my impression it really accelerated after the '08 financial crisis (+- a few years for all the people who left wall street and went to HBS) after being an ibanker was no longer cool or well paid and the people who would have gone there decided to come to Silicon Valley. That's a huge mass of people who are grinders who just want to make money and quick and have a totally different mindset than the people who wante…

What are GSB and HBS here?

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

#217

Post by rowanG077 »

dvh1990 wrote: post #197
koonsolo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you were not really interested in Tech. Just in being in some pseudo exclusive club. I definitely think building your own drone is very exciting.

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

#218

Post by zozbot234 »

frostwarrior wrote: post #203
zozbot234 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> As you mention, computers can become "orders of magnitude more capable" simply by shrinking to a smaller form factors. 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. 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 a…

> We (naively) wanted more people to become computer literates. Instead, we got algorithms and fake news.

Arguably, we got both. Even basic computer literacy is a huge value added right now. Journalists are telling coal miners to "learn to code" if they want a job, and being told to "learn to code" in return. Tim Apple is expressly saying that every kid should learn to code. This is astounding from a 1980s and 1990s perspective.

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

#219

Post by csande17 »

barrell wrote: post #142
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…

> Tech is still really cool, compared to decades ago I think a huge factor I haven't seen mentioned is continuous delivery. How often were new operating systems released? How often were new products announced? When you bought software, the devs would be hard at work working on the next version with the incentive to make it good enough that people would buy again. Now software is continually released. "Major" updates…

I am skeptical that, particularly in software, rolling releases are a net improvement. If users are locked into subscription services or monetized via data collection, version N+1 no longer needs to be better than version N for the company to keep making money. (In fact, it can be worse, if users are sufficiently locked in via network services or app/plugin ecosystems.)

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

#220

Post by frostwarrior »

WJW wrote: post #83
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…

For sure, there is boatloads of cool tech out there and the barrier to entry is lower than ever. Btw, I think an overlooked part of the OP was: > Nowadays I'm a software dev and tech entrepreneur. Doing anything as a job is an excellent way to kill your enjoyment of it as a hobby. Subconsciously, you start looking at projects in a business light ("can I turn this into a side gig", "will this advance my career", etc)…

I personally disagree. I'm a software dev and software is still exciting to me.

What kills enjoyment it's not proffesionalism but efficiency. You stop exploring new things and start doing things the fastest and least effort consuming way. You stop wondering what new cool things a technology could offer and start thinking what's the shortest path to a functional product.

Being playful is the opposite of that. Being playful is about going out of your way to explore a new thing, setting your curiosity high and your expectations low, and coming back with a new experience. Let it be a spark of excitement or a total bummer because that new thing turned out being crap.

But don't expect that to happen in your job. Any company will always optimize for profits over cool tech. Even if you only have 1 hour a day to spend in a tech hobby, that hour will be more exciting then the previous 9.

Another problem is that, when you have a solid knowledge about the foundations, there's a tendency to disregard abstractions or quality of life advances. If for every new language you say "It's slow and heavy compared to C and its advantages are crap" well, you are killing your excitement yourself.

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