Ask HN: Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years?

It's like the glass of water, while we are seeing the most amount of technology ever in our existence, several issues that we grow up thinking that technology will solve like health, hunger and others, are still unresolved. But the potential is real and up to us to take us there. While the amount of bad things Ai/technology is being used is also on an high (attacks and deceptions) it is still a tool like a knife.

I think it’s all about balance. In my free time I do “slow” programming: I read the timeless books of our craft (e.g., TAOCP), I spend lots of time writing code by hand, debugging, using pen and paper to think, etc. I love it. All the crap we have now (AI everywhere , technofeudalism, etc.) doesn’t get to bother me. Now, at work, I use AI , I get things done and call it a day. I can do that because I have fun outside work.

Were the Rockefellers' doom prepping though? It's hard to be a techno-optimist when those selling the dream don't believe it.

"Tech billionaires seem to be doom prepping. Should we all be worried?" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly17834524o

> it is still a tool like a knife.

I would argue it's different: AI/technology is pushing us to use more and more energy (which is a problem because energy is not infinite), and therefore emit more and more CO2 (which is a problem because climate change). And in the side, it allows us to do more of those things we like to do like destroying habitat, hence we are living in a mass extinction right now (it's a fact, we can measure it).

A knife does not fundamentally contribute heavily to killing all species including ours.

I'd say it is saturation fatigue. 20 years ago, people who were online were kinda power users. Nowadays, internet is full of normies. Nothing wrong with that but it also means competition for everything has increased ten fold. Social networks used to be filled with smart people, now they are filled with average people and smart people are now just static noise in the background.

Jobs in IT are the same. Instead of 5 smart people competing for one job, now you might have hundreds and thousands and as employer you might not be able to distinguish the good/skilled one from the average one. And now employers have to hire based on your skin color instead of skill, among other things, which dilutes the potential for a company to be successful in inventing, creating, competing disrupting...

You used to be able to create some fun side project and get few customers to pay your bills. Nowadays, everything is monopolised and behind red tape with insane cost of entry. Which discourages competition and creativity of an individual.

Software has hit a plateau with social networks, online communication, programming languages and whatnot. Now it is all about AI(which it is not but it is being sold as such) because that is the last software paramount.

Hardware stopped advancing too, mostly due to AI again. We had the smart phone revolution, tablet revolution, online video streaming revolution... then Elon Musk did some work with SapaceX(rockets + internet) and electric cars. But that is about it. Not much new came after that. Definitely nothing ground breaking or revolutionary. Again, likely because most effort and investments go into AI hardware.

So we are in a limbo when it comes to both - HW and SW. We've reached peak saturation in user base, we've hit ceiling in programming and hardware and there is nothing interesting behind the corner. Maybe except new-age nuclear reactors(smaller, more efficient) and quantum computing(though that is still decades away from commercial use and production).

But I think all of this is mostly because economic and demographic factors. The societies have peaked, at least the "western" ones, and are now heading into correction period that will stifle technological progress as the "west" overplayed the globalization card and has to pull back and start shifting towards manufacturing and blue collar jobs, as it became heavily service-based economically.

Also it is important to factor in the feminism and DEI aspect of modern societies that is causing (white)men to graduate less, partake in STEM less, be more absent in white collar jobs, HR departments hindering creativity at the work place and so on. It's a whole bowl of spaghetti of societal issues that has to get unwound and levelled before we can bounce back up.