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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?

#51

Post by supernovae »

rcarmo wrote: post #26
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…

To your point about 3D printing and robots, we haven’t really moved the needle that much. We’ve made it easy for anyone to print a “cool” robot, sure, but it isn’t necessarily a _useful_ one. As a former “maker” and electronics hack I think lot of maker stuff has devolved into “cool” stuff that consists of wire hangers and servos with RGB lighting and very little actual value. But coolness doesn’t really mean much wh…

Being a maker isn’t about creating “things of value” or being “useful”.

That same mindset is ruining many a good hobby. Astrophotography is going down a shameful route where the only thing your peers want to see is the misery of all the debt you have to out fancy someone else.

as for 3d printers.. they have come a long way and have become a core part of creativity and engineering for programs like First Robotics.. hardware is improving, safety is improving, reliability is improving - so much so that if you give up on the creative aspect you can just print away and get started with little effort.

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

#52

Post by hwers »

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…

Are you sure? I'd like to hear the take of someone in their early twenties on this. My feeling is that a lot of them are terrified by it themselves too.

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

#53

Post by anotherhue »

davidn20 wrote: post #40
anotherhue wrote: post #18

Smartphones. Purely consumption devices changed the balance to be more producer/consumer than collaborator. The world is on board now so rapid tech changes aren't possible to market. There's still crazy/genius if you look for it, but hobbyist only in most cases. NixOS, Urbit, any DHT or CRDT system, VR, Graal, WASM, mesh nets like ygssadril.

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

Is it their fault? The software tries every trick in the book (and some new ones) to steal your attention.

I disagree about the creation utility from a quality perspective, lack of ergonomics while filming, bad mics, etc. But there's no question the availability of the device is astonishing.

The old addage: "the best camera is the one you have with you".

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

#54

Post by Maxburn »

It feels like we had a little golden age where we explored the limit of what connected devices and open information sharing could do for everyone and that was interesting. Now we have seen that can have some bad sides too.

We've come down from that high and looked around at the physical world and technology is not progressing at the same pace, it is a little depressing. Real progress is still being made but we got used to the fast pace of exploring and filling the connectivity gap and it's a rough transition.

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

#55

Post by secretsatan »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #5

Oh, this is a question I actually have asked myself before! The definitive answer is July 10, 2008; App Store opens, and ushers in this new age of garbage software.

I don't know, there's always been garbage software, it's just mass market now.

I also happen to think techies can get a bit snobbish about it all. Techies always just "know" to avoid garbage, but there must have always been a market for it. There's still a bunch of cool stuff you can get buried under free to play micro transactions/advert based games.

One of the things I like about the app store, and a reason I moved into mobile development, is that it's easier than ever to be a one man dev team again, good or bad

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

#57

Post by jraph »

As someone who has been attracted to programming quite young and who now lives off this activity, I have never been hugely attracted to hardware. I didn't like spending, too.

However, today it's worse. I still don't like buying stuff, and I now see hardware as future waste. What changed in me is the ecological perspective which I didn't have that much before. I also see hardware as things that take place in my home. Not attracted at all. I want less things around me, and less waste. What gets my interest now is hardware enabling free software and that lasts.

Still very much interested in things related to programming. Computing also gained a political dimension to me. It's everywhere, and there's this constant fight to keep it non hostile and useful to people. Nowadays I weakly advocate for free software and privacy, including to people who are not especially interested in computers.

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

#58

Post by yodsanklai »

For me, it's stopped being cool for a few reasons.

Environment. I know most people don't care about the environment on HN, but the toll of consumerism, including tech gadgets, is huge on the environment. I restrain from buying new devices for that reasons.

Profit. It has always been about profit, but never to that extent. It's all about selling new stuff that we don't need, getting our attention, making us addicted. And it's the same on the workplace. I used to work on weekends because I loved what I was doing. Now it's all about trying to pass the next performance evaluation.

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

#59

Post by supernovae »

screye wrote: post #49

Economies of scale ruined it. Good indie games like Super meat boy & Hollow Knight take more human resources than AAA-gamechanger Doom did, back in the day. Your 'kind of useful but fun/dirty' hacker project either becomes ad-infested to survive or is too-useful and gets copied by a big-company. If your problem is cool enough and you can solve it, investors will throw millions at you in hopes of making a global succe…

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.

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

#60

Post by t-3 »

davidn20 wrote: post #40
anotherhue wrote: post #18

Smartphones. Purely consumption devices changed the balance to be more producer/consumer than collaborator. The world is on board now so rapid tech changes aren't possible to market. There's still crazy/genius if you look for it, but hobbyist only in most cases. NixOS, Urbit, any DHT or CRDT system, VR, Graal, WASM, mesh nets like ygssadril.

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.
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