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We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

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Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#31

Post by literalAardvark »

tsol wrote: post #19

We thought the future was gonna look like a movie, or something like The Jetsons. The future like actually much more mundane, and predictable. It's curved tv screens and smaller phones. That's kind of cool, but nothing special. I think part of it is people had very big expectations for the future and those are only rarely met. I also think we already got a lot of the low hanging fruit. Growing up, I used to dream of…

Phones are much more than most fiction ever dreamed. I feel like they're one of the few fulfilled promises of tech.

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#32

Post by literalAardvark »

crtified wrote: post #22

The mainstream commercialisation of tech may be tedious, but life on the tinkering fringes is about as exciting and engaging as ever. There's a lot more noise to filter out, of course. Perhaps that falls under "careful what you wish for" - that is, as 80's/90's youngsters we all wished that the world was more tech and computer -centric. Well, we got our wish.

Eternal techtember

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#33

Post by Nextgrid »

tuatoru wrote: post #18

Huh? I still am excited about technology. Technologies I'm awaiting keenly:- * Electrolysed hydrogen for iron smelting and fertilizer making * Reverse osmosis fresh water production * Cell-cultured meat * Robots in pedestrian spaces / robots around people (hospital and university delivery bots, fruit picking bots, re-taskable robots in factories, etc.) * Bio-inspired textiles like artificial spider silk and vegan lea…

> Robots in pedestrian spaces / robots around people

I guess we haven't had enough with shitty bike/scooter sharing services cluttering sidewalks, now we'll have shitty food delivery services doing that too. Obviously none of them will even interoperate across different providers (how will the founders achieve their monopoly vision otherwise?) so it'll be wasteful both in terms of money, hardware, energy and sidewalk space. Can't wait!

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#34

Post by Nextgrid »

stevage wrote: post #27

I blame venture capital for a lot of this. A bootstrapped tech company can keep making products for consumers at a modest profit. A vc backed startup has to grow and grow, so selling out their customers is just an expected part of that journey. It sucks. I hate it. Maybe we will see the rise of some label that companies might adopt, to signal that they are not trying to profit from what they know about you, they just…

Growth for the sake of growth has a (in)famous equivalent in biology: cancer.

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#35

Post by wildrhythms »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

Peak tech. This feels rather behind the curve, like the author is just figuring out what we've been saying here for many years now. But the difference is that it's now okay for an MIT professor of AI Ethics to say it. That's the crucial change. People are saying it. At the school. At the hospital. Out in public amongst friends one used to "keep up appearances" for. I can discuss it with my boss. Even my aged but high…

>We built this stuff.

I think a lot of engineers would prefer to not build this stuff, and are even ideologically opposed to its existence. But there is always another engineer struggling to make ends meet who will commit the code. There is little collective support within the professional engineering space to stand behind ethics in tech; moneyed interests are not just oblivious, but diametrically opposed to it.

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#36

Post by wildrhythms »

stevage wrote: post #27

I blame venture capital for a lot of this. A bootstrapped tech company can keep making products for consumers at a modest profit. A vc backed startup has to grow and grow, so selling out their customers is just an expected part of that journey. It sucks. I hate it. Maybe we will see the rise of some label that companies might adopt, to signal that they are not trying to profit from what they know about you, they just…

While I think VC is a culprit of this phenomenon, look at established institutions like Microsoft, Lenovo... still injecting ads and bloatware for decades and laughing all the way to the bank. I think this transcends any recent trends in startup funding.

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#38

Post by 6510 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #8
anon115 wrote: post #6

because we don't really need anything else?

Disagreed. There's a lot of things we need, just that they're against corporate interests, and in some cases those corporate interests have successfully lobbied our governments to make those things illegal. When I want a car for example, I want to have a single client application that will automatically get quotes & availability from Uber, Bolt, the local taxi service, etc and pick me the fastest/cheapest option. Thi…

I was most impressed by random security cameras and video doorbells. Its just wifi, a video module, a plastic box and some components to glue it all together. Before buying one nothing is disclosed about monthly fees for limited cloud storage. Desktop clients are missing.

Some how the sum of technology +1000 euro phone +Gbit internet adds up to a doorbell so slow the visitor is long gone before you get to respond verbally or in person. That is, if the notification is audible at all.

The old vintage video doorbell displays the video feed pretty much instantly. The old vintage intercom allows you to talk to the visitor immediately after picking up the horn.

If you lower the volume or mute my stereo or my tv, should that action also mute the doorbell???

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#39

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

shephardjhon wrote: post #30
Atheros wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, the government would simply write laws making the bad things illegal. "Vacuum cleaners may not upload any information about a person's home to any server or through any network, else fines and prison." "Televisions and monitors may not, of their own volition, display advertisements, else fines and prison." Or at least very clear labeling rules. I think that the underlying problem, as is often the case,…

While I mostly agree I think this one is more about older people in government simply not understanding tech and data in the age of IoT. I know they do have some small understanding because I have recently read up on SOX, HIPAA and Graham Leach Baily act which all have to do with protecting data and securing IT in some way. What they mostly boil down to is, write stuff down, make sure consumers know it, and protect y…

Yes, and we only need to look at the banking and investment sector to see how well this sort of thing actually works. These are all employment bills, written by the consulting companies who are going to be the ones to take the call from the Fortune 1000 companies that have to implement the regulations, and precious little of what happens in all of this activity actually accomplishes the stated reasons for the law.

Re: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

#40

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

auggierose wrote: post #9

Last week I cancelled Apple Music. I found that my previously large music collection, which I had before joining Apple Music and its convenient web upload, was in tatters. Most albums were gone, and of the few ones still there, many had missing songs. Is that progress? Luckily I found the missing music as part of the backup of a laptop I decommissioned in 2016. Much technology is becoming too difficult to judge prope…

You don't even have to cancel Music to notice. My playlists and library albums are changing all the time. Even super-popular stuff just up and greys out. Tracks and entire albums disappear. Just like what's happening on Netflix, et. al., the copyright holders are going CRAZY, apparently working overtime juggling catalogs for some reason. If you really want to know that you have a copy of something, despite paying for it, piracy is the only solution. It's just sad. To me, consumers met in the middle with the copyright cartel and their DRM, and now they're just shining us on. Well, I guess, who could have seen that coming? Everyone.
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