I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
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Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#2> Of course nowadays days I see the downsides of these devices and we're getting to a point where the cons outweigh the pros, but back when I bought the first smart phone (I guess in 2012 or so, I was relatively late to the party) it felt like a leap into the future compared to what I had before.
I know a lot of people have a troubled relationship to their phone, but this is really surprising to me. Would I want to go back to a world where I can't conveniently contact people, navigate the world, look up anything I want to know in an second, and set timers by yelling at the air rather than getting sticky foccacia dough in the cracks of my egg timer? Not even a little bit.
The last time I personally felt the excitement the author describes was probably with the announcement of Apple Vision Pro, but unfortunately that product went nowhere.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#3High quality eBikes are pretty amazing: I have nearly 4000 miles on one of ours, and nearly all of those are replacing car trips around town, including most of our grocery shopping.
While not revolutionary - they're kind of an incremental improvement - I'm pretty impressed by all the things a cheap Chromebook can do.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#4There's a term for that, it's called "getting old" and older people have been saying this kinda stuff for generations.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#5High quality eBikes are pretty amazing: I have nearly 4000 miles on one of ours, and nearly all of those are replacing car trips around town, including most of our grocery shopping. While not revolutionary - they're kind of an incremental improvement - I'm pretty impressed by all the things a cheap Chromebook can do.
We went from hipsters with tattoos on fixies to this guy
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#6I feel the same way. I think the difference is that new tech used to be an improvement to your life. New tech is there simply to suck life (your attention) and money away from you.
There are exceptions of course, But the general trend is worrying.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#7I've been playing Project Zomboid with my friends. It's an isometric survival game set in 1993 in a fictional area around Louisville, Kentucky. It has VHS tapes, TV and radio broadcasts, ham radio, CDs, and landlines in it. So far in my playing experience, there's no real internet component.
There's some sort of disease outbreak that turns people into zombies and society starts to collapse. Eventually things like the power grid and water/sewage infrastructure break down. Food rots. Gasoline runs out. It's basically guaranteed that you and your teammates will die in this game.
Even after living through a pandemic and all of the shit that came with it, and despite the grim atmosphere of the game, I still miss the time period that this game symbolized. I know I was only a child during the 90s and the era had its real problems, but there were good things about it and the state of technology at the time that have gotten worse in the decades since.
It was a time when media was a physical good and had meaning, when there wasn't a constant deluge of information, when my attention was less valuable than advertisers have made it today, and there was, at least for the majority of society, a shared informational reality.
That's all gone and there are massively powerful interests working to make sure it stays gone.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#8> Of course nowadays days I see the downsides of these devices and we're getting to a point where the cons outweigh the pros, but back when I bought the first smart phone (I guess in 2012 or so, I was relatively late to the party) it felt like a leap into the future compared to what I had before. I know a lot of people have a troubled relationship to their phone, but this is really surprising to me. Would I want to g…
I bought a flip phone that blocks web browsers and social media apps.
All other apps work though.
Best of both worlds.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#9I still get excited by the sheer power of current and upcoming tech
It may be the same stuff we had 20 years ago, but the specs!
What was a supercomputer before is now just a component in a datacenter, one of 72 per rack.
Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
#10There's a term for that, it's called "getting old" and older people have been saying this kinda stuff for generations.
The kids don't seem very excited anymore either from what I can tell.