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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

#71

Post by brabel »

jshaqaw wrote: post #57

I am a bit over 50. Most new computer tech doesn't hit me like it used to but occasionally I still get hit with wonder. I got that feeling trying the Apple Vision Pro in store demo. 50-something me still can't believe I have AI at my fingertips. For the most part though it's not that new tech isn't cool but as I get older, parts of life which seemed mundane as a kid or young man aren't quite so mundane anymore. As a…

> As a teenager it seemed like family and loved ones were just there and part of the normal background.

So true. I even thought family was annoying. Now that most are gone ( some dead, some barely keeping in touch ) I understand, too late, they were what it’s all about for sure.

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#72

Post by brabel »

seancavorley wrote: post #63

Now that you mention it, yeah. I remember my mom doing the watch this microwave thing boil a cup of water demo for months everytime someone stopped by. It was a show. The last one I remember like this, with both "I want to show" and "I want see" high demand like that, was the Siri launch. Someone in my office got it running and he had people coming to his cubicle all day asking to hear it.

Last time I saw it was a guy bringing a VR headset to the office. Some 8 years ago.

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#73

Post by ericmay »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #68
ericmay wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars are really cool but they won't really solve our transit problems, they'll probably just make them worse and more expensive. We should be focusing on better development patterns (appropriate density - not skyscrapers and not suburbia), walking, biking, and hopping on a tram or something along those lines. Self-driving cars are an additive technology, and there is certainly a place for them, but they…

You are absolutely right, and the only negative is the utopian-esque description, therefore it'll never quite work as well as it should - but I think aiming for that will still get something better than what we've got. Your comment just made me think about the whole self-driving car thing as an extension of the car-centric thinking of the US (and how car-centricity is essentially anti-social, but that's beside the po…

Yea, it is an extension. It's additive. The safest car is the one that's parked. Car-centric culture has a lot of negative externalities. But the entire society is geared toward cars and propping them up. Cars themselves, auto jobs, departments of highways, tires, oil, gas, insurance, fast food, COSTCO, you name it. Most of those things can be replaced with something as simple as a sidewalk and better urban planning. If your goal is to prop up an industry, self-driving cars will do that for you.

If your goal is to increase autonomy [1], wealth, entrepreneurship, and happiness and decrease death and health concerns, racism, obesity, and other things you need to move away from car-only building and design patterns. I also think busses are a problem because they just reinforce bad habits. For most municipalities a bus is just a worse version of your car which is why they're largely unsuccessful for the masses. Bike/walk/rail is, in my view, quite literally the only good path forward for future transportation development.

I don't think the US is losing the car race to China though. What race? Why are we even in a race all of a sudden? I drive an EV and like them but aside from emissions I'm not sure one is really all that better than another (I find EVs more convenient though).

[1] Been a bad person lately? Maybe the government and the vehicle facial recognition technology says sorry no driving for you. Now what? Secondarily for the elderly (as the single-issue voter OP has mentioned) walking/biking/rail allows for better outcomes and for folks to participate more in daily life. Driving becomes more and more hazardous as we age and folks wind up stuck at home.

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#74

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Aurornis wrote: post #13

I remember my grandparents making this exact same complaint: All of the new technologies during their younger years were amazing and improved the world. All of the technologies that came along in their later years were only complicating life after they had settled into comfortable routines. In my hobbies and other real world activities I cross paths with people in their 20s a lot. It’s really refreshing to see their…

It may be based on your mental categories.

Let's say you were born in 1910. The revolutionary stuff (at the time) was applying electricity to stuff. Well, by the time you were 30, you'd seen all that. "X thing that we'd done before, but now done by electricity" wasn't a revolutionary idea any more. And by 1940, the really revolutionary advances in airplanes had mostly already happened (although the switch to jet engines was still to come).

What did it take to be revolutionary to a 30-year-old in 1940? Penicillin. Color television. The computer. There were still revolutionary things happening, but the bar was raised.

Or take the 1980s. It was revolutionary. Everything that people were doing anyway, they figured out how to do on a PC. I remember that time. Every month, there were new things possible, things that I didn't even think of trying to do on a computer.

By about 1990, that was over. Oh, you got the computer to do one more thing? I'm not surprised any more. I've seen that a hundred times over the last decade. It's just one more thing now.

Same with the internet. At first it was magic. Now, you can do one more thing on the internet? Yawn. Of course you can.

What's revolutionary now? AI. Twenty years from now, it will be a yawn too. Oh, you got AI to do one more thing right? No big news.

TL;DR: I guess that after a bunch of changes that can all be lumped into one bucket in your thinking, more changes in that bucket don't seem as interesting as the first few did.

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#75

Post by stickfigure »

We have self-driving cars and near-human AIs. And yet the author can't find something to get excited about?!?!?

I'm slightly older than he is and I lived through all those changes he talks about. I'm still in awe every time I fire up Codex. This article sounds like depression talking.

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#76

Post by dosisking »

swiftcoder wrote: post #18
dosisking wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBikes may be pretty amazing in isolation, but as a pedestrian, I absolutely hate people who ride eBikes.

Do you hate e-bikes, or do you hate city planning that treats e-bikes as second-class citizens, and forces them into direct competition with cars and pedestrians?

[flagged]

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#78

Post by brazukadev »

stickfigure wrote: post #75

We have self-driving cars and near-human AIs. And yet the author can't find something to get excited about?!?!? I'm slightly older than he is and I lived through all those changes he talks about. I'm still in awe every time I fire up Codex. This article sounds like depression talking.

self-driving cars isn't a reality besides in a few controlled environments and I empathize that near-human AIs being used as an excuse to lower wages and fire people isn't something to get excited about.

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#79

Post by driverdan »

I do agree it feels different but there is still a lot of interesting and exciting tech innovation. OP is about the same age as me so my list will be from my lifetime.

* Lithium batteries. They are one of the most important innovations of our generation. They are so much better than NiCads and lead acid batteries. Much of today's important tech, like mobile phones, wouldn't be possible without them.

* Solar panels went from a novelty to something that we can put on our homes with a positive ROI in a short time.

* EVs. If you haven't been in one go take a test drive. The prices are still too high, at least in the US, but Chinese innovation are pushing that down.

* Driving automation such as radar cruise, lane assist, and other autonomous driving features.

* Digital media, streaming or self hosted. Yes streaming services peaked 10+ years ago but the innovation is there. Having a small server in a closet hosting hundreds of 4k videos is quite an innovation compared to VHS.

* Home automation. It was previously limited to wired devices for the rich. Now anyone can put together complex self-hosted home automation with inexpensive Zigbee/ZWave devices and a Raspberry Pi hosting Home Assistant.

* Hobby electronics have become far more accessible and inexpensive. Arduino, raspberry pi, etc.

* SDRs radically changed radio technology.

* FDM/3D printing.

* Other CNC manufacturing became accessible to hobbyists.

* Bluetooth

* WiFi

* Progress in machine learning / AI, invention of LLMs

Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#80

Post by petra »

There are just so many new technologies, some just as software, some in hardware,food,medicine, etc.

But maybe it makes it harder to get excited from most things.

For example, once you browse Anna's library, or ask Claude to develop some software for you, it's harder to get excited from most things.

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