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The tech monoculture is finally breaking

jasonwillems.com

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Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#21

Post by packetlost »

Havoc wrote: post #13

What the author describes seems to be more specific examples in his/her circle rather than a wider movement I’d say. The walled gardens are imo getting worse. And opting out (dumb phone) isn’t the same thing as that dissolving. That said I’m also cautiously optimistic in some areas. Linux on desktop in particular is on a good streak. Riscv seems promising. More people are understanding lock in risk etc.

The regulation that I wish would happen that never will is user data sovereignty laws. It's obnoxious that there's not a way to back up my phone to my NAS.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#22

Post by Yhippa »

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #3

Tech was probably the most fun for me in the mid to late 2000s. Definitely a lot more fun than whatever the tech industry has become now in 2026.

Everything now has to be fully vetted before trying it as opposed to making something weird and quirky. Sad! I miss those days.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#23

Post by netsharc »

BeetleB wrote: post #2

> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.” Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage…

> You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.

The most WTF thing was when Airpods got a firmware update that worsened the noise cancellation, because some patent troll sued them saying it violated some patent...

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#24

Post by observationist »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #17

I'm not sure I agree with all of that - that single-purpose tech is making a real comeback. But I do have one example in my daily life that supports this: A Garmin watch. Unlike "full" smartwatches (arbitrarily defined as: You can browse the web on them in some fashion) Garmin devices are intentionally limited but in return, what they do works very well and seems fully debugged. I spent several years recording outdoo…

I've started to realize of late that a vast majority of tech is "making things and services that maximize the amount of money taken out of customer wallets" and not "making cool technology that works". They have just as much pride and put just as much care and craft into squeezing money out of consumers as developers and engineers put into their projects.

This creates a market where quality and craftsmanship and customer service reduce competitiveness and eat into profits. We've empowered and optimized a market for the enshittifiers, and they're damn good at what they do.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#25

Post by kens »

In the article, he lists his 14 major electronics purchases for 2025 along with "more mechanical watches than I can count". Serious question: is this a normal level of acquisition? I'm not a minimalist, but that's more electronics than I buy in a decade.

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#26

Post by NitpickLawyer »

biophysboy wrote: post #10

My ideal situation is that AI becomes commoditized so much that it yields relatively little value for the producers and an incredible amount of value for the consumers. I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer, but my hope is that the seeds for the next generation of tech have already been sown. It would be cool if software becomes so mundane and interchangeable that tech once again distingui…

> I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer

Open models are a great proxy (and scare tactic) to what we can expect. As they are already released, and won't change, you'll get basically the same capabilities in the future for current or decreasing cost (with normal hardware improvements trends). The current SotA for open models (dsv3, glm, minimax, devstral, etc) are at or above the mini versions of top labs (haikus, -mini, etc). With the exception of gemini 3.0-flash I would say. So, barring any black swan events in Taiwan, we can expect to be enough pressure to keep the prices at those points, or lower in the future. And we can expect the trend of open to chase top labs to continue. The biggest "gain" from open models is that they can't go backward. We can only stagnate or improve, on all fronts (capabilities, sizes, cost, etc).

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#28

Post by netsharc »

__loam wrote: post #11
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #3

Tech was probably the most fun for me in the mid to late 2000s. Definitely a lot more fun than whatever the tech industry has become now in 2026.

Tech is being run by ignorant financiers and college dropouts who don't understand institutional knowledge or technology.

It was hackers building crazy stuff (Steve Woz' book detailed how he built one of the company's first computers, and he knew what every logic gate in it did) and then some people realized there's money to be made...

Any "founders" out there showing off their vibe-coded SaaS with money from their FAANG career that they got after finishing the bootcamp course? (I mock, as the inner voice asks "You had the talent, why aren't you in the 2 commas club?")

Re: The tech monoculture is finally breaking

#29

Post by sylens »

I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune).

Instead, I see the growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.

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