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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

#81
As I've aged and grown as a data engineer/scientist, unsurprisingly, it has become much rarer that I encounter something new that seems like magic (ie is something with functionality that expands my understanding of what is possible), but through new hobbies or explorations into new fields, I continually discover new and exciting uses of technology that adds neat functionality to my life.

For example, maybe a year or two ago, my wife started getting into bird watching, which introduced me to the Merlin Bird Id app [0], which (using my location, the date, and audio from my phone's mic) identifies the birds around me on walks. I can walk around and get mostly accurate identifications that help me better understand a complex and rich facet of the world that I had mostly ignored before! Super cool!

Another tech thing I recently learned a lot about that got me excited: I was playing around with a personal project to produce safer bike routes and I finally dug into OpenStreetMap [1, 2]. I had been aware of OSM for a long while, but taking this project on led me to look for a source for freely available route segment data that I could collect and use to build upon, and I found OSM was perfect for this. Digging into the source, I discovered it's essentially a Wikipedia-esque project (a triumph of the human species) where anyone can contribute edits to maps and they're immediately published worldwide! I was and remain very excited about this project.

When I just stay in my technical lane, I get desensitized to the cool stuff people are doing (which becomes hard to find in our ecosystems that have sold our attention to the highest bidders), but when I go out looking, people are still doing exciting stuff.

[0] https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap

[2] https://www.openstreetmap.org

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

#82
post #72

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.

Last time I saw it was a guy using ChatGPT to translate a conversation. Some weeks ago.

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

#83

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.

"In theory" you can imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios that will make you depressed.

In practice you can ride in a real self-driving car in a dozen major metro areas in the US. I have and they are fantastic.

In practice you can fire up an LLM today and use it for research or writing code or organizing your finances or any of a million incredibly useful things.

At present, the downsides are theoretical and the upsides are practical. The article says more about the author than the state of the world.

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

#84
post #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 g…

> set timers by yelling at the air rather than getting sticky foccacia dough in the cracks of my egg timer? I know it's mainly in jest, but this always strikes me as an odd example of 'high tech'. It feels like a 'first you create the universe' solution to using an egg timer with doughy fingers. Egg timers are simple devices that clean easy and can handle dough transfer. They are (or perhaps only 'were ') built as fi…

I was expecting a much better example. Not many people are looking to micro-optimize their time. An app to do that (and maybe choose something cheaper and better than big mac) already exist. Whatever improvement is marginal.

Your example reminds me of the famous chatbots buying plane tickets. There is no demand of people looking for a chatbot to buy plane tickets.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"In theory" you can imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios that will make you depressed. In practice you can ride in a real self-driving car in a dozen major metro areas in the US. I have and they are fantastic. In practice you can fire up an LLM today and use it for research or writing code or organizing your finances or any of a million incredibly useful things. At present, the downsides are theoretical and the up…

In theory, you can pretend that the experience of one afluent person in a metro area in the US is enough to make the dystopian situation we are heading to looks fantastic.

In practice, most people are fighting to keep their jobs if they have one, CEOs of corporations are talking daily about AI-driven layoffs and some of them even come to this forum to do exactly the same while talking about how this new era is bright and great. They make money through making other people hopeless and dependent.

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

#87
post #11

Tech is no longer exciting to me because I no longer feel a connection between tech improvement and world (or personal life) improvement. I used to read sci fi for the wonder, but now I read it with dread, for Chekov's Gun is a Torment Nexus, and if you introduce a Torment Nexus in Act 1 of a sci fi dystopia, it will be fired IRL by act 3. Deeper lurks a more chilling question: what, on a dying planet run by fascists…

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

#88

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…

[deleted]

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

#89
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Re: I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

#90
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the n…

Does not check out. One of the things I was highly excited about was RF communication. It still is. Another thing was LASERs and it still is. Computers also was one of them. But modern media boxes are not exciting. Microcontrollers though, are still exciting.

Yeah, TV was around long before I was born. It sucks, always has.
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