I grew up with nearly every stage and major leap of our modern tech. I saw dialup internet and windows 95 and the major shift to XP. I had an original Nintendo and gameboy, and got to witness the evolution to handheld and 3D gaming. I had a flip phone with T9 texting, and saw the first smartphones come about. For me, tech peaked in like 2012, and hasn't done anything worthwhile or innovative since, with the exception of the steamdeck. The internet has only gotten shittier since, cell phones and PCs have only gotten more expensive and complex, without any major increase in capability. Sure they're more powerful, but they can't really do anything new, and all software has only gotten shittier and less efficient. It's honestly depressing to think about how much hope I had for the tech space in the 2000s and how far we've fallen since then.
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
Everything modern I buy just breaks in a year
Everything modern also says you don't own it, only lease access that can be revoked at any time, and also serves you tons of ads while listening to and spying on everything you do.
But anytime anyone says anything unkind towards the god of technology, they are amish, luddites, fools, etc.
The Luddites got a bad rap. They weren't anti-technology. They just knew that the technology was being used to push their wages down and make their hours longer.
Ned Ludd knew that smashing the machines was sometimes the best option!
Yeah, after I learned about his movement, I stopped using the term as a pejorative. They were' pretty based.
A lot of the machinery was also dangerous AF.
I draw the line at 2000.
You just broke your promise :/
Ssshh... don't tell my other personality.
Someone is pushing a very stupid narrative about those of us who see the situation as anything other than progress.
Not amish.
Moral compass.
The only technology developed after 2021 was LLM's and Stable Diffusion
This is the understanding of a "tech enthusiast", not someone who's actually interested in how computers work.
Thats a bad way of describing enshitification. Yeah people are not interested in buying stuff they already had but for a monthly subscription. That's literally the only idea anyone in tech has had this decade. Do the same thing for a subscription and slap AI all over it. Get series A funding and sell the company.
I like technology (mostly pre-2010), but I think there’s been a philosophical shift in the things that modern tech companies prioritize. AI is a huge part of the problem obviously, but it’s more of a symptom than a cause.
I want something that I can repair and modify. I want the internals to be easy to access and made out of parts cheap enough for me to replace. I want to be able to play pretend like I’m Terry Davis and not have to deal with UEFI bullshit telling me what I can and can’t run on my computer.
It’s all a move to walled gardens with very limited access to the OS or hardware, where the focus is on touch screens and amplified UIs. I’m the kind of person who customized Xmonad and Vimperator (RIP, I know there are dupes but it’s not the same) to never even bother with a mouse, and so it all feels unnatural. I spend so much time fighting my autocorrect when I’m on windows or Mac products, another one of those “helpful” features that is forced and obnoxious.
It’s a move from computers as toy (LEGO set) to computers as toy (needoh squishy). They’ve become machines designed to deliver content and extract data while you zone out. Some of the most fucking fun I’ve had in my life has been spending 6 hours writing PERL to do something I probably could have done manually in 30 minutes or strange journeys into the windows registry as I try to figure out why all of my / changed into ¥, and that’s just not the vibe of anything in modern technology. Everything is designed to hide as much of itself from you.
Tiny minority very vocal on lemmy
In my mind it is not the age of the technology, but its owner or lack thereof.
Make it 1994 and I'm fine with it. Couldn't care less. I'd trade it all to be back in 1994.
- Sooooo many great games and movies released then, and the 90s left a great catalog of both.
Edit: I started my comment with "2001" but it only says "1." When I view it? Maybe a bug in my client.
{number}{dot} is a Markdown list. Like this:
- one
- two
The original Markdown was poorly documented (including in this regard), but most derivatives specify that the numbers are ignored and it just counts from one. Annoying when you are trying to count from zero.
Ah this explains it. The full sentence was "2001." I guess next time I need to make an actual sentence. Thanks! TIL
Pre 9/11, it was all transparent plastics and physical media. Those were the days.
I miss my MiniDisc Walkman.
Yes!! I don't care how common it was, transparent purple rocked.
Is "digital amish" meant to be a pejorative of some sort?
They say it like it's a bad thing?
I guess if you consider the word "Amish" to be negative? I mean I despise Amish because of how they treat their animals, but I don't consider it negative. I'd assume most people don't.
Yeah I've got beef with their love of domestic violence, not their aversion to technology
I take it as a "fixed" reference. Many people know the Amish community hit a point and chose not to use new technology created after that.
They are not against it, or others using it.
I don't interpret the phrase as having malace, just a way to show this might be the new line in the sand.
Amish 2.0 ?
Whoever sets up the first anti-AI town is going to do very well for themselves.
there should be theme towns for every decade with era appropriate technology in each one
Hollywood has this essentially but it's for filming.