There’s nothing wrong with the technology, it’s who is running it all that needs to be fixed, with the general f*ckery that is through everything now I miss my 2400 baud modem that was bigger than my computer and dialing in to a BBS.
You have my permission to write fuck on the internet. On the fediverse, Zuck is the more offensive four-letter word.
What the zuck…
Language!
I’ll take the Zuckwit over Bozos or Ellison.
Why did you censor ‘fuckery’ tho?
I like the star in it, reminds me of a sticker, which is an odd mental association but I swear like a sailor while dropping that in fuck.
Fair enough!
Yup, almost 70 and tech is fine. Just use what you need and ignore social media is what I do. I also of course do Lemmy. I ran a few BBS’s back in the day. Oodles of fun.
Algorithms that are specifically designed to addict you are pretty wrong technology in my eyes. Wouldn’t matter who is running it, that tech is harmful.
Okay, but booze, nicotine, and crack were also pretty addictive.
Idk if I’d trade The Algorithm epidemic of the 2020s for wood grain alcohol from the 1920s
Yeah, those are also harmful technologies that harmed societies more or less depending on the historical and geopolitical context.
Right now, the algorithm is more harmful than those because everyone is addicted to them. The sheer amount of time waste and collective brainpower that is being degraded or never even being developed is staggering and will stunt our society for decades to come.
Even fentanyl, while incurring a much more dramatic and tragic cost on individuals, has a fraction of the impact on society that the algorithm will have due to the scale of our collective addiction.
It’s like how wage theft has a relatively low impact on individuals but combined represents significantly more money stolen than all other crime nationwide.
The effects are spread out over many individual people, but it has an overall dampening effect on the growth and development of communities.
Right now, the algorithm is more harmful than those because everyone is addicted to them.
Again, I don’t think you’re acknowledging the difference between chemical addiction and social habit.
If you spend a week without cell phone reception, you don’t die from withdrawal symptoms.
The distinction is not really worth considering except in the context of managing withdrawal symptoms during recovery. Any substance/behavior addiction can be devastating, and trying to say that someone’s addiction is less valid than someone else’s just prevents them from seeking help.
except in the context of managing withdrawal symptoms
Seems like one hell of a caveat
I mean, it is important, but detoxing is probably the easiest part of actually stopping an addiction. The majority of people who go to rehab later relapse, so it’s not actually getting clean and managing withdrawal that determines recovery success, it’s the long term plan for replacing the addiction with healthy behaviors.
People have commuted suicide, though.
Just because it’s not a physical addiction does not men it can’t be as extreme, and generally a physical addiction will end up with nausea, exhaustion, and mood swings rather than death. It takes deep or long-term addiction to be fatal.
Okay, but booze, nicotine, and crack were also pretty addictive.
And heavily controlled, regulated and legislated. Algorithms aren’t
And heavily controlled, regulated and legislated.
Only took a century or ten
Yeah, this unfortunately. The algorithms are a mistake
They are deployed to addict, there is some benefit to them, Google used one back before they dropped “Don’t be evil” to enhance the relevance of search results.
Now they use it to censor, and sell shit, but it was not a bad technology before it was corrupted.
There is a reason I specified algorithms that are designed to addict. Algorithms in general are not bad technology, but these specific ones are.
There’s nothing wrong with the technology
Glances at the legacy fossil fuel infrastructure
Idk about that.
the general f*ckery that is through everything now I miss my 2400 baud modem that was bigger than my computer and dialing in to a BBS.
A lot of the historical nostalgia is based on biased accounts of past eras.
“I wish I lived in the 80s” is a thing you say when you’re not told about the airborne lead fumes or the acid rain. “I wish I lived in the 50s” is said by people who would feel very differently if they were being drafted to the Korean War.
Yeah, it’s nice that they fixed the ozone and acid rain, but now they’ve gone and walked back what stopped it, so we’ll see it again soon enough.
At least in the 80s there was potential for improvement, in spite of the problems, rather than an eternal spiral into oblivion.
We also were still able to rely on legal protections rather than having it all privatized and laws bypassed by T&C.
At least in the 80s there was potential for improvement
We don’t talk about the irreconcilable damage inflicted during the earlier industrial era. We don’t talk about what modern fossil fuels and plastics replaced.
Nothing about this is eternal. We are no closer to oblivion today than we were during Operation Plumbbob or the Black Plague.
You won’t live to see the end. You won’t live to see the beginning of the end. You won’t even live to see the end of the beginning.
We’re all living through a single footstep on an endless road.
Yeah the hardware is pretty solid. It’s the software that’s the problem.
Tech in the 1980’s - 2010’s was hopeful, beneficial, and fairly consumer oriented. Tech today is mostly some sort of scheme for recurring billing while openly assisting the modern surveillance state. It’s no wonder modern tech feels icky.
The thing full of promise turned into the tyrant it swore to never become.
“don’t be evil”
Tech used to promise a better life. Now it requires a subscription and wants your biometrics just to lie about pizza toppings to you. Sounds like gen z is on the right path.
imagine telling someone in the 80s that in the future so communities computers will need your age and will report it to the government.
Tech is still cool, but subscriptions are not. That is why I like self hosting and open source so much.
I feel like gen z caught the full destruction of 3rd spaces that melenials still caught the tail end of.
I’d love a community space to share my knowledge of pre-zuck-thiel tech with. I feel like the complete destruction of 3rd spaces are part of why there is such poor knowledge xfer between z and millennials
it’s not community spaces dude.
it’s that going out was CHEAP.
i could go out in 2006 with my friends on a friday night for $20. hell 10 years ago i could go out for $50 or so.
now going out on a friday night costs you closer to $200. that’s not possible for a college kid, unless that college kid has mommy and daddy’s credit card.
the COL basically means unless you have lots of money, you can’t ever go out anymore. a fucking movie ticket is 20-25 dollars now. I used to see movies for 3-5 bucks when I was young.
the value of the dollar has collapsed.
Were you born in 84?
Millennials caught the tail end of physical 3rd spaces, but experienced the golden age of digital third spaces. The internet until the mid 2000s was way more decentralised and chaotic.
Instead of anonymous chatrooms and forums as digital 3rd spaces, Zoomers used less accessible proprietary options such as Discord or Twitch instead.
If you have a Hacker/Makerspace near you, you might want to check that out.
the makerspaces in my city are full of trust fund elitist douchebags who who snub you if you aren’t rich like them. they also charge usage fees, usually starting at 200/mo or 50/hr. they are not communal spaces for anyone to show up and hang out.
the only place that is legit free is the library, but their makerspace is only open T-F at 10am-4pm, because it’s for teenagers and retirees.
Is it “discomfort”, or a full rejection of the values represented by the enshittified tech companies and their LLM-cronies?
I’m tired of tech being everywhere from cars to toasters I still prefer analog things that do the job and only that job.
I don’t need my internet connected fridg to tell me what groceries to buy while selling my data to insurance companies
i don’t think it’s tech, it’s that tech stopped being something that helps you, now it’s just things that control you, and it’s all so shitty.
being a millennial was nice. almost every new piece of tech was useful and made life easier. but i think it was around 2010ish when it all began going downhill. first, capacitative buttons, then smart everything that didn’t help, just monitor you and sell your data. now so much tech is straight up hostile.
I remember when the first round of capacitive buttons showed up. I can’t find it anymore, but there was an article on a fan site for MP3 players I read in 2010 that showed the comparisons of physical vs capacitive vs touchscreens and capacitive buttons only had negatives. It baffled me when they just never stopped using them on things. That article was burned into my mind and now I see that logic has spilled into a thousand other industries.
I’m a bit older than you, I enjoyed tech when it was an escape and communication/education tool not a requirement even my local library uses an internet connected touch screen to locate books.
Yep, it all went to shit about 2010. The Mayans were right.
Mayans predicted the capacitative buttons
Hahha
Had a similar experience when SCUBA diving recently. New pressure gauges these days are digital and I still think the analog ones are not only prettier, but also functionally more convenient. You don’t need to be able to read numbers to know you’re getting into the red. Maybe they have some extra feature but I didn’t need it.
you don’t have to buy tech devices. they sell non tech fridges dude.
you can also just not use the tech in your car/tv/etc. nobody is forcing you to connect it and use it.
It’s universal man. They fucked everything up, don’t blame us (everyone) that we don’t want to use your garbage tech. What do you expect to happen when you suck all the soul and humanity out of everything, out of daily living? People want that, need that, desire that, well, most people.
“to live in the past” is so fucking dumb, it shows that the person who wrote that title and the publisher who approved it thinks depending in AI, not caring about the data collected from you, jumping into whatever new popular thing and never having any critical thoughts about where this is all going is a good thing and the future.
They’re actually living in the now and making choices from that and for the future, they understand the objectively bad practices and shitty behaviour of the late stage capitalism we’re living in.Modern technology is great. It’s massively cheaper and more performant for orders of magnitude less money.
Consumer technology on the other hand, is cursed.
The problem is that nobody needs to know how to use technology anymore. Every piece of consumer hardware and software is designed so that the company does all of the work for you and then rents you the fruits of the technology. Now you’re eternally dependent on someone else to operate your technology for you because you’re constantly paying the people that are ensuring your technological ignorance.
Don’t worry about learning how to store mp3s or manage your music Library! Just pay Spotify, YouTube Premium, or Apple Music $10/mo!
Don’t worry about needing to learn how to backup your data or to store you photos, just give Apple $29.99/mo! Shopping for hardware is hard, learning the difference between a Megapixel and a Megabyte is for nerds! Just buy the iPad, iLaptop, iCamera, iEarbuds, it only costs 50% more than it should!
Dealing with .mp4 and .mkv files, too complicated! Don’t worry about needing to learn anything about movies, Netflix/Hulu/Disney/Paramount/Amazon/AppleTV/etc will gladly take your $20/mo and do everything for you!
Don’t like your computer’s OS being filled with advertising, spyware and AI? Too bad! Your only options are 1. Live in Apple’s Walled Garden, 2. Put your entire life’s worth of private data on the auction block for the lowest bidding advertiser for the benefit of Microsoft’s shareholders or 3. Give your cellphone provider and Google root access to your entire life!
Yes, this is a ‘Just use Linux’ comment.
Modern technology is great. It’s massively cheaper and more performant for orders of magnitude less money.
Performant and cheaper are not inherently good things. LEDs perform a shit ton better than incandescent bulbs and are cheap as hell. But we fundamentally didn’t need more cheap light for 95% of consumer use cases. Now light pollution is climbing exponentially, 10% per year.
Consumer compute was atrocious to start, but reached a useful level where it unlocked a ton of value for people. Graphics at a legible fidelity, replacing paper documents, data over networks, responsive input, portable-ish laptops, etc…
Now we’ve got more compute than we’d ever reasonably need as a species. Landfills full of IoT waste, datacenters filling up with cheap bytes where only 1/10 will ever be read, drones dropping bombs and gearing up to monitor our every move, trillions of Kw/hr spent driving it all every year…
And what novel value has been unlocked by this glut of compute that we didn’t have before? On-demand AI meme videos?
Sure I can spend a few hundred bucks on a personal LED lightshow that would have cost tens of thousands a few decades ago. And sure I can spin up a home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago. But what have I actually gained?
And sure I can spin up a home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago. But what have I actually gained?
A home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago.
Things such as:
Cheap mass storage and a home network connection with upload speeds that make hosting media streaming and ‘cloud’ storage out of your closet an affordable possibility.
Access to large, quality, high resolution displays that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.
High performance portable computers that draw significantly less power.
Cheap, high capacity, battery technology to power said devices.
Mobile data networks with orders of magnitude more data bandwidth.
All of this is to say: The ability to own and control all of the technology that you depend on without needing to rent services from a corporation.
I don’t need iCloud, when I have a 2Gb connection attached to a 24TB storage array. I can do better than Spotify, play the music that I want to listen to without serving me ads or providing my private data to be used by some profit-seeking company. I don’t have to give away my privacy to Microsoft just to be able to have a functioning desktop PC. I don’t require Amazon’s storage and processing to have smart security cameras. Google isn’t required for my smartphone to work, my cellular provider doesn’t get to dictate which apps are permanently installed.
All of this is possible now for orders of magnitude less capital and operating expenses than it was 20 years ago.
I don’t need to throw away my computer because Microsoft has decided that it’s much easier to enforce control over their operating system if your hardware prevents you from modifying the software running on your machine. I don’t have a drawer full of old Apple cables which were only created in order to sell you a $2 piece of copper for $39.99. My movie streaming service doesn’t randomly decide that I need to pay another $5/mo or insert advertisements into my TV shows and I am not at risk of having access to my cloud storage permanently revoked because of some clause in a 700 page Terms of Service that changes every other week.
Technology is so much better, more private, safer and more affordable now. As long as you’re willing to learn how to use it.
Unfortunately, the profit is almost entirely in fostering the world’s population into a state of technological dependence on these proprietary services and devices. It’s hard to convince someone to overcome their fear of a terminal when they can pay a monthly fee for the rest of their life in order to avoid it.
Cheap mass storage and a home network connection with upload speeds that make hosting media streaming and ‘cloud’ storage out of your closet an affordable possibility.
My closet could already hold DVDs and I could have bought a slightly pricey flash drive to carry around a good chunk of media without getting networking involved. Now I can get the data from those DVDs without leaving my couch or carry around more than I have time to consume. Do I truly benefit much more?
Access to large, quality, high resolution displays that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.
Larger and higher quality to show higher resolutions of the same basic media tech from 20 years ago. It’s certainly novel to see a movie at home in HD/4k, but it didn’t fundamentally change the experience of watching a movie in 720p.
High performance portable computers that draw significantly less power.
Power draw wouldn’t be as much of an issue if we didn’t require digital access 24/7. A blackberry w/ voice mail and an iPod drew significantly less power and gave me all access to portable messaging and non-video media.
In exchange for gaining that video media, everyone assumes I will download their app or pull up their QR code menu.
Mobile data networks with orders of magnitude more data bandwidth.
Which still can’t match the sneaker-net bandwidth of me carrying some flash drives or DvDs. Only necessary because the raw size of data has exploded. Though I supposed I gained the ability to scroll memes on the bus.
The ability to own and control all of the technology that you depend on without needing to rent services from a corporation.
We had nearly as much control 20 years ago. Linux was just as available if you didn’t want a mainstream OS.
Technology is so much better, more private, safer and more affordable now
Don’t worry, I’m sure legislation will catch up. Our dependence on convenience tech has allowed Apple/Microsoft/Google et.al. to purchase control of their own regulation. Your OS requires age verification today (because of this ocean of data kids can access from their pocket) and tomorrow all hardware sold will require a DRM heartbeat.
Looking back on it all, the cheap tech has basically unlocked consumer video media. It wasn’t feasible to create and store significant digital video for anyone in the 00s, but now people can make professional quality movies with iPhone. Was that worth the externalized costs?
average people will never use linux.
it’s for nerds. average people are not nerds.
Xennial here. I got rid of most social media years ago (FB, twitter, etc.) and never signed up for a lot of others. I’m replacing my google pixel watch with a pebble. I’m open to ditching my android google phone as well once something works properly with all the Japanese government and banking services. Thinking about how to degoogle.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows back in the '80s and '90s, but I definitely feel like we should take back some of our balance, security, and comfort (though streaming and recording video can stay).
I’m replacing my google pixel watch with a pebble.
And you make way more money than the average US worker.
I work in Japan and get paid in yen so that seems unlikely. Indeed. I am basically at the median us salary with the exchange rate. I’ve bought two phones in the last 11 years (and won’t replace my pixel 6 until it dies). I also work two jobs.
Put Graphene OS on your Pixel.
Fair point. I was wrong to be snarky without knowing where you lived.
It’s not really discomfort. It’s the fact that any benefit technology would give us is being monetized and abused to the point where it’s not enjoyable. I have this phone because employers expect to be able to contact me 24/7, and because governments want to spy on me, and companies want to harvest my data so they can profit from me. In return im given just enough to make it to the next day, and a screen to distract me from how fucking pointless our society is.
A skilled/educated American worker should be able to retire comfortably at 50 without having to worry about how they’ll afford healthcare.
Companies make millions off you, then you give a few thousand because they know if they ever paid you a fair share, we’d all realize how much they’ve been robbing us this whole time.
A skilled/educated American worker should be able to retire comfortably at 50 without having to worry about how they’ll afford healthcare.
I did that, and I’m an unskilled American worker. Never had a tech job in my life.
You have your kids college/first home deposit covered and enough for you and a spouse to retire comfortably, and also cover any and all future metal expenses. Good on you man. You’re a unicorn
But that’s exactly the point…I’m not some rare unicorn.
Most people on Lemmy make more money in a single year than I ever earned. A lot of you have probably never made less than $85k a year since college. Do you even realize how much money that actually is?
How many on Lemmy made at least that much on their very first fucking job. You know what I did as a job in college? I worked as a fucking dishwasher.
The average full-time U.S. worker makes about $62,000 a year.
Most of you wouldn’t even consider taking a job that pays that little. You can complain about prices, gas, and the cost of living all you want, but $85k a year is more than enough to live comfortably for the vast majority of Americans.
The truth is, most of Lemmy has no real idea how the average person actually lives. Yet you still come here and bash capitalism and technology. The very fucking things that let you earn well above the national average.
Most of you have had far more financial comfort than I ever did, even after adjusting for inflation. Plenty of you could buy a house in a nice small town and pay it off in less than 10 years. But instead, you choose to live in expensive cities, go out every night, buy the latest tech and electric cars, then act like your life is so hard.
I was a single dad at 19, could never afford to finish college. Worked two jobs so my kid could have a room of his own in a small dumpy house. I would stay awake at night scared to death of losing one of my jobs and then losing my kid to the state because I wouldn’t have housing. The vast majority of Lemmy has no idea what real struggle is, but they’ll come on here and bitch about how terrible their lives are. What a fucking joke! What, you worried you won’t be able to make a payment on your brand new EV? lol
Get away from me with that nonsense. Most Lemmy’s have never had to work at McDonalds and wouldn’t know how to live off that salary if they did. Hell, my pension is smaller than half of your paycheck. LMAO
Most on this platform have multiple degrees, tech jobs that pay way above average, but you bitch and moan. It’s all bullshit. You could go to a rural town in Missouri and buy a nice fucking house for $180K. And you know what the majority of replies here on Lemmy would be to that bit of info? “Yeah, but it’s Missouri and they probably voted for Trump, so fuck that!”
That shit right there is all of Lemmy. Every single one of you could have a house if you really wanted one. But holy smokes, you may have some conservative neighbors, so fuck that. hahhahhaha
Guess you don’t really want a house and affordable living then do you? Because god forbid that you have neighbors that vote different than you.
But all good. The reckoning is coming. Your good tech jobs are gonna go away, and then you can know what real fear is like. How many of you are gonna be able to survive digging ditches for a living… like I did for 6 years. Try that during summer in Missouri, then come back here and tell me how much of a “unicorn” I am. lololol
Not sure why you make a distinction between skilled and unskilled workers. If anything, ‘unskilled’ workers should be able to retire even sooner since they often do work that strains the body.
If I was gen z I would purely hate how I grew up. They got the worst if it. Well, them and alpha.
No wonder so many want to go back, I do as well! Give me all of our civil rights of today (minus US idiocy, I mean actual first world countries ) and take me to 1995-05 somewhere.
I am the oldest of Gen Z having been born in the late 90s. I got the tail end of what the world was like pre-smartphone and gotta say it was better…
Gen Xer born in 1967 checking in. Totally agree the world pre-smartphone was better. People just seemed to be more aware of their surroundings and each other. I don’t blame Gen Z for getting dumb phones and, like, actually engaging with each other. We abuse our tech, and big tech abuses us.
I’m a mid-millennial, born in the late 80’s. I’ve seen all of the 90’s.
If I was going into temporal witness protection, going back in time to keep me safe from the mob I ratted out…would I want to live in 1995?
2005 is an easier sell. I graduated high school that year, and a LOT changed in those ten years. Would I want to go back to 1995?
I remember 2005 very well and it was so nice lol, but I am very biased for being a kid then.
As a gen z who likes to call himself a millennial despite not being one, I can say growing up wasn’t the worst. Yes I saw the end of the wild west of the internet, but I got to experience what is in my opinion the greatest console to ever come out: xbox360.
Not as good of a lineup as other consoles of the past, but where else am I getting games like the Halo games or Gears of War?
360 was good. Xbox and ps2 IMO were peak, because they didnt have fuckng “avatars” and online only games yet. You could get halo 1 and 2 and gears of war on Xbox og.
Drramcast is my fav tho. Even though it was shunted by the ps2.
Woop I was wrong. Gears of war was 360 only! I even have it on 360, lol. Thought they made the 1st one for og xbox.
Nnnnnn…that line “I say ‘your civilization’ because when we started thinking for you it became ‘our civilization’ which is really what this is all about” hits different in 2026. In 1999 it came across as generic movie villain drivel, now it’s headline news.
Bullshit. This sounds like a dumbshit conservative article written in hopes to belittle gen z into boomer thinking.
Tell me without telling me that You didn’t understand anything what was written in the article or you didn’t even read the article?
You beat me to the punch. Yes & thank you. -From a fortunate & somewhat observant and empathetic Gen X’er that owns an honest awareness for not only our generational woes, but all the subsequent generations that the Boomers have F’d over as well.
Maybe we (Gen X’ers) feel somewhat, guilty for not going harder. Perhaps by the time we figured our way through the system we were so initially disgusted by, we abandoned our F The Man ideals and took the route of the Happy Days comfortable Boomer route? Please be kind, it’s late here & this is just more of a rant. Perhaps there are some that may feel somewhat similar? Or not. It is a wide spectrum of people we are considering in this conversation.
It was that good in the 90s, enshittification is only more visible now as you have gotten older and better at identifying it.
The sad thing is they aren’t really equipped to live in any world but the one being created for them. All the education indicators are trending down. They can’t do much without an internet connection and apps
“They” can’t? None of us can. It’s not generational, it’s systemic.
Technology has become a way for the rich to extract more wealth from parts of other people’s lives they have no business being in. I sincerely hope we can all get away from that side of it.
