In the 60s science fiction we had all those advanced aliens who had artifacts that were nearly indestructible, worked forever and could output tons of energy. That was our vision of "high-tech". In the 80s we got the idea that maybe advanced aliens would have "smart" devices that could adapt to their environment, repair themselves and be incredibly versatile.

In those decades SF technology has one thing in common, regardless of the specific narrative: it granted incredible agency to the person who wielded it.

We also constantly tell ourselves that out technology advances forward, sometimes outpacing science fiction... Except the actual properties of our technology "evolve" in the opposite direction. We now have devices that are low-power, utterly fragile and dependent on tons of external services.

Our real technology today takes our agency away. As the article points out, it's often deliberate.

I sometimes entertain the idea of making a web comic where people have science fiction tech (spaceships, tasers, AI) with all our current problems: glitches, constant updates, loss of functionality due to poor connectivity, DRM, incomprehensible setup procedures, etc.