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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

I've always said we peaked at the technology level of the late 90s. We had everything we needed, and none of the BS; cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, SMS, file sharing, blogs, forums, and broadband internet were all widespread at that point. Everything since has just been layers of monetized, corporate controlled, walled garden crap that has objectively ruined society and turned the techno-utopian dreams we had then into a dystopic Orwellian nightmare.

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I wonder if a community will form around this philosophy, and we'll end up with a new kind of Amish. Like in the year 2200, there's a group of people called the Seinfeldians who refused to use any technology introduced after 1998

It’s pretty much guaranteed. Live long enough and you witness the cycle of one generation’s legacy become taken for granted by the next, followed by rejection and rediscovery by each subsequent.

The kinds of people who'd use SourceHut and Gemini [0] and run a lightweight desktop Linux distro?

RMS is famously unbending in his refusal to use non-Free software. There aren't many like him though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

There are the various Tilde.club and similar servers, and SDF.

Arguably the "new kind of Amish" are... just the Amish; they've continued to adopt new technologies when they comport with their particular values. Other intensional communities may have different values.

Love "Seinfeldians" :)

Interesting, I didn't know that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Use_of_technology_by_dif...

I might be the outlier here: but I think we had everything we needed BEFORE cell phones and SMS (or more specifically before cell phones were common). Sure, it's nice in an emergency to have a phone anywhere you are, but in a society where you can be reached 24/7 there's a sense of urgency all the time. I struggle to even describe the difference because it's been so long since I've felt that sense of calm that comes with: hey guys, I'm going to X, I'll be back at dinner - and nobody expecting to hear from me until dinner.

I'm sure there are a privileged few that will say you just need to shut your phone off, but for most of us that's not an option. On a vacation? Sure. Outside of that, good luck.

I'm really curious what you mean by "privileged" for a person to be able to say "just shut your phone off".

I recently broke my phone and it took ~10 days to get a replacement. During this time, I had my wife text my family that I had no phone and wouldn't be responding to anything for a while. I felt no urgency, nobody got upset that they couldn't reach me, and thankfully there were no emergencies.

What level of privilege do you consider me having (or lack thereof that you apparently have) that doesn't let you do this? Genuine question btw, not trying to be facetious. I found the use of "privilege" here to be an interesting word choice and was hoping you could expand a bit.

My read is that it's specific to the case of being a programmer/sysadmin. Even if you're not on call, it's usually pretty unimaginable to be completely uncontactable if something breaks.

So privileged might literally mean "not having the most common job held by the people reading this."

I think that needs to be specified even further, because although this seems to surprise many people on this site, the vast majority of programming jobs do not require you to be "constantly contactable if something breaks". I have been a dev for almost 10 years now and never had a job that required anything to this level of "ability to be contacted", and neither have none of the people in my social circles. I genuinely feel bad for the people who end up stuck in jobs where this is the case, and in that way perhaps I would be more privileged than the GP

Every job I’ve had came with reachability expectations

Hopefully not 24/7/365. I think that's what OP was getting at. At the very least, weekend coverage should be passed around various co-workers.

It's a pretty big deal to ask somebody to shut off what might be their only form of social connection. It sounds like you have the privilege (not pejorative) of having a decent social network irl if you have a wife and family, as do I now that I'm later in life, but I can remember being an only-child teenager in the middle of nowhere with no social outlet other than online.

I know you're not the OP, but this is a very fair point. I would imagine though that if you're in such a situation you don't see your online time or phone as much of a detriment; You would see it as a lifeline and most likely be quite happy to have it. The GP does not seem happy with the idea of phones in this case.

>you just need to shut your phone off

These arguments are frustrating to me, they are completely missing the point. It's a misunderstanding of the difference between incentives and choices. When someone says "I have to be online all the time," they are not saying "I have no free-will and am being legally and/or physically compelled to stay online." They are saying "If I don't want to make substantial changes to my lifestyle and drastically reduce my career opportunities, not to mention possibly get fired from my job and/or lose personal relationships, I have to stay online all the time."

The challenge now with ditching the cell phone is that, in light of so many people having cell phones, the once-ubiquitous pay phones are mostly gone. Instead of carrying a cell phone, I once carried a few quarters.

Remember pagers? Even before cell phones, my dad (a physician) was reachable 24/7.

It’s an option for everyone unless you’re being paid to be on call.

Yes, I always thought this as well, but was not sure if it was influenced by me feeling nostalgic for the 90's...

I was not around enough in the 90's to have nostalgia, but looking back at history I have to agree.

Video calls? Skype initial release was in 2003. Consumer OS with server-grade kernel? Windows XP first release was in 2008. USB thumb drives? Windows 98 didn't have drivers for them, so they came bundles with CD with drivers? Web browsers? Firefox initial release was in 2002, much hated IE6 - in 2001. In 90s you had IE5 - I doubt it was much better than IE6.

Skype's big innovation was its ability to work in NAT-to-NAT situations, not anything to do with its actual calling functionality. People were video chatting even way back in the mid '90s: https://www.sattlers.org/mickey/CU-SeeMe/internetTVwithCUSee...

>>Video calls? Skype initial release was in 2003.

The first commercial software application for point-to-point video calls is CUSeeme and it was released in 1992.

The first concert to be live-streamed over the Internet was in 1993. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone

> Video calls?

Microsoft NetMeeting[0] was released in 1996 and actually included with Windows 95 through Vista

> USB thumb drives? Windows 98 didn't have drivers for them, so they came bundles with CD with drivers?

Zip drives and/or CD-RW were pretty widespread by then, filling a similar role

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_NetMeeting

The web made for IE5/Netscape 4 was much better than the current mess we have now. Websites were designed for the people reading them, rather than for analytics.

> Windows XP first release was in 2008

Not the 90s, but XP was released in 2001.

Thanks! I looked at a wrong release date on wiki ("Final release", which is actually Service Pack 3)

Trivia: AT&T consumer Picturephone service launched in 1970. https://ethw.org/Picturephone

Pffft! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotelephony#/media/File:Bil...

1997, under 1000,- Deutsche Mark. A pair for 1798,- DM Oh, and ISDN of course ;-)

There was Windows NT 4 which was awesome, released in 1996, and Windows 2000, released in 1999.

As a kid I used both of those. NT 4 was a bit hard to use since most programs (read games) were written for DOS or win95/98.

But Windows 2000 was awesome. It was like having winXp a couple years early

Yes, I deliberately tried to exclude the NT family by mentioning "consumer OS" :) BTW, how was Windows 2000 in terms of software (read games) compatibility?

“ to exclude the NT family by mentioning "consumer OS" ”

Sorry missed that.

Games: I wasn’t much of a gamer by then. But Age of empires worked well :D

IE6 was a great browser when released, the problem was that IE7 wasn’t released for another 5 years, a lifetime in those days.

In the movie The Matrix, Agent Smith explains that the Matrix is designed after the peak of human civilization, which just so happens to be the late 90s.

I'd argue that cellphones, e-mail, instant messaging, and SMS were already developments detrimental to the well-being of the average Joe.

>I've always said we peaked at the technology level of the late 90s.

The 1890s was a good time! Surprised an Amish posted on HN.

I definitely don't need 24/7 access to news and social media, but I still really appreciate the ability to access the internet "on the go." If my destination changes, I can look up new directions. If my friend and I are making plans to meet up again later, I can check an up-to-date weather forecast.

This was an ability I actively longed for as a child growing up in the 2000s (I'm 26 for perspective). I bought that special web browser for my Nintendo DS, but it was useless away from a wifi hotspot. (And it was slow as heck.)

>> I've always said we peaked at the technology level of the late 90s.

I like having Wi-fi and Bluetooth and these didn't become popular until sometime around 2004. In 99, most people would still use ethernet cables and floppy disks.

And corporate controlled, walled gardens have existed even before the commercial net. Online service providers (like Compuserve and AOL) were a huge market until the Dotcom bust.

Unfortunately, couldn't agree more. We need more cancel culture in tech.

I tend to disagree: spending the last 4 months in lockdown would have been really hard for me, but playing Table Tennis in VR with my home 3D printed paddle made things so much better.

So how do we get it back?

Give everyone you want to talk to your phone number, then delete all of your social media accounts, for a start.

Nothing better than waiting two days for a video file to download.

Blogging wasn’t really widespread until ~2001-2002

This is what we call boomer speak. Stop wallowing in your nostalgia, and look at reality as it is.

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