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I was thinking about this the other day too. In the last 10 years has technology actually made my life better? I had surgery recently and it seems like medical technology is much better. But day to day consumer tech? I was actually happier with that stuff 10 years ago than I am now.

> I was actually happier with that stuff 10 years ago than I am now.

Why can't you just use that then?

The Internet of 10 years ago doesn't exist. The Google search of 10 years ago doesn't exist. The social media of 10 years ago doesn't exist.

Sometimes it's a matter of the prisoner's dilemma or an arms-race. For example, I would like to continue using older phones. But most older phones don't support 4G or 5G. And that's not just a matter of internet: I had a nice phone, worked well for calls and texts, but the phone literally would not connect to the network because it was 2G max.

In other cases, one has to use newer technology because it is what is provided at work. Mainly because older technology doesn't get security updates. Now my iPhone SE original, which works perfectly fine, no longer is updated and I don't know what to do. I DON'T want a newer phone. I hate phones.

Still, some other technology isn't even made any more and if you need to use something at all, it has to be newer because it's harder and harder to find older stuff.

Because increasingly I can't park my car, order from a restaurant, manage my bank account, or schedule a doctor's appointment without an up-to-date smartphone, since the old ways of doing those things got removed in favor of apps. I also can't stay in touch with a bunch of my friends, who are on various chat platforms I can't access.

Unless you're prepared to go full off-grid hermit, you cannot opt out of technological progress even if you want to. That irks me, but what can I do?

> Because increasingly I can't park my car, order from a restaurant, manage my bank account, or schedule a doctor's appointment without an up-to-date smartphone

We still have the ability to opt-out of these things, and (sometimes) loudly let businesses know why, but the window is closing fast. If we want to have any hope for a world that doesn't require smartphones and apps, we need to take action now.

> We still have the ability to opt-out of these things, and (sometimes) loudly let businesses know why, but the window is closing fast.

I sometimes wonder if we do have the ability, because for every one person that has some sense, luxury, or energy to opt-out, there are a hundred that go with the flow. For every person who walks out of a restaurant with a QR-code menu, there are a dozen hungry people that walk in. How can we then take action within this system that is closing up around us?

I don't know what the solution is. The idiot consumers that accept and help to normalize this are too numerous.

One can only hope that there will always be at least one bank, at least one restaurant, or at least one doctor that addresses the shrinking market of those of us who care.

That's the whole thing with "enshittification". Things have been made deliberately worse or unavailable.

I agree wholeheartedly. Over a decade ago I was excited about all the new technological advancements in consumer devices. Every year, every month, something awesome was happening. Now I don't care anymore. New consumer tech features barely make a difference while useful features get removed to cut costs. Yet pricing has skyrocketed and subscriptions and ads are in everything.

> In the last 10 years has technology actually made my life better?

In my case? Yes, absolutely. Automatic speech to text is now cheap or free, ubiquitous across most platforms (even Linux!), and generally very effective. Total game changer to my ability to participate in meetings at work and in society generally.

Like I said, there are fringe cases as always.

I think that's mostly nostalgia talking or not paying attention?

For example, for me:

- My current MB Air (M2 I think) might be best product I have ever owned. I have zero daily use complaints about the product, it's fantastic. I remember vividly how obviously shitty aspects of any of the previous laptops I owned were (screens, fans, heat). At the same time, that Framework can exist and what they do is absolutely amazing.

- Absolutely everyone has a access to a really good smart phone, because bad smart phones don't exist anymore

- I find it intolerable to leave the house without a good set of headphones with good ANC. The idea that I ever tolerated that level of noise and the negative health effects that it has feels silly.

- Similarly, electric cars have made care noise bearable and car exhaust actively offensive to me

- You can reasonably cover your electricity needs with solar panels (and a battery, which also exists) at home

Idk. Just off the of my head. I feel fairly confident I could take branches down the tree and just keep going.

They will not rest until humanity has become as depicted in WALL-E: the ultimate brainless consumers. Unable to concentrate or focus or form an original thought. WALL-E might be the most prescient sci-fi movie ever made.

Substitute hover chairs for automobiles and we're already living in it. As a walker and cyclist in your average midsize US city, I often feel like the scene where WALL-E is pursuing EVE through the spaceship narrowly escaping collision.

> There’s a moral imperative of somehow celebrating making something with people that you think is important and curious and special.

This nonsense from a speech Ive gave (in celebration of designing a few expensive jackets that were not really different from other expensive jackets) sticks with me. It is a pathology when you become this delusional.

https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/moncler-jony-ive-lovefrom-co...

Yeah, these days a lot of people have that attitude. And I had that attitude when I was younger. But now that I've gotten older, I have realized there is "another side to the equation": there is also a moral imperative to take responsibility for your creations, and to temper curiosity with wisdom and care for how your inventions might affect the future. The problem is, in today's culture, we're only about rights and benefits and "curiosity above all else" without wanting to take the responsibility that goes with it.

Unlike the prevailing philosophy in tech and academia, we shouldn't elevate curiosity above all else, and it is pathological to do so even when not delusional if it becomes a myopic goal to the exclusion of other considerations.

If innovation stagnated 20 years ago we wouldn’t have Baldurs Gate 3, etc

> If innovation stagnated 20 years ago we wouldn’t have Baldurs Gate 3

I'm not sure, is this supposed to be irony?

Parent is arguing technology hasn't added enjoyment to life. Have you played Baldur's Gate 3? I did and I enjoyed it.

But is BG3 MORE enjoyable than anything that's come before? I would say I got just as much enjoyment from Mass Effect 20 years ago.

Like is entertainment THAT much better now? Is better entertainment really the bar we want to use for measuring tech advancement?

> But is BG3 MORE enjoyable than anything that's come before? I would say I got just as much enjoyment from Mass Effect 20 years ago.

Can't comment on Mass Effect, but I find BG3 is definitely more enjoyable than DOS2 or PWotR.

> Is better entertainment really the bar we want to use for measuring tech advancement?

There is definitely room for improvement there. I am having existential crises every time I wait for the next game I would enjoy to come out. The best time of my life was during the recent Mecha Break open beta, but now they closed it and I basically have nothing to do that I would really enjoy.

I'm not saying that there won't be small new additions to life that are fun, like better cameras (for me). But I think that you'd probably find something else equally enjoyable, like another new game that just isn't as advanced, and your life would not be significantly worse – in general, except for fringe cases. And on average, life isn't made better specifically because of technological improvement.

life peaked at 8-bit

Baldur's Gate 3 nailed execution out of the park, but I don't know what I'd point to as innovation that puts it meaningfully beyond what Neverwinter Nights expansions coming out in 2004-2005 were doing.

Baldur’s Gate 3 could have been made 10 years ago. Just the graphics would have been worse.

Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in the 90’s after all.

> Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in the 90’s after all.

Is Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 as enjoyable as Baldur's Gate 3?

>> They promise that their gadget will free us from technology

> One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology.

So they're blatantly lying to our faces, then? Or, more charitably, they're so full of themselves that they aren't registering their own contradictions.

> most of this recent junk we've been seeing

What are you thinking of?

AI, LLM models, newer computers that come *default* with A.I, newer phones with cameras I don't want, "Apps" for everything, IOT devices that flood the trash heap with electronic waste, phones that are forced to be obsolete and upgrade to make more trash, websites that load 200MB onto your local storage just to read an article that can fit in 65KB (check out the structure of BBC.com and see how much space it takes in the cache), cars with *ugly* huge screens and touch controls, social media, huge tech corporations, sophisticated advertising algorithms,...

> And what did we get in return?

Almost two hundred years ago, a bearded philosopher proposed that technology would simply make money move even faster to the pockets of the ultra-rich and leave the rest of humanity poor. He was ignored. We're now witnessing the results.

Didn't he predict that capitalism will naturally give way to socialism?

Technically there is still time.

He wasn’t ignored, and tens of millions of people died unnecessarily trying to implement his ideas.

What he didn't expect was the rise to democracy and governments that started to help people rather than oppress them.

Modern governments having so high taxes and using almost all of that for social benefit while being controlled by the people is probably something Marx would already call an utopia, but people call that horrible capitalism still even though its nothing like the capitalism under his time.

I agree that Marx missed to a large degree the ability of the system to adapt; and it shows both in his philosophical and economics writings.

It’s a bit ironic that in 1883, the year Marx died, Otto von Bismarck initiated a series of reforms in an effort to appease the working class. The reforms that were disparagingly called Staatssozialismus (State Socialism) by his liberal opponents.

I doubt Marx would call modern governments utopia, but the centralisation of banking, state schooling and better working conditions were indeed a part of the demands in his manifesto.

Curious who y'all are referring to, for those of us who are out of the loop.

Edit: Oh is it Marx?