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Comment by moregrist | Hacker News Reader

What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism. Technology was going to make our lives better and unlock opportunity, not take all our jobs and render us irrelevant.

To me, the weirdest thing about the AI hype cycle is the inherent nihilism of it all. If there's one thing I miss, it's the optimism. I used to be enthusiastic about what the tech industry was doing and where it was going.

> The larger thing we lost is the internet. There’s no “90s internet” that someone can do without doing some stupid geocities/angel fire meme site. I don’t have an answer to this.

How about this: Back in the late 90s, after Google appeared, search actually worked, worked well, and was not yet deeply tied into creepy tracking and ad tech.

I would wade through thousands of geocities memed sites to have that experience again.

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I miss the optimism too. What drew me to tech was how it felt like we were trying to make people's lives better.

These days, it feels like tech is primarily interested in extracting value from us. I guess this is nothing new. Profits at any cost, and all that.

I don't know, I'm just kind of sad about all of it. Even though my smartphone is like 100x more powerful than my first computer, it still feels like something was lost

There was the sense that tech and the internet would change human systems. Information wants to be free and all that. The individual power granted by tech would lead to individual liberty. Traditional power structures would crumble when faced with this.

We didn't realize that it only felt that way because the people with power didn't care yet. Tech was like an ant crawling across a picnic blanket and thinking it's powerful because the people aren't doing anything about it. Once traditional power structures woke up to tech and the internet, they coopted it all.

This is a great point and way of saying it.

There's still that at usenet at comp.misc, comp.arch and so groups. Good discussions with almost no clickbaits and the like.

> These days, it feels like tech is primarily interested in extracting value from us. I guess this is nothing new. Profits at any cost, and all that.

Not just that but the whole "shaping the future whether you like it or not" push.

In the 90s, building the computing future meant figuring out a user need and building a product that fit that need. Now, there is this idea that technology companies are just building their idea of what the future should be, minus any product imperative, minus input from customers or the public, and then it's up to us to "get on board" and adopt it. The cart is driving the horse.

It's all feels though. If you stare into the void, the apocalypse is coming. OTOH, bringing an AI assistant to every person in the world to make their lives better, is one perspective to take. It's all a matter of framing.

The optimism died a long time ago. I’m a Millennial, the 90s flew by as I was growing up, but one of my formative experiences was playing Deus Ex in 2001, after 9/11. It gave me healthy distrust of technology, governments, big corp, and what the world is going through today only reinforces this vision of the world. Of course I am nihilistic about AI: when I read about Altman and Karp, I see Bob Page. These are NOT the type of people I want to create a new world order. Yet these are exactly the people positioned to create a new world order.

I feel the older generations still believe that technology will set us free.

Ironically libre games gave me that faith back when I saw roguelikes coming (in 2002 with Slashem, Nethack being back and Angband), libre engines, Linux distros working with AvermediaTV pirating media streams and whatnot. Corporate computing was hell, full of virii, shitty interfaces (and now even more with even more control), adware, and tons of shovelware.

But the common folk was doing amazing stuff. A 3D suite/raytracer for free? Free as in freedom math books with easy algebra teachings? Free compilers, operating systems and whatnot? You don't need to pay about $600 (or $3000 on industrial basis) for everything in Debian Sarge? Just an $20 DVD? It was like getting a damn interdimensional UFO for free when everyone was paying for expensive cars, gas and highway tolls.

> I feel the older generations still believe that technology will set us free.

I still have my original copy of High Noon on the Electronic Frontier[1] and still hold out hope that computer technology will ultimately end up on the positive side of the scale rather than the negative side, despite how our current tech leaders are racing as fast as they can toward the negative side.

1: https://www.amazon.com/High-Noon-Electronic-Frontier-Concept...

I’m a Millennial, the 90s flew by as I was growing up

I'm a young GenXer and I've told some Millennial friends that I feel bad for them because they had probably the best childhoods in human history[1] and then were plunged into worldwide terrorism, the Great Recession, and now the affordability crisis and incoming AI Apocalypse.

As a GenXer, at least I lived with the anxiety of nuclear annihilation at any moment as a child to set my expectations for the future.

[1] assuming you're at least vaguely middle-class and American or, presumably, living in Western culture. I can't speak to the experience outside this realm, but I watched my Millennial cousins grow up in a flourishing economy with endless products and media designed to delight them.

Still somewhat optimistic here. It's easy to fixate on the negatives, and tech has brought many negatives for sure. It sometimes feels like governments and big business read all the dystopian sci-fi novels and turned those ideas into operational playbooks. But tech has brought many good things as well.

If you're a basic bitch consumer and complainer, that's on you. The world is hard, life is hard, humans are beautiful and terrible. These things don't change. But there are more options now, and it's never been easier to learn, explore, and DIY.

Besides all the nice luxuries like power tools and google maps and online shopping, my true optimism lies in digital data, transparency, and accountability. The powers that be of course are allergic to latter two, but tools are there now and we're slowly making inroads. There are real problems being solved across all industries that wouldn't be possible without technology.

Nostalgia is fine and all, and the 90s were certainly a more naive time of course, but it's not like everything was great and now it's terrible.

> What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism.

To me it felt we were slowly making the world better for all. Progress was happening and would continue to happen.

Now it feels like we are rapidly on the path to a dystopian Elysium like future. A dystopia for everyone but the sociopathic ultra wealthy that want to rule over us. And they’re not even hiding their intent from us anymore.

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