| |
| ▲ | epolanski 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe you're too young to remember the kind of vibe and optimism that people rode in the 90s. Felt like everything was going to be better, like we humans were going to be better. More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us. In fact, I invite you to re read your entire post. You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress, but...people have never read as little as they do today, never went to so few concerts as today, or the movies and the average adult in US spends less than 4 hours socializing (including both family and friends) per week, that's less than half the quote of the 90s which was already less but not as significantly. | | |
| ▲ | paulcole 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I started getting online in around 1996 for whatever that’s worth. > You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress A careful reader will note that I did not do this. | | |
| ▲ | solomonb 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You didn't explicitly call your examples major milestones of human progress but you did use rather trite examples of consumer capitalism as a counter example to my disappointment at the lackluster end game of 20th century techno-futurism. As other commenters have stated the techno-futurist vision that comes out of the Whole Earth Catalog was radically utopian and far grander then "I get to watch low value consumer media whenever I want." | | |
| ▲ | ch4s3 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I’d say dirt cheap solar panels and CRISPR based vaccines are pretty cool. I’m also quite optimistic about the proliferation of plausible SMR designs. That new concrete that self heals and sequesters carbon is cool too. | | |
| ▲ | fhennig a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I think it's a category error. The optimism isn't about tech, but rather about society changing in ways that make life better: > More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us. If I read your comment charitably, one could maybe argue that we're actually making decent progress in the electrification of things, and that we're also improving health globally, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It doesn't quite feel like it at least. | | |
| ▲ | ch4s3 a day ago | parent [-] | | > It doesn't quite feel like it at least. I think that's a function of social media and living in a society where things are objectively already really good for the vast majority of people compared to 50 years ago. | | |
| ▲ | fhennig a day ago | parent | next [-] | | We're talking about the whole earth here, not just the societies that we live in. And globally, things are not so rosy. Specifically the point of electrification, might be that we electrify more, but globally the CO2 emissions are on the rise still, and have continuously risen in the past 50 years. | |
| ▲ | epolanski a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's only good if you over focus on material things. As soon as you start looking at: mental health, drug addiction, loneliness rate, sexual activity, going out, etc, by all metrics we're way worse than our parents, let alone our grandparents. |
|
| |
| ▲ | vermilingua a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And we have the administration of the ex-hegemon working to demonise most of the cool innovations we do have. | |
| ▲ | frereubu a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | These are much better examples. |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | achierius 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Social dislocation, a loneliness epidemic, the breakdown of civil society and of trust in the media, gambling unleashed in everyone's pockets, billions of dollars spent trying to get you addicted to scrolling on your phone... Yes, it's worth bemoaning that. | | |
| ▲ | paulcole 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah my mistake you’re right. I’ll go be sad for awhile as penance! | | |
| ▲ | kakacik a day ago | parent [-] | | People have good points, and you refute it in childish manner, its hard to have sympathies. I for one can fully agree with them since I am one of those who experienced whole transition, and overall its heading into sad 1984-esque direction without any real way to change course. Sure, toys and cheap fun are more accessible than ever, but we are losing something much deeper that makes humans... more human for the lack of better words. Election results in many places are just a result of that. Maybe you don't care about that or are oblivious about it, to your own loss, but its everywhere and everybody who cares sees/feels it. There is gigatons of cool technological progress for sure, but it doesn't counterbalance what was expressed. I am lucky that I moved to society which offers much more real freedom and democracy than current US can to 99.9% of its citizens (none other than Switzerland), even if for other reasons initially (mountains and obviously money), its what eventually made me stay and much more (polite respectful society which is low crime, high quality public healthcare and education, decent social system and so on). Most of the world has much less and it doesnt seem to be improving. |
|
| |
| ▲ | maleno 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Maybe I'm missing some sarcasm here, but it would be worth asking what the consequences of this situation are for the people who actually make all the music/books/films you get to consume for a "comically small amount of money". | | |
| ▲ | paulcole 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I don’t know, I haven’t talked to Taylor Swift or the Grateful Dead lately. |
| |
| ▲ | MarcelOlsz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I Live in a Techno-Dystopian Surveillance Nightmare and All I Got Was This Shitty MP3 Player | | |
| ▲ | wombatpm a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Sorry you bought a Zune instead of an iPod. | | |
| ▲ | MarcelOlsz a day ago | parent [-] | | I know this is a razz but I must have you know I use a frankenstein-d iPod classic with rockbox, bluetooth mod, and an SSD. Don't hate on Zunes those things ruled too. Nothing beats a sansa clip though. |
| |
| ▲ | paulcole 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s actually a pretty cool mp3 player! |
| |
| ▲ | bmitc a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're arguing convenience for things you could already do through a library over the huge amount of negatives that has come with the Internet: crime, espionage, hacking, emotional manipulation, spread of propaganda and disinformation, social media, legalized data stealing, destruction and abuse of copyright, centralization of information flow, etc. | | |
| ▲ | SirHumphrey a day ago | parent [-] | | Well, you could already do, sort of. Even the best stocked library in the world has it's limits and even the largest printed encyclopedia cannot reach anywhere near the breath of information on Wikipedia and no technical library has as many articles as PubMed. We switched from techno optimism to techno pessimism - for some good reasons - nevertheless internet brought to the table revolutionary capabilities not only for evil but also for good. |
|
|
