I remember my grandparents making this exact same complaint: All of the new technologies during their younger years were amazing and improved the world. All of the technologies that came along in their later years were only complicating life after they had settled into comfortable routines.

In my hobbies and other real world activities I cross paths with people in their 20s a lot. It’s really refreshing to see their excitement about new technologies and the future, contrasted with all the cynicism you get when you spend time in places with a lot of jaded adults who wish the world would stop changing.

I think it’s natural to wish that technology would pause right at the point in your life and career where you’ve got it all figured out and lose your appetite for new things. It feels good to be on top of it all and feel like your knowledge, routines, and career skills are never going to go out of style. It feels uncomfortable when the world continues to change after you’ve settled into something familiar and routine.

I do agree it feels different but there is still a lot of interesting and exciting tech innovation. OP is about the same age as me so my list will be from my lifetime.

* Lithium batteries. They are one of the most important innovations of our generation. They are so much better than NiCads and lead acid batteries. Much of today's important tech, like mobile phones, wouldn't be possible without them.

* Solar panels went from a novelty to something that we can put on our homes with a positive ROI in a short time.

* EVs. If you haven't been in one go take a test drive. The prices are still too high, at least in the US, but Chinese innovation are pushing that down.

* Driving automation such as radar cruise, lane assist, and other autonomous driving features.

* Digital media, streaming or self hosted. Yes streaming services peaked 10+ years ago but the innovation is there. Having a small server in a closet hosting hundreds of 4k videos is quite an innovation compared to VHS.

* Home automation. It was previously limited to wired devices for the rich. Now anyone can put together complex self-hosted home automation with inexpensive Zigbee/ZWave devices and a Raspberry Pi hosting Home Assistant.

* Hobby electronics have become far more accessible and inexpensive. Arduino, raspberry pi, etc.

* SDRs radically changed radio technology.

* FDM/3D printing.

* Other CNC manufacturing became accessible to hobbyists.

* Bluetooth

* WiFi

* Progress in machine learning / AI, invention of LLMs

I feel the same way. I think the difference is that new tech used to be an improvement to your life. New tech is there simply to suck life (your attention) and money away from you.

There are exceptions of course, But the general trend is worrying.

I still get excited by the sheer power of current and upcoming tech

It may be the same stuff we had 20 years ago, but the specs!

What was a supercomputer before is now just a component in a datacenter, one of 72 per rack.

>But maybe I'm wrong? If you are in your 20s now and feel like writing down your thoughts about this topic, consider yourself challenged! I'd love to read them.

i'm 24. I think that improvements in tech nowadays mostly involve the hobbyist of any niche, while the general public is ever more satisfied with what already exists.

sd to hd to full hd was cool, full hd to 1440p i can see the difference, at 4k yes but it is not so big. Miniled is something people won't really care about imho (and they can already go very bright, i'm only waiting for more minileds to be integrated in monitors before changing mine).

Audio, well, most people will be satisfied with cheap razer/gaming/bose/whatever headphones are there. Sure anc is cool if you're in a noisy environment quite often

Bikes, well at 24yo i'm not really knowledgeable to say whether a bianchi that costs more than a motorbike is worth the upgrade from an older model... but ebikes are kinda nice even for people outside of the cycling world

However, what has happened with audio and video - and a change that i can perceive -, is the prices of things (not cpu/gpu related, for obvious reasons) coming down. oleds were so espensive ten years ago, now they are not. 4k minileds monitor are as expensive now as my regular non miniled 1440p va monitor from ~4/5 years ago. Hifiman has (permanently) slashed the prices of its headphones more than once over the years. It is not exciting as new tech but it is "just" nice

p.s. wifi printers are a pain in the ass much more than cable printes, and for llms i am kinda happy with them, i'll give you that, they're a godsend for studying; i'm less excited about the idea they'll replace most workers

I am not part of the group being polled (firmly ensconced in middle age), but I feel the opposite. Yes, the AI roll out has been shambolic to say the least, and it can also be annoyingly intrusive. On the plus side, AI is allowing me to take on projects that I would never have bothered in the past because the learning curve would have been too arduous. I am currently reverse engineering an embedded system going in there with a multimeter and logic analyzer. It is a lot of fun and I am learning a ton. If you told me five years ago that I would eventually be taking on such a project, I would not have believed you. On the job side, a lot of what I do involves troubleshooting (e.g., looking at reams of logs), and there too AI has been a boon. So, yes, actually excited about where things are going (with some misgivings).

> If you are in your 20s now and feel like writing down your thoughts about this topic, consider yourself challenged! I'd love to read them.

I’m 29 so I guess I just barely qualify haha. But overall, I agree with your writing and can say as a technologist myself, I also rarely get excited about new technology - nor do my peers.

There are occasional exceptions though. Near the beginning of this current GenAI revolution, I was frequently excited. Watching that SpaceX rocket land back on earth had me on the edge of my seat. I also recently bought AirPods and found the conversation awareness feature to be incredible. Similarly, I got my first fitness tracker and find it mind blowing how much it can measure by just zapping my wrist with light.

As I've aged and grown as a data engineer/scientist, unsurprisingly, it has become much rarer that I encounter something new that seems like magic (ie is something with functionality that expands my understanding of what is possible), but through new hobbies or explorations into new fields, I continually discover new and exciting uses of technology that adds neat functionality to my life.

For example, maybe a year or two ago, my wife started getting into bird watching, which introduced me to the Merlin Bird Id app [0], which (using my location, the date, and audio from my phone's mic) identifies the birds around me on walks. I can walk around and get mostly accurate identifications that help me better understand a complex and rich facet of the world that I had mostly ignored before! Super cool!

Another tech thing I recently learned a lot about that got me excited: I was playing around with a personal project to produce safer bike routes and I finally dug into OpenStreetMap [1, 2]. I had been aware of OSM for a long while, but taking this project on led me to look for a source for freely available route segment data that I could collect and use to build upon, and I found OSM was perfect for this. Digging into the source, I discovered it's essentially a Wikipedia-esque project (a triumph of the human species) where anyone can contribute edits to maps and they're immediately published worldwide! I was and remain very excited about this project.

When I just stay in my technical lane, I get desensitized to the cool stuff people are doing (which becomes hard to find in our ecosystems that have sold our attention to the highest bidders), but when I go out looking, people are still doing exciting stuff.

[0] https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap

[2] https://www.openstreetmap.org

We have self-driving cars and near-human AIs. And yet the author can't find something to get excited about?!?!?

I'm slightly older than he is and I lived through all those changes he talks about. I'm still in awe every time I fire up Codex. This article sounds like depression talking.

This is good because there are much better places to find fulfillment.

It's like when you get a new smartphone and you baby it for those first couple weeks until, bam, it falls and gets a ding in it. Then after a brief sense of loss, you suddenly see it as a tool with utility and a lifespan. I think that's where you want to be with material things and technology.

I am a bit over 50. Most new computer tech doesn't hit me like it used to but occasionally I still get hit with wonder. I got that feeling trying the Apple Vision Pro in store demo. 50-something me still can't believe I have AI at my fingertips.

For the most part though it's not that new tech isn't cool but as I get older, parts of life which seemed mundane as a kid or young man aren't quite so mundane anymore. As a teenager it seemed like family and loved ones were just there and part of the normal background. With years I see those moments with loved ones as precious, finite, and what it's all about. Tech is neat and sometimes very neat ... but it isn't what it's all about.

Echoing others here, but I think part of it is that a lot of the new tech is designed to make things worse.

If I think about new tech, all the examples that immediately spring to mind are negative ones: surveillance cameras, AI-enabled spam & propaganda, autonomous weaponry.

The less flashy advances tend to be harder to get excited about, and they're also often negative. My computers get more expensive, but they also collect more data on me, and it's harder to get one without a bunch of unwanted features.

People used to be excited about new tech because it was exciting and aspirational; I think we've lost a lot of that.

It isn’t that surprising that computers have become somewhat crap as they’ve gained ubiquitous adoption (that’s just the nature of appealing to everyone). IMO it is more surprising that nothing has really filled in that gap.

> Of course nowadays days I see the downsides of these devices and we're getting to a point where the cons outweigh the pros, but back when I bought the first smart phone (I guess in 2012 or so, I was relatively late to the party) it felt like a leap into the future compared to what I had before.

I know a lot of people have a troubled relationship to their phone, but this is really surprising to me. Would I want to go back to a world where I can't conveniently contact people, navigate the world, look up anything I want to know in an second, and set timers by yelling at the air rather than getting sticky foccacia dough in the cracks of my egg timer? Not even a little bit.

The last time I personally felt the excitement the author describes was probably with the announcement of Apple Vision Pro, but unfortunately that product went nowhere.

Tools for Conviviality (Ivan Illich) has this idea about the two watersheds of new technology.

During the first watershed, it solves an actual problem + improves the lives of those who adopt it.

During the second watershed, it gets institutionalized and the technology shifts into something that requires people serve it rather than serving those it’s intended to help.

His examples are all old technologies like modern medicine, non party line wired phones, the radio, etc. but the ideas fit the shape of the technological advances we’re seeing in our lifetimes as well.

1772844707 | Burdened by Tech, Gen Z Is Flocking to DVDs and VHS [video] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqoTO9kO6c | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47283157

1775416796 | Gen Z is building an analog future a $5B+ opportunity | https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/gen-z-... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652884

1776360520 | Why Gen Zers are trashing smartphones: 'People are just sick of it' | https://nypost.com/2026/04/16/tech/gen-z-and-parents-are-hit... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47796713

1777577258 | Discomfort with modern technology shapes Gen Z's desire to live in the past | https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/discomfort-mo... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967131

1778400195 | Gen Z Resentment Toward AI Grows as Adoption Stagnates and Workplace Fears Mount | https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/about-us/newsroom/gen... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48081942

1778917719 | Why Gen Z Is Returning to Analog Tech | https://internetdecode.com/gen-z-digital-detox-analog-tech-c... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48157828

1783085911 | The Luddite festival harnessing Gen Z's rage against Big Tech | https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-luddite-festival-harn... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48774892

1783094027 | The Luddite festival harnessing Gen Zs rage against Big Tech | https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-luddite-festival-harn... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48776496

1783677638 | Neo-Luddites: The Gen Z Backlash to Big Tech [video] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxpV97A5I90 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48857916

1784293384 | Gen Z is pushing back against AI a reminder that the future isn't written | https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/gen-z-pushback-ag... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946910

1785690397 | Why Gen Z is nostalgic for a world it never knew | https://bigthink.com/mind-behavior/why-gen-z-is-nostalgic-fo... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49146274

There are just so many new technologies, some just as software, some in hardware,food,medicine, etc.

But maybe it makes it harder to get excited from most things.

For example, once you browse Anna's library, or ask Claude to develop some software for you, it's harder to get excited from most things.

Consider that it's probably not tech but rather a cycle of aesthetics you're experiencing.

Just like films, music, or even sports, there are eras of a certain paradigm or aesthetic. What we consider the 'peak' is always evaluated in retrospect or in comparison to a previous peak. Neurologically, humans are naturally predisposed to evaluate the world in terms of "how much pleasure" an activity gives, and when you experience "more pleasure" (for example, riding a fast rollercoaster vs. a slow one) then the previous experience is often discarded or treated as inferior. In some cases that's true, but, by and large, these comparisons are again purely psychic in nature.

What you viewed as more exciting was an age where advertising didn't cheapen your experiences. Overexposure/stimulation as a means of advertising, co-opted with combining social media with advertising to a startling degree is the true culprit behind what you're seeing, and as a captive audience, like the prisoners in Plato's cave, you are unable to look away...

One thing I've thought about for a long time, as someone who's been interested in new technology and sci-fi for a long time:

you still need to work; still need a job.

With all this new technology that does things for us, there will be new things that need doing in order that we can pay for the things that do the old things for us.

I still find this a jarring thought.

VR is probably the coolest new tech of the last decade to me, hanging out with friends and exploring weird spaces is so wild (sure there are lots of flaws and limitations but it's definitely exciting and new to me even as a jaded, increasingly luddite programmer)

there are still new things and fun tech, don't give up!

The last technology that truly excited me was the ebook. I truly believe is one of the greatest gadgets ever invented. It's just fantastic the disconnection you get with it, the quality of the screen, how long battery lasts and obviously how many books you can carry in a small package.

Don't worry, you're just getting old. It happens to all of us. At some point we simply stop being excited about new shiny things and start to prefer stuff we know and rely on. In especially bad cases, some start seeing new shiny things as threat to the stability of their lives.

The marginal payoff from incremental innovation produces lesser and lesser endorphins as we age. They increasingly become a smaller part of our experiences.

And btw, by and large, this happens to every feeling, not just excitement from technological innovation.

Oh come on...

* Putting down the throttle of my first BEV was magic (a rented ID3 Pro rented, it's not even performing like mad, but RWD gets it done). I laughed manically and in tears until arriving at home. Even laid back acceleration is still fun. ICE cars have become boring to me.

* The first time generating a longer working script with ChatGPT in its early incarnation was great! Correcting a broken web app by a junior dev with the help of Claude and ChatGPT was also crazy the first time.

* Letting the drone of my brother in law start and land from my hand, making incredible camera moves by pushing a few buttons was surreal.

* Hearing the first sounds of my mobile with Dolby Atmos was also like hallucinating. These tiny speakers have become unbelievable good for media consumption.

* Playing a recent e-piano that even mimics damper and co-vibrating strings. The improvements in tactile and acoustic experience are subtle but great

* I cannot wait to test a tone3000 neural amp modeling thingy -- the first time I heard a Kemper and tested even the basic Pod Go was also great.

* First picture of a laser projector: blown away. Next level of sharp picture.

...

So, I don't know what you're talking about.

Now that you mention it, yeah. I remember my mom doing the watch this microwave thing boil a cup of water demo for months everytime someone stopped by. It was a show. The last one I remember like this, with both "I want to show" and "I want see" high demand like that, was the Siri launch. Someone in my office got it running and he had people coming to his cubicle all day asking to hear it.

I used to not be excited about the next consumer tech gadget or the next JS framework, but I am now pretty excited about transforming new tech now (AI, energy, space, etc).

I'm excited about self driving cars for aging boomer and drunk mobility. Most consumer tech seems to be pure agitation and slop. Can't seem to think that ways to engage media is getting better (paid streaming now with ads etc.) TVs take a forever to change channel, call quality seems to be worse than analog etc.

Robotics, AI, hypersonic/Ramjets, affordable mobile data, streaming video, lots of innovation in the last 10 years.

High quality eBikes are pretty amazing: I have nearly 4000 miles on one of ours, and nearly all of those are replacing car trips around town, including most of our grocery shopping.

While not revolutionary - they're kind of an incremental improvement - I'm pretty impressed by all the things a cheap Chromebook can do.

It's called getting older.

Cheap radios are in everything now.

Think about all the fun wifi, zigbee, matter devices that you can play with (if you are inclined).

Meshtastic and LoRa is a great toy to play with.

The kitchen is full of interesting things, Sous Vide is great, the air fryer is... interesting and useful.

Lots of people love their robot vacuum

LED strip lighting has gone from nerdy to high design and has interesting features now.

Those "VCR" and "iPhone" moments are rare. There is a lot of practical innovations that make my life better and I would be hard pressed to give up.

I've been playing Project Zomboid with my friends. It's an isometric survival game set in 1993 in a fictional area around Louisville, Kentucky. It has VHS tapes, TV and radio broadcasts, ham radio, CDs, and landlines in it. So far in my playing experience, there's no real internet component.

There's some sort of disease outbreak that turns people into zombies and society starts to collapse. Eventually things like the power grid and water/sewage infrastructure break down. Food rots. Gasoline runs out. It's basically guaranteed that you and your teammates will die in this game.

Even after living through a pandemic and all of the shit that came with it, and despite the grim atmosphere of the game, I still miss the time period that this game symbolized. I know I was only a child during the 90s and the era had its real problems, but there were good things about it and the state of technology at the time that have gotten worse in the decades since.

It was a time when media was a physical good and had meaning, when there wasn't a constant deluge of information, when my attention was less valuable than advertisers have made it today, and there was, at least for the majority of society, a shared informational reality.

That's all gone and there are massively powerful interests working to make sure it stays gone.

- 90s: - video games were something truly new. before it, stories and fantasy was something to be enjoyed mostly through static medium. and games were the first medium that lets you interactively enjoy stories. - internet was something truly new. never before we get to connect with people by sharing things we create. and there's so many things were created out of genuine love and passion - late 2000s - social media were something truly new. it lets you connect with people and share things

every era brought something truly novel to the table. but then something changed mid 2010s. and it's not entirely megacorps' fault. it's also us customers. we didn't want to pay. and thus the business model that promotes enshittified services were born and now we have to live with it.

Most modern tech solutions feel like scams: illegal cabs, illegal hotels, gambling, price fixing, loan sharking, data harvesting, IP theft, mass surveillance... It stopped making our lives better and became mired in crime.

Tech is no longer exciting to me because I no longer feel a connection between tech improvement and world (or personal life) improvement.

I used to read sci fi for the wonder, but now I read it with dread, for Chekov's Gun is a Torment Nexus, and if you introduce a Torment Nexus in Act 1 of a sci fi dystopia, it will be fired IRL by act 3.

Deeper lurks a more chilling question: what, on a dying planet run by fascists, should I do with my time?

You do have to move your focus for sure. Gadgets used to be cool, but now you'd have to look at SpaceX or Stoke for space, and all the crazy ambitious fusion startups, or Quaise. Those are the ones I'm tracking at least..

There's a term for that, it's called "getting old" and older people have been saying this kinda stuff for generations.