3 ms·

This is most definitely selection bias, but it seems like there's something in the air at the moment with people jumping off the "mainstream tech" ship. Lots of

This is most definitely selection bias, but it seems like there's something in the air at the moment with people jumping off the "mainstream tech" ship. Lots of talk of nostalgia for 90s internet culture, switching to Linux (I also switched to Linux (and Emacs!) after a decade+ on Mac), more secure/transparent tech with phones etc. More willingness to put up with "rough spots" and "less shiny" for greater access to things under-the-hood. Is it just nostalgia? Global politics? Me hanging around other nerds who are also getting older? I dunno, but now computers seem more exciting than ever! Ok, I gotta get back to IRC and browsing the internet on M-x eww...

phil21 8y ago
> Is it just nostalgia? Maybe. I think the Internet was pretty much an objectively better place in the 90s, but far more useful for "real world" things today. For me it's pretty personal and to be completely honest immensely sad. Since I was 14 I've worked full time on this "Internet" stuff and like to think I've contributed my tiny slice of pushing the future forward (and at times, unfortunately the opposite!). I truly bought the dream that enabling decentralized communications would allow for far more human potential to be realized, and perhaps even bring down longstanding immoral power structures. Nope. Unfortunately my life's work has been used to centralize control and engage in monopoly-like behaviour. Watching everyone hell-bent on moving to just a few central "cloud providers" is incredibly frustrating. This road leads to tears. Seeing that there are only really a half dozen "eyeball" ISPs in the US that matter is just as frustrating, and will harm us long-term. Basically for me I'm sure it was some youthful optimism and passion, but it's really a lot like building a really cool robot and then seeing someone use that to go to war against people you love. Trying to recreate those times won't work, it never does. My only hope is that in another decade or three the newer generation realizes we're back to where we were with the giant telecoms and fight back with another new black swan technology.
- rusk 8y ago
  Looking back, I'm wondering how I could have ever expected anything else ... all this amazing and eye-wateringly expensive network infrastructure provided for free! On a more positive note however, I do believe the pendulum swings back. Sometimes you've just got to stand back and watch the mistakes be made. I think a lot of this fascination with retro tech is in part an attempt to find a safe-space to operate while waiting for it all to blow over .. kind of like the Magratheans [https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Magrathea https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Magrathea].
blhack 8y ago
I think it's that the mainstream stuff has just pushed too hard against usability for nerds. I bought a laser cutter recently that requires internet access so they can use "the power of google cloud" to process vector files. Something computers have had NO problems with since he 90s.
caconym_ 8y ago
For me it's because the big tech companies (one of which I work at) are making everything way too complicated, gimmicky, and over-integrated for me. I want a keyboard, not half a keyboard and a weird touch display that does nothing useful for me I want a directory that's synced to durable cloud-based storage, not a monolithic service product that tries to work its hooks into every corner of my computer(s) and digital life in general. I want software that writes data in common formats to a filesystem I can understand and interact with as such, rather than squirreling away my data somewhere application-specific that isn't replicated on my personally owned storage, in some unknown format that's probably locked down according to business concerns I shouldn't have to care about, and subject to some arbitrary TOS picked out of the massive constellation of TOSs we all have little practical choice but to be subject to. And so on. The more time passes, the more consumer products seem to drift away from what I want. It's a shame because a lot of the hardware is really quite nice and technically capable of hosting my workloads, but the software makes me feel dirty when I use it and often just can't do what I need. I think there is a crazy emphasis on consuming rather than creating, and it hobbles so many products that could be great. For instance, I bought my girlfriend an iPad Pro for Christmas and it's amazing, and I'm so fucking jealous. But it can't run a *nix terminal without a boatload of caveats, doesn't have a real accessible filesystem, and there are a million other little problems (like, I can't remap caps lock to control). So, as much potential as I think that form factor has for me, the product itself is useless because it's pretending it's not a general-purpose computing device. Rant over, I guess. Ultimately I don't expect big companies to go out of their way to cater to users like me, but it's a constant disappointment.
- Derbasti 8y ago
  I agree with every word you said. Thank you for writing this!
- wasted_intel 8y ago
  Well said. I switched to an XPS-based Arch build for many of these reasons. I think computers are generally too complicated for lay users. People tolerated the quirks because there was no alternative. Even on a Mac, which wouldn't suffer from the same hardware compatibility issues as a PC/Windows machine, users would still need to understand how to organize files, properly close applications, and avoid running/opening arbitrary programs/files from the internet. And that's if they could connect to the internet at all. iOS and its ilk solved all of that. And in that moment, the number of people who needed to be exposed to all of that underlying complexity shrank considerably. There is most certainly something lost for those people, but at the end of the day, there is a cognitive cost to understanding how those pieces work, and I think the mass market has shifted away from implementations that require (or allow for) that visibility. I think that's fine, provided there are still hardware options available to the rest of us. :)
the_cat_kittles 8y ago
my hunch is that the combo of education tools like youtube n stackoverflow and reddit etc has made the “simplified” aspects of many products less attractive. in many cases the products arent much simpler, but they are more effective at getting your money.

phil21 8y ago

> Is it just nostalgia? Maybe. I think the Internet was pretty much an objectively better place in the 90s, but far more useful for "real world" things today. For me it's pretty personal and to be completely honest immensely sad. Since I was 14 I've worked full time on this "Internet" stuff and like to think I've contributed my tiny slice of pushing the future forward (and at times, unfortunately the opposite!). I truly bought the dream that enabling decentralized communications would allow for far more human potential to be realized, and perhaps even bring down longstanding immoral power structures. Nope. Unfortunately my life's work has been used to centralize control and engage in monopoly-like behaviour. Watching everyone hell-bent on moving to just a few central "cloud providers" is incredibly frustrating. This road leads to tears. Seeing that there are only really a half dozen "eyeball" ISPs in the US that matter is just as frustrating, and will harm us long-term. Basically for me I'm sure it was some youthful optimism and passion, but it's really a lot like building a really cool robot and then seeing someone use that to go to war against people you love. Trying to recreate those times won't work, it never does. My only hope is that in another decade or three the newer generation realizes we're back to where we were with the giant telecoms and fight back with another new black swan technology.

rusk 8y ago
Looking back, I'm wondering how I could have ever expected anything else ... all this amazing and eye-wateringly expensive network infrastructure provided for free! On a more positive note however, I do believe the pendulum swings back. Sometimes you've just got to stand back and watch the mistakes be made. I think a lot of this fascination with retro tech is in part an attempt to find a safe-space to operate while waiting for it all to blow over .. kind of like the Magratheans [https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Magrathea https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Magrathea].

blhack 8y ago

I think it's that the mainstream stuff has just pushed too hard against usability for nerds. I bought a laser cutter recently that requires internet access so they can use "the power of google cloud" to process vector files. Something computers have had NO problems with since he 90s.

caconym_ 8y ago

For me it's because the big tech companies (one of which I work at) are making everything way too complicated, gimmicky, and over-integrated for me. I want a keyboard, not half a keyboard and a weird touch display that does nothing useful for me I want a directory that's synced to durable cloud-based storage, not a monolithic service product that tries to work its hooks into every corner of my computer(s) and digital life in general. I want software that writes data in common formats to a filesystem I can understand and interact with as such, rather than squirreling away my data somewhere application-specific that isn't replicated on my personally owned storage, in some unknown format that's probably locked down according to business concerns I shouldn't have to care about, and subject to some arbitrary TOS picked out of the massive constellation of TOSs we all have little practical choice but to be subject to. And so on. The more time passes, the more consumer products seem to drift away from what I want. It's a shame because a lot of the hardware is really quite nice and technically capable of hosting my workloads, but the software makes me feel dirty when I use it and often just can't do what I need. I think there is a crazy emphasis on consuming rather than creating, and it hobbles so many products that could be great. For instance, I bought my girlfriend an iPad Pro for Christmas and it's amazing, and I'm so fucking jealous. But it can't run a *nix terminal without a boatload of caveats, doesn't have a real accessible filesystem, and there are a million other little problems (like, I can't remap caps lock to control). So, as much potential as I think that form factor has for me, the product itself is useless because it's pretending it's not a general-purpose computing device. Rant over, I guess. Ultimately I don't expect big companies to go out of their way to cater to users like me, but it's a constant disappointment.

Derbasti 8y ago
I agree with every word you said. Thank you for writing this!
wasted_intel 8y ago
Well said. I switched to an XPS-based Arch build for many of these reasons. I think computers are generally too complicated for lay users. People tolerated the quirks because there was no alternative. Even on a Mac, which wouldn't suffer from the same hardware compatibility issues as a PC/Windows machine, users would still need to understand how to organize files, properly close applications, and avoid running/opening arbitrary programs/files from the internet. And that's if they could connect to the internet at all. iOS and its ilk solved all of that. And in that moment, the number of people who needed to be exposed to all of that underlying complexity shrank considerably. There is most certainly something lost for those people, but at the end of the day, there is a cognitive cost to understanding how those pieces work, and I think the mass market has shifted away from implementations that require (or allow for) that visibility. I think that's fine, provided there are still hardware options available to the rest of us. :)

the_cat_kittles 8y ago

my hunch is that the combo of education tools like youtube n stackoverflow and reddit etc has made the “simplified” aspects of many products less attractive. in many cases the products arent much simpler, but they are more effective at getting your money.