10 ms·

There’s something… different about how people (techie people are most of my sample) would write before the 00’s. I’m not sure if it has to do with the medium, o

There’s something… different about how people (techie people are most of my sample) would write before the 00’s. I’m not sure if it has to do with the medium, or the constraints of the time, but reading it always fills me with something I can best describe as peace/nostalgia. The belief that technology honestly can change the world for the better and that the most influential people driving it have good motives instead of profit motives. And they were real visionaries most of the time. By contrast, anything seemingly after the dot com boom (I can’t draw a clear line, this is just throwing a dart) seems, I don’t know how to describe it. Too self-aware, too clever? It’s similar to the contrast between HN and other forums/social media out there. I’m not sure, but whenever an older article or something shows up, I usually enjoy it. Perhaps it’s that only the best have survived till now.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
baby 5y ago
Very similar to the cryptocurrency field. Lots of noise nowadays.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Bitcoin was born in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the occupy wall street movement.[1] Events where, giant banks and institutions received trillions of dollars in unprecedented bail outs while 'main street' suffered with record unemployment, foreclosures, and destruction of small businesses. People rightfully realised that perhaps government should not have absolute and total control of the monetary supply and financial system. That a 'Plan B' may be in order. Unfortunately, today it's 90% people trying to get rich quick. [1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
  - cinquemb 5y ago
    > Unfortunately, today it's 90% people trying to get rich quick. And that is, unsurprisingly (and quite banally), used by many detractors to dismiss it all while handwaving away: > Bitcoin was born in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the occupy wall street movement.[1] Events where, giant banks and institutions received trillions of dollars in unprecedented bail outs while 'main street' suffered with record unemployment, foreclosures, and destruction of small businesses. > People rightfully realised that perhaps government should not have absolute and total control of the monetary supply and financial system. Like people still hand wave away all the metadata and other work-arounds to compromising popular crypto systems that are highly touted because they are popular/convenient/etc or all the "get rich quick" mentality/motivations that exist outside of cryptocurrencies and have always existed…
    - petters 5y ago
      > And that is, unsurprisingly (and quite banally), used by many detractors to dismiss it all There is a stronger argument against crypto: the main use case (outside speculation) seems to be illegal activities. If what you are doing is legal, why not use government currency? If what you are doing is illegal, crypto is great. A currency outside the control of the government (police) is almost by definition made for illegal activities. In some countries, illegal activities are morally correct, though. Crypto helps here. But crypto has enabled entirely new types of crimes that did not exist before: ransomware. I have not completely for or against crypto. I am responding to your comment that people are dismissing because it seems like speculation only. I don't think that is true and that there are better reasons for dismissal?
      - dannyw 5y ago
        1. Why does FedEx exist? If what you are doing is legal, shouldn't you use USPS? 2. There are plenty of things that are federally illegal but many consider to be morally legal. Examples include, for example, weed dispensaries operating in states that have legislated cannabis. 3. What happens if a future government makes funding of ETE encrypted software, without CSAM scanning, illegal?
      - 5y ago
skybrian 5y ago
One difference (in this article at least) is that there are no jokes or unnecessary cultural references. Another might be called moral clarity. Unfortunately, it's usually an illusion. We have much more experience with technologies invented under optimistic assumptions turning out to be a moral gray area at best, when you look at how they're used. I found this paper interesting: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf
- Zababa 5y ago
  I'd put "jokes" and "cultural references" together under "tone". Recent articles often feel like they're trying to catch the attention of children. There are lots of "candies" to make you read: pictures, GIFs, jokes, an attention grabbing title, colors, emojis, a friendly tone, lots of exclamation marks. On the other hand, that article is mostly black on white text, that's plain in a good way.
  - tasogare 5y ago
    I especially hate this "corporate fun" style when it's a big tech repository where each bullet point of a list is replaced by an emoji.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      I really have a hard time with emojis outside of communications. Either they are saying something that was already said by the word or words before, and in that case they are useless, or they replace a word and make text harder to read. I also really don't like the concept of making objects into emojis, as we already have words to describre that, and emojis reflect a very limited world. For example, if you look at the food emojis, this is basically "I live in San Francisco and all of the food I get is from restaurants". I think I've heard it described one day as "the world of people that live in airports", and that fits well.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    That's because young people have very short attention span and they must be fed with instant gratifications all the time to continue reading. Those "candies" are targeted at them.
emilsedgh 5y ago
You are right. All the good movements in tech happened ~20 years ago. Free Software/Open Source, Wikipedia, etc, all date back to early days. Now it's all about that SaaS money.I don't mind the money part, but sadly, tech has become a gold mine for predators who smell the money and are out for blood.
- whoaisme 5y ago
  Funny how it's obvious you're not a woman. 20 years ago if I groped a woman's ass or called or called my coworker Jose a wetback people would have clapped compared to today. And you're right, greedy predators like Gates and Ellison are a totally recent phenomenon. The past is better more noble and cleaner than the present. Honestly what a basic sentiment.
roenxi 5y ago
I suspect it is that there are a lot less abstractions and the thinking is much more moored in the material. In this profoundly technical article there is barely even a mention of computers or algorithms, and the vision is of a more analogue world (of paper bills, phone companies, physical wiretaps, human agents). The modern internet is almost entirely clashes of abstract concepts. It also shows up in the slight breakdown on the internet of basic, verifiable facts. Nobody is relying on real-world stimulus to form opinions. It is a bit draining to keep up with. That and there is less optimism because it is clear how slowly the world changes. Consider the "The government has a track record that does not inspire confidence..." paragraph. Written 30 years ago, part of it could credibly be talking about Assange, have names swapped for Trump, etc. At some point intelligent people are going to get jaded pretending that this is new based on the overwhelming evidence that the internet gives us access to.
dylan604 5y ago
To me, there was something to say vs people posting shit just to meet a quota. There seems to be much less thought/research/editing of content now. It wasn't so gamefied before HTML2.0 and social.
- iso1210 5y ago
  Not convinced HTML2 'gamified' anything. "HTML 1" wasn't really a standard anyway and I don't remember what html2 actually brought - I remember not every browser in the mid 90s did tables, client side image maps etc but they were later additions to html2. Javascript (which came in with html 3.2) was far more of a step change than html2
  - bretthoerner 5y ago
    I think they meant "Web 2.0"
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Yes, you are correct. Totally meant Web2.0 when things became interactive and sites started allowing users to post comments and what not.
  - doublerabbit 5y ago
    HTML5 brings incredible things to the table however with its taints of corporate presence and those who hold a dictation in direction. This is not "free". HTML doesn't have to be the only web transport. Build your browser and make your own protocol. IPFS is doing just fine. HTML4 was the last true free-release from any corporate grab. And it has everything youll ever need. However it just sits there forgotten taken by the glory of HTML5.
intricatedetail 5y ago
I think FOSS didn't predict that work done by volunteers will be appropriated repackaged and sold by big corporations without sharing profits with contributors nor sharing any patches. This caused people to develop defensively - contribute as little as possible and only for their own benefits. Developers no longer wanted to be taken as fools.
harryf 5y ago
Aside from shifts in morality and underlying cynicism that took place online from around 2007, once the "unwashed masses" because addicted to Facebook, I think the biggest thing that killed good writing online was analytics. Once most people discovered their well thought-out blogpost got only 100 page views while a meme with a cat got 10 million, many just gave up. But what's missing in those numbers is, of those 100 page views, perhaps 10 were people you actually respect, have influence in your field, were actually using your Open Source project etc. By optimising metric like page views we lost sight of the genuine impact we might have had with good writing.
danielschonfeld 5y ago
I am with you. But I think I know what it is, you touched on it and almost had it. It was indeed peace, we almost had it, world peace - feeling utopian and all loving in the 90s. Then came 9/11. It’s the single point in history where just about everything to do with American society can be defined to be before and after. Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described, the fact of the matter is that America as a country has been locked in this sort of country wide PTSD since and have changed completely. Along with it went peace, calmness, secularism, egalitarianism and altruism. We’re constantly the hunted now, the ones who need security, everything needs to be dumbed down, so called common sense rules and it better be mine common sense and not yours. And on and on it goes. We’re operating like a demented, schizophrenic who has woken up from a nightmare every day of their lives and have lost the fact they are living in their head instead of in the real world.
- jeofken 5y ago
  > Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described Interesting small mention. Is it common in America to disbelieve in the mainstream history of 9/11? I’m just getting glimpses from the new world via the internet and have no ear to the ground there
  - danielschonfeld 5y ago
    The answer to that is a personal one and I suggest for anybody on either side of any argument to recall Nietzsche’s saying - Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    I'm not sure what the original commenter was talking about, but no, it's not. There is vast agreement in the US about what happened.
    - danielschonfeld 5y ago
      Not as vast as you think [1]. Also as of late it appears the victims don’t want their president there in their 20th reunion for similar reasons. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_con...
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
By now the concept of competing for attention, for the limited 3-4 hours of free time you have a day is well known. To maximize engagement and clicks you just have to appeal to the shittiest parts of human nature - anger, fear, low attention spans. A few people figured out how to make the equivalent of cocaine (e.g outrage porn news, gamified social media) and now there is no going back - you compete with cocaine whether you like it or not. The more technical phrasing is that "intermittent variable rewards" are highly addictive - and this basically explains the entire design of social media or the shitty mobile games you see now. You can read statements/watch videos by Chamath Palihapitiya or Sean Parker admitting to this being an explicit strategy at Facebook. "Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport is also a nice book that covers some of the same ground. If you ask me, our current way of managing society is a failure. You have large, well-coordinated organizations basically selling cocaine (fast food, youtube, social media, cigarettes) on end, but the other end (consumers) are necessarily less coordinated and informed because they don't operate within an organizational hierarchy with centralized decision making, shared knowledge and people dedicating 8 hours a day to maintaining those systems. Theoretically, companies live and die by how much value they create for their their customers. Practically, many companies resemble organized militia waging asymmetric warfare on unorganized masses in an increasingly zero-sum world. I think we need to focus a lot on organizing as people outside of the structure of a for-profit corporation. Theoretically the government plays this role but it's not enough. (inb4 omg you hate capitalism stupid commie)
- honzzz 5y ago
  >> in an increasingly zero-sum world I don't understand this part - what do you mean by that? Why would the world be increasingly zero-sum?
  - zaptheimpaler 5y ago
    Most of the developed economies of the world have seen lower productivity growth since the booms after WW2 and have never recovered to previous levels. There are some arguments to be made that much of our current economic growth is artificial as well. The IT revolution has also not made much of a dent in overall productivity growth, at least as of yet - I don't know whether this is an artifact of how its measured, or the growth is yet to come, or perhaps there really isn't any growth. The bigger point is that our economies are simply not designed to work in a world where there is low growth [1]. In a zero growth world, the only way to make money is to take it from someone else, so you get more zero-sum behavior. The slow growth is also in line with what folks from the WEF are saying [2] [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme [2] https://investmentmonitor.ai/global/the-urgent-case-for-stakeholder-capitalism https://investmentmonitor.ai/global/the-urgent-case-for-stak...
ok_coo 5y ago
Money/Greed attracts a certain type of person who has different values, priorities, and interests. I think it mostly comes down to that.
anyonecancode 5y ago
I agree with you, but my hypothesis is straightforward -- it's the money. The internet in particular, but tech more broadly, is now a mainstream industry, generating and attracting a lot of money. In the US, even a poorly paid SWE, for instance, is almost certainly making well above the median income. Decently paid SWEs make a lot more, and well paid SWES... And of course those who actually employ well paid SWEs and are only paying their developers the least they can get away with, while still paying them a lot, are obviously raking it in. There's good and bad in this, but it does clearly change things. When there's that much money on the line, ironically the stakes become higher and there's less genuine creativity and risk taking. The flip side is of course true -- too little money is a problem (I mean, I'm not about to trade my SWE gig for working in an Amazon warehouse as a means of spurring personal creativity), but given enough money past a certain baseline, things do change. There's a sweet spot at "enough money that people can feel free to be creative and take risks" and "so much money people are scared to take too many risks".
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
I think much of it has to do with that they were originally written for books, magazines with thorough editorial practices and a reputation to preserve. 'Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine'[1] another HN favorite comes to my mind. It was originally written for Physics Today magazine. I don't think it's limited to only long form content, Even today printed news papers which have been in existence for >=~100 years does have better quality of writing than online content(even from the same news media) due to some resemblance of their editorial practices. But all those printed newspapers are on the verge of bankruptcy or already dead. Their online counterpart is now only concerned with how many articles can be published/hour, There's not even proof reading because of this as they have to please Google, Facebook, Apple for those screen time. I've noticed when I give interviews to online news the writer often has to work with their web-admin to fix errors in my statements after publishing(when it's different from what I actually said)and often it takes several hours if it even happens. Where as in printed news papers had the habit of error correction in the next issue. [1] https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin...
jrochkind1 5y ago
The utopianists saw what they had wrought, and did not like it.
jimmaswell 5y ago
Ever watched old commercials? It feels like they were less "in your face", not constantly jumping up and down for your attention. Calmly spoken and more likely to actually say something about the product. That shift is another indicator of the shift of things getting dumbed down in a way.
throwaway984393 5y ago
It was a different time. The people writing these things were more nerdy and more mature. The social internet hadn't taken over. People weren't concerned with votes, stars, comments, likes, splashiness, attention, or trading funny pictures of cats. You could take your time to write something considered just because you needed to get the information down. Software projects were idealistic because most software out there was proprietary and expensive; paid software was an entrepreneurial risk, and free software was transgressive. If a culture is popular, it tends to saturate. The old internet simply couldn't compete with the new one.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wiremine 5y ago
The dot com boom is a reasonable point in time to make the cut. But it's never a single event. Ever other posters referenced 9/11, which was definitely another major event. I'd add Columbine as another event, which occurred in 1999 [1]. That seemed to have a lasting affect on that cohort, which was also the group that got hit hard in the 2008 downturn. But maybe a better line is the rise of Facebook, which shifted the story from the promise of tech to the promise of social connections. Of course, technology will never be able to safe us, and the human condition is what it is. So, really, while a small passionate group seemed excited back in the mid 90s, it was always false gold. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

baby 5y ago

Very similar to the cryptocurrency field. Lots of noise nowadays.

dannyw 5y ago
Bitcoin was born in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the occupy wall street movement.[1] Events where, giant banks and institutions received trillions of dollars in unprecedented bail outs while 'main street' suffered with record unemployment, foreclosures, and destruction of small businesses. People rightfully realised that perhaps government should not have absolute and total control of the monetary supply and financial system. That a 'Plan B' may be in order. Unfortunately, today it's 90% people trying to get rich quick. [1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
- cinquemb 5y ago
  > Unfortunately, today it's 90% people trying to get rich quick. And that is, unsurprisingly (and quite banally), used by many detractors to dismiss it all while handwaving away: > Bitcoin was born in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the occupy wall street movement.[1] Events where, giant banks and institutions received trillions of dollars in unprecedented bail outs while 'main street' suffered with record unemployment, foreclosures, and destruction of small businesses. > People rightfully realised that perhaps government should not have absolute and total control of the monetary supply and financial system. Like people still hand wave away all the metadata and other work-arounds to compromising popular crypto systems that are highly touted because they are popular/convenient/etc or all the "get rich quick" mentality/motivations that exist outside of cryptocurrencies and have always existed…
  - petters 5y ago
    > And that is, unsurprisingly (and quite banally), used by many detractors to dismiss it all There is a stronger argument against crypto: the main use case (outside speculation) seems to be illegal activities. If what you are doing is legal, why not use government currency? If what you are doing is illegal, crypto is great. A currency outside the control of the government (police) is almost by definition made for illegal activities. In some countries, illegal activities are morally correct, though. Crypto helps here. But crypto has enabled entirely new types of crimes that did not exist before: ransomware. I have not completely for or against crypto. I am responding to your comment that people are dismissing because it seems like speculation only. I don't think that is true and that there are better reasons for dismissal?
    - dannyw 5y ago
      1. Why does FedEx exist? If what you are doing is legal, shouldn't you use USPS? 2. There are plenty of things that are federally illegal but many consider to be morally legal. Examples include, for example, weed dispensaries operating in states that have legislated cannabis. 3. What happens if a future government makes funding of ETE encrypted software, without CSAM scanning, illegal?
    - 5y ago

skybrian 5y ago

One difference (in this article at least) is that there are no jokes or unnecessary cultural references. Another might be called moral clarity. Unfortunately, it's usually an illusion. We have much more experience with technologies invented under optimistic assumptions turning out to be a moral gray area at best, when you look at how they're used. I found this paper interesting: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf

Zababa 5y ago
I'd put "jokes" and "cultural references" together under "tone". Recent articles often feel like they're trying to catch the attention of children. There are lots of "candies" to make you read: pictures, GIFs, jokes, an attention grabbing title, colors, emojis, a friendly tone, lots of exclamation marks. On the other hand, that article is mostly black on white text, that's plain in a good way.
- tasogare 5y ago
  I especially hate this "corporate fun" style when it's a big tech repository where each bullet point of a list is replaced by an emoji.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    I really have a hard time with emojis outside of communications. Either they are saying something that was already said by the word or words before, and in that case they are useless, or they replace a word and make text harder to read. I also really don't like the concept of making objects into emojis, as we already have words to describre that, and emojis reflect a very limited world. For example, if you look at the food emojis, this is basically "I live in San Francisco and all of the food I get is from restaurants". I think I've heard it described one day as "the world of people that live in airports", and that fits well.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  That's because young people have very short attention span and they must be fed with instant gratifications all the time to continue reading. Those "candies" are targeted at them.

emilsedgh 5y ago

You are right. All the good movements in tech happened ~20 years ago. Free Software/Open Source, Wikipedia, etc, all date back to early days. Now it's all about that SaaS money.I don't mind the money part, but sadly, tech has become a gold mine for predators who smell the money and are out for blood.

whoaisme 5y ago
Funny how it's obvious you're not a woman. 20 years ago if I groped a woman's ass or called or called my coworker Jose a wetback people would have clapped compared to today. And you're right, greedy predators like Gates and Ellison are a totally recent phenomenon. The past is better more noble and cleaner than the present. Honestly what a basic sentiment.

roenxi 5y ago

I suspect it is that there are a lot less abstractions and the thinking is much more moored in the material. In this profoundly technical article there is barely even a mention of computers or algorithms, and the vision is of a more analogue world (of paper bills, phone companies, physical wiretaps, human agents). The modern internet is almost entirely clashes of abstract concepts. It also shows up in the slight breakdown on the internet of basic, verifiable facts. Nobody is relying on real-world stimulus to form opinions. It is a bit draining to keep up with. That and there is less optimism because it is clear how slowly the world changes. Consider the "The government has a track record that does not inspire confidence..." paragraph. Written 30 years ago, part of it could credibly be talking about Assange, have names swapped for Trump, etc. At some point intelligent people are going to get jaded pretending that this is new based on the overwhelming evidence that the internet gives us access to.

dylan604 5y ago

To me, there was something to say vs people posting shit just to meet a quota. There seems to be much less thought/research/editing of content now. It wasn't so gamefied before HTML2.0 and social.

iso1210 5y ago
Not convinced HTML2 'gamified' anything. "HTML 1" wasn't really a standard anyway and I don't remember what html2 actually brought - I remember not every browser in the mid 90s did tables, client side image maps etc but they were later additions to html2. Javascript (which came in with html 3.2) was far more of a step change than html2
- bretthoerner 5y ago
  I think they meant "Web 2.0"
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Yes, you are correct. Totally meant Web2.0 when things became interactive and sites started allowing users to post comments and what not.
- doublerabbit 5y ago
  HTML5 brings incredible things to the table however with its taints of corporate presence and those who hold a dictation in direction. This is not "free". HTML doesn't have to be the only web transport. Build your browser and make your own protocol. IPFS is doing just fine. HTML4 was the last true free-release from any corporate grab. And it has everything youll ever need. However it just sits there forgotten taken by the glory of HTML5.

intricatedetail 5y ago

I think FOSS didn't predict that work done by volunteers will be appropriated repackaged and sold by big corporations without sharing profits with contributors nor sharing any patches. This caused people to develop defensively - contribute as little as possible and only for their own benefits. Developers no longer wanted to be taken as fools.

harryf 5y ago

Aside from shifts in morality and underlying cynicism that took place online from around 2007, once the "unwashed masses" because addicted to Facebook, I think the biggest thing that killed good writing online was analytics. Once most people discovered their well thought-out blogpost got only 100 page views while a meme with a cat got 10 million, many just gave up. But what's missing in those numbers is, of those 100 page views, perhaps 10 were people you actually respect, have influence in your field, were actually using your Open Source project etc. By optimising metric like page views we lost sight of the genuine impact we might have had with good writing.

danielschonfeld 5y ago

I am with you. But I think I know what it is, you touched on it and almost had it. It was indeed peace, we almost had it, world peace - feeling utopian and all loving in the 90s. Then came 9/11. It’s the single point in history where just about everything to do with American society can be defined to be before and after. Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described, the fact of the matter is that America as a country has been locked in this sort of country wide PTSD since and have changed completely. Along with it went peace, calmness, secularism, egalitarianism and altruism. We’re constantly the hunted now, the ones who need security, everything needs to be dumbed down, so called common sense rules and it better be mine common sense and not yours. And on and on it goes. We’re operating like a demented, schizophrenic who has woken up from a nightmare every day of their lives and have lost the fact they are living in their head instead of in the real world.

jeofken 5y ago
> Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described Interesting small mention. Is it common in America to disbelieve in the mainstream history of 9/11? I’m just getting glimpses from the new world via the internet and have no ear to the ground there
- danielschonfeld 5y ago
  The answer to that is a personal one and I suggest for anybody on either side of any argument to recall Nietzsche’s saying - Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  I'm not sure what the original commenter was talking about, but no, it's not. There is vast agreement in the US about what happened.
  - danielschonfeld 5y ago
    Not as vast as you think [1]. Also as of late it appears the victims don’t want their president there in their 20th reunion for similar reasons. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_con...

zaptheimpaler 5y ago

By now the concept of competing for attention, for the limited 3-4 hours of free time you have a day is well known. To maximize engagement and clicks you just have to appeal to the shittiest parts of human nature - anger, fear, low attention spans. A few people figured out how to make the equivalent of cocaine (e.g outrage porn news, gamified social media) and now there is no going back - you compete with cocaine whether you like it or not. The more technical phrasing is that "intermittent variable rewards" are highly addictive - and this basically explains the entire design of social media or the shitty mobile games you see now. You can read statements/watch videos by Chamath Palihapitiya or Sean Parker admitting to this being an explicit strategy at Facebook. "Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport is also a nice book that covers some of the same ground. If you ask me, our current way of managing society is a failure. You have large, well-coordinated organizations basically selling cocaine (fast food, youtube, social media, cigarettes) on end, but the other end (consumers) are necessarily less coordinated and informed because they don't operate within an organizational hierarchy with centralized decision making, shared knowledge and people dedicating 8 hours a day to maintaining those systems. Theoretically, companies live and die by how much value they create for their their customers. Practically, many companies resemble organized militia waging asymmetric warfare on unorganized masses in an increasingly zero-sum world. I think we need to focus a lot on organizing as people outside of the structure of a for-profit corporation. Theoretically the government plays this role but it's not enough. (inb4 omg you hate capitalism stupid commie)

honzzz 5y ago
>> in an increasingly zero-sum world I don't understand this part - what do you mean by that? Why would the world be increasingly zero-sum?
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  Most of the developed economies of the world have seen lower productivity growth since the booms after WW2 and have never recovered to previous levels. There are some arguments to be made that much of our current economic growth is artificial as well. The IT revolution has also not made much of a dent in overall productivity growth, at least as of yet - I don't know whether this is an artifact of how its measured, or the growth is yet to come, or perhaps there really isn't any growth. The bigger point is that our economies are simply not designed to work in a world where there is low growth [1]. In a zero growth world, the only way to make money is to take it from someone else, so you get more zero-sum behavior. The slow growth is also in line with what folks from the WEF are saying [2] [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme [2] https://investmentmonitor.ai/global/the-urgent-case-for-stakeholder-capitalism https://investmentmonitor.ai/global/the-urgent-case-for-stak...

ok_coo 5y ago

Money/Greed attracts a certain type of person who has different values, priorities, and interests. I think it mostly comes down to that.

anyonecancode 5y ago

I agree with you, but my hypothesis is straightforward -- it's the money. The internet in particular, but tech more broadly, is now a mainstream industry, generating and attracting a lot of money. In the US, even a poorly paid SWE, for instance, is almost certainly making well above the median income. Decently paid SWEs make a lot more, and well paid SWES... And of course those who actually employ well paid SWEs and are only paying their developers the least they can get away with, while still paying them a lot, are obviously raking it in. There's good and bad in this, but it does clearly change things. When there's that much money on the line, ironically the stakes become higher and there's less genuine creativity and risk taking. The flip side is of course true -- too little money is a problem (I mean, I'm not about to trade my SWE gig for working in an Amazon warehouse as a means of spurring personal creativity), but given enough money past a certain baseline, things do change. There's a sweet spot at "enough money that people can feel free to be creative and take risks" and "so much money people are scared to take too many risks".

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

I think much of it has to do with that they were originally written for books, magazines with thorough editorial practices and a reputation to preserve. 'Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine'[1] another HN favorite comes to my mind. It was originally written for Physics Today magazine. I don't think it's limited to only long form content, Even today printed news papers which have been in existence for >=~100 years does have better quality of writing than online content(even from the same news media) due to some resemblance of their editorial practices. But all those printed newspapers are on the verge of bankruptcy or already dead. Their online counterpart is now only concerned with how many articles can be published/hour, There's not even proof reading because of this as they have to please Google, Facebook, Apple for those screen time. I've noticed when I give interviews to online news the writer often has to work with their web-admin to fix errors in my statements after publishing(when it's different from what I actually said)and often it takes several hours if it even happens. Where as in printed news papers had the habit of error correction in the next issue. [1] https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin...

jrochkind1 5y ago

The utopianists saw what they had wrought, and did not like it.

jimmaswell 5y ago

Ever watched old commercials? It feels like they were less "in your face", not constantly jumping up and down for your attention. Calmly spoken and more likely to actually say something about the product. That shift is another indicator of the shift of things getting dumbed down in a way.

throwaway984393 5y ago

It was a different time. The people writing these things were more nerdy and more mature. The social internet hadn't taken over. People weren't concerned with votes, stars, comments, likes, splashiness, attention, or trading funny pictures of cats. You could take your time to write something considered just because you needed to get the information down. Software projects were idealistic because most software out there was proprietary and expensive; paid software was an entrepreneurial risk, and free software was transgressive. If a culture is popular, it tends to saturate. The old internet simply couldn't compete with the new one.

deleted 5y ago

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wiremine 5y ago

The dot com boom is a reasonable point in time to make the cut. But it's never a single event. Ever other posters referenced 9/11, which was definitely another major event. I'd add Columbine as another event, which occurred in 1999 [1]. That seemed to have a lasting affect on that cohort, which was also the group that got hit hard in the 2008 downturn. But maybe a better line is the rise of Facebook, which shifted the story from the promise of tech to the promise of social connections. Of course, technology will never be able to safe us, and the human condition is what it is. So, really, while a small passionate group seemed excited back in the mid 90s, it was always false gold. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre