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You know what the biggest problem for me is with tech and computers in general? I don't think tech companies have actually made the world better, in fact, every

You know what the biggest problem for me is with tech and computers in general? I don't think tech companies have actually made the world better, in fact, every single day of my life I can see countless examples of how the technology gold rush has generated worse outcomes for everyone involved. I love computers, but I also have to admit most of my problems in life come from them. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars, developers study for years, but we still get low quality software everywhere that instead of solving issues they create more. Life could be simpler. It used to be simpler. And I believe it will go back to be simpler when our minds get rid of the haze this technology gold rush has created, and we simply as developers and users start valuing free software, simplicity and consistency. I'm just not confident it will happen soon, though. I think we still have at least a few tech bubbles and a few thousand startups before we reach that point.

Torifyme12 4y ago
We've enabled authoritarian beliefs, fostered genocide, damaged the social fabric and that's just Facebook. We've actively made the world worse.
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  Yeah, before the rise of the computer, none of those things really existed. /s
  - Torifyme12 4y ago
    Right, but "It happened before us" isn't a valid defense if we keep enabling it. JFC.
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      of course it is. You think progress should be stopped if it has any downsides at all?
- p0pcult 4y ago
  And we ruined the internet with advertising.
- milemi 4y ago
  The world is much better than it used to be, you’re just more aware of all the present evil because the evidence is so much easy to gather, disseminate, and search for. Nobody was aware of the extent of police criminality before everyone had a camera in their pocket, as just one example.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  No. Advertising and the need to drive engagement has made the world worse. At the root of most evil in the western world is advertising, it is just hidden well because it is good at moving the blame to, e.g, tech. Also those movements were there before tech.
xwdv 4y ago
Your problems in life come from computers because your life is computers. If your life was cars you would soon find most of your problems in life come from cars.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  Perhaps, but as I said I also see it around me. Many of their problems also arise from computers. There are two way I see people dealing with this: - It's normal, I don't need to do anything. These people are the ones who were born 90s or later. They see computers as a simple fact of life. - It's not a problem, at least we have something. These people will generally be older and I think fail to see the incredible potential benefits of tricking a rock into thinking for you. These are all generalizations of course, not social facts but simply representations of how I experience reality. The thing that really ticks me in the wrong is that people in other industries don't always see the things they do as a net negative for humanity. For instance, most types of engineering such as civil, eletrical, chemical, etc. have real net positive benefits in the way I and everyone around me experiences life. I've never seen a civil engineer say they hate how we built bridges. I've met very few computers scientists who were confident about the way we deal with computers. Anyways, this is just a long way of saying I agree, but that I don't think it invalidates what I talked about tech companies not being a net positive.
  - andyferris 4y ago
    > most types of engineering such as civil, eletrical, chemical, etc. have real net positive benefits in the way I and everyone around me experiences life They do _now_. During their exponential-growth phase I think there were lots of negative externalities? (Pollution, etc). And we still have to regulate them heavily to avoid societal problems. Another post in this thread mentioned it's all the closed-platform/walled-garden/attention-grabbing/rent-seeking behavior which is the worst aspect of "tech"... honestly I have the feeling we just haven't gotten around to learning how to regulate these well yet, just like it took a while to figure out how to control (local) pollution (I mean, even this is still a huge problem with global carbon pollution).
  - 4y ago
quanticle 4y ago
You don't think your life has been substantially improved by Google? Or the Internet more generally? You'd rather go back to the '90s, when you had to carefully watch how much Internet you consumed, so as to keep from running out of AOL hours? You want to go back to an era when you couldn't instantly pull up navigation direction in a foreign city? You like to to take photos on film, paying ridiculous prices for every photo you took, and then paying again to have some stranger paw through your family photos while developing them? You want to go back to an era when batteries were heavy, polluting NiCd bricks, which required special chargers that would completely discharge and recharge them in order to avoid things like the memory effect? You want to go back to a time when you had to call a person on a phone in order to book a flight. You want to go back to a time when, if you moved to a different country, you got to talk to your relatives in the homeland once a month, for five to ten minutes on a noisy analog phone line, because that's all the international long distance you could afford? Don't get me wrong, I dislike social media just as much as anyone. But do I dislike tech? Would I give up the all innumerable ways that my life has gotten better thanks to Moore's Law, ubiquitous Internet, and the proliferation of tools and services that take advantage of the above two? Absolutely not.
- trident5000 4y ago
  I do think those things are great but I would say that culture is substantially worse. People are less kind/patient, more disrespectful, more isolated, more narcissistic, less family oriented, more politically combative, have shorter attention spans, and are less happy than prior generations.
  - hotstickyballs 4y ago
    That’s a people problem. People can change. Technology just is.
  - dixie_land 4y ago
    Your observation about the culture being worse is accurate, but none of them are caused by tech.
Method-X 4y ago
I agree with you, but I don't think we're ever going back to simpler times. While I'm not religious, I have often wondered if this is what the "Garden of Eden" story warned us about. Or more cynically, "Industrial Society and Its Future".
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  > Or more cynically, "Industrial Society and Its Future". I always see myself calling the unabomber crazy, but then I remember he was a mathematician which studied in the MIT and he was probably much smarter than I could ever dream of being. "The Industrial society and it's consequences was a disaster for the human race" is something that passes through my mind somewhat often, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not. Maybe he did have a point. edit: He studied at Harvard, not the MIT, memory failed me there. I don't condone any of his actions (i.e. bombing people).
mozman 4y ago
I sometimes joke that computers were a mistake but the older I get the more I believe it.
ghusto 4y ago
Came to say this, glad someone else is doing down in flames with me ;) To all the "yeah but what about all the good it's done" comments: I would gladly give all that up if it meant going back to the standards we had before around 2007 (though for me the 90s was the best time, I don't know how much of that has to do with the rose tint that teenagerhood gives you). Even some of the good it's done is questionable. I can now order exactly what I want from a range of online shops at 2am, instead of going to the single jeans shop in my town and having to settle for the wrong size in the wrong brand. The flip side is that local shops have gone out of business, resulting in a loss of community, with all the ills that brings. Besides which, psychologists would argue that getting what you want isn't a good thing (and after years of getting what I want, I can confirm).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
qpooqpoo 4y ago
Anti-Tech Revolution and Technological Slavery are both amazing books and must-reads.

Torifyme12 4y ago

We've enabled authoritarian beliefs, fostered genocide, damaged the social fabric and that's just Facebook. We've actively made the world worse.

travisgriggs 4y ago
Yeah, before the rise of the computer, none of those things really existed. /s
- Torifyme12 4y ago
  Right, but "It happened before us" isn't a valid defense if we keep enabling it. JFC.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    of course it is. You think progress should be stopped if it has any downsides at all?
p0pcult 4y ago
And we ruined the internet with advertising.
milemi 4y ago
The world is much better than it used to be, you’re just more aware of all the present evil because the evidence is so much easy to gather, disseminate, and search for. Nobody was aware of the extent of police criminality before everyone had a camera in their pocket, as just one example.
tomjen3 4y ago
No. Advertising and the need to drive engagement has made the world worse. At the root of most evil in the western world is advertising, it is just hidden well because it is good at moving the blame to, e.g, tech. Also those movements were there before tech.

xwdv 4y ago

Your problems in life come from computers because your life is computers. If your life was cars you would soon find most of your problems in life come from cars.

doodlesdev 4y ago
Perhaps, but as I said I also see it around me. Many of their problems also arise from computers. There are two way I see people dealing with this: - It's normal, I don't need to do anything. These people are the ones who were born 90s or later. They see computers as a simple fact of life. - It's not a problem, at least we have something. These people will generally be older and I think fail to see the incredible potential benefits of tricking a rock into thinking for you. These are all generalizations of course, not social facts but simply representations of how I experience reality. The thing that really ticks me in the wrong is that people in other industries don't always see the things they do as a net negative for humanity. For instance, most types of engineering such as civil, eletrical, chemical, etc. have real net positive benefits in the way I and everyone around me experiences life. I've never seen a civil engineer say they hate how we built bridges. I've met very few computers scientists who were confident about the way we deal with computers. Anyways, this is just a long way of saying I agree, but that I don't think it invalidates what I talked about tech companies not being a net positive.
- andyferris 4y ago
  > most types of engineering such as civil, eletrical, chemical, etc. have real net positive benefits in the way I and everyone around me experiences life They do _now_. During their exponential-growth phase I think there were lots of negative externalities? (Pollution, etc). And we still have to regulate them heavily to avoid societal problems. Another post in this thread mentioned it's all the closed-platform/walled-garden/attention-grabbing/rent-seeking behavior which is the worst aspect of "tech"... honestly I have the feeling we just haven't gotten around to learning how to regulate these well yet, just like it took a while to figure out how to control (local) pollution (I mean, even this is still a huge problem with global carbon pollution).
- 4y ago

quanticle 4y ago

You don't think your life has been substantially improved by Google? Or the Internet more generally? You'd rather go back to the '90s, when you had to carefully watch how much Internet you consumed, so as to keep from running out of AOL hours? You want to go back to an era when you couldn't instantly pull up navigation direction in a foreign city? You like to to take photos on film, paying ridiculous prices for every photo you took, and then paying again to have some stranger paw through your family photos while developing them? You want to go back to an era when batteries were heavy, polluting NiCd bricks, which required special chargers that would completely discharge and recharge them in order to avoid things like the memory effect? You want to go back to a time when you had to call a person on a phone in order to book a flight. You want to go back to a time when, if you moved to a different country, you got to talk to your relatives in the homeland once a month, for five to ten minutes on a noisy analog phone line, because that's all the international long distance you could afford? Don't get me wrong, I dislike social media just as much as anyone. But do I dislike tech? Would I give up the all innumerable ways that my life has gotten better thanks to Moore's Law, ubiquitous Internet, and the proliferation of tools and services that take advantage of the above two? Absolutely not.

trident5000 4y ago
I do think those things are great but I would say that culture is substantially worse. People are less kind/patient, more disrespectful, more isolated, more narcissistic, less family oriented, more politically combative, have shorter attention spans, and are less happy than prior generations.
- hotstickyballs 4y ago
  That’s a people problem. People can change. Technology just is.
- dixie_land 4y ago
  Your observation about the culture being worse is accurate, but none of them are caused by tech.

Method-X 4y ago

I agree with you, but I don't think we're ever going back to simpler times. While I'm not religious, I have often wondered if this is what the "Garden of Eden" story warned us about. Or more cynically, "Industrial Society and Its Future".

doodlesdev 4y ago
> Or more cynically, "Industrial Society and Its Future". I always see myself calling the unabomber crazy, but then I remember he was a mathematician which studied in the MIT and he was probably much smarter than I could ever dream of being. "The Industrial society and it's consequences was a disaster for the human race" is something that passes through my mind somewhat often, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not. Maybe he did have a point. edit: He studied at Harvard, not the MIT, memory failed me there. I don't condone any of his actions (i.e. bombing people).

mozman 4y ago

I sometimes joke that computers were a mistake but the older I get the more I believe it.

ghusto 4y ago

Came to say this, glad someone else is doing down in flames with me ;) To all the "yeah but what about all the good it's done" comments: I would gladly give all that up if it meant going back to the standards we had before around 2007 (though for me the 90s was the best time, I don't know how much of that has to do with the rose tint that teenagerhood gives you). Even some of the good it's done is questionable. I can now order exactly what I want from a range of online shops at 2am, instead of going to the single jeans shop in my town and having to settle for the wrong size in the wrong brand. The flip side is that local shops have gone out of business, resulting in a loss of community, with all the ills that brings. Besides which, psychologists would argue that getting what you want isn't a good thing (and after years of getting what I want, I can confirm).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

qpooqpoo 4y ago

Anti-Tech Revolution and Technological Slavery are both amazing books and must-reads.