5 ms·

I feel the optimism people reminisce over around frutiger aero is coupled with the more optimistic view people had of tech at the time vs today.

DrawTR 3y ago
I think that's half the fun of it? There's this sort of squeaky clean optimism and hopefulness to it that's just absolutely gone in today's universal design language
nvy 3y ago
Yep, back when we still believed the lie of "Don't be Evil", and before the tech darlings of yesteryear ruined society by turning all of technology into a surveillance panopticon just to sell us a few more ads. I hate the future we inhabit compared to what could have been.
- trealira 3y ago
  At my university library, there are a bunch of books from the early 2000s already with titles like "Web Content Mining with Java" (Tony Loton, 2002) and "Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques" (2001, Han Kamber (and 2006 and 2012)), as well as a whole lot of others. (Though most of these books are more about introductory statistics and using databases). The seeds of the current world were already being sown some 20 years ago.
  - ReactiveJelly 3y ago
    I remember when "data mining" had a negative connotation :(
    - trealira 3y ago
      I think "data mining" must have had less of a negative connotation when they wrote those titles 20 years ago.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  I think "Don't be evil" was actually real for a couple of years.
Lammy 3y ago
Also, we were twelve https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/06/16 https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/06/16
- erickhill 3y ago
  Yep, good ol' C64. Sigh... (lord, I'm getting old!)
- tomcam 3y ago
  How did Tom the dancing bug slip out of my view? Thanks for the callback.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  You can see this in the HN age poll. The most recent one shows the age group clustered around late millennial to young GenX. If you're 40 today, you would have been 17 in 2000, so yeah.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
> more optimistic view people had of tech at the time vs today. Probably because there was yet not that much weaponized targeted advertising, brain rot content, and social media designed to make you consume content all day that gives you non-stop dopamine, then makes you feel depressed about yourself. Tech was more of an extra tool to aid life IRL, and hadn't yet completely absorbed and replaced IRL entertainment and interactions. It was easier to separate and limit your on-line activity from your daily life than today without the feeling that you're missing out. The online presence was all about niche online communities, games, forums, bulleting boards, and chat groups, instead of all being absorbed into Subreddits that gamify your engagement for upvotes to sell it to investors and advertisers. Consumer PC hardware at that time was mature and reliable enough to not require a PhD or make you hate using it, but still progressing quite fast to make you excited about the next OS, video games, CPUs and GPUs(back when people could actually afford them). It was a wild transitional period for tech, from 32bit CPUs to 64bit, DirectX 8 to 9 to 10, single core CPUs to multi-core, some of the best movies, videogames and franchises launching in that period, instead of all being sequels, rehashes, reboots and remakes of old franchises like today. It was a great time to be alive and whatness all that, hence the optimism you mentioned. Oh, and all videogames (and SW in general) shipped as "Gold" on discs, fully finished, tested and patched, no bullshit broken preorder cash-grabs needing the famous zero-day patches to work as advertised, treating their customers as beta-testers, plus half the game being sold to you as an extra DLC six months later.
- anthk 3y ago
  >wild transitional Not even close to the huge shift from 1989 to 1999.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Meh, PCs weren't so mainstream in consumers' homes back then, it was still more a thing for businesses and nerds, as the tech was quite limited for entertainment and HW still quite expensive for the casual user. Yes hardware progress was fast, but it was also quite expensive and difficult to set up and use, a lot of the times buggy and with compatibility issues, and it would get outdated far too quickly[1] to the point you'd spend a fortune on a new GPU which would be obsolete in a year and the company would go bankrupt in 2 years, leaving you with no games that would support it anymore, turning you expensive GPU in a worthless paperweight. It was rough being a a consumer back then unless you were loaded to afford keeping up with the upgrades and stomaching the teething issues and quick obsolescence. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI
causality0 3y ago
That was when technology was solving real needs, therefore it was getting genuinely better all the time. Now almost all solvable real needs are solved, therefore technological progress is aimed at manufactured needs and the needs of companies, not users.

DrawTR 3y ago

I think that's half the fun of it? There's this sort of squeaky clean optimism and hopefulness to it that's just absolutely gone in today's universal design language

nvy 3y ago

Yep, back when we still believed the lie of "Don't be Evil", and before the tech darlings of yesteryear ruined society by turning all of technology into a surveillance panopticon just to sell us a few more ads. I hate the future we inhabit compared to what could have been.

trealira 3y ago
At my university library, there are a bunch of books from the early 2000s already with titles like "Web Content Mining with Java" (Tony Loton, 2002) and "Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques" (2001, Han Kamber (and 2006 and 2012)), as well as a whole lot of others. (Though most of these books are more about introductory statistics and using databases). The seeds of the current world were already being sown some 20 years ago.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  I remember when "data mining" had a negative connotation :(
  - trealira 3y ago
    I think "data mining" must have had less of a negative connotation when they wrote those titles 20 years ago.
ahartmetz 3y ago
I think "Don't be evil" was actually real for a couple of years.

Lammy 3y ago

Also, we were twelve https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/06/16 https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/06/16

erickhill 3y ago
Yep, good ol' C64. Sigh... (lord, I'm getting old!)
tomcam 3y ago
How did Tom the dancing bug slip out of my view? Thanks for the callback.
Karrot_Kream 3y ago
You can see this in the HN age poll. The most recent one shows the age group clustered around late millennial to young GenX. If you're 40 today, you would have been 17 in 2000, so yeah.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

> more optimistic view people had of tech at the time vs today. Probably because there was yet not that much weaponized targeted advertising, brain rot content, and social media designed to make you consume content all day that gives you non-stop dopamine, then makes you feel depressed about yourself. Tech was more of an extra tool to aid life IRL, and hadn't yet completely absorbed and replaced IRL entertainment and interactions. It was easier to separate and limit your on-line activity from your daily life than today without the feeling that you're missing out. The online presence was all about niche online communities, games, forums, bulleting boards, and chat groups, instead of all being absorbed into Subreddits that gamify your engagement for upvotes to sell it to investors and advertisers. Consumer PC hardware at that time was mature and reliable enough to not require a PhD or make you hate using it, but still progressing quite fast to make you excited about the next OS, video games, CPUs and GPUs(back when people could actually afford them). It was a wild transitional period for tech, from 32bit CPUs to 64bit, DirectX 8 to 9 to 10, single core CPUs to multi-core, some of the best movies, videogames and franchises launching in that period, instead of all being sequels, rehashes, reboots and remakes of old franchises like today. It was a great time to be alive and whatness all that, hence the optimism you mentioned. Oh, and all videogames (and SW in general) shipped as "Gold" on discs, fully finished, tested and patched, no bullshit broken preorder cash-grabs needing the famous zero-day patches to work as advertised, treating their customers as beta-testers, plus half the game being sold to you as an extra DLC six months later.

anthk 3y ago
>wild transitional Not even close to the huge shift from 1989 to 1999.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Meh, PCs weren't so mainstream in consumers' homes back then, it was still more a thing for businesses and nerds, as the tech was quite limited for entertainment and HW still quite expensive for the casual user. Yes hardware progress was fast, but it was also quite expensive and difficult to set up and use, a lot of the times buggy and with compatibility issues, and it would get outdated far too quickly[1] to the point you'd spend a fortune on a new GPU which would be obsolete in a year and the company would go bankrupt in 2 years, leaving you with no games that would support it anymore, turning you expensive GPU in a worthless paperweight. It was rough being a a consumer back then unless you were loaded to afford keeping up with the upgrades and stomaching the teething issues and quick obsolescence. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI

causality0 3y ago

That was when technology was solving real needs, therefore it was getting genuinely better all the time. Now almost all solvable real needs are solved, therefore technological progress is aimed at manufactured needs and the needs of companies, not users.