3 ms·

In my career, engineering went from lucrative, upper middle class to a potentially explosive wealth-building apparatus. Once people became aware of that, they

In my career, engineering went from lucrative, upper middle class to a potentially explosive wealth-building apparatus. Once people became aware of that, they began to strive for it. Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Their hunger for more created a subculture of grinding and speculation. As the playing field grew feom office computers to everyone's phones, the old school capitalists dove in and catalyzed it all. To the point where the wellbeing of our young, the environment, the jobs we created- none if it mattered anymore. The goal was to get perversely rich and dominate the subculture, dissolving the real culture with it. Can we ever get back on track?

surgical_fire 2y ago
> Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Ironically, this is was what I chased, and what I found. I never wanted to have a destructive amount of money, just enough to have a house and raise a family. A lot of people in this industry just wanted to make money very quickly to retire early though. There is something unhealthy that comes with it, I think. > Can we ever get back on track? I am very pessimistic about it. Not without heavy government regulation, and it is a can of worms of its own. We are never going back to the environment we had around the 90s and early 2000s. There was a naivety in the air back then, some healthy gleeful contrarianism. After the dot com bust, it was unclear for a while how many things could even be monetized. There was a pervasive desire to build things for the sake of it. What we have now kinda sucks, and it is probably only gonna get worse.
- sydbarrett74 2y ago
  There was a universal, naïve air of optimism on the eve of 9/11. To wit Francis Fukayama's blithe sentiment that history was over with the fall of the USSR and that a capitalist, secular paradise would be ushered in with the Millennium.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    That's generally true. I remember that back then technological advancement was seen as a force for good and freedom. It was difficult to argue against this idea, in the context of the time, even if there were dissonant voices and even when you looked at things critically, you could see cracks on the surface. People wanting to go back to a simpler, smaller internet -to this mythical prelapsarian era - are in my opinion just nostalgic about how things felt back then. But there is no going back, tragically.
sydbarrett74 2y ago
I don't have any evidence for this assertion, but my intuition tells me a huge downturn ('correction' in economists' parlance) is about to hit us like a tsunami and get rid of much of this extractive, parasitic, unsustainable 'tech'. It's a storm that's been brewing at least since 2010 or so. Think dotcom crash, but at least an order of magnitude worse.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  I am curious about what forces would bring about this unraveling of the extractive, parasitic, unsustainable tech industry. Then again, it is difficult to see how an empire would fall when you are witnessing it at the height of its power, even if that height is on the eve of its downfall.
  - sydbarrett74 2y ago
    I don't know the hows or whys. It's just a general feeling of unease that I have. I'm waiting for additional shoes to drop.

surgical_fire 2y ago

> Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Ironically, this is was what I chased, and what I found. I never wanted to have a destructive amount of money, just enough to have a house and raise a family. A lot of people in this industry just wanted to make money very quickly to retire early though. There is something unhealthy that comes with it, I think. > Can we ever get back on track? I am very pessimistic about it. Not without heavy government regulation, and it is a can of worms of its own. We are never going back to the environment we had around the 90s and early 2000s. There was a naivety in the air back then, some healthy gleeful contrarianism. After the dot com bust, it was unclear for a while how many things could even be monetized. There was a pervasive desire to build things for the sake of it. What we have now kinda sucks, and it is probably only gonna get worse.

sydbarrett74 2y ago
There was a universal, naïve air of optimism on the eve of 9/11. To wit Francis Fukayama's blithe sentiment that history was over with the fall of the USSR and that a capitalist, secular paradise would be ushered in with the Millennium.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  That's generally true. I remember that back then technological advancement was seen as a force for good and freedom. It was difficult to argue against this idea, in the context of the time, even if there were dissonant voices and even when you looked at things critically, you could see cracks on the surface. People wanting to go back to a simpler, smaller internet -to this mythical prelapsarian era - are in my opinion just nostalgic about how things felt back then. But there is no going back, tragically.

sydbarrett74 2y ago

I don't have any evidence for this assertion, but my intuition tells me a huge downturn ('correction' in economists' parlance) is about to hit us like a tsunami and get rid of much of this extractive, parasitic, unsustainable 'tech'. It's a storm that's been brewing at least since 2010 or so. Think dotcom crash, but at least an order of magnitude worse.

surgical_fire 2y ago
I am curious about what forces would bring about this unraveling of the extractive, parasitic, unsustainable tech industry. Then again, it is difficult to see how an empire would fall when you are witnessing it at the height of its power, even if that height is on the eve of its downfall.
- sydbarrett74 2y ago
  I don't know the hows or whys. It's just a general feeling of unease that I have. I'm waiting for additional shoes to drop.