I think this is less about “respect” and more about the general change in business attitudes that happened over the 90s and the ability for software to be more verbose.
On the attitude side, software development, developers and management shifted heavily from stodgy “IBM suits” to “renegade / hacker” teams. That shift showed in more than just dress codes, it showed in how software talked in general and in how companies talked to their customers. And more screen real estate, more dynamic software and more dynamic interfaces meant communication could be more verbose. “PC LOAD LETTER” is plenty succinct, and most people hated it.
> And more screen real estate, more dynamic software and more dynamic interfaces meant communication could be more verbose.
Could have been, but the opposite happened.
Instead of changelogs, one has "bug fixes and performance improvements". Instead of KB686848 and KB7849867 one has "cummulative update"
Surely the poster child of the 90s for 'not IBM' was Google. And that worked because it removed things.
So yes, I agree somewhat, but I think it's more a corruption of that original ethos by said suits. But I suppose that's true of everything on the internet.
These small annoyances just keep adding up. The result, a less happy population which most likely correlates with a lower life expectancy. It's also just less and less human agency. My cars software is going to monitor and manage my behavior? Seems maddening.
I had the unhappy experience of driving a car with collision warnings. I got 3 in one day. It would be nice after the fact to know what it thought was happening.
Author here! Yup exactly! I don't mind that it's telling me things (well, I do, but that's another post), I just want it to tell me _why_ instead of giving me a weak suggestion with no context so I can make a judgement on how to proceed. Feels like a passive aggressive mom telling you "Maybe try on another outfit" when what she really means is "I think your shirt is horrific and I can't be seen with you in it."
what i really hate is the "remind me later" buttons. I want to say a plain "no" but the app won't let me. It promises not to respect my decision right there in the popup itself!
Instead of giving terse, succinct messages it was assumed the user was lazy with an iq below 80 and and needed to have friendly, patronizing responses