[at-fates-hands]

>> I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

People will argue this point. However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue. AI is just another item on a very long list of dystopian markers that writers/musicians have warned us about for years.

The scary part now is people denying its happening right in front of them.

[jordwest]

> The scary part now is people denying its happening right in front of them.

I wonder if age is a factor. Those of us who have been around for a while have seen all the promises and hope and excitement about the future, that maybe 20% of that comes true and the rest ends up being the usual exploitation and greed.

The younger people haven't been through that cycle of disillusionment yet so they still believe that only the positive, hopeful dreams will come true. It's natural, but naive, to believe that humans will always collectively choose the best path forward [1].

My grandma always refused to touch computers despite my excitement about them in my youth and I couldn't understand why. Now I think I get it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

[karmakurtisaani]

This made me think about the difference of growing old in a static world vs a one where change is constantly accelerating.

In the former, you understand it better and better as you age, but in the latter you're left with knowledge that's of no use while the next generation is ahead of you just by the privilege of being young.

In the former, you are a valuable source of information. In the latter, a burden.

[coldtea]

>In the former, you understand it better and better as you age, but in the latter you're left with knowledge that's of no use while the next generation is ahead of you just by the privilege of being young.

I'd put it more like: you're left with knowledge that sees right through bullshit and the same-old promises and error modes, but nobody's buying. And the next generation is hired precisely because they're naive to all of that to repeat the same mistakes eagerly while sociopaths profit.

[pjmlp]

Exactly, something that seniority brings is the ability to say no, and that isn't something most managers want to hear.

[coldtea]

Yes. Also folks who've been around remember what e.g. the dream of FOSS was (it wasn't merely about getting "software with a specific type of license" at your phone or behind some corporate cloud).

[jnpnj]

Could you tell us more about your grandma point of view (if she ever told you more of course).

With age I'm becoming jaded with computing, not personal computers per se, but the overwhelming space taken by them now (especially due to cheap networking I guess).

[jordwest]

She just didn't see the point in them, she enjoyed a simple life, grew up with little but had a full life and didn't see the need for more. She would ask me as a kid "you've been playing the television again have you?". I don't think she ever really understood that to me it was a creative tool.

I did manage to convince her to try a VR headset at one point and despite her protests she clearly enjoyed it. Afterwards she said "what a silly gadget" haha. I'm realising now that I have similar feelings about generative AI.

[jnpnj]

Hehe yeah we all have our own tastes based on time. But I'm also interested about the perception of computers. I too was enamoured with the creative possibilities of it. But nowadays I see a detrimental trend in how aesthetics are born on computers. The cleanliness, the recurrent patterns. A lot of pre-computing visuals were really different, none of it would qualify as nice today, but it was seen a cute before, and I kind of miss the less structured, less obvious, less shiny approach. It was also material, a different game, with constraints about possible colours, shape and precision you know. It also distracts us too much and creates real mind issues (I struggle with strange behaviors when browsing, near no attention-span etc)

So now I rebalance things and put computers in a smaller niche, not the centre of gravity.

[jordwest]

I can totally relate, funny enough I find myself drifting back to really appreciating old school interfaces and pixel fonts lately. I've been enjoying using the old IBM DOS font [1] [2] in my editor, terminal etc.

Hard to tell if it's just nostalgia, but all the smoothing, drop shadows, antialiasing (and now blurring with MacOS 26) feel so unnecessary and hardly even pretty anymore.

There's something nice about computer interfaces that just look like computer interfaces instead of pretending they're something else.

IMO part of it is that the older interfaces trusted the intelligence of the user to understand the abstractions below the interface, while newer software assumes the user is dumb in order to capture the largest possible market share. In the 90s it was "RTFM", now it's "your software sucks if it's not obvious". But what we lost in that is that interfaces now abstract away what's actually going on underneath.

Maybe this preference for the old way is part of the reason for the resurgence of TUIs.

    [1] https://viznut.fi/unscii/
    [2] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/

[jnpnj]

I ask myself the same questions. And I see other people discussing this on HN or other websites (old video games culture for instance).

I too feel that the computing aesthetic has vanished, somehow on purpose, a lot of efforts were aimed at making gpus and browser able to emulate anything (magazine, movies), so that's what apps do.

And I also agree about the balance between the tool and user. Limitations forced UIs to be organized, structured in some simple ways, they would do enough work to do some of the work, but the rest was on you to grasp the abstractions and ideas around. The software became something to immerse yourself in to gain more. That was part of the magic.

[classified]

> The scary part now is people denying its happening right in front of them.

Even scarier are the UIs for whom it's not happening fast enough and who cheer it on. Most of them don't realize they are digging their own graves if the promises they believe in become true. And if they don't become true, there will be a rude awakening for a great many people and bankruptcy for many companies.

[trhway]

>However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue.

Imagine, you invented iron production to improve people lives - better tools (ploughs, axes, knives), etc - and now you see how people immediately use it for better weapons crushing the ones who have still been using bronze.

Or for example from the Palantir's Karp's book "Technological Republic" :

" We make the case that one of the most significant challenges that we face in this country is ensuring that the U.S. Department of Defense turns the corner from an institution designed to fight and win kinetic wars to an organization that can design, build, and acquire AI weaponry—... "

The tech is great, be it iron or AI. The people are still [almost] the same (i sometimes think that our evolutionary goal is the AGI robots who would take over the Earth and will evolve toward higher morals and conscience faster than we would - as they would naturally have shared brain state/connection that we can get only if we develop telepathy which we wouldn't, and we unfortunately disregard the next best thing - empathy)

[stevenlangbroek]

"technology is neutral, deployment is not"

is that a reasonable statement? if so, congratulations, welcome to the club bud! you're a luddite now. we meet on tuesdays, please bring cookies if it's your first time.

[grim_io]

We are building software in the image of their sponsors.

This is nothing new or unique to software.

[coldtea]

It is quite new historically.

[selfhoster1312]

The software part, yes. For the rest, luddites would like to have a word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite (probably not the oldest instance, but the oldest i know of)

[munksbeer]

>People will argue this point. However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue.

Certainly a lot of bad things have come out of tech.

But I don't agree that it has made everything overall worse. That feels like recency bias. In which few decades in history would you rather be spending your years on this earth, instead of now?

[coldtea]

I'd take the 90s, 80s, 70s or 60s anytime, just gimme that magic time travel option. You know what, even the 00s would be fine.

[munksbeer]

Yes, recency bias.

[coldtea]

Nope, raw "actually good balance of stuff I like and stuff I don't like in those decades" pragmatism.

I could not give less fucks for having AI and smartphones and most other stuff, including all the fancy new medical procedures which are barely incremental.

Fridges, basic 90s-style internet and mini-skirts and welfare, and cheap housing, and jobs-a-plenty, more affordable healthcare, and the lifestyle, I can use just fine!

And I'd avoid the Plague or feudal times too. Including the techno-feudal times of today.

Pretend people can't have periods they'd be fine to live again and might prefer to today is bullshit.

[munksbeer]

The thing is, the option you want is available today. There are communities all around the world that live much simpler lives. Some just because that is how they are, others because they've formed communities to escape all the things you don't like.

Genuine question, have you ever investigated these options? If so, why did you dismiss them?

[coldtea]

Because I don't want a fucking enclave to larp in, and even if I did, no place is safe from late stage capitalism and its corporations and politics.

I want the era/society/world, not mere personal or communal play-acting it.

[esseph]

> The thing is, the option you want is available today.

Disagree

Removing yourself from the computing environment does not remove the impact it has on the world and around you. That is the equivalent of sticking one's head in the sand.

[bryanrasmussen]

anti-recency bias, with a less recency bias tagged on before.

I gotta say it reminds me a bit of that old Louis C.K bit where black people can't be messing with time machines. I guess gay people can't either. I don't think if you were gay you'd want the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s - maybe late 90s.

I mean it does seem that there are many groups of people I could think of that might be like 10 years ago please, but not much further back than that. Then again social progress not being evenly distributed might mean that 20 years ago and in a different country might be equivalent to 10 years for some life scenarios.

[vinceguidry]

Please. Covid destroyed everything in my life that I loved.