If I was gen z I would purely hate how I grew up. They got the worst if it. Well, them and alpha.
No wonder so many want to go back, I do as well! Give me all of our civil rights of today (minus US idiocy, I mean actual first world countries ) and take me to 1995-05 somewhere.
I am the oldest of Gen Z having been born in the late 90s. I got the tail end of what the world was like pre-smartphone and gotta say it was better…
I’m tired of tech being everywhere from cars to toasters I still prefer analog things that do the job and only that job.
I don’t need my internet connected fridg to tell me what groceries to buy while selling my data to insurance companies
i don’t think it’s tech, it’s that tech stopped being something that helps you, now it’s just things that control you, and it’s all so shitty.
being a millennial was nice. almost every new piece of tech was useful and made life easier. but i think it was around 2010ish when it all began going downhill. first, capacitative buttons, then smart everything that didn’t help, just monitor you and sell your data. now so much tech is straight up hostile.
Yep, it all went to shit about 2010. The Mayans were right.
Mayans predicted the capacitative buttons
Hahha
I remember when the first round of capacitive buttons showed up. I can’t find it anymore, but there was an article on a fan site for MP3 players I read in 2010 that showed the comparisons of physical vs capacitive vs touchscreens and capacitive buttons only had negatives. It baffled me when they just never stopped using them on things. That article was burned into my mind and now I see that logic has spilled into a thousand other industries.
I’m a bit older than you, I enjoyed tech when it was an escape and communication/education tool not a requirement even my local library uses an internet connected touch screen to locate books.
Tech used to promise a better life. Now it requires a subscription and wants your biometrics just to lie about pizza toppings to you. Sounds like gen z is on the right path.
imagine telling someone in the 80s that in the future so communities computers will need your age and will report it to the government.
Tech in the 1980’s - 2010’s was hopeful, beneficial, and fairly consumer oriented. Tech today is mostly some sort of scheme for recurring billing while openly assisting the modern surveillance state. It’s no wonder modern tech feels icky.
The thing full of promise turned into the tyrant it swore to never become.
“don’t be evil”
Modern technology is great. It’s massively cheaper and more performant for orders of magnitude less money.
Consumer technology on the other hand, is cursed.
The problem is that nobody needs to know how to use technology anymore. Every piece of consumer hardware and software is designed so that the company does all of the work for you and then rents you the fruits of the technology. Now you’re eternally dependent on someone else to operate your technology for you because you’re constantly paying the people that are ensuring your technological ignorance.
Don’t worry about learning how to store mp3s or manage your music Library! Just pay Spotify, YouTube Premium, or Apple Music $10/mo!
Don’t worry about needing to learn how to backup your data or to store you photos, just give Apple $29.99/mo! Shopping for hardware is hard, learning the difference between a Megapixel and a Megabyte is for nerds! Just buy the iPad, iLaptop, iCamera, iEarbuds, it only costs 50% more than it should!
Dealing with .mp4 and .mkv files, too complicated! Don’t worry about needing to learn anything about movies, Netflix/Hulu/Disney/Paramount/Amazon/AppleTV/etc will gladly take your $20/mo and do everything for you!
Don’t like your computer’s OS being filled with advertising, spyware and AI? Too bad! Your only options are 1. Live in Apple’s Walled Garden, 2. Put your entire life’s worth of private data on the auction block for the lowest bidding advertiser for the benefit of Microsoft’s shareholders or 3. Give your cellphone provider and Google root access to your entire life!
Yes, this is a ‘Just use Linux’ comment.
I really don’t think that specific emotion is isolated to gen z.
I remember all the promise and excitement that tech had back in the late 00’s and early 10’s. Things were unique and fun. That’s just not true anymore. Every new software update adds shit that you didn’t ask for and don’t want (AI, ads, removal of user freedom). New hardware releases are either an underwhelming iteration of specs from the previous version, or an unimaginative device that has the same basic look and feel as every other device it’s competing with.
Tech used to be fun and exploratory, now it’s just companies pushing to see how much they can be allowed to exploit you for the least cost.
I’m just going to put this here. There are places feel that way again. tildeverse.org
Thanks for sharing!
Things were unique and fun. That’s just not true anymore. Every new software update adds shit that you didn’t ask for and don’t want (AI, ads, removal of user freedom).
Amen. Every time I hear about a new tech product or startup or conference, now all I see are ads, subscription traps, and generally just people looking for new ways to fuck me.
(And I don’t like to be fucked by anyone except Mrs. Wallace)
It boggles my mind how people accept auto- and forced updates these days. I go far, far out of my way to use software where YOU have to go and download an update if you want it.
Don’t even get me started on the 1990s. Every new processor generation actually felt faster. Web pages had blinking banners because the creator thought it looked cool, not to advertise a personal information vacuum. There was no better introduction to the public’s absolutely awful sense of style. But I went from talking to international friends for $0.50/minute to free, and it was amazing.
What’s really just depressing is that these companies are more profitable and worth more than ever before. They don’t need to do this. They are essentially tightening their grip on civilization’s throat to see how hard they can squeeze before we all die, for the love of the game.
It’s also weird because they are opening themselves up to being out-competed by a company that isn’t (as) evil. Being not evil is the most valuable market differentiator right now. Companies like Valve that seem to just be sticking with “we have enough money” are like water in the desert.
valve is not public, rest of big tech is; which means shareholders are god and line must go up whatever the costs involved are, including civilization breakdown & climate change mass extinctions
Oh boy. If people would just start seeing that open source still gives you exactly this, but you know, Linux is for incels and shit, I much more prefer being spied on by big corp.
Linux and FOSS tech about to become the new mainstream underground punk rock hangout spot.
Always has been.
I feel the same. I quit working in tech. It really has no soul anymore, specially talking to chat bots and agents.
Tech now is building the infrastructure for dystopia and its so obvious.
Are you still working? If so, doing what?
Tech used to be fun and exploratory, now it’s just companies pushing to see how much they can be allowed to exploit you for the least cost.
The fun and exploratory tech still exists, its just not sitting as a single product on a store shelf in a plastic clamshell package. The maker space is where all the exciting exploration is happening. If you have an idea the technology likely exists to make it happen, and the cost of the parts won’t break the bank. Lots of reuse of cast off out-of-date tech can be integrated dropping the costs even more. While there are even better solutions, if you’re just getting started pick up an old Arduino or Raspberry Pi (not the new expensive high end models) for under $30. Grow from there to microcontrollers like the ESP32 where it gets even cheaper for about $5 each. Learn to solder! Learn modeling and 3D printing! Use an operating system that lets you control your system instead of one that you just have to accept what they give you.
It really is an amazing time in tech if you stop accepting a products as they are, and instead what you want them to be with your own modifications.
Is it “discomfort”, or a full rejection of the values represented by the enshittified tech companies and their LLM-cronies?
It’s universal man. They fucked everything up, don’t blame us (everyone) that we don’t want to use your garbage tech. What do you expect to happen when you suck all the soul and humanity out of everything, out of daily living? People want that, need that, desire that, well, most people.
It’s not really discomfort. It’s the fact that any benefit technology would give us is being monetized and abused to the point where it’s not enjoyable. I have this phone because employers expect to be able to contact me 24/7, and because governments want to spy on me, and companies want to harvest my data so they can profit from me. In return im given just enough to make it to the next day, and a screen to distract me from how fucking pointless our society is.
A skilled/educated American worker should be able to retire comfortably at 50 without having to worry about how they’ll afford healthcare.
Companies make millions off you, then you give a few thousand because they know if they ever paid you a fair share, we’d all realize how much they’ve been robbing us this whole time.
Not sure why you make a distinction between skilled and unskilled workers. If anything, ‘unskilled’ workers should be able to retire even sooner since they often do work that strains the body.
Technology has become a way for the rich to extract more wealth from parts of other people’s lives they have no business being in. I sincerely hope we can all get away from that side of it.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the problem is not the technology, but who controls it.
If we actually taught digital literacy in schools, and democratized access to technology, people could be making their own software made for solving problems instead of capturing attention!
If I ran a high school tech class I’d give them a box of parts and say “make it run Doom”
Also, when most of the new technology is corporate-fellating AI, surveillance and ad technology, it’s also the technology that’s the problem.
100%. I can’t believe how much technology is things I dreamed of having but never thought of it as being applied in anything but a eutopic model. Basically our social advancement is lagging way behind our technical advancement. Heck we are going behind. It still gets me how we have a very good example of how communications should be looked at legally with the post office and how we intentionally do not use it as a baseline.
I always talk about how life and trends are just a pendulum, And how it swings, and that I have this hope for the generation(s) after me swinging the pendulum in the other direction. I’m born in '87. We embraced technology to the fullest. And now, unfortunately, technology has been ruined, in the fashion of things gaining popularity going to shit. Way she goes.
I have this idea that the pendulum will come back to a point where kids want to separate themselves from the lens of the internet, where you’ll be chastised for using your phone. And perhaps this is just some strange (anti?)dystopian story in the making, but a tale as old as time is kids being like “That’s not cool, fuck that shit.” I’m just hopeful that “that shit” is tiktok and its ilk.
I think it’s just normal for new generations to revive cultural elements of past eras with a kind of nostalgia, even though they weren’t really present for them. For millennials, it was the 80s and even the early to mid 20th century.
Gen-Z is thinks the 90s were cool and is bringing back a bit of that.
I had an idea for a sci-fi setting where criminals are held in stasis like Demolition Man or Minority Report except the point isn’t to keep them away from society or rehabilitate them. It’s to rob them of their time in the present assuming that things are only going to bet worse.
Reminded me of that white christmas black mirror episode that your conscience can be virtualized and simulated so years can pass in a minute.
Discomfort with new modem technology shapes frustration as no modern terminal application has ZModem support.