Cheap mass storage and a home network connection with upload speeds that make hosting media streaming and ‘cloud’ storage out of your closet an affordable possibility.

My closet could already hold DVDs and I could have bought a slightly pricey flash drive to carry around a good chunk of media without getting networking involved. Now I can get the data from those DVDs without leaving my couch or carry around more than I have time to consume. Do I truly benefit much more?

Access to large, quality, high resolution displays that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.

Larger and higher quality to show higher resolutions of the same basic media tech from 20 years ago. It’s certainly novel to see a movie at home in HD/4k, but it didn’t fundamentally change the experience of watching a movie in 720p.

High performance portable computers that draw significantly less power.

Power draw wouldn’t be as much of an issue if we didn’t require digital access 24/7. A blackberry w/ voice mail and an iPod drew significantly less power and gave me all access to portable messaging and non-video media.

In exchange for gaining that video media, everyone assumes I will download their app or pull up their QR code menu.

Mobile data networks with orders of magnitude more data bandwidth.

Which still can’t match the sneaker-net bandwidth of me carrying some flash drives or DvDs. Only necessary because the raw size of data has exploded. Though I supposed I gained the ability to scroll memes on the bus.

The ability to own and control all of the technology that you depend on without needing to rent services from a corporation.

We had nearly as much control 20 years ago. Linux was just as available if you didn’t want a mainstream OS.

Technology is so much better, more private, safer and more affordable now

Don’t worry, I’m sure legislation will catch up. Our dependence on convenience tech has allowed Apple/Microsoft/Google et.al. to purchase control of their own regulation. Your OS requires age verification today (because of this ocean of data kids can access from their pocket) and tomorrow all hardware sold will require a DRM heartbeat.

Looking back on it all, the cheap tech has basically unlocked consumer video media. It wasn’t feasible to create and store significant digital video for anyone in the 00s, but now people can make professional quality movies with iPhone. Was that worth the externalized costs?

Modern technology is great. It’s massively cheaper and more performant for orders of magnitude less money.

Performant and cheaper are not inherently good things. LEDs perform a shit ton better than incandescent bulbs and are cheap as hell. But we fundamentally didn’t need more cheap light for 95% of consumer use cases. Now light pollution is climbing exponentially, 10% per year.

Consumer compute was atrocious to start, but reached a useful level where it unlocked a ton of value for people. Graphics at a legible fidelity, replacing paper documents, data over networks, responsive input, portable-ish laptops, etc…

Now we’ve got more compute than we’d ever reasonably need as a species. Landfills full of IoT waste, datacenters filling up with cheap bytes where only 1/10 will ever be read, drones dropping bombs and gearing up to monitor our every move, trillions of Kw/hr spent driving it all every year…

And what novel value has been unlocked by this glut of compute that we didn’t have before? On-demand AI meme videos?

Sure I can spend a few hundred bucks on a personal LED lightshow that would have cost tens of thousands a few decades ago. And sure I can spin up a home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago. But what have I actually gained?