Not excited about tech
I recently read a question that asked why people are not excited about new technology anymore?
My first reaction was to chuckle inside, because the answer seems so obvious that it makes the question sound almost rhetorical.
My biggest gripe about new technology is that it provides a lot of churn in one's life for little to no benefit. The endless slew of notifications, warnings, updates gets old really quickly. My parents, once they master a UI of their banking app, often receive some update which changes it, leaving them saddened, because in the end, it's the users who tend to think that they are at fault for not keeping up with the "changing" world. And don't get me started on dark pattern proliferation, even if you don't use social media apps.
It's easy to bang on that drum, especially so if you care much about your blog stats going up. But when I tried to turn off my cynicism for a moment, some other thought entered my mind. What if, because of this thinking, I'm missing some cool, paradigm-altering stuff that is lost in the sea of junk and enshittification?
If you're old enough, or are interested in retro stuff, you probably remember the times when a new software version changelog was an interesting read, a hardware upgrade was like going to the Moon, and booting up to X on Linux was a strange miracle of some sort, which made you feel like Neo for a moment, at least until you realized that the installer had wiped out your hard drive, leaving only your new, experimental OS to play with, without any usable drivers.
And then came the Internet. It's quite normal now, but it was mind-bending back then that I could just talk to people around the world. I've met many pivotal people in my life through the Internet. I've read stuff that has changed me as a person, influenced my thinking, and made me feel less alone in the world in general. Thanks to computers and Internet, I got a good job and almost endless source of knowledge.
The decision to buy computer or connect it to the Internet was not mine alone. I think parents enabling of computer or the Internet use is a frequent storyline in many lives, and I think a lot of those people would agree that it gave them a head start in various ways.
So I had this thought, what if I'm missing something because of my stance about tech? Are LLMs the next paradigm shift, whether we like it or not? Would I be excited enough to connect my younger self to the Internet?
I'm not sure. But It's scary to think I would not, if we agree that it was a good thing. Back then it was, as clankers often put it, a game changer. I don't think it's good to be online that much nowadays, but am I missing out on any paradigm shifts because of my biases about tech?