
I don’t like computers - cheiVia0
https://www.happyassassin.net/2016/11/04/i-dont-like-computers/
======
m_fayer
This struck a chord with me.

Unlike the author, I think I still like computers, but only in their essence.
I like programming, the detective game of debugging, learning new paradigms,
getting lost in abstraction, the thrill of watching powerful automation doing
it's thing.

But I don't like what computers and the internet have become. Without constant
mindful adjustment, all my devices inevitably become attention grabbing
pushers of just-so packaged bits of media. I don't let that happen, but that's
clearly their essential inclination. Keeping this at bay feels like swatting
away the tentacles of some persistent deep sea creature.

I feel everyone's attention span eroding. I feel people packaging themselves
for social media, opening their self-image and self-worth to the masses. I see
a flood of undifferentiated information, the spread of hysteria and
belligerence, the retreat of quietude, humility, and grace.

This is all downside, but lately I'm losing the upside. While I still love the
technology underneath it all, more and more I feel like I'm working in the
service of something that's driving humanity collectively insane.

~~~
tgarma1234
Yes Werner Herzog mentions the collective insanity of humanity in conjunction
with text messaging in one of his documentaries. Games and text messages and
social media have captured peoples brains. People are drawn into their devices
mentally and emotionally in a way that barely makes them present in the actual
world, even when they are walking to work or dining with friends or driving.
There is something so magnetic about these devices that draws in almost every
person who encounters them in a way that is not healthy.

Because it's all happening in real time to humanity as a whole it's hard to
see the bigger picture of how we are changing. I think of it as probably being
like how people responded to the invention of fire. It just made perfect sense
and took over the world and happened to everyone together. Being present in
the midst of this historical change is an opportunity to know something very
deep about human beings, who we are.

The biggest thing about these changes from my perspective is that people are
devolving into something that looks like a collective autism. Like they are
obsessed with the fact that something is happening somewhere else at all times
and the device has opened a window to seeing it. And yet when you look out
that window into the collective digital consciousness of pictures and texts
and advertising you see that there is actually nothing happening at all that
isn't exactly what you would expect. People doing things. But always somewhere
else.

The main thing I don't like is when I am walking downtown and people are
literally just wandering mindlessly as a herd texting on their phones not even
looking up at traffic as they cross the street. They navigate by being aware
of other people's direction and path but oblivious to their own. For example,
I will be crossing the street and another person who is texting will walk just
a few steps behind me texting, looking at their phone, never looking up at
traffic and trusting that if they follow my path they will end up on the other
side of the street. I don't even know really how to describe that experience
but I am sure everyone else has it too. It's like people have been reduced to
herd animals walking collectively while immersed deeply in their devices...
because there isn't possibly anything at all happening in this present moment
that is worth paying attention to. And I am not talking about one or two
people walking around in this way. It's practically everyone.

Honestly, am I the only person who notices this? I wonder.

~~~
m_fayer
My pet theory: the digital world is just real enough for us to inhabit without
feeling alone, while removing a few crucially difficult elements of in-person
interaction. Because we can't escape the reality of being social animals, we
gravitate toward the easier social world - the digital one, and thus we end up
checked out of the physical world way too much.

I've been disturbed, above all, by the following dynamics that are missing
from the digital world:

Social awkwardness is alleviated by asynchronicity, there's no such thing as
awkward silence online, and you can carefully craft everything you put out
there.

One can avoid various flavors of vulnerability and ennui. Hiding your face
from others means no one can see your exhaustion, dissatisfaction, denial,
boredom, etc. - and because you see yourself more clearly when reflected
through the eyes of others, a lack of that reflection makes self-deception
that much easier. And on the flip side, avoiding seeing these things on the
faces of others allows us to escape the difficulty and obligation that empathy
imposes on us.

This would all be great if we didn't need these and other hardships of the
analog world to truly flourish, but we do. So existence in the digital-social
world becomes akin to slow carbon monoxide poisoning. It fools your system
just enough that you don't realise that you're actually suffocating - the ill
effects pile up while the alarm systems (loneliness, need for intimacy) stay
mum.

~~~
adrusi
Why do we need those things to flourish?

~~~
kame3d
If I may I would recommend the work of Sherry Turkle[1] from the MIT. There
are several talks from here on youtube, and I particularly like her
conversation on the good life project podcast[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Turkle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Turkle)
[2] [https://soundcloud.com/goodlifeproject/sherry-
turkle](https://soundcloud.com/goodlifeproject/sherry-turkle)

------
mouzogu
I agree with the sentiments. I don't agree with the notion of the good-old
days however. It only takes 5 minutes on a PC running Windows 3.1 to remind me
how much of pain those days were at times - at least in comparison to now.

You see the difference is that I was much more patient and tolerant then. Now,
thanks to the Internet - I have become very impatient, anxious and my
attention span has dropped almost to zero.

I hate theee things. The way technology has changed me. This is why I have
grown more and more disinterested in technology and all its promises. Even
though if I were being honest we have never had it better in terms of the
range, options and diversity of the field.

I think technology has made me a worse person. More informed but less
interested. It's given me more opportunnities at a time when i feel most
exhausted and apathetic. Perhaps this is normal considering we are going
through the "internet" revolution. A lot of changes. Many of which I don't
like within myself and society in general.

~~~
dpweb
The tech is still fun and cool, it's the hype that's taxing. VCs promising to
invent human immortality 'we're going to solve the problem of death' was the
pinnacle of their hubris. Calm down guys. A global communication network is
great but it ain't an invention on the level of a cancer cure.

People who love computers take a hobbyists view. It used to be a hobbyist
thing. That's gone forever if you look at the world the influence now of
global power structures and corrosive effects of greed. You can preserve the
hobbyist mentality about it yourself in your own pure joy of it but if you
don't naturally your going to get disillusioned about the whole thing.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _VCs promising to invent human immortality 'we're going to solve the problem
> of death' was the pinnacle of their hubris._

I have a different view. I'm thinking, "finally someone is fucking serious
about what should obviously be the goal of everyone". If rich SV people are
willing to throw money at something actually useful for a change, I'm all for
it.

~~~
shshhdhs
I disagree. It should not be the goal of everyone because we have hundreds of
other larger humanitarian issues on earth than delaying aging & dying. That
literally is a "first world problem". Let's fix the crises first

~~~
orangecat
_we have hundreds of other larger humanitarian issues on earth than delaying
aging & dying_

Do we? Preventing people from dying is at the core of what "humanitarian
issues" actually means. Yes, too many people die because of violence or
starvation or lack of basic medical care, and we should absolutely address
those problems, but the effects of aging are harming billions of people and
will ultimately kill them.

~~~
shshhdhs
Death is a guarantee, even if you extend it. While in the United States we may
live 70-100, in other countries they live to maybe 40, while child mortality
is sky high. It would be awesome if we can close that gap first, instead of
making the divide between the rich and poor even wider.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It would be awesome, sure, but if both things can be done in parallel, why
not?

This smells of a "if I can't have it first, nobody can have it" thinking. Do
lives of the westerners matter so little? Are they not people too?

------
clarry
I kinda share the feeling. Well I still like tinkering with some things that
nobody else seems to care about. But most of the time it feels like doing
stuff with computers is just fighting the new technology (which I don't care
for) and then there's politics, copyright & contracts, things that further try
to ruin it for me.

For most part I can't get excited about any of the news about software,
programming languages, new services or big tech corps. I look at the front
page of HN, yawn and move on. I don't care what Apple is doing, I don't care
what Google is doing, I don't care about your new javascript framework or
microservice, not about your new OS, I don't care about a new smartphone or
laptop...

The few things I find interesting are things I keep to myself because every
time I've tried to make a discussion about them, nobody else seems to be
interested. Or it may even be met with hostility.

~~~
igk
Would you care to share those things now? Here or email if you prefer

~~~
TeMPOraL
Gonna join in. I too would like to know those things!

------
bitL
I really think there was a hidden shift in the past 10 years from dreamers
trying to implement things helping humanity to asocial computing whose only
purpose is to extract more money than humanly possible. Before these dreamers
had an edge as the power-hungry people didn't get it; now they get it and use
it to extend their power and even using these dreamers as disposable ways to
reach their goals. It's difficult to get excited about it.

~~~
blowski
The same is often said of literature, cinema, healthcare, childcare, tourism,
and just about everything. Heck, this was a criticism of the Sophists in
Ancient Greece!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Whether it was said or not, I lived through it, so I have first-hand
experience that tells me there was a shift. It used to be that programming was
an unpopular hobby of unpopular people (nerds!). Now not just IT, but the
whole geek/nerd culture got commercialized, to the point that today's
programmers are nothing like the ones from 10+ years ago. Today if you pick a
random developer in a random company, you'll most likely find someone with
only shallow knowledge/understanding of programming, who is in this career
just for the money, and only cares about the craft between 9 AM and 5 PM.

It does _feel_ like the culture I grew up in was invaded and taken over by
barbarians.

~~~
mhurron
How do those that are interested in just doing a job affect you at all? Are
you upset that you can't say you're a programmer and hold it as a badge of
honour that you're not one of 'them?'

~~~
TeMPOraL
I got used to it so it doesn't upset me at all. The thing that affected me was
that when I came to the workplace, I expected to meet more people "of my
kind". Instead, I've met the same normal people who laugh at you for
programming after work or having scientific interests (i.e. "having no life").
Adults are more polite about it, though.

------
kleiba
I guess I can relate to the general feeling, but I would say that it's not
computers I don't like, it's the internet. And if you look at the bulleted
list in the original blog post, you see that most of the things listed there
are internet related - probably, as one might argue, because computers ==
internet these days.

But that's why I say I share the feeling: what drew me to computers when I was
little was the tinkering with this fascinating machine that did as you told it
(so you better told it the right things or else it would end up in a mess
without mercy). It was a time were you felt you could still reach a point were
you're actually in control, computers were still simple enough that one person
could pretty much understand all of it.

This is no longer the case today. The complexity of the modern IT landscape is
just intimidating. You couldn't possibly feel like you could one day be in
control or on top of things anymore. Everything's changing, everything's
growing at too fast a pace to keep up.

Therefore, if what drew you to computing in the first place was a personal
connection and interaction between yourself and _the_ machine, it's no wonder
that that magic has gone now.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Since I am now 30 years into the this career, I now see the young software
engineers and wonder to myself what a shit-career they must be embarking on. I
don;t know that for sure — I don't know how much I am just projecting, or is
Software Engineering just not as fun as it used to be for some of the reasons
you cite (too much changing too fast, never a sense of being able to fully
control/own the architecture)?

Regardless, it gives me some comfort to know that I've enjoyed a good part of
my career up to this point and I'm a lot closer to being on the way out of my
career than the way in.

------
dasmoth
I'm guessing a similar-ish age to myself.

Besides the internet, one thing that's changed is that computing has become a
much less solitary activity: in the 90s and 2000s we were still seeing the
tail end of the microcomputer era which was very much built by individuals
hacking away on stuff at home or in tiny businesses -- and when larger
businesses hired "microcomputer" (and to some extent PC, and web) people, they
still worked in very much the same way.

Today, the IT workplace is all about "teams and practices", and even if you're
working on something intensely personal as a side project, there's still a
degree of expectation that if you want it to amount to anything you need to
get it out there as a collaborative, open source project. Or a company with
other people involved.

At least for introverts, computing used to seem like something of a refuge.
That's definitely less true today unless you deliberately do something that's
totally personal.

~~~
baconizer
I miss that old computer. That feeling of top of the world when something I
made just works, without worrying being judged by framework standard,
patterns, team collaboration, pair programming, etc etc

Someone mentioned about 14.4k hayes modem, I miss that too, BBS was a wonder
land, people talk and share and respect without worrying being downvoted or
disliked.

I miss the world without portable computers, nowadays it's hard to hold on a
conversation with someone without her being buzzed away by phone/watch, heck
it is even impossible to start a conversation to people sitting next to us,
buried her head in her shiny gigantic smartphone.

~~~
kylebenzle
> I miss that old computer.

Emulate at the Wayback Machine

> 14.4k hayes modem, I miss that too.

Most providers offer slower speeds for less $!

> nowadays it's hard to hold on a conversation with someone without her being
> buzzed away by phone/watch

I live in the 2nd largest Amish community in the US, there are still a lot of
people/places without buzzers attached to them.

> it is even impossible to start a conversation to people sitting next to us

This is nothing new, the best book (my opinion) was written long before any of
this stuff, _How to win friends and influence people_.

------
eludwig
This is a normal part of growing up. It sounds like the author is perhaps in
his mid-30s? 40ish? Am I close? Actually that doesn't matter at all, because
this happens throughout your entire life. It's happened to me several times.

The secret to human interests is that they have an arc. A beginning, a middle
and an end. Are you still doing the same things you were doing when you were
ten? Maybe, but maybe not. I'm certainly not. There were no computers when I
grew up. Well maybe a few ;)

It's natural to be bummed out when your interests (work interests, love, play,
etc) change. It feels weird and uncomfortable, like we are losing something.
It feels bad. You wonder if you are in a deeper funk...like real depression.
Will it return? Is it a phase? You don't know.

The best way I have found to deal with this is just to watch. Observe. Hmm.
I'm really not feeling this today and haven't for a while. That sucks. Don't
get too caught up in it. Let the feelings rise and fall. Keep noticing. What
is it that I do get turned on by? Well, I'd really like to be reading right
now. So make time and do it. Let your urges take you where they will. Trust
them. Let them lead you towards something that does it for you. The author
seems to have that covered. He (she) is aware of things that are interesting.
Keep doing these things. Let the things that interest you reveal themselves.
Have faith in this cycle. It does eventually resolve itself.

I realize that this whole deal is tough due to responsibilities. Family, etc.
People are counting on you. You have bills to pay. Appointments to keep. Keep
them. Stick to the routine while you explore. This is important, because
learning about yourself is easier when the external drama levels are low.

You will know if this course works, because you will feel better. If you still
have angst and it is getting worse, then you may need to talk to a real person
(a whole other kettle of fish).

My advice: listen and watch. Do what you need to while exploring what makes
you happy.

~~~
drchickensalad
Thank you.

------
ensiferum
Heh, and I don't have a problem to say that I'm looking for a career switch.
In fact I've been doing software engineering professionally for +15 years now
and quite honestly I'm sick of it. Have been for years now.

I still enjoy programming but only that and when I get to program my own hobby
programs and focus on the parts and problems that I find worth solving and
doing. I don't enjoy the SW dev work at _work_ , doing stuff that I don't care
(or the world doesn't care about), solving problems like fixing build files,
or having a shitty tool that crashes or having all these stupid useless (meta)
problems and the general nonsense prevalent in the IT/tech industry. Just as
an example of what I mean the other day I was having a problem with automake
(WARNING: 'aclocal-1.14' is missing on your system.) when building protobuf
(not going to get into details, it's very obscure). My motivation for this
kind of (nearly daily) crap is about absolute 0. I'm sick and tired of it all.

The only reason why I'm still doing this is because I haven't realized what
would be a feasible alternate job for me to do and which direction to go to.

Overall I feel like this job has changed me as a person as well. I'm extremely
cynical these days about anything related to tech/IT. But hey at least I have
a great taste for cynical and sarcastic humor now (for example Dilbert)!

~~~
ensiferum
Replying to my own reply,

furthemore I guess the most painful aspect about is the realization of own's
limitations and understanding that despite the effort to self improve, study
and actively try to learn I'm never going to be a top tear developer with a
fancy career that would take me to places. I mean I'm a solid developer but
still I'm just a "SW dev" and lacking a massive fluke in this industry thats
probably all I'm ever going to be. Partially it's also about me not being very
career orietented (at least when I was younger) but now when you realize that
you've hit middle age, your friends have moved up in the world to bigger
companies, bigger jobs/positions and salaries and after 15 years you're
beating the same dead horse (hey, look what cmake just vomited out!!) it
feels... well it feels like you got deceived.

Basically same thing in a blog format:
[https://giantfublog.wordpress.com/2016/10/05/the-
difference-...](https://giantfublog.wordpress.com/2016/10/05/the-difference-
between-a-job-and-a-career/)

~~~
manmal
This resonates with me, BUT - I think looking up to peers because of their
tangible accomplishments is a kind of self deception. If you were the best
earning person at high school reunion - would that make you happier on the
whole, or would you just enjoy boasting at the reunion, and that's about it?
Who are you really envious of? The rich people, or the dream-come-true people
with an average or even low income? I'd rather strive to be in the second
group. I'm deeply envious of my guitar teacher. I certainly make more than
him, and giving lessons can be boring - but making music makes him deeply
happy.

~~~
ensiferum
Well large paycheck would be a nice thing, but more than I guess it'd be about
accomplishment, making something worthwhile and recognition and/or making
something that'd actually make the world a better place and obviously getting
to do what you actually enjoy doing.

>>I'm deeply envious of my guitar teacher. I certainly make more than him, and
giving lessons can be boring - but making music makes him deeply happy.

I'm envious of guys like that too. It's great if you can spend your time doing
what you enjoy. My first 5 years in the tech were like that. But the luster is
definately gone now.

------
MrQuincle
A different angle, but I don't like computers that are in your face, costing
time, rather than giving me time.

I don't like games. I don't like VR. I don't like AR. I don't like television.
Also reading HN too much makes me feel empty.

However, I do like smart things that do stuff for me and get out of my way. I
really like waking up in a warm bedroom while the rest of the house is allowed
be cold. I like the convenience of telling Alexa, "play something relaxing"
when I come home from work. I like having to clean a little less thanks to a
Roomba. I like not having to switch off stuff because it's done automatically.
I like an AI to schedule my appointments.

Every computer that minimizes my interactions with computers or gives me time,
the most precious resource, I like!

~~~
humanrebar
Hey, your taste is your taste, but I don't see why you'd come down on screen-
based entertainment but appreciate the other things that 'cost' time: books,
cooking for yourself, dishes you have to wash, shopping, theater, hiking, etc.

~~~
pjc50
All of those apart from dishwashing and some of the shopping are
benefits/entertainment, surely?

I think it's useful for people to make a distinction between "I'm doing this
by choice as entertainment" vs "I'm doing this as a default activity that's
sort of addictive, and not really enjoying it". TV, social media, and, er,
Hackernews can fall into the latter category if you're not mindful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Totally this. For me, it's about whether the cost is imposed on me, or chosen
voluntarily.

So I _love_ videogames, but I hate those designed to suck you in on purpose
via cheap psychology tricks. I love books. But I hate ads, infomercials and
content with very low quality/size ratio. And I absolutely hate maintenance
tasks (dusting, washing dishes, exercise) and wish they could all be automated
away.

~~~
jeff_petersen
> I absolutely hate maintenance tasks (dusting, washing dishes, exercise) and
> wish they could all be automated away

I sort of share this opinion, and when it comes to dusting and washing dishes
I still agree. But recently I started weightlifting and its come to be much
more fun than just straight cardio ever was, now I look forward to going to
the gym. Worth a try if you haven't already.

Also polishing my shoes is a maintenance task, but I find it very relaxing and
gratifying when I'm done. But yeah, as soon as I can get a robot butler to
handle the other stuff I'll be happy as a clam.

~~~
ahussain
I agree, but also feel that sometimes 'maintenance tasks' can be incredibly
humanizing. Life can feel artificial when there are too few maintenance tasks.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Feels to me like the Stockholm syndrome thing (for lack of a better term). You
can't avoid the bug, so in order to keep your sanity, you start to treat it as
a feature. Similar thing as with treating death as a "natural state of
things", ergo good.

------
noir_lord
My GF laughs at me and says that I'm a terrible techie, outside of computers
and programming, I'm just not that interested in technology anymore, A lot of
the fluff around IoT seems just that fluff, I'm excited by the possibilities
in terms of things like city management, I couldn't care less if I can turn my
lights on when I walk into my house or if my toaster is connected to the
internet.

I don't buy gadgets, I own tablets to watch the odd movie and for device
testing otherwise I would only have one, my phone is a 4 year old Nexus 4
which I broke the back on and covered in black electrical tape (I could
replace it but I don't _care_ enough to do so), I use a 17" Vostro for working
the odd time I can't be at my office or at home and it's dented and has
stickers stuck all over the scratches, I'm not even sure I remember what the
stickers where for.

I'm just not excited by new hardware like I used to be, I only care when it'll
have a demonstrable impact on my enjoyment of programming where once I'd have
lusted after the latest and greatest I couldn't even _name_ the best model of
i7 or whatever at the moment, I only care about that stuff when I'm building a
new desktop.

What does excite me is how technology is having a meaningful impact on peoples
quality of life.

I think in a way thats just part of getting older (I'm 36).

That and every time I interact with technology that isn't one of my linux
machines I come away feeling like I should hunt down whoever wrote the
software with a bat and some bad intentions, one of the downsides to been a
programmer is that the deficiencies of everything are so much more _obvious_.

Prime example, I bought a LiFX 1000 bulb (WiFi/IoT bulb) to put into a ships
lamp as a christmas present for the GF, it took me 45 minutes to set the thing
up, followed all the instructions to the letter, de nada then I thought "I
wonder if changing the wireless channel might work" and lo and behold changing
from Channel 13 to channel 9 made it work.

Nowhere was that documented in the instructions (which I read) and had I not
been a techie I'd have never thought to try it, my point been where once I'd
have thought "This is cool" now I just _resent_ the 45 minutes I won't get
back.

~~~
bayonetz
I just lost 3 hours of my life debugging JavaScript utc vs local time issues
in a top rated React datepicker component. Where I used to relish the learning
from such experiences, now I feel vaguely resentful and just want that time
back for more leisurely pursuits. What I've realized is there is an
exponential drop off on how much time "learning experiences" like these will
save me in the future. For example, for this category of debugging, it might
taken me several days early on, then 1 day, then 4 hours, then 3.5, now 3,
maybe 2.8 next time, etc. I think unconsciously when I was starting out I
thought all this hard work I was putting in would pay off such that I'd
eventually get to a level where I could basically blink and new 1000+ line
projects would just appear effortlessly, bug free, and ready to go. The
reality is much farther from the truth. While my investment has paid off
immensely, there is still a ton of uninteresting ditch digging that still has
to get done in the service of making stuff. For me all the way up to the most
brilliant engineers out there, there are still plenty of 3 hour slogs left
where we will never get that time back and the result won't feel like it was
worth it.

~~~
noir_lord
Everything you said and the fact that the 'surface' to learn anything well is
now _huge_ so we have lots of abstractions all of which leak and require you
know a fair bit about all the layers underneath if you want to consider
yourself 'good' at what you do.

------
marcusr
I'm guessing I'm a similar age to the author from the reference to parents
shouting at the phone bill from my 1200/75 modem running all night. And just
recently I've felt exactly the same way. My job involves both running systems
and writing software, and the joy has disappeared from both. I used to work
all day, then come home and hack all evening, but now I don't know if I'm
burnt out, but I can find no interest in making computers do cool things any
more.

There's been one small bright spot - I tried learning Haskell and loved the
way functional programming stretched my brain but there's an awful lot to
learn to do anything useful. But Elm, wow, do I love Elm. I feel the
excitement I felt when I saw Ruby on Rails for the first time ten years ago.
It's finding something interesting and useful to build with Elm that I'm
struggling with now.

I wonder if it's the message that if you're not building a product that will
build a unicorn company, then it's not interesting that's part of the general
malaise.

~~~
slau
Thanks for writing this. I can completely relate.

I noticed this when I got my first job, some ten years ago. Back then, I was
hacking on Maemo like crazy. I moderated newsgroups, I contributed code to
anything I could, in any language that would let me.

I loved my new job. I worked anywhere between 40 and 140 hours, depending on
how much work or stress there was. Very quickly, this started eating away at
my ability to contribute and participate in the communities I loved and
adored.

After some time, I even struggled with becoming a troll against those very
communities.

Fast forward some time, and I still haven't found a way to produce software as
a hobby. Sometimes I'll get a burst of energy, and manage to architect,
document and write a few thousand lines of code over the course of a few
weeks, but it's definitely not sustainable.

------
pmyjavec
"Somewhere along the way, in the last OH GOD TWENTY YEARS, we – along with a
bunch of vulture capitalists and wacky Valley libertarians and government
spooks and whoever else – built this whole big crazy thing out of that 1990s
Internet and…I don’t like it any more."

It was great fun before it all got so serious. Very funny and true ;)

~~~
mioelnir
I'm always tempted to classify the internet as a test network in our firewall
documentation, because that can't be the production version.

~~~
yxhuvud
All places have a test environment. Good places have a separate production
environment.

------
teekert
OP is getting older. And, like me you move from nights of Gentoo tinckering to
Arch, to 30 min Ubuntu LTS installs and hoping the default config files are
what you need. And, in the future I see myself buying a Synology.

A child is intrinsically motivated to play, you loose this as an adult. No
biggie but your shit just needs to get the job done, and the job is not
learning as much about the shit as you can. Such is life, you have other
things to do now, like raising a kid, and getting enough sleep while doing it.

As with life I learned a lot when young, taking the time to learn the stuff
that I still use now. Perhaps computers extend the playing age because they
are intellectually satisfying for much longer than other forms of play, but
eventually you're done playing.

~~~
allendoerfer
> OP is getting older. And, like me you move from nights of Gentoo tinckering
> to Arch, to 30 min Ubuntu LTS installs and hoping the default config files
> are what you need. And, in the future I see myself buying a Synology.

Feeling this. Except I hate crappy things. There is just a threshold of
brokenness I am willing to accept. Consumer products are designed for
shinyness and to break and be obsolescent. So most of the time when I have a
problem, I learn the right way to do it (TM) look at the ready made solutions
and conclude: Oh dear, I have to do this myself again or pay a shitload of
money, haven't I?

I think my father passed this on to me. It may have something to do with
craftsmanship. There is a German term called "Handwerkerehre" [0] (honor of a
craftsman), which is culturally quite significant and encapsulates that you
have to feel insulted by poor attitude and quality of work. He was a
construction engineer and we always used to have professional grade equipment
around the house. Either do it right or do not bother at all.

[0]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwerkerehre](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwerkerehre)

~~~
ensiferum
I don't speak German but I love that word already. Craftmanship however
doesn't exist in consumerism and capatilism where the goal is maximize profit
and minimize cost. Whatever quick crap that I can sell to you to make better
gain for myself is the way to go. Product development lines (not only in tech
but in other fields such as construction) are dozens of levels of deep with
each link adding a layer of indifference and workers who just don't give a f*k
and nobody takes overall responsibility for any of the services/products
rendered.

Eventually this our communal fault for having a strong bias towards price.

Personally I'd love to buy better quality products even if that means the
price is higher. I'd love to replace quantity with quality. But sadly that
doesn't exist in many fields / product categories and going for the "Premium"
product still gives you that same "made in china" experience unless you can
really afford to buy those luxury items such as have a single carpenter build
you your dining table by hand. (Which is something I'd love to do but the cost
is prohibitive)

~~~
allendoerfer
> Personally I'd love to buy better quality products even if that means the
> price is higher. I'd love to replace quantity with quality. But sadly that
> doesn't exist in many fields / product categories and going for the
> "Premium" product still gives you that same "made in china" experience

The solution to this seems to be XaaS, where the business behind it buys the
professional solution and rents it to you on demand.

Another way I deal with it is to buy extended warranties (e.g. for a vacuum
cleaner etc) so they at least have additional costs if they sold me a crappy
product.

You also should buy brands and then shamelessly abuse customer support. I own
a Logitech mouse since about 10 years. Not only is the mouse still working,
they also replaced its gliders free of charge after I have used it already for
4 years. Guess which brand I will recommend and buy in the future. I trust
that they would want to protect their brand if a feature version would turn
out shitty and replace it for me and improve the product for others.

I think this topic is way deeper than it sounds at first. It concerns all
areas of society and has effects of historical significance up to the question
of war and peace. Essentially it is added layers of complexity equals lacking
accountability resulting in lost trust.

Some of it of course always has been that way, it is just that we see more if
it now. We have never been healthier, there has never been a lesser percentage
of poor people worldwide and so on. Maybe it is just a shift the most
developed nations have to make. We have been cranking out features and
innovations, time to refactor a bit and improve the base. I think it is
already happening due to focus on green products.

------
LeoPanthera
I find solace by retreating back into my childhood. My home office contains a
collection of obsolete yet comfortable pieces of hardware. A BBC Micro, an
Amiga, a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, a MAME cabinet, and a small
collection of pinball tables.

I can happily spend hours immersed in the past, and when I'm done, returning
to modern digital life is somehow refreshing.

See also, the Computer Chronicles YouTube channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT](https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT)

------
neals
I just wanted to add, that whenever I've worked too hard for a few nights
straight and find myself on the edge of that dreaded burnout... I start to
"not like" things.

I know you say you've been watching your hours, but burnout doesn't maybe just
come from hours.

For me, it's the first signal I need to do something when I start to feel
there's no food that is really tasteful anymore, there's no games I like
playing and there's no job or person in the world that could possibly make me
happy.

I get that's not the issue of the post, but maybe it's something to think
about for all of us?

------
erikb
I think all technological revolutions were a big game changer and people who
didn't follow it lost a lot of advantages for that. It is the same with this
one. Now if you are 55 years old (and this guy seems to be) and you have saved
enough money to stop caring, then go ahead.

But don't misunderstand that this is a luxury that you need to be able to
afford. If you don't have rich parents, or saved enough money to live without
the internet, you must must must find a place in the internet world that you
can stay at (e.g. some FOSS 1990 style mailing list) and at least find some
way to use social media (gnu social or G+ anyone?) in some reasonable way and
have some kind of internet presence (e.g. a github page and some foss projects
you supply commits to).

Really, try if you can't afford the luxury to ignore it. Politics always talks
about the gap between rich and poor that gets bigger and bigger. But the same
is true for the gap between people who take part in the internet and use it to
their advantage, and those who ignore it. Both these gaps already overlap to
some degree, and that overlap will continue to grow!

~~~
jazzyb
> you must must must find a place in the internet world that you can stay at
> (e.g. some FOSS 1990 style mailing list) and at least find some way to use
> social media (gnu social or G+ anyone?) in some reasonable way and have some
> kind of internet presence (e.g. a github page and some foss projects you
> supply commits to)

I'm curious why you would say this. I understand that most of the people here
are coders and github or the like would be a good place to point to potential
employers for work samples, but a "1990s style mailing list" isn't going to
increase your visibility enough to get hired. It almost sounds like you think
a presence on the internet _at all_ is a good end in itself.

> Politics always talks about the gap between rich and poor that gets bigger
> and bigger. But the same is true for the gap between people who take part in
> the internet and use it to their advantage, and those who ignore it. Both
> these gaps already overlap to some degree, and that overlap will continue to
> grow!

I agree in part, but there is a third category that the OP hints at which is
"consumers of information who don't create". Most people use Facebook,
Twitter, etc. for consuming entertainment and advertising their identities,
but they are not using it for any advantage. People may be able to use them to
network, but most don't, and there is nothing inherently worthwhile in using
social media by itself.

~~~
erikb
> a "1990s style mailing list" isn't going to increase your visibility enough
> to get hired

This is too limited thinking. I can't tell you what the opportunity will be,
but there are opportunities if you participate pro-actively, even if you think
of opportunities only as job opportunities. In percent it's probably smaller
than in 1990, but in absolute numbers it has grown just like every other
market around the internet and IT.

> there is a third category

Completely agreeing with that part. To some degree they are also part of these
people who don't really use the internet. If you just scroll through your
facebook feed and click like here and there, you are not participating. You
must at least be able to answer most daily questions via google to be
considered participating.

~~~
jazzyb
> I can't tell you what the opportunity will be, but there are opportunities
> if you participate pro-actively, even if you think of opportunities only as
> job opportunities.

I agree. However, I think it's worth noting that this is no different from any
other community/social activity. You can make the same argument for being
involved in churches, civic organizations, the local city council, etc. In
fact this argument could be used to encourage people to give-up some of their
time on the internet and become more involved in the aforementioned analog
organizations.

------
jordigh
I don't have a phone (mobile or not). I especially do not want to carry a
pocket computer around with me, but that's just because it would make me feel
so powerless to have a device that can track me, that I can't hack, and I
don't have certainty of what it can or can't do.

Am I just old? I'm in my mid 30s. According to Douglas Adams, that's kind of
the age at which new things are just perceived as being against the natural
order of things. Kids these days are being raised thinking that talking to
Alexa and having it bring back accurate results is completely normal and
natural.

Are there young people out there who think modern pocket computing is just
plain wrong? Do they have any second thoughts about putting their entire life
online under the control of 3rd parties?

~~~
__s
I'm 24, have never had a phone. But I'm more weary of being able to be
interrupted at any time. I'm a big fan of pull communication rather than push
communication

~~~
laurentdc
> I'm 24, have never had a phone.

 _How do you even?_

More seriously: not even a old Nokia 3310 or some other dumbphone to use in
case of, I don't know, emergency, or calling someone to pick you up, etc?

My only phone is a beaten up Android thing with pretty much nothing installed
on it but WhatsApp just for quick stuff like "ok, let's meet at $place" or
"I'll be late". I'm not sure how I could do without.

~~~
jordigh
This is such a common response.

You are aware that only very recently is not having a phone as weird as
refusing to wear shoes, right? This is the one thing that bugs me the most
about modern western society. People just think it's unthinkable to not have a
phone and come up with all sorts of anxieties and emergencies that can come up
without one.

Like I've said before, it really isn't that big a deal. Life is not as full of
emergencies as phones have made us feel it is.

~~~
Matachines
It's different when society and people expect you to have a mobile phone. It's
not weird to not have one in 1975 because no one else did.

~~~
noir_lord
What other people expect me to do is way down the list on the reasons I do
things.

I have a phone for emergencies, it's _never_ off silent, I don't answer the
phone I ring people back when it's convenient for me or preferably I text.

People almost get offended with the "You never answer your phone!"..well yes
that's because I'm busy and the automatic assumption that I should drop
everything to answer your call is a little arrogant no?.

Family and close friends know that if it's important/urgent they can text
"ring me" and I'll ring them back straightaway everyone else rings out (I
don't have voicemail either) as I found that if people can't leave a voicemail
they'll email me whatever it was they wanted..which they _should_ have done
anyway.

This constant push for everyone to be always available at the beck and call of
other people is insane and I refuse to go a long with it, I grew up without a
mobile phone (didn't get my first one til I was 20 in 2000 and I miss those
days).

~~~
markatkinson
I need to adopt this. My phone is a source of anxiety and I have no idea why.
When my phone rings I literally get a pang of angst, like "oh shit what now".
Maybe there is some other underlying issue, but I also hardly answer the
phone. I absolutely do not have voice mail, and I have been considering making
a messaging app that only notifies you of new messages on the hour each hour
or some custom setting.

Perhaps a more customizable phone where only approved numbers can call and the
rest are forced to a message saying something like "your number is not
approved for this action, please leave an SMS and the person will get back to
you when appropriate." I would love that.

~~~
noir_lord
> Perhaps a more customizable phone where only approved numbers can call and
> the rest are forced to a message saying something like "your number is not
> approved for this action, please leave an SMS and the person will get back
> to you when appropriate." I would love that.

You can do this already on Android, if you star them in your contacts and then
put the phone into "Priority Only" silent mode, it'll ring for them and
everyone else it mutes.

I found that just putting the phone into silent and ignoring it until I'm
ready to deal with the calls was the better approach though, it took a week or
so before I realized I was checking it less and less (I'd been trained like a
skinnerbox) until now I look at it 2-3 times a day.

I should add that we don't value aloneness enough in our current society, the
ability to spend an entire day undisturbed by anyone else is a valuable and
prescious thing, been alone with your own thoughts is a refreshing experience,
it gives you chance to stop and take stock and think about what is going on
with your life, for some reason we prize "busyness" at the expense of just
about everything else, I don't see any virtue in been "busy", I see purpose in
getting done the things that are important to me.

------
glaberficken
IMHO the feeling the OP is describing is nothing specific or exclusive to
computers or the internet.

If you listen/read closely to people that work in all sorts of fields, this
feeling is quite common.

You made a career out of a hobby you really enjoyed. And after a few years it
became your work and you no longer enjoy it. You now find joy in some other
activity. That new thing? That's your hobby now.

I got this impression after years of thinking of throwing myself into video-
game journalism or bicycle mechanics as a profession (2 of my favorite
hobbies). When I started speaking to actual video-game journalists and bicycle
mechanics I immediately noticed that I couldn't find a singe one that still
enjoyed his respective activity anymore.

I'm not going to try to play "psychology expert" here, but for me the reason
seems to be pretty simple: Those people could no longer spend their time
playing the video games they liked or riding and fixing their own bikes. They
now had to play all the games they were "told" to play and on top of it take
notes and write meticulously about them, the bicycle guy now had work on a
bunch of strangers bikes he didn't care about and keep up with a bunch of new
bike tech he actually thought was needless bullshit, and he had to sell
bullshit Lycra shorts and stuff like that.

To this day (37yo) its one of the decisions I think I got "the most right" in
my life. Not turning one of my hobbies into my job. (curiously this runs right
against the common advice "Take what you are passionate about and make that
your life's work.")

~~~
erikbye
While you are completely right, in that this is very common: losing passion
for your hobby when it becomes a job.

The problem is that your hobby has now become too structured and rigid, not
giving you enough freedom to allow for the play and creativity you were used
to. Hence, it feels like you actually lost passion for, say, computers. You
actually just dislike the "rules" imposed on you, by your job.

Not all jobs will be like this, but many will. Going from a hobby
programmer/hacker to a Java enterprise programmer will definitely, most often,
end up being like this. Whether you are working on BI, ERP, or video games.
This is probably why so many are attracted to startups and startup culture, as
there is less rigidity, also, why many like to just "play startup" (like a HN
post called it out), and stay a "startup" for years.

It is the same thing that happens to kids who enjoy a sport, but once it
becomes too serious it's no longer fun.

~~~
xherberta
Punishment by Rewards by Alfie Kohn speaks to this ... being rewarded for any
activity destroys intrinsic motivations -- rewards make you forget reasons you
may have originally had for enjoying or benefiting from that activity. Once
you see yourself as doing it to get rewarded, it sort of cheapens the whole
experience.

i.e. Kids given a prize for participating in a library summer reading program
will read <i>less</i> after the program ends than kids who never participated.

It's a totally worthwhile read for parents and managers.

~~~
glaberficken
Thanks for the book recommendation =)

------
arximboldi
This article was very touching. I'm 28 and I feel exactly the same way. I have
spent quite some time thinking about the topic. I have even used the same
words in conversations with friends.

There is a generation of people that got into computers because they were a
tool for empowerement and creativity. When I was a child, my younger sister
would create movies editing frame by frame in MS Paint while I would learn
Pascal to make a sequencer to play "melodies" using the PC speaker bell
commands. Her friend would learn HTML to create a manually updated blog where
she would post fantasy short stories. In the Internet, we all hang around with
nicknames in chat rooms and learn to make flashy websites and get through the
chain emails from relatives. We needed no Netflix or Facebook to share stuff,
we had P2P and email and IRC. Then we learnt about GNU/Linux: the ultimate
tool to get control of our machines. It was all organized chaos, instant
communication that no one could control, limitless creativity, the ultimate
dream of a post-capitalist anarchist society...

At some point, some got to believe that if only these tools would become
mainstream, the mainstream would adopt these values. A techo-revolution!

This overestimated the transformative power of technology. What happened was
otherwise: technology is now mainstream and has become a tool for social
control and the ultimate frontier of consumerism. Tech didn't change society,
society changed tech...

I still want to believe in these utopic values. But I understand that it is a
long way traveled in little steps whose significance is hard to see while at
it. In the meantime it's often tiring and lonely to live in the computing
underground. One has to explain people why you don't have a smartphone (and it
gets harder to reach people without having Wassapp and so on), one has to
explain relatives why you don't want to work for BigTechCorp, while tryin to
stay "up to date" one has to go through the angry rants of Apple users on HN
[1] or the celebration of the new Micro$oft facelift, and the collective
systemic submission in the startup world in this new gold rush...

The hardest part for me is to find stuff that I can do well and that I find
valuable to the world... and still get paid for it. And I am an Software
Engineer, the profession of the future! How can I be so obnoxious to have
plenty of well paid jobs around me and not be interested in them? This makes
me very sad and makes me feel deeply alienated...

\---

[1] You are not angry because of the design of a computer, you are angry at
the realization that you are so personally invested in a technology that you
have no control of, but has control over you!

~~~
Anasufovic
I've been dreaming of a job where I work outdoors and maintain a bunch of
simple IOT type devices end to end. Deploy hardware, script, and analyze data
as needed. I would love to just cut through all the noise.

~~~
ambicapter
Like Tom Cruise in Oblivion, without the ensuing events.

------
qwertyuiop924
I love computers. I hate the BS: I don't care about that new sillicon valley
project. But I do care about that new project that's going to change how we
think about computing. I care about the programming language that will show me
a radically different way to program. I care about the tool that's so
elegantly designed that it takes 5 minutes to explain how it works, and does
its job amazingly well.

I care about things that remind me why I got into computing in the first
place: For the sheer joy of it.

~~~
amelius
Could you translate that in a percentage of HN posts that you care about?

~~~
qwertyuiop924
About half: The half that's about cool tech, not SV culture, not boring
startup news, and not polical BS surrounding a project (I don't care what they
said, I do care about the software they wrote).

I do care about that which impacts actual systems, like the incresing movement
towards systemd (which is an awful idea).

~~~
noir_lord
It would be interesting to write a browser plugin that allowed you to
subscribe to users on HN to see what they liked/upvoted, your interests and
mine apparently align quite closely and there is a lot on the HN frontpage I
just don't care about.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
OTOH, it's good to see what the hivemind is excited about. I mostly go to HN
for news, posting my thoughts, and having a discussion if one arises.

But HN isn't a great place for discussion. If I really want discussion, I'll
go to lainchan.

Speaking of lainchan, if you enjoy cyberpunk at all, you should go read
lainzine ([https://lainzine.neocities.org](https://lainzine.neocities.org))
right now: if you're anything like me, you'll gaze with a mixture of
fascination and horror upon one of the strangest things I've seen on the
internet.

~~~
noir_lord
I've never liked the term "hivemind", it implies an us/them divide where none
exists and it's frequently used as a pejorative, "I'm different/better than
the hivemind" (note: I'm not saying this what you are doing just that the
hivemind thing is over used).

We are all part of the same zeitgeist, just in different parts of it at
different times.

I've never heard of lainchan but I'll have a look and I love cyberpunk so I'll
take a look at that as well, thank you :).

On a slightly un-related note this tendency to self-organise into
tribes/cliques and then hurl shit at the other side drives me crazy, There is
far more that binds us than divides us and yet I frequently hear "I hate
liberals, I hate republicans, I hate Appletards, I hate Linux users, I hate
Javascript users, I hate PHP users, I hate <insert anything where they picked
a different path/choice>".

I'm not even sure why we do it possibly an evolutionary reason of "My tribe
good, that tribe bad", it's easy to rationalize a world where anyone who
agrees with you is inherently good and everyone else is at best wrong and
worst malevolent.

As I get older I realised that someone holding a different view/choice to mine
means I should look more critically at _my_ view/choice often I'll realise
that the other person made a valid/good choice _for_ them and possibly for
_me_ , dogmatism is rarely a good thing.

------
coldnebo
I can sympathize, and there are areas of computing that are tiresome and never
seem to get better, but there are just way too many things on my bucket list:
unbiased rendering, physics, AI, mathematics education, visualization, theory
of computation...

Heck, there are so many research projects out there completely changing what
it means to compute (i.e. Bret Victor), let alone rediscovery of what the
founding scientists (i.e. Turing) had for their original vision (did you know
Turing generated music from his computer? Decades before the first
synthesizer?! or Bell Labs, or PARC.

There is so much to know and so very little time to even scratch the surface.
Maybe I'll get bored later, but right now there are things to do!

------
quickben
I'm 35 and in good balance and desire for life. I want to share that you too
should:

\- read your Marcus Aurelius

\- listen to some Alan Watts

\- you are not alone, or the first person to get existential, many before you
did and many after you will. Detach from anything technology from time to
time, and spend some serious time reading about who people think they are, and
what all this is about.

------
darrelld
This hits the nail on the head of a feeling I've been having for years now.

Computers used to be fun and exciting. Learning how to program was a hobby for
me. Opening up that Gateway 486DX to tinker with the insides of it and swap
parts out was fascinating. Yes they were big bulky and prone to failure but it
was still fun.

Nowadays everything is integrated, soldered on and you need a laundry list of
tools to even open the casing. Used to be you could just get a star head screw
driver out of the kitchen and be done.

All of the whining about the new Macbook made me sigh. Get over yourselves.

The internet was a fascinating place before. I remember frequenting forums
like [http://www.hack3r.com/](http://www.hack3r.com/) and reading a python
tutorial, finding a mistake in it and chatting on IRC with the writer who
treated me as an equal, not just some 13 year old kid. On other forums there
was debate and deep conversation. Trolls and extremism was not welcome.

Now we have twitter and Facebook where it's all "me me me" and no one is
having real conversations anymore. Just short bursts of it.

Now when I start a project and someone asks me "Why are you using <INSERT NEW
TECH HERE>?" I roll my eyes and groan. It's a single page website with a form
on it. I'll code it up in Notepad++, capture the form data and save it to a
database thank you very much. I'll get it done quickly and commit it to
source. No need for me to spin up Node, grunt, yeoman and whatever other shiny
thing you're talking about. I'll be dammed if I even use jQuery.

I've been day dreaming about going into another field where I can still
maintain my standard of living, but then program again just as a hobby at
home. Anyone know of a good field outside of the tech industry that a
developer mindset would thrive in?

------
jay_kyburz
I suspect I am a similar generation, and I still love to tinker and make
things happen on my computer.

But Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, or Uber, have nothing to do
with tinkering or creating something.

I also don't want to surround myself with the internet of things because I
know how insecure and broken everything is. I'd rather be buying appliances
that I can leave for my children when I am gone, rather than buy new ones
every two years.

I'm still perfectly happy with the 5 year old MBP. I hope it will last another
5 years - even more with luck.

------
snarfy
I felt that way years ago.

I liked video games. I wanted to make video games. To do that requires
programming a computer. Ok, how do you do that? Let's go down that rabbit
hole. 30 years later and I'm still going down the rabbit hole. I've haven't
made a video game yet, only bits and pieces and some mods, but at this point,
I don't really like video games much anymore. So now what?

I've been doing a lot of hardware, electronics, arduino and general maker
stuff. I still like making stuff, but it doesn't have to all be on the
computer, and it doesn't have to be a game. I'm more interested in how a HAM
radio transmitter works than the latest js framework these days.

~~~
vidanay
I got my ham radio license (N9NAY) a couple months ago for very similar
reasons. The allure of simple analog communications via essentially 100 year
old technology is something that has pulled at me for 30 years or more since I
first failed to get my ham license in Boy Scouts. I am planning to learn CW
because my interest lies in the simple basics. Narrow bandwidth. Low
throughput. Low power.

~~~
selimthegrim
How long does it generally take to study for the ham exam?

~~~
vidanay
Depends on what level of general electronics knowledge you already have. If
you are an EE, you could take the exam after only an hour or two of reviewing
the test questions. If you don't have any pre-knowledge, then a week or two
with one of the study guides should be enough. You can take practice exams at
qrz.com and many other sites.

------
hellofunk
My main problem with computers is how they have infected global society such
that human social behavior now revolves around how computers work.

Other advancements, like the automobile, also changed society, but at least
once you leave your car and are having a real conversation with someone, your
car won't suddenly take your attention away.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Someone wise once quipped that "the problem is not computers thinking like
people, it's people thinking like computers".

------
theparanoid
It was a shock talking to a colleague and realizing I used to have his
enthusiasm, now I want own a night club like jwz.

~~~
dasmoth
Farming is another one that seems to have a pull for a certain subset of
hackers. Myself included, to some extent.

~~~
douche
It's hard to have a more concrete, and _real_ activity than farming. There's
an immediacy and a sense of consequence to it that you just don't get when you
are spinning castles made of air and bits as a programmer.

I play with Legos as my therapy, or when I start getting really burned out,
take a weekend and go visit my parents in Maine. A weekend splitting firewood
or tinkering on tractors or digging potatoes or deer hunting or the million
and one other things that have to be done to keep up with a rural almost-farm
are calming and help keep me grounded.

~~~
pimlottc
"What do you do?"

"I work on an API middleware layer for targeted advertising analytics service
based on big data. What do you do?"

"I grow food in the ground that people eat to stay alive."

------
sz4kerto
Neither do I. Well, I do like my main computer, I enjoy having lots of ram,
cpu power, large monitor. Because I spend a lot of time with it.

But.

I have an iPad for 2 years that I haven't used, almost ever (got it as a
present). I don't want a smart fridge. I run without monitoring myself all the
time. I don't play on my (otherwise high-end) smartphone, I only use 6-7 apps.

The reason: I realized that these stuff are not _that_ smart yet. When I use
their 'smartness', they consume more time than the non-smart things. We use a
simple post-it for grocery lists with my wife because opening Trello is much
more complicated than just picking up the pen when I realize that we don't
have more garlic in the fridge.

I still enjoy hacking things for the sake of hacking, but that activity is not
'sold' as something smart that will save me time. It doesn't save any time,
just makes me feel good.

------
SubiculumCode
I also dont like computers anymore. Its from being on them all the time. I
want life apart from the screen. Then I get bored.

~~~
Anasufovic
Real life is slow I'd say. This digital world just provides endless stimulus,
it's pure addiction. I'd love to go out in the woods and just enjoy nature for
a week. No music, no fancy camping gear, and just appreciate life 1.0.

------
gravypod
Leave your job, become a welder, a package delivery guy, or pick up fixing
cars.

It seems like you have one real hobby but no one should have one real hobby.

Welding is really rewarding. You're working with a really dangerous machine to
turn 2 piece of metal into 1.

Working in the world of the 1st class currier is great to. A lot of time
driving or traveling around where you live.

I didn't realize how fun working with motors is until I tried fixing something
in my car. I'm trying to get my hand on a motorcycle that's broke so I can
rebuild the engine to further learn how they work.

Also if you're fed up with the internet and still want to communicate with
people become a HAM and learn all about RF propagation and other important
things. Really fun, one of my favorite hobbies

------
nul_byte
I appreciate where this guy is at.

After work you should do what you want to do. If that includes sports, going
out and eating nice food etc, good for him. That is a balanced lifestyle, and
worthy an effort to make.

I am kind of the opposite though when it comes to computers & IT and wanting
to retreat a little. I started my coding career at 43 years old. I have worked
in tech all my life, so the industry is nothing new to me, but I was never in
engineering / software development. I was more of a Linux / network admin /
systems integration engineer or run of the mill network architect (lots of
time in powerpoint, visio (yuck!)). I kind of always had a healthy envy of
developers, as I knew they were working within the real guts of computers and
creating things. I was always the one trying to mop up the mess of a less
bright developer who managed to get something dire into production. All this
made me even more curious to get into that area myself.

With the advent of cloud, namely OpenStack and all the other devops'y type
applications in the eco-system such as kvm, containers, vagrant, ansible,
puppet etc etc, I found my nix skills could be reinvented and started learning
python, brushing up my shell scripting, learning about serialising data,
restful API's, messaging, models, views, controllers yada, yada, and then in
turn learning lots of new tools including, git, gerrit, travis etc.

I am now loving what I do and I am super keen to learn more and more, so I do
spend lots of spare time now absorbed in writing code and getting up to speed
on different tooling available to developers.

Right now my spare time is spent learning rust as I would really like to get
into systems programming and work with the kernel space for networking based
apps.

Its weird, in that now is the time when I should be just specialising and not
being so absorbed (a lot of senior guys do this at my firm, they are happy
just to sit looking at some spreadsheet or project plan until 5pm and then go
home), but instead I really want to develop a new career as a programmer over
the next 10 - 20 years, and I love the idea of that.

I now have a laptop covered in stickers, have grown a big beard and I go all
goey at the sight of some new snazzy framework. My wife jokes about it being a
mid-life crisis.

I don't seem to be slowing down either, but in fact going quicker then ever
before.

I am with him on instagram though, and I have no idea what alexa is.

------
jdhzzz
While I'm somewhat in this camp: I don't do twitter (or instagram, or
snapchat, or whatsapp...) I don't have Sonos I only lurk on Facebook to find
out what's up in other's lives I still really like working with computers full
time. But, you can take the following from my cold, dead hands:

podcasts (listen to radio in the car? what year is this?) mp3/itunes/amazon
music/pandora/google play music/spotify phone with fingerprint scanner

What I am over is being a sysadmin on any of these devices.

Upgrade to android 7 breaks my phone to car radio connection? Ugh. Spare me
the lost Saturday afternoon researching, tinkering, worrying that I'm going to
brick the radio. Forget it and learn to live with only a bluetooth connection.

Swapping out the drive on my laptop with an SSD. I suppose, but I'm
unenthusiatic. Do the same for my wife's laptop? Nah. She's not that sensitive
to disk lag and the disruption and subsequent "It never did this before..."
aren't worth it.

Perhaps I'm just getting old...

------
jasonkostempski
"I use computers for...well, I use them for reading stuff. That is, actually
reading it. Text. Pictures if I have to."

The other day I starting thinking of a way to filter the internet down to
text/plain content only. I couldn't find a way to make Google filter on
Content-Type, you can filter on filetype:txt but not all urls to text/plain
content will have that extension. I also looked for a aggregate site that only
allowed users to submit links to text/plain content but didn't find one,
thinking about making one. Multimedia, markup, JavaScript and hypertext are
all really useful, but they are abused so much that I think it would be better
to start with the assumption that it's useless until proven otherwise. I'd
rather have to copy and paste a URL to get a picture of a diagram relevant to
an article than open the flood gates for in-line media, styling and scripting
just because it looks a little nicer and saves few keystrokes.

~~~
combatentropy
Why not use w3m or lynx?

------
kilon
I am 37 years old, I am coding since I was 9 but this is not my full time job
, I make graphics and sound with the computer since day one.

The one thing I hated more than I hate Windows and C++ is the Green monitor of
my first computer, a Amstrad CPC 6128. I was drooling over a Amiga 500 but my
father apparently did not want to "spoil" me. But I was lucky enough to own a
computer back then it was luxury.

I have to say I am in love with the Internet , is just an amazing tool. When I
was kid my go to knowledge base was a 20 tome encyclopaedia.

Even learning coding was a huge struggle, as a 9 year old kid I could not
afford expensive programming books, fortunately Amstrad came with a Basic
manual, not the best written book but better than nothing.

I laugh when people claim that coding is hard, because I immediately remember
my struggle those days. Internet would have been a miracle to have.

Its not hard to filter noise, I have made Twitter my news site with
subscriptions to people that offer tutorials and links to useful websites. I
watch youtube tutorials and very rarely cat videos. I dont care about facebook
and most other popular sites.

The things I do not like, is mainly that sofware has become very complex, that
is difficult to keep up with technology , though that is also an advantage. I
also hate internet trolls and people being rude.

My iMac is the revenge of not owning an Amiga 500 and now I can have powerful
software without even spending money.

I know people take a look at the technology and say "whatever" or as a
comedian once said people fly with an aeroplane and complain that they had to
wait on the runway for 10 minutes instead of feeling the wonder of flight.

I am the kind of person that is amazed by the ability to fly.

I am also find extremely hard to fathom that my iMac is more than 6.000 times
more powerful than my first computer.

Its crazy

just crazy

------
lazyjones
I second this, but don't think it's just a matter of getting older and less
curious or being fed up with computers due to years of professional work on
them. For me, a large part of the frustration comes from having moved
previously simple tasks and habits to complicated, complex and unstable
computer-based solutions. Not only have the tasks themselves become more
difficult and in some ways less efficient (reading tiny text on small displays
- no thanks!), but they come with a huge burden of having to maintain an OS,
network infrastructure, software updates, security risk, privacy
considerations, prevent data loss (make backups). Sure, there are many
advantages with our new approaches, but the burden of complexity far outweighs
them if you stop ignoring it.

------
andretti1977
I was born in 1977 and programming since i was 7. I am a software developer.
Seven years ago i had to start freelancing to enjoy my work again. Now i now
that work can take no more than 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, no more.
This way, computers are still beautiful and interesting.

~~~
almata
Any advice on how to reorient your career into this maybe? :)

~~~
dejv
Just start, it is not complicated business. Ask around for work, deliver
results and repeat. If you are any good you should be fine. Start with doing
side projects and then make jump if you like it.

On the other side, there is no certainty in freelancing, programming will be
just some part of your job and most of your time will be spent on trivial
projects (unless you are very lucky).

I am 12 years into freelancing and it is good way to make living.

------
eswat
I’ve been feeling this. Still not quite sure why. But I think a good reason is
I’m starting to see newer technologies come out as veiled hypotheses on how to
extract the most time or money out of the user, not so much as things that
actually provide real, long-term value to people.

I’m not actively trying to be a luddite or think I need to stick it to “the
man”. But I can’t shake the feeling that many technologies coming out simply
don’t care enough about humans to warrant actually being used. That’s not to
disregard side projects and such. Most of the time the creation out of those
projects is out of pure intentions. A lot of those same intentions get thrown
out the window when money and company survival and thrown in.

------
lugus35
I was in the same mood. Now I 've stopped coding for a living (you can try
management, presales,...) and at home I do what I like (exploring data
structures and algorithms) with the tools (Emacs) and languages I like (Common
Lisp)

------
pesenti
I am the opposite. I used not to care much about computers (I liked math). But
I have been blown away but what they enable us to do. And it keeps getting
better. Yes computers allow us to Tweet or Facebook which may not seem like a
great advance. But they allow us to send rockets in space and make them come
back. They allow a majority of humans to access almost all knowledge
instantly. They allow my company to develop new medicine much more
efficiently. How amazing!

My advice to the OP: go work for a company that uses your computer skills to
do something good, something meaningful to you. It will change your
perspective.

~~~
markatkinson
Nice and constructive advice. I agree. I think what the author is looking for
definitely still exists and probably is in arms reach but sometimes we feel
overwhelmed and like the well has been poisoned because the barrage of
meaningless shite that gets pumped through the Internet and down our throats
eclipses everything else.

There is so much incredible and wonderful tech out there to sink our teeth
into you just need to find an efficient way of wading through the shit storm
of social media and the millions of boring startups pumping promotional PR for
the next never seen before food delivery app.

------
digi_owl
The way i see it, once the UX "experts" moved in, the fun moved out. Because
they keep adding layers upon layers of "drywall" to hide exactly how the
computer operates. Because exposing those inner working may scare away dear
old aunt Tillie.

DOS and early CLI Linux was straight forward, kernel booted, some text files
were parses, and you could do your thing.

In contrast the number of background processes that is present to keep a
modern DE upright is just nuts. And more are added with every minor release it
seems.

------
pjc50
I wonder how much of what we're discussing here is "future shock"; we've lived
in a time of extremely rapid change and a high-speed cycle of hype and
disillusionment.

------
dictum
I'm younger than the OP (going by the modem speed etc) but I've been
experiencing the same apathy for a while (coupled with similar feelings about
visual/interactive design), but I'm slightly more comfortable with it now.

Maybe I learned to deal with my own cynicism, but the turning point was
probably when I started looking at my work (and computing) less as a
goal/ultimate meaning and more as just another piece in peoples' lives; a way
for them to accomplish non-tech goals.

------
addicted
This piece really resonated with me.

10 years ago I had a few ways I kept in touch with my family in a different
country. And depending on the situation, it was usually 1 way. If I had my
laptop (which was almost always the case) and had decent internet connection,
we'd Skype. If either party lacked one of these, we'd call on cellphones. And
if it was something formal that needed to be remembered, we used email. Or we
used some form of IM but irrespective of which service I would use Adium.

Now? I cannot keep in touch with my family because my communications are split
between WhatsApp, iMessage, Viber, Skype, FaceTime, email, Facebook, Facebook
MEssenger, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Nothing works with each other,
and simply managing the variety of apps, and the mental calculations to figure
out which app to use depending on the context, the people I am communicating
with, the combinations of people I am communicating with, the formality of the
communication, the stuff being communicated, is just mentally exhausting.

I am afraid to look at my phone when I receive a notification, because there
is always a mental calculation that needs to be made about what I need to do
next.

This obviously happened earlier, but there was less expectations of immediate
responses, so it was easy to manage, as I would simply read and handle my
notifications at regular selected times.

Maybe kids growing up in this environment will be (are) much better at
managing this, because their brains get wired this way, but as a 30 year old,
it's overwhelming, and destroys my productivity.

------
runesoerensen
Just going to leave this here (from 49s):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP6lIM3OAFY&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP6lIM3OAFY&feature=youtu.be&t=49s)

 _" You know, I see the look on your faces. You're thinking, 'Hey Kenny,
you're from America; you probably have a printer. You could have just gone on
the internet and printed that bitch.' Yeah, you know what? I could have, 'cept
for one fact: I don't own a printer. And, I fucking hate computers. All kinds.
I come here today, not just to bash on fucking technology, but to offer you
all a proposition. Let's face it, y'all fucking suck."_

[http://www.powerisms.com/i-know-a-lot-of-you-guys-
have-119.h...](http://www.powerisms.com/i-know-a-lot-of-you-guys-
have-119.html)

------
erikbye
Not using/liking Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, or Uber, has nothing to do with
"I don't like computers'.

~~~
csydas
My interpretation was not to take the specific services so literally but
instead to focus on how content has centralized to a few specific places that
come with a lot of excess baggage to get at content instead of it being spread
out across multiple forums, websites, chats, and so on. There's a lot of
infrastructure that goes into powering these services and the advertising
backbone for them that simply dominates all other attempts to get any
publicity on the modern web. I mean, if you're on iOS, you have multiple
integration items for services that you might not even use.

Social media may not be the only use for computers, but there's a lot of
effort at all levels of infrastructure put in place to ensure that the devices
we use are able to access these few core services really fast while everything
else is secondary. Yes, the services are optional - you aren't required to
sign up for them and use them, but their presence in modern computing and
online just can't be ignored.

~~~
erikbye
Of course they can be ignored, completely, especially on a personal basis,
but, in a lot of scenarios on enterprise level this is possible as well. I do
most of my paid computing work in a large private network.

Has there ever been more diversity in terms of a customized computing
experience than today? No, is my answer. There is something for everyone.

Why should the centralization of some content be a bad thing? The majority of
cat videos and other garbage is now on Youtube, good riddance I say, easier to
avoid. I say it is easier for me, to get at the content I qualify as good and
interesting to me, than ever before.

Man, I used to have to call up random BBSes to explore content... And to reach
content beyond my small country, I had to hack business PBXes, so I did not
have to pay for the long distance call, as I could not afford it.

I used internet from the beginning, and I do certainly not miss it, there were
very little content.

If one is feeling nostalgic, one can revert completely to "neckbeard
practices". Go back to newsgroups, use mailing lists and IRC. I am sure OP
will feel right at home. But it is also possible to combine these things
(modern services), like IRC and Slack. Just one example.

To end, even though we are talking about big services in terms of
infrastructure, consumers, and bandwidth, they are a small part of the
diversity of the internet and modern computing.

Modern computing is not about services that come and go, it is about what it
has always been. R&D, innovation. Modern computing is going to take us to
Mars. It's about CERN. Autonomous vehicles, etc.

------
392c91e8165b
I still like computers, but dislike this decade's _web_.

I wish I could access all of the web's _text_ , _images_ and _hyperlinks_
without running Firefox, Chrome or a similarly massive code base.

I am aware that my wish is impractical even if a philanthropist or a
government were to spend 100s of millions of dollars on it.

------
dendory
I think there's multiple things there and I don't think taking any particular
stance is wrong. I love technology, in the sense that if I get a problem to
solve which makes me dig deeper into an area to figure out how things work
under the hood, I really dig that. But I don't use Facebook, Netflix, Siri,
Alexa or any of those things. I want nothing to do with the Internet of
things. I suspect this is common among those of us who grew up with
technology, as opposed to those who had technology by the time they grew up.
They see technology as a service they should always have available in every
facet of their lives, while we see it as something that used to be cool and
mysterious, but now has been wrapped by so many commercial interests.

------
chridal
I loved this post, and so I wrote a small "reply post".
[http://valleybay.me/2016/11/05/death-of-the-
internet/](http://valleybay.me/2016/11/05/death-of-the-internet/)

~~~
thesagan
Your last paragraph about the Internet as once-upon-a-time being a place to
"hide" is spot-on for me, personally.

------
susan_hall
I agree, and I do wish that science fiction writers still had the social
prominence that they had back in the mid 20th century. Because I think
humanity needs a group that thinks about how things could be, and how things
should be, and to what extent advances in science could make life more fun.

Part of the "This isn't fun anymore" feeling for me comes from the way the Web
has consolidated to a handful of companies (Google, Facebook, Apple,
Microsoft...) and what we are being given is what they find profitable.

The loudest voices in the room are those corporations. I'd like to live in a
world where the loudest voices shaping our technologies are science fiction
writers who are thinking hard about what might actually be useful or fun.

~~~
jackskell
I still cultivate bookmarks and links from others, and avoid corporate
(spoon)feeds like the plague.

I miss civil discourse on Internet forums.

------
JKCalhoun
It may be an age thing. I've been coding professionally for maybe 30 years and
having been doing more or less the same thing, interacting with machines. I
find that, while I too can get momentarily caught up in the chase for a
programatic solution or hunt for a bug, if I am truly honest with myself,
there is very little intellectual curiosity left that might drive me to learn
new language or framework. And yet, I recall having this enthusiasm years
ago....

I find too though that when I am left to pursue my own projects at home, on
weekends, some of the magic comes back a bit. Perhaps it is just Corporate
America that has sucked the life out of my soul when I am at the workplace.

------
hackerfromthefu
Yes, yes.

The signal to noise ratio of the modern internet has changed for the worse,
western/global culture has lost it's manners, and what signal there is left
shows leaders have either lost their culture or their clothes..

none of these global trends are anything to do with you personally .. those
trends are external!

thus even if you look after yourself, if you avoid burnout from todays
overpaced pace, if your hardware is ready and able to be inspired ..

Then, to feel that inspiration again, you must really appreciate and nuture
the inspirations you find amongst the noise

Personally I believe the next frontier is hacking and implementing
political/social/power cultures and social mores inspired by Libre Values

------
arekkas
"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress."

~~~
991839181
I don't think the Internet has brought much of _actual_ progress at all.

------
adamwill
OP here. Thanks for the interesting discussion, everyone! There's some really
great posts in here. I really liked
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879141)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884730)
especially; that dilemma of not wanting to spend all your time sysadminning
things (I've got a phone, four servers, a desktop, two laptops, a router, an
HTPC and god knows how many little trinkets to take care of) yet also knowing
too much to be OK with just telling Google or Apple to take care of it all
(assuming a certain ideology) is a big part of this, I think. (Full
disclosure: after getting that post out of my system I ordered a new laptop
and spent half of this weekend planning a bunch of changes to my mail
server...)

I also really liked the wider culture comments, especially
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879035)
, but I wanna emphasize something I wrote in the comments on my blog: this is
a very personal post. It's just about how I feel, and I don't think how I feel
is 'right'. I think there's actually an awful lot of really interesting stuff
happening in all the spaces I don't personally care about - new video
platforms and VR and all of that. I'm self-aware enough to realize that part
of this is just me wanting the kids off of my lawn. But since it's my blog, I
can wave my stick at them as much as I like ;) But I wouldn't want to claim
that just because I'm okay with what I know, none of this stuff has value, as
a lot of it does.

Finally, just to note that when I wrote that I still like my job, I meant it!
The post wasn't meant as a cri du coeur, exactly. I'm actually perfectly fine
with this stuff. It doesn't keep me awake at nights. I just do my job, and use
the tech I actually want and find useful, and forget about the rest of it. I
just wanted to write it down, I guess.

Oh, and since 'guess my age' seems to have become a popular game...I'm 34. :)

------
thght
I think you shouldn't dislike computers for not enjoying what other people do
with it. But a part of the magic of computers and the internet in the 90's is
definitely gone, for ever, true. But hey, would you prefer to go back to
connecting to a BBS with a 14k4 modem? I prefer my wireless 340Mbps broadband
modem, really.

Fortunately I do enjoy every new day and can still become excited about new
technology, which is emerging all the time. And I truly believe that computers
and the internet have become much better and ever more interesting. You just
have to be very selective in the vastness of things out there.

~~~
WildUtah
14.4kbps! When I first connected to the internet, 300bps was the order of the
day. We loved it because it was a lightning fast upgrade from the poor sad
folks that were still stuck with 110bps. Gosh, what we could have done in
those days with UTF-8 and Unicode...

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
> Gosh, what we could have done in those days with UTF-8 and Unicode.

Make ASCII art way too easy? (like tennis with the net down ;-)

------
tibu
What I still like is creating valuable solutions through programming. That
made me a computer maniac when I got my ZX Spectrum and this is the part what
I still mostly enjoy - writing some core and watching how others use it

------
creyer
One should imagine the days without computers... waiting days for a letter to
arrive... Even if you don't like computers many of the benefits that come with
them you might like... so think of them as a necessary evil.

------
Yenrabbit
Reading this made me realize I have similar feelings. But I don't think it's
technology's fault - I only really got into computers ~6 years ago, and to me
then they were fascinating! I think it's just that we start to use them for
work, and sooner or later stop caring about how everything works and start
wishing it would all get out the way and let me browse the web or write my
document. I think it's curable though. A few days ago I dug out my early code,
and felt the old excitement welling up again - I'm going to spend some time
trying to find that again.

------
debt
Congrats you've reached the end of your programming career.

Sitting at a computer all day actually is quite uninteresting and boring. It's
the light at the end of the tunnel or big ah-ha moment many programmers have.

It's simply more fun to socialize all day.

Many big projects say self driving cars or FB or whatever don't actually
require that many antisocial, introverted engineers; only 10's of thousands so
things like that will always get built anyway.

It pays well but its not good for your health to sit at a computer all day nor
is it fun to socialize only through a chat screen all day.

Time to take a break.

~~~
anta40
>> Sitting at a computer all day actually is quite uninteresting and boring.

I work as a programmer and I found this to be true. Well, sometimes, though,
not all the time.

I enjoy programming, but on the other hand I'm not interested in spending my
whole career as a programmer.

Being a wedding/travel photographer, which often requires you to travel
overseas sounds fun :D

------
djhworld
One thing I have noticed about myself is how my browsing habits have become
the complete opposite of what the Internet was supposed to offer.

My tab bar at the top mainly consists of the same websites I visit every day,
HN, reddit, newsblur, facebook, google inbox, youtube. I can't remember if I
was any different 10 years ago, but it just feels like I've carved my own
bubble and rarely leave it.

Maybe that comes with age, I'm not sure.

------
tech2
I ended up feeling similarly, no longer hacking at home, no more linux
installs on my home machines, etc.

Instead I started on other hobbies, I repair physical things (mechanical,
electrical, electronic), I enjoy photography, I work on my car.

I used to make the joke that if ever computers were no longer a thing for me
that maybe I'd move to New Zealand and make violins for a living... that time
isn't here yet, but I can feel it.

------
imode
when hobbyist computing went the way of the dodo, I hit this state, and I hit
it hard.

I found that either inventing a small programming language or getting back
into microcomputers worked as a cure. small, controllable, programmable
systems that feature instant-on programming.

nothing between you and the machine. seems we've lost track of that idea
somewhere between x86 and Javascript.

------
nthcolumn
I ditched my smart phone for a flip phone. Apparently it's all the rage but I
don't know how I know that since I don't use those social media platforms you
mentioned either. Just developer forums (or fora) and such like. Good feels
from helping people, getting help and not feeding trolls.

------
anta40
I watch videos on computers. Oh look, another new cute cat video on Youtube
_click_

I occasionally read Twitter, usually for news.

I post images to Instagram almost daily. One picture per day is a good way to
exercise photography.

I use Uber. Sometimes too lazy to drive

I still enjoy using computer, especially for coding. Well, to each his/her
own.

------
anthk
I've got a #pocketchip, and I am learning again Pascal with fp-ide and X86 ASM
with NASM and DosBOX. Retrocoding is fucking awesome, and doing emulators on
Free Pascal in a DOS-klike IDE on the underground is cool and relaxing as
fuck.

------
fagnerbrack
That's really interesting.

------
z3t4
when something feels like work it usually is!

------
apeacox
This is a modern manifesto. I'm almost there, just a bit less, for now.

~~~
scandox
Agreed. The graphics outside may be crap but the horizons seem a lot wider. My
brain feels different away from computers.

------
djhworld
I like computers, but can understand some of the sentiment expressed in this
article.

What's wrong with podcasts anyway? They can be informative if you want to
learn something new, entertaining if you want to be amused.

------
fit2rule
Computers are broken.

Wait, no. Operating Systems are broken.

Wait, no. It should all just be the Web.

But wait, no .. the Web is broken.

Ah well, I guess its time for something new. Something, not-broken ..

------
happy-go-lucky
When did computing become separate from math and other sciences and why? I
always think it's integral to math.

------
profalseidol
Anything too much is bad, just like too much capitalism (which is the root
cause of bad blocker bug meetings).

------
owenversteeg
I guess I'm not as far along as the OP is, but I can definitely feel myself
getting there.

The meaningless Internet bullshit used to be meaningless, but mean a lot to
me; the big news would be a 2% drop in Firefox users or something and everyone
would lose their minds. Now, the meaningless Internet bullshit is some site
with no vowels and no revenue selling for twenty billion dollars, and it
actually means something because twenty billion dollars is a lot of money in
the real world; for a sense of perspective, read this [0] and realize that
twenty billion dollars could supply all of those things yearly for _a decade_.
And yes, I know that 15 years ago there was a bubble too, but it was a lot
smaller. In 1999 there was barely north of ten billion total invested in
software by VCs.

I don't know exactly when it was, but at some point I went from excitedly
tracking the latest versions of distros, googling "shareware" and installing
whatever I could find, getting wrapped up in flamewars, formatting my hard
drive every week (and it was a hard drive, not an SSD; in 2010, the price of a
120gb SSD dropped from $420 to $230.)

I think that point was systemd. Six years ago, the initial version was
released. That was 2010, and things seemed different. No way I would accept a
complex, huge init system on MY carefully tuned $distro_of_the_week.

Today? I'm 100% in support of systemd. It makes my life easier. I have zero
desire to tweak a complex mess of init scripts. And sure, I run Arch Linux,
but that's mostly because it Just Works (tm) and I'm used to Linux. If someone
gives me a Windows box, I won't lecture them on how they're contributing to
the downfall of humanity, I'll take the damn machine and write the code
they're paying me to write. I shudder at the thought of googling "shareware"
and just randomly installing programs, and it looks like I'm not the only one;
it seems that trend died... yep, around 2010. [1]

I no longer give friends USB drives of "cool software", and if they gave me
one I'd think it's a strange joke. I no longer read stuff like WinSuperSite;
I'm sure Paul Thurrott is still churning out the same quality content as
always but I have no interest in reading about the latest features of
whatever.

[0] [https://www.cardonationwizard.com/blog/2011/07/01/unicef-
usa...](https://www.cardonationwizard.com/blog/2011/07/01/unicef-usa-what-
can-2-billion-dollars-buy/)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=shareware](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=shareware)

[edit] Turns out WinSuperSite is gone. Or, technically it's there but it's not
Paul. "SuperSite Windows is the top online destination for business technology
professionals who buy, manage and use technology to drive business"... wow,
that's depressing. The old URLs even 404. :(

~~~
adamwill
Thurrott has his own site these days -
[https://www.thurrott.com/](https://www.thurrott.com/) . I see his byline pop
up elsewhere quite regularly too.

"Does that site still exist?" is a great drinking game, btw. ;) I love that
Blue's News is still going.

------
redsummer
A lot of people think the Amish are against technology. In fact, they
carefully consider the technology's effect on themselves and their community.
Will it really help, or is it just a new thing which will cause unintended
consequences? For instance, some Amish groups accepted cars, and their
community disappeared - when anyone can drive anywhere the community
collapsed. Now there are no Amish who allow cars. The same thing would happen
with the internet.

Tech people like ourselves automatically assume that technology is some
advance, or improvement. Our peers tell us this, our incomes depend on us
believing this.

In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It
erodes it. We would be better making careful decisions like the Amish, but our
civilisation is locked onto this myth of 'progress'.

~~~
intro-b
is civilization locked into the "myth of progress" or, by living in
civilization, is an individual's incentives (professional, financial,
cultural, social) just more likely to be aligned with technology-centric and
business-oriented practices? i don't think the issue is that we, as a society,
are collectively choosing a path that may further erode personal liberties,
societal cohesion, and maybe even personal happiness. it's just that rewards
are positioned in such a way that many people, especially young and educated,
will generally move toward that direction.

------
andrewclunn
We have Wikipedia, a user generated encyclopedia. We have countless musicians,
artists, and amateur film makers just a few clicks away. We have archives of
history from the edge of wax audio recording and papers from the 1800s. Want
your old internet back? It's as simple as not creating an account for
anything, not bookmarking portal sites, and running an ad blocker.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Yes, but I want my newspaper back. :-)

~~~
jpindar
Do you go to your local newspaper's site? If not, why should they think that
you will pay for a physical newspaper?

------
kleigenfreude
I was here about 10 years ago. Sick of technology. No longer wanted to learn
about it. Just went into survival mode because of self-loathing that I was
just contributing something that I no longer felt was a good thing.

Here's what I've learned since:

Part of what you are experiencing is real. This will never leave you and will
transform you. It is part of maturation. It is natural to start seeing that
what matters in the world are its life, its people, its wonder, and its love,
and that you have human failings which over and over again will leave you
feeling guilt for not reaching a potential. Or perhaps you will transcend this
and just be ok with everything, or to devote your life to doing everything the
best way you can, and accepting you will fail along the way in a way that
limits self-pity.

Part of what you are experiencing is due to your health and circumstance. This
is something you can affect. If you are tired, maybe you need more sleep and
exercise. Maybe CPAP or an oral appliance from your dentist could help with
sleep apnea. Maybe you shouldn't drink before you go to bed as often. Maybe
you could see a recommended psychiatrist and get some medication. Maybe yoga,
a martial art, tai-chi, or guided meditation would help. Maybe you should read
more.

Computers in their many forms, but particularly mobile computers ("phones")
are way too distracting. So is streaming entertainment. Too much of our lives
are wasted on them. Go buy a bicycle, or some running/walking clothes and
shoes, and get out into nature. Buy a tent, camp stove, ramen, sleeping bag,
inflatable mat, and backpack and go camping.

Feel like what you are doing is B.S.? If you're smart, join Geekcorps and
travel to another country doing something cool:
[http://www.iesc.org/geekcorps](http://www.iesc.org/geekcorps) . Even the
peace corps has jobs in dev/IT like: [https://www.peacecorps.gov/returned-
volunteers/careers/caree...](https://www.peacecorps.gov/returned-
volunteers/careers/career-link/software-developer-junior/)
[https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Peace-Corps-software-
engineer...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Peace-Corps-software-engineer-
Jobs-EI_IE14903.0,11_KO12,29.htm) Or if you're an engineer: [http://www.ewb-
usa.org/](http://www.ewb-usa.org/)

------
cairo_x
Everything in moderation I guess. A good comedy podcast every now and then is
quite therapeutic, but a lot of it can become like being possessed by an
insatiable trivia-demon demanding to be fed 24/7.

------
andrewvijay
Reading the bullet points with actual gun shot sound in our minds makes it so
amazing! Try it

