Ask HN: Has Tech and Culture stagnated since the mid 00s?

[tropicalfruit]

technology and art through the 70s, 80s, and 90s (and earlier) seems to have distinct eras marked by noticeable aesthetic progression and change.

however, since the mid-00s, particularly with the rise of smartphones, there's seems to be a real lack of distinctive change until now.

i dont think i could tell a film or album made in 2013 versus one made in 2023 for example. they sound and look the same to me.

computer hardware and software also feels increasingly stagnant and samey. the last 4 or 5 iphones are almost identical. UIs all most look the same or very similar.

social media is 4-5 apps reposting and sharing the same content over and over again. occasionally broken up by some new moment that goes viral.

did smartphones and social media make us stuck in a memetic, globalized, echo chamber where we just follow trends? are people more focused on making things that sell, rather than trying out new ideas that are outside of this chamber?

2007 we had the jobsian smartphone, followed by the 2008 financial crisis. i feel strongly that these two events stole away a different better future, one of a more utopian socialist technology landscape. or maybe i am just a naive and bitter nostalgic person.

[impendia]

I think that US political culture has changed a lot recently. The 2020 murder of George Floyd saw massive protests, on a scale not seen a generation ago. Now, look for example to the recent pro-Palestinian protests at MIT -- MIT is not the sort of place where I would have pictured political turmoil in the past.

The labor union movement is seeing a resurgence, and check out the /r/antiwork subreddit -- lots of people are pissed off at "the system", letting it show, and winning at least some victories.

Tech-wise, ChatGPT is probably the most significant piece of new technology to emerge in my lifetime, with the most profound implications. It's very possible that most of us will be critically relying on AI in our daily lives within ten years. It's at least plausible, if far from certain, that the emergence of AI in various forms could prove to be the most profound change in human history. If 80% of jobs no longer need humans to do them.....

The culture of the tech industry has also changed a lot, from what I can tell as an outsider. I used to be much more optimistic. Recently I feel like the industry has reoriented itself around commandeering my attention and shoving ads down my throat, and I want no part of this.

Overall I think we live in a time of anxiety and malaise, with potential huge changes on the horizon, whether for good or ill. We live in interesting times.

[giantg2]

I don't feel tech has stagnated. There have been all sorts of advances or at least things being more common. The state of Linux on the desktop is much further along than it was 20 years ago. Hardware specs are better and the chips/memory/storage is cheaper (adjust for inflation). Internet is faster and more available. New stuff like ML/AI/blockchain/quantum/etc have become more mainstream or found practical implementations. Languages have advanced with new frameworks, libraries, etc that tend to make development faster or provide more functionality. 3D printers are readily available to consumers, as are drones and other formerly out of reach tech.

For culture, I don't know. What is culture? We don't really have a single national identity. We are a large diverse country with many nations. There are certainly cultures that exist here today. It might be that they are a smaller subset and not so homogenous as you will find in other countries.

[brudgers]

At some point tools are good enough for what most users use them for. How much have nail guns changed in twenty years?

Or nails? And that’s because the utility of tools is in part dependent on ecosystems. Social media in particular shows this. The intersection of people I know and people who use social media is almost entirely captured by Facebook so Facebook is a useful tool for me.

The nail gun nails useful sizes of readily available nails. Some are faster. Some are lighter. Some are cheaper. But they all work the same way.

Sure Dyson makes a cool looking fan. But it still blows the same air as every other despite the lipstick.

Good luck.

[mikewarot]

Casey Neistat changed vlogging forever with his daily vlogs from 2015-2017. He brought cinematic skills to a genre previously seen as lacking potential.

Deviant art, Flickr, and many other sites, along with Creative commons licenses provide a good way to share with a community, and find audiences in a consensual manner.

With GitHub, GitLab and the others, open source projects, tools and techniques are easier than ever to share and fork.

Thanks to 3d printing, low cost CNC routers, etc... and the maker movement, you can now make things that previously required a machine shop, at home.

It's amazing. What a great time to be alive!

[graphe]

Dubstep sounds very distinct from mumble rap. You didn’t live though all those eras did you? If you went further back you might think Victorian England and Edwardian England had no changes.

You don’t seem to care for modern culture. Trying ivermectin and other outside chamber ideas happened.

[mydriasis]

Culture in the United States is a disturbing heap of consumerist oppression. I have friends overseas, and when they ask, I say "we do not have culture here, we have stores."

I can't think of ~ anything ~ from mainstream culture anymore that doesn't have a price tag attached to it in some way, shape, or form. Nothing of intrinsic value is being preserved by the mainstream at this point for longer than a few months before it is poached by corporations looking to make a buck on a once-unique cultural facet of our society. All of this is amplified by the globalized echo chamber you're talking about: as soon as anything of real value comes along, marketers and applications wring it dry of all of its heart until the general population is bored of it and moves on.

More and more it seems like the only escape from this technocratic capitalist culture is to return to valuable or forgotten traditions -- creation without expectation of return, sharing of stories of heritage and history lost by our parents, etc.

But then I don't think this is a purely modern thing. I think it has developed over the last century. I read an article recently that put it somewhat succinctly ( though I can't remember the article off the top of my head ) -- that the baby boomers enjoyed a kind of "in-between" period, where they were able to enjoy both the community and traditions put in place by their parents and grandparents, but also the individualism and consumer comforts of the modern age.

Now, we struggle for that, though it's all but gone. We cannot have it both ways: it wasn't sustainable then, and so now we're dealing with the fruits of the usury of our culture. To return, I think we'll need to ditch some of our modern ideals around value and build up the long-lost communities of the start of the last century and beyond.

I think you're only nostalgic if you're pining for something that can never return, or that doesn't have true value. I don't think that's true of the community-centric culture of our past, and I think everything of value -- real value -- follows from that kind of culture.

There's a fine line, though. I have trouble breaking out of the consumer mindset -- that culture can be bought and sold readily, and that culture boils down to a dollar -- because it's what I was raised to know. It's what I was brought up in, and trained for. Then, it's a paradigm shift -- and a hard one -- to consider any other path.

Art will come with a real culture, a culture that isn't self-centered. And invention, and innovation, and stories, and real value -- value that you can feel in yourself, not in the next object you're looking at.

'Phew. Big rant, sorry.

Anyway,

You're not alone.

[badpun → mydriasis]

> More and more it seems like the only escape from this technocratic capitalist culture is to return to valuable or forgotten traditions -- creation without expectation of return, sharing of stories of heritage and history lost by our parents, etc.

I think there's plenty of creation without realistic expectation of return. Just check out soundcloud. Or all the self-published books on amazon - or even books with legit publishers. Some people may be deluded, but plenty of musicians or authors are aware that the chances they'll make any serious money on their creations are slim. I think they create mainly out of love of creating, because they have an idea they want to get out to the world etc., and not because of expectation of return.

[h2odragon]

"Command Economy"

The Illuminati decided Google's "AI" was smart enough around 2004 and started implementing its programs.

They moved it to Utah a few years later. That's when "Google search" stopped working well for most people; "they" took away googles' personality profiles.