Tech in the 1980’s - 2010’s was hopeful, beneficial, and fairly consumer oriented. Tech today is mostly some sort of scheme for recurring billing while openly assisting the modern surveillance state. It’s no wonder modern tech feels icky.
Is it “discomfort”, or a full rejection of the values represented by the enshittified tech companies and their LLM-cronies?
I’m tired of tech being everywhere from cars to toasters I still prefer analog things that do the job and only that job.
I don’t need my internet connected fridg to tell me what groceries to buy while selling my data to insurance companies
i don’t think it’s tech, it’s that tech stopped being something that helps you, now it’s just things that control you, and it’s all so shitty.
being a millennial was nice. almost every new piece of tech was useful and made life easier. but i think it was around 2010ish when it all began going downhill. first, capacitative buttons, then smart everything that didn’t help, just monitor you and sell your data. now so much tech is straight up hostile.
I remember when the first round of capacitive buttons showed up. I can’t find it anymore, but there was an article on a fan site for MP3 players I read in 2010 that showed the comparisons of physical vs capacitive vs touchscreens and capacitive buttons only had negatives. It baffled me when they just never stopped using them on things. That article was burned into my mind and now I see that logic has spilled into a thousand other industries.
I’m a bit older than you, I enjoyed tech when it was an escape and communication/education tool not a requirement even my local library uses an internet connected touch screen to locate books.
you don’t have to buy tech devices. they sell non tech fridges dude.
you can also just not use the tech in your car/tv/etc. nobody is forcing you to connect it and use it.
It’s not really discomfort. It’s the fact that any benefit technology would give us is being monetized and abused to the point where it’s not enjoyable. I have this phone because employers expect to be able to contact me 24/7, and because governments want to spy on me, and companies want to harvest my data so they can profit from me. In return im given just enough to make it to the next day, and a screen to distract me from how fucking pointless our society is.
A skilled/educated American worker should be able to retire comfortably at 50 without having to worry about how they’ll afford healthcare.
Companies make millions off you, then you give a few thousand because they know if they ever paid you a fair share, we’d all realize how much they’ve been robbing us this whole time.
Not sure why you make a distinction between skilled and unskilled workers. If anything, ‘unskilled’ workers should be able to retire even sooner since they often do work that strains the body.
Modern technology is great. It’s massively cheaper and more performant for orders of magnitude less money.
Consumer technology on the other hand, is cursed.
The problem is that nobody needs to know how to use technology anymore. Every piece of consumer hardware and software is designed so that the company does all of the work for you and then rents you the fruits of the technology. Now you’re eternally dependent on someone else to operate your technology for you because you’re constantly paying the people that are ensuring your technological ignorance.
Don’t worry about learning how to store mp3s or manage your music Library! Just pay Spotify, YouTube Premium, or Apple Music $10/mo!
Don’t worry about needing to learn how to backup your data or to store you photos, just give Apple $29.99/mo! Shopping for hardware is hard, learning the difference between a Megapixel and a Megabyte is for nerds! Just buy the iPad, iLaptop, iCamera, iEarbuds, it only costs 50% more than it should!
Dealing with .mp4 and .mkv files, too complicated! Don’t worry about needing to learn anything about movies, Netflix/Hulu/Disney/Paramount/Amazon/AppleTV/etc will gladly take your $20/mo and do everything for you!
Don’t like your computer’s OS being filled with advertising, spyware and AI? Too bad! Your only options are 1. Live in Apple’s Walled Garden, 2. Put your entire life’s worth of private data on the auction block for the lowest bidding advertiser for the benefit of Microsoft’s shareholders or 3. Give your cellphone provider and Google root access to your entire life!
Yes, this is a ‘Just use Linux’ comment.
average people will never use linux.
it’s for nerds. average people are not nerds.
Modern technology is great. It’s massively cheaper and more performant for orders of magnitude less money.
Performant and cheaper are not inherently good things. LEDs perform a shit ton better than incandescent bulbs and are cheap as hell. But we fundamentally didn’t need more cheap light for 95% of consumer use cases. Now light pollution is climbing exponentially, 10% per year.
Consumer compute was atrocious to start, but reached a useful level where it unlocked a ton of value for people. Graphics at a legible fidelity, replacing paper documents, data over networks, responsive input, portable-ish laptops, etc…
Now we’ve got more compute than we’d ever reasonably need as a species. Landfills full of IoT waste, datacenters filling up with cheap bytes where only 1/10 will ever be read, drones dropping bombs and gearing up to monitor our every move, trillions of Kw/hr spent driving it all every year…
And what novel value has been unlocked by this glut of compute that we didn’t have before? On-demand AI meme videos?
Sure I can spend a few hundred bucks on a personal LED lightshow that would have cost tens of thousands a few decades ago. And sure I can spin up a home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago. But what have I actually gained?
And sure I can spin up a home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago. But what have I actually gained?
A home lab with more functionality and power than was even available 20 years ago.
Things such as:
Cheap mass storage and a home network connection with upload speeds that make hosting media streaming and ‘cloud’ storage out of your closet an affordable possibility.
Access to large, quality, high resolution displays that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.
High performance portable computers that draw significantly less power.
Cheap, high capacity, battery technology to power said devices.
Mobile data networks with orders of magnitude more data bandwidth.
All of this is to say: The ability to own and control all of the technology that you depend on without needing to rent services from a corporation.
I don’t need iCloud, when I have a 2Gb connection attached to a 24TB storage array. I can do better than Spotify, play the music that I want to listen to without serving me ads or providing my private data to be used by some profit-seeking company. I don’t have to give away my privacy to Microsoft just to be able to have a functioning desktop PC. I don’t require Amazon’s storage and processing to have smart security cameras. Google isn’t required for my smartphone to work, my cellular provider doesn’t get to dictate which apps are permanently installed.
All of this is possible now for orders of magnitude less capital and operating expenses than it was 20 years ago.
I don’t need to throw away my computer because Microsoft has decided that it’s much easier to enforce control over their operating system if your hardware prevents you from modifying the software running on your machine. I don’t have a drawer full of old Apple cables which were only created in order to sell you a $2 piece of copper for $39.99. My movie streaming service doesn’t randomly decide that I need to pay another $5/mo or insert advertisements into my TV shows and I am not at risk of having access to my cloud storage permanently revoked because of some clause in a 700 page Terms of Service that changes every other week.
Technology is so much better, more private, safer and more affordable now. As long as you’re willing to learn how to use it.
Unfortunately, the profit is almost entirely in fostering the world’s population into a state of technological dependence on these proprietary services and devices. It’s hard to convince someone to overcome their fear of a terminal when they can pay a monthly fee for the rest of their life in order to avoid it.
Cheap mass storage and a home network connection with upload speeds that make hosting media streaming and ‘cloud’ storage out of your closet an affordable possibility.
My closet could already hold DVDs and I could have bought a slightly pricey flash drive to carry around a good chunk of media without getting networking involved. Now I can get the data from those DVDs without leaving my couch or carry around more than I have time to consume. Do I truly benefit much more?
Access to large, quality, high resolution displays that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.
Larger and higher quality to show higher resolutions of the same basic media tech from 20 years ago. It’s certainly novel to see a movie at home in HD/4k, but it didn’t fundamentally change the experience of watching a movie in 720p.
High performance portable computers that draw significantly less power.
Power draw wouldn’t be as much of an issue if we didn’t require digital access 24/7. A blackberry w/ voice mail and an iPod drew significantly less power and gave me all access to portable messaging and non-video media.
In exchange for gaining that video media, everyone assumes I will download their app or pull up their QR code menu.
Mobile data networks with orders of magnitude more data bandwidth.
Which still can’t match the sneaker-net bandwidth of me carrying some flash drives or DvDs. Only necessary because the raw size of data has exploded. Though I supposed I gained the ability to scroll memes on the bus.
The ability to own and control all of the technology that you depend on without needing to rent services from a corporation.
We had nearly as much control 20 years ago. Linux was just as available if you didn’t want a mainstream OS.
Technology is so much better, more private, safer and more affordable now
Don’t worry, I’m sure legislation will catch up. Our dependence on convenience tech has allowed Apple/Microsoft/Google et.al. to purchase control of their own regulation. Your OS requires age verification today (because of this ocean of data kids can access from their pocket) and tomorrow all hardware sold will require a DRM heartbeat.
Looking back on it all, the cheap tech has basically unlocked consumer video media. It wasn’t feasible to create and store significant digital video for anyone in the 00s, but now people can make professional quality movies with iPhone. Was that worth the externalized costs?
Bullshit. This sounds like a dumbshit conservative article written in hopes to belittle gen z into boomer thinking.
Technology has become a way for the rich to extract more wealth from parts of other people’s lives they have no business being in. I sincerely hope we can all get away from that side of it.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the problem is not the technology, but who controls it.
If we actually taught digital literacy in schools, and democratized access to technology, people could be making their own software made for solving problems instead of capturing attention!
Also, when most of the new technology is corporate-fellating AI, surveillance and ad technology, it’s also the technology that’s the problem.
If I ran a high school tech class I’d give them a box of parts and say “make it run Doom”
I always talk about how life and trends are just a pendulum, And how it swings, and that I have this hope for the generation(s) after me swinging the pendulum in the other direction. I’m born in '87. We embraced technology to the fullest. And now, unfortunately, technology has been ruined, in the fashion of things gaining popularity going to shit. Way she goes.
I have this idea that the pendulum will come back to a point where kids want to separate themselves from the lens of the internet, where you’ll be chastised for using your phone. And perhaps this is just some strange (anti?)dystopian story in the making, but a tale as old as time is kids being like “That’s not cool, fuck that shit.” I’m just hopeful that “that shit” is tiktok and its ilk.
I had an idea for a sci-fi setting where criminals are held in stasis like Demolition Man or Minority Report except the point isn’t to keep them away from society or rehabilitate them. It’s to rob them of their time in the present assuming that things are only going to bet worse.
Reminded me of that white christmas black mirror episode that your conscience can be virtualized and simulated so years can pass in a minute.
Does GenZ want to live in the past?
Nearly half (47%) of adults ages 18-29 said if they had the option, they’d choose to live in the past, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey. One-third said they’d pick a time period less than 50 years in the past, while another 14% said they’d choose more than 50 years in the past.
Sort of, yes?
I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s. It’s natural for me to be nostalgic about the 90s. It’s absolutely strange to me that any significant group of people who grew up in the 2000s would actually want to go back to the 80s or 90s, which they never experienced first hand.
The only explanation I can think of is that these GenZers watch shows like Stranger Things or Friends and think that’s what we all lived like back then.
I think it’s more because the future looks so bleak. Climate change & global ecological collapse, fascism, techno-feudalism, enshittification, the destruction of the middle class. These are all problems that the ruling class is actively and purposefully making worse. It’s no wonder that the younger generations don’t want the future we are headed towards.
It definitely seems like a lot of people think the future is bleak, though most people feeling that way have no idea what things were like 100 years ago.
My grandparents grew up on farms with 10+ siblings and left school after grade 8. They lived in tiny houses with multiple kids packed into a single room. They worked heavy manual labour on the farm and in forestry. It was very common for young children to die of the flu or measles or the common cold. My grandfather’s little brother died as a child. They had no idea whatsoever that the future was going to be as good as things are now, so it’s hard to say they had any more to look forward to than we do now.
They also had 2 world wars in their future, and for all the war we have going on right now, we’re fortunate that it isn’t even close to as bad as the world wars of the 20th century. Climate change is definitely a legitimate thing to worry about, but it’s really hard to predict how much it will affect any of us individually.
Oh absolutely they are wrong to seek refuge in the past. There is no refuge to be found there. I’m just saying it’s not surprising.
no, they want to grow up with economic optimism instead of despair.
i graduated in 2005 with 30K of debt, and i had a job for 40K and my rent was 500 bucks.
if I graduated in 2025 i’d have something like 120K of debt and my job would be like 45K, and my rent would be 1500.
my sister started working in 1995, she had 10K of debt, a 35K job, and her rent was 300 bucks. she was able to buy a brand new 15K car after graduation, before she even got a job…
the rich kids will be fine, however, anyone whose parents aren’t in the top 10% is economically fucked for life unless they win the lottery, statistically speaking. rent/housing costs keep going up at twice the rate of inflation in most areas.
cost of living is has been outpacing wages by a factor of 2x for over almost two decades, and there is no sign of things ever getting better.
the stability of a middle class life has been stolen from gen z by boomers and gen x, and it will be even worse for gen alpha. even among millenials, there is stark economic divide between those who had their college/housing paid for my parents, and those who had to pay for it on their own.
If that’s the case, why prefer the last 50 years over the decades before that? In 1975 the average house price in San Francisco was 1/27 the price it was in 2024. That means you could have a $1.5m house for $55k. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $337k in 2026 dollars.
If you went back even further (to the 60s or 50s) it would be even more ridiculous.
because 1975 is two generations ago for them, not one.
for kids today, 1975 looks the way you probably see the 1930s/1940s. it’s basically old timey black and white. it’s not appealing or relatable, it’s completely foreign.
90s is only one generation removed and relatable. when i was in high school kids loved the 70s, because it was one generation removed, but nobody was into the 1950s.
it also has to do with fashion and vintage and nostalgia, there is a 20 year gap there as well. that’s why boomers are nosalgic for the 1940s/50s, because they were all born in the 50s/60s.
The 1970s are just as unrelatable to me as the 1930s. It’s all just “the before times” to me.
Also I think GenZers have no idea how bad everything smelled back then, due to the pervasive smoking in public and in everyone’s houses. I know this because public smoking lasted well into the 90s and I remember when it started going away.
I have a friend who is nostalgic for those times before he was born, and even claims to want to take up smoking, though he hasn’t had the guts to actually try. Really strange. I find smoking totally repulsive.
yep, pre EPA.
lead in the water, lead in the air, LEAD EVERYWHERE.
I remember kids in the 90s wished they lived in the 60s and 70s. There are always people who aint feeling their lives who think a past time would auit them better
I’m sure you could find some kids like that, but 47%? That’s a lot!
in the 90s we looked forward to the future. in the 2020s very few people look forward to the future because the future looks so shitty.
i mean, i can relate. i don’t see my life getting better in the future in any material way. i see my standard of living maybe being stagnant… if I am lucky. and my income have kept pace with inflation… but that’s largely only because i have been investing since i was 25, if i was depending solely on my job income i’d be looking at falling further and further behind.
i also think it’s bullshit that i literally can’t go back to school or change careers, because the costs to do so would wipe me out economically. i’d have to take on 60-100K of debt to get another masters degree, that’s INSANE.
just maintaing my certs in my own field now costs me 1000s.
You could move to another country where education is more affordable. Some places even have schools where masters and PhD students are funded by the university (and work as TAs for a stipend), rather than taking on debt.
I can understand if you’re not able to uproot your life like that though, so I’m not saying you’re wrong to stay where you are and try to survive.
No you can’t. millions of people cannot do that.
The only explanation I can think of is that these GenZers watch shows like Stranger Things or Friends and think that’s what we all lived like back then.
That makes more sense. I was also thinking bigger time scales, “The Age of Plastic” or “The Renaissance” Not "When the modems were slower"😂
Is this anything new at all?
Even back in the day, you had people wanting to live in the recent past, because the past usually gets romanticised.
So people in the 1960s might have a rosy view of the turn of the century, and want to go back to the 1930 days of art deco and balls, or those today, that might want to return what they believe to be glory days of 1960. Even if it isn’t actually realistic to how you might live in the past. The average citizen in 1930 was not attending balls at a swanky music lounge.
Give it a few decades, we might also have people from 2050 pining for the 2020s, believing it to be just like the advertisements, where we all live in the penthouse level of skyscrapers, overlooking a vast cityscape.
Discomfort with new modem technology shapes frustration as no modern terminal application has ZModem support.
If you go back a few decades, you would see how companies would produce technological innovations with the mindset of, “If we design the best, most useful device possible, customers will come to us and buy our product”.
Today, that has flipped into a mindset of, “We will create this technology, force users into adoption, and exploit them as hard as possible once we have them under our control.”
The technology has become a means to control users, not to enable them.
At least it’s good to see that people are catching on though.
Gen Z (and younger) are the new boomers. Don’t know basics of technologies.
