Tech is just less fun these days. Regular people can see where they're being monetised, they can see the rot economy in action. Everything is convoluted, full of tolls, demanding your email address and phone number and tracking everything. It's exhausting www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-econ...
Thinking about this as my kid's high school notifies me of yet another App for parents to sign up for and enter details on because the school doesn't want to send texts or emails and last year's App imploded
Also, not even very long ago tech was about selling you products that did interesting things (even if they did break too soon) now so often “selling a product” is secondary to actual financial goals and it shows in the designs
I'm a home theater nerd and I keep waiting for something to be a genuine improvement. But despite all the wifi connectability, there hasn't been a single tangible technology that makes things even slightly better than they were 20 years ago.
Also the people who run these services are constantly saying “we can’t make this service better it’s out of our hands because blah blah”
It's mind numbing. Do these corporations not see how illogical it all is?
I love how my TV forces me to see ads every time I go to the home screen. Not the cable company or any of the streaming services. I bought a device for full price, and it just has an ad system hard coded into it so the company that made it can make me look at their ads, because ???
But also a product can be profitable without growth. The restaurant at my corner has been the same size for 30 years and the owners live well. Growth is for when you want to roll the dice on being filthy rich and the dice are made of your employees’ and customers’ bones.
Fun fact, if you listen to enough of Ed’s podcast better offline, you can hear this article in his voice!
It's isolating too. A lot of tech isolates and fragments people from community.