"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 ;)
It was the Snowden revelations that finally had a serious affect on me. I still enjoy creating things, but the internet has soured. Work is up and down, mostly down. A new job at the right place will fix that though.
Only us engineers still see the internet as the internet.
To most of humanity, what it really is is the media, a communications medium, and a few other things. We sw engineers are the roofers, plumbers, and drywallers keeping this invaluable, rickety, incumbent-infested, ethically iffy edifice upright. Of course the work is grim, if you look at it in this (IMO correct) light.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
making a great living by pushing buttons on the interwebs, most likely. many of us lose the childhood passion at some point but still can be good technologists. our interests shift over time, but discipline and the ability to get shit done means you are valuable to society, and especially to others in your field.
what i really am envious of are people who take their fading passion (for lack of a better of work) passion in pure technology and judo-flip it into massive career leverage in another industry they have new-found passion or interest in.
I have some weird interests that I guarantee puts people to sleep (watch repair, horology), but I'm a weirdo.
I have a feeling your interests might interest a lot of us?
As to myself, I'm tired of computers, and the Internet--it all peaked, for myself, around 2008. I wont say why because everyone got so pious, for Very good reasons.
I do miss the plethora of information people were scanning, or uploading back then.
I agree. I remember learning to program on my graphing calculator in the early 2000's. Nobody cared, unless i could make a game they could play. Flash forward to now, I enjoy making web apps. None of my friends care unless I can make an app they can use.
Nothing has really changed. Being a maker is still as uncommon/weird as it always was. It might seem like everybody likes tech today, but they liked tv and video games and phones too. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same...
A little off topic but I also got my start on graphing calculators (Ti 83 plus)!
And your experience mirrored mine as far as external interest, outside of games and in my case, programs that "did the homework for you", no one really cared about the process of making them, it was all about if the end result was something they could use
Ti 83 plus here too :) Such a great platform to start on. Press right arrow to go to the edit tab, easy to see examples. And the instructions in the manual!!! Whoever put those there is responsible for my career, or at least my passion. Realizing that I didnt have to do math homework was addicting :)
"programs that "did the homework for you" " Lol, I was careful not to tell people about those. I knew they would peer pressure me, and eventually they would get caught using one on a test.
"And your experience mirrored mine as far as external interest"
I think this is common for any creative task. I love music, but I never really cared to learn the scales, or any instruments. Nor do I listen when others talk about them. Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made I guess :)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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"
This. You realize that like 99% of people just have some boring job being a cog in a wheel, right? I met a janitor once who was really passionate about saving the planet. His impact was limited to purchasing 'green' soap.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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!
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
*edit: At first I wrote a text that listed lots of examples, but usually people don't agree with examples that aren't close to what they have experienced. The question "why" is a really good one, and we should ask it more often.
Look around you. Are you a heavy internet user or not? How is your life comparing to the alternative? You will probably realise that the person with more internet knows more (why? how?), his opinion has more facettes (why? how?), finding things (places, translations, info, jobs) is easier for him (why? how?). And he has a much bigger world view (why? how?).
> Now if you are 55 years old (and this guy seems to be)
I don't quite think that's the case. More like 35, by the timeline given. This isn't old-timer grumpyness, it's simply seeing something you grew up with change, while you lose your childhood naivity, and it loses its innocence. Welcome to adulthood. It ain't quite as unilaterelly great as we all pictured growing up ;)
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.
> 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.
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)
> 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I agree, but also feel that sometimes 'maintenance tasks' can be incredibly humanizing. Life can feel artificial when there are too few maintenance tasks.
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.
A counter-intuitive finding: studies claim you'll feel happier while doing lame tasks if you concentrate entirely on the task at hand (i.e. being in the present.) I find this rather difficult to test, but momentary glimmers are promising.
N=1 counterfinding, but I find myself incredibly frustrated if I "concentrate entirely on the task at hand" while doing household cleaning. Instead I try and think of anything else.
These sorts of discussions add more value to my thought life than 'healthy and normal' 'real life' conversations (sports, weather, ailments, traffic). I find that "real life" relationships involve a lot more wasted time. So I guess your mileage may vary.
I think it's dangerous to place "add value to my thought life" too high on the spectrum of things that are valuable. Human connection, empathy, direct service to others are also tremendously important parts of life that are sometimes forgotten when "thought life" is put ahead of "real life" too often.
Different person, but my radiators can be controlled remotely, so I have a timer to turn up the bedroom radiator and fire up the boiler 10 minutes before getting up. The other areas in my house don't need to be heated, so they aren't.
The same for me. I've radiator valves that are scheduled (one time I'll add presence sensing to it as well).
Moreover I've "district heating" from the industry region at the Rotterdam harbor. So, I don't need to fire up a boiler. I have heat per radiator as soon as the valve opens.
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.
"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."
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.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadIt was great fun before it all got so serious. Very funny and true ;)
To most of humanity, what it really is is the media, a communications medium, and a few other things. We sw engineers are the roofers, plumbers, and drywallers keeping this invaluable, rickety, incumbent-infested, ethically iffy edifice upright. Of course the work is grim, if you look at it in this (IMO correct) light.
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
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
What is it that you like?
what i really am envious of are people who take their fading passion (for lack of a better of work) passion in pure technology and judo-flip it into massive career leverage in another industry they have new-found passion or interest in.
I have some weird interests that I guarantee puts people to sleep (watch repair, horology), but I'm a weirdo.
I have a feeling your interests might interest a lot of us?
As to myself, I'm tired of computers, and the Internet--it all peaked, for myself, around 2008. I wont say why because everyone got so pious, for Very good reasons.
I do miss the plethora of information people were scanning, or uploading back then.
Nothing has really changed. Being a maker is still as uncommon/weird as it always was. It might seem like everybody likes tech today, but they liked tv and video games and phones too. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same...
And your experience mirrored mine as far as external interest, outside of games and in my case, programs that "did the homework for you", no one really cared about the process of making them, it was all about if the end result was something they could use
"programs that "did the homework for you" " Lol, I was careful not to tell people about those. I knew they would peer pressure me, and eventually they would get caught using one on a test.
"And your experience mirrored mine as far as external interest"
I think this is common for any creative task. I love music, but I never really cared to learn the scales, or any instruments. Nor do I listen when others talk about them. Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made I guess :)
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.
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.
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.
This. You realize that like 99% of people just have some boring job being a cog in a wheel, right? I met a janitor once who was really passionate about saving the planet. His impact was limited to purchasing 'green' soap.
Not trying to be preachy, just wanted to put things in perspective. And see eludwigs comment above :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879025
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Make ASCII art way too easy? (like tennis with the net down ;-)
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!
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.
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.
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.
Why?
Look around you. Are you a heavy internet user or not? How is your life comparing to the alternative? You will probably realise that the person with more internet knows more (why? how?), his opinion has more facettes (why? how?), finding things (places, translations, info, jobs) is easier for him (why? how?). And he has a much bigger world view (why? how?).
Much fun while learning by looking!
I don't quite think that's the case. More like 35, by the timeline given. This isn't old-timer grumpyness, it's simply seeing something you grew up with change, while you lose your childhood naivity, and it loses its innocence. Welcome to adulthood. It ain't quite as unilaterelly great as we all pictured growing up ;)
That's why it's no longer fun. It's no longer a choice, an improvement over some baseline. It's an obligation.
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.
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
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)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
+ "Light pollution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution) versus "City of Light" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Light)
+ In Holland "Horizon pollution" of windmills at our beaches versus nostalgia, Unesco world heritage and thousands of tourists at Kinderdijk.
That what might feel like "Information pollution" to one will feel like a bath of excitement and enjoyment to the other.
That sounds pretty cool, what is going on there?
Moreover I've "district heating" from the industry region at the Rotterdam harbor. So, I don't need to fire up a boiler. I have heat per radiator as soon as the valve opens.
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.
"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...
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.