HN Explorer

Ask HN: Has tech flatlined or is it just HN?

11 points by timthelion ↗ HN
Looking at HN's top stories over the past couple of months, I cannot remember a single story about an exciting new technology. There have been some stories about machine learning and self driving cars, but in neither category have any real breakthroughs been published, nothings really changed in say half a year.

This is not normal. At least not for my lifetime as a 26 year old.

I wonder where the problem is. Is the problem that new things aren't being invented, or that the new inventions aren't being talked about on HN?

I think it is a combination of both. I think that HN has started to get too silocone valley meta. Too many articles are talking "about the industry" and too few are talking about exciting new projects. Afterall, github is overflowing with exciting new projects, and the makerspace culture still exists (though seems to be on a downturn). But it also seems that the English speaking tech world isn't doing very well right now.

What do you think?

15 comments

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cnocito
Since you mention your age, there is a good chance you are just having a quarter life crisis (becoming more cynical, great South Park episode about it!)
timthelion
I've thought about that, and it is certainly true that I now know of most technologies and therefore cannot learn something new each week. However, the stream of technologies which realy did arive and prove to be world shaking in the past was real. There's no way cynicism is playing a role here. I saw (in no particular order)

1. consumer internet 2. WIFI 3. the first laptop with more than an hours charge capacity 4. the first tablet/smartphones 5. the incredible increases in bandwidth 6. the invention of mobile internet 7. the invention of google maps 8. the invention of code completion and inteligent IDEs. 9. the first interactive account based web services (web 2.0) 10. the laser mouse 12. working touch interfaces 13. the consumer digital camera 14. voice streaming 15. video streaming 16. hardware virtualization 17. the consumer 3D printer 18. the consumer CNC kit 19. bluetooth 20. the quadrocopter 21. wacom stylus interface over a glass screen 22. USB ports (might not seem like much now, but wow did that change things!) 23. CD roms 24. the push notification 25. distributed version control 26. automated software updates 27. consumer LCD monitors

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there are more...

Almost all of those things were invented since I was 10ish, so there should be >1 really world shaking real, buy it on the shelf today, type techs per year.

The only such consumer technology that has come to my attention in the past 3 years is the electric bicycle, and that has yet to shake the world.

What recent real, actually existing technology has impacted reality to the extend that the ones that I listed have? Siri?

issa
You are so lucky to grow up in a time when "nothings really changed in say half a year" seems like stagnation. I suggest taking a deep breath and reflecting on what changed between 1990 and now. To give you some perspective, when I was a kid, we had Pong. If I'd been born a decade earlier, I would have been rolling a tire down the road with a stick and been thrilled about it. It's all about perspective.
timthelion
Yes, but between 1995 and 2005 was a decade when everyone seemed to think that "tomorow we'll wake up, in a different, better, world". And they had inventions to back up that feeling. I don't know anyone who feels that way now, and I don't seem the inventions to back up such a feeling if it were to be felt. And the beleif at the time, was, that we would see growth in inventiveness as tech improved, it would enable more tech.
EGKW
Drug tolerance, where you need increasingly more of a substance to experience the same elation.
timthelion
Kurzweil promised us exponential growth. I want a refund.
swah
There's VR and Apple's ARkit very recently...

I feel more like innovations are appearing all the time and I cannot keep up. And that most awesome stuff (technically) is done inside big companies..

Though that I feel like new gadgets/apps don't make me feel empowered and smarter like when PCs first appeared. Just the opposite: they train me to have zero focus etc.

brudgers
I was about your age twenty-six years ago [ie I am about twice your age. In my youth, personal computers and expert systems and anti-lock brakes and microprocessor controlled automotive drive trains and laptops that fit over the shoulder and mobile phones -- called home after school on one in 1977 because I was staying late for HAM Radio Club. Later CD ROM's and 9600 Baud Modems and The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog and 800x600 displays with 16 million colors and the 80486 with a built in FPU and two ethernet cards + two cables + a hub for $149.

Today I've got four Raspberry Pi's and a laptop with a GPU that does two terraflops and four wireless routers running linux and half a dozen other computers scattered around the house and a drawer full of smartphones and there's a straight line from what I saw in seventh grade to here because I saw it happening. And if I look back to before I was in seventh grade or at the things I didn't know were happening in the 80's and 90's and 00's then it all looks incremental -- I had one of these http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-011212sprint-thumb-photo.h... in 2002.

If I am saying get off my lawn, it's because I have changed. That's what life does, at least hopefully and hopefully for the better. Chess playing computers were a big deal thirty years ago. They're still amazing today even though they have become part of the furniture. What has changed is my expectations.

Good luck.

owebmaster
This has more to do with the regime change in the US than you might think. Democrats/liberal values are spread over the most part of cultural and news business in the US, and when they are in power, talks about a brighter future is always in vogue. If you look at the tech hype cycle, the first bubble happened on the end of Bill Clinton's government. Now the same thing happened at the end of Obama's, although it didn't come as a stock crash.