Microblog Memes

Techies were just in the loop enough to see what happened to technology.

Stuff like that was also kind of present in the past.

My non-gamer friends suddenly became gamers thanks to 3D games.

I remember people telling me not to buy a video game controller, because everything will be motion controls in the future.

My stepfather wanted to cut our cable TV internet the moment 3G modems came out. He even talked about Soviet TVs with wired remotes to try to convince me and my mother.

My late stepmother accepted that I won't go to a trade school to become some kind of repairman after Facebook became popular, although she thought "software developer" was the same as "CNC machine programmer".

I call this phenomenon "normietech", and AI is the worst example of it.

I’m mildly interested in one of those coffee mugs that heats your coffee, as I drink mine slowly while working.

But I don’t want an app for that. I just want a wireless charger puck and a temperature dial, with maybe a failsafe so it doesn’t overheat when empty.

So much tech should be small little closed systems, but then you lose the ability to shove pop up ad notifications at the user, or scrape and sell their location, or preinstall residential prices you rent to highly suspicious companies.

It's true.

I'm this 👌 close.

Me when new smart devices are created

If they mean 20 years ago in the Covid Timewarp sense that the 90s were twenty years ago, then yes.

Literally 20 years ago the horror was already upon us. It was around that time that fear of the government chipping us to track our every movement was peaking, and hey, by the way, please buy and pay a monthly cost for this tracking device that has audio and video recording but also plays silly cat videos ANYWHERE!!!

20 years ago, the Patriot Act was already in place and privacy was essentially dead (and other countries were not exempt from US spying), people just didn't know the full extent until the Snowden leaks. But it was clear enough then, if you weren't gripped by the hysteria, that the "emergency measures" were there to stay, and get worse.

I mean its true.

But my 4K120hz VRR Oled just never connects to the internet. gAmInG-rig is on Linux. Pixel got the Graphene treatment. Homeautomation always seemed stupid to me(personally, if you have usecases, good for you). If there were ready to use iot devices which doesnt suck and respect my privacy by just beeing on the local network: sure i would think about it. But hacking together something good with arduinos wasnt worth my time for now atleast.

VR headset OS is hacked and nerved to the best of my knowledge.

For now there are still ways to enjoy tech even though overall its a fucking hellscape.

20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could.

Now, normal people buy smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retreating to the forest

As someone else mentioned, in 2006 the overwhelming amount of 'tech' was not designed with slop and spying in mind. If you bought a super high end stove/oven or toaster it would NOT need constant software updates or Internet connection and be forced to give telemetry and have microphones or cameras to listen and watch you as you use it.

The absolute first 'always online' device was the juicero in 2013 and it was an abject failure on every level. Not only were people confused as to why it needed to be online in the first place, it was a horribly designed and extremely inefficient machine... Someone at the time brought in the proprietary bag of juice it uses and squeezed it out by hand, and he was faster and more efficient in doing it than the machine was.

I personally did not hear about online appliances until I took a course on IoT in late 2020. And that one showed how you can use an arduino to make device an internet connected device.

But even then... Both young and old heads just don't like this shit. A toaster does not need to be online... A lamp and its lightbulb do not need to be internet connected. I am confident that if and when they make it legally required to do so (as they are absolutely going to do with cars) there will be so much disregard for the law that it will be unenforceable.

I just ordered a mechanical watch. Primarily because I think they're cool, but it not even having a battery feels as far away from a smartwatch as you can get to me, and I like that too.

my college roommate in 2008 was schizo, his handle was NetSecSatan, he predicted all this stuff

If it wasn't so difficult to do so legally, I would already be in the forest.

Tech used to be fun for some reason and innovative and you knew when something new was made it was better than the previous model and you would notice the improvements, now when something new comes out there's no more excitement because it's the same shit with a new model number and that's why it seems like techies aren't interested in tech because they already tried everything 5-10 years ago and the new stuff just isn't "new" anymore, it was just simplified for non tech savy and rebranded as "new".

Beyond what's been said about data harvesting, 20 years ago new devices very often represented genuine improvements in form and function on each new iteration. Physical and functional differences were easily apparent between each model of early smartphones.

The only thing we have right now that's similar was model releases from AI labs. And it seems like even those are slowing down because the urgency to release anything incrementally better undermines huge, stable jumps.