Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years?

I like to read about the Industrial Revolution a lot, and I think a thing that’s lost in the the way we talk about luddites was the change from guild/skilled labor to factory labor. Software engineering is a lot like that old guild labor, you understand the whole of your craft (at the time called “mysteries”) and work to build things understanding that entirety.

When things changed to factory / assembly lines, sure, products got a lot cheaper and more plentiful for everyone else, but if you were a blacksmith or stone mason or etc. you lost both your middle class income, status in society, and day to day joy from being an expert with autonomy — we talk a lot about how engineers value autonomy when building engineering cultures. With AI that’s starting to slip away.

I actually think the twentieth century is a global culture-tech inflection point, and while I’m reluctant to say things will just continue to get worse (there are a lot of years ahead of us and lots of eras and changes to go through). The one thing I’m sure of is that for all the benefits technological change brings they’re not evenly distributed.

So as many I think have pointed out, if you like spending 8+ hours a day on the nuts and bolts of software engineering, and you’re really invested in the sort of late nineties to early 2020’s technological paradigm, subjectively —- things are probably getting worse from here on out.

A lot of art from the middle ages is anonymous. Painting itself is an extension of the artist, containing the intension of the person producing it and hence no name is necessary. Then comes the renaissance and painters begin to attach their names to their works. Here starts a crucial shift - a turn from quality to quantity. Certain artists are better than others and hence quality is now measured (quantified). After that the name becomes so prevalent that some works begin to be valuable only because a certain name was responsible in producing that work. Think - Picasso. Quantity starts to take over. Then comes film and comics and ads where the painter is expected to have no individuality, and he is praised for having a style and technique that is replaceable. Same is true for corporate software development by the way. Here the name disappears or at best it is replaced by a name of a "golem" - a corporation. Quantity dominates - more and faster is better. Some thought this is the limit of dehumanization and it cannot move any further. But now we have AI - where a work of art (or other kind of work) cannot be associated with any quality (cannot be given a name) in principle. And quantity (more, faster, cheaper) dominates. When you think in these terms, the "technological optimism" is just a place somewhere in this arrow moving from quality to quantity. Hence, it is not a stable position.

> From 2010 to 2020, tech optimism was at its peak. Despite the flaws, companies like Airbnb, Uber, Amazon, and countless SaaS startups felt like they were genuinely improving things

These are some legendary American companies whose service made life more convenient, however I never felt they were earth shattering in the way other American inventions like the plane, the Internet, the mircochip, nuclear power, the light-bulb and the laser have been. Not to mention the personal computer and the smartphone that were also invented in America. I always thought the aforementioned inventions carried more heft. AI seems to me to be the only advancement on the same level of importance today.

Not only from 2010 to 2020, I would say from 00s to 20s, starting with the so-called "Web 2" era. There was this incredible optimistic force. We were in a golden age and we didn't know. Now, it should be clear we are in full decadence, towards dark ages.

It's just less mainstream, not a part of the agenda, and therefore some people actively judge you if you happen to be a techno optimist. Also, some "techno optimists" out there definitely don't help.

> Airbnb, Uber, Amazon

literally none of these are good for society.

> countless SaaS startups felt like they were genuinely improving things

> false nostalgia

I think so... the more time that passes the clearer it becomes that techno-optimism and silicon valley were really just a thin veil, and techno-feudalism was the real motive the whole time. See Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin et al.

Techo-optimism peaked in the 1960s. After that people became much more cynical or realistic about technology.

The last three recent major technological advances in term of impact on everyday life are the internet and mobile phone in the 1990s and then the smartphone as ushered by the iPhone in 2007. All three are intertwined and really what makes today different from 1990.

Amazon is a 1990s company. In the 2010s it was fully established and a giant. It's a retail and logistics company that understood the impact and possibilities of the internet.

AirBnb (founded 2008) understood and exploited that the internet and smartphone allowed a new approach to holiday lettings but isn't doing anything hard technologically.

Uber (founded 2009) has done the same for taxi cabs. Nothing technologically hard but making full use of the ubiquitous smartphone.

Perhaps you remember the 2010s as more exciting because it was when the smartphone was new so there was this burst of apps and services to make use of it.

Airbnb, Uber and Amazon were already making everything worse. We're past the "bleak threshold" for over 10 years now.

Airbnb is inflating the real-estate bubble everywhere. Apartment building now are mass produced, tiny, and expensive, targeting investors who are only interested in Airbnb.

Uber/ifood and other transport/delivery apps are just working around labor laws, undoing centuries of progress towards worker rights and approaching slavery-like situations.

Amazon is just another monopoly, not sure why you put it beside the others, but it's one of the companies lobbying to make the world a worse place.

Then came crypto"currency", which started the "age of anything goes", where tons of money are thrown in the trashbin for the next speculative pseudo-tech bubble.

AI is just the bubble that came after crypto, little practical utility with lots of hype from billionaires who threw money at it.

After it bursts, there'll probably be another.

Tech went from solving problems for the Everyman or for every day things, to all in on gambling and other perverse shit.

I honestly believe that 2008-2019 was the Golden Age.

There were apps for so many things popping up. Services for making life better. People got paid. Dev tools for actual work. Etc.

Fast forward to 2025. Betting on stupid shit. Buy now, get fucked. People who actually unironically want to live in cyberpunk 2077.

In 2018 I felt like a million dollars meant something. Today I feel like nothing when someone mentions they made 100M or even 50B. I genuinely loved my Tesla when I first got it. I thought my iPhone was amazing.

Now it’s like how can I extract more money from you or enslave you to my platform.

It’s all wack. I hope there’s such a massive financial crash that all these assholes are wiped.

The only nice thing has been agentic coding. It’s like having an on demand rubber duck for when I’m solo working.

IMHO, "tech optimism" reached its peak in 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon.

We watched them walk on the Moon on live TV.

After seeing them perform that impossible feat, it seemed like we could use technology to do anything.

As far as the Digital and/or Internet revolutions, the changes have been so fast and widespread that people have not come to terms with them, at least I haven't, and I've been pretty deep into both.

My particular concerns are around atrophy of basic skills (reading, research, writing, etc.,) the authenticity/trustworthiness of "knowledge" obtained from various Internet sources (misinformation, fake news, deep fakes,) and lack of personal contact and interaction in a world where peoples' only connection to others is through a screen (fakebook, instagram, tiktok, etc..)

AI is not going to make any of those any better.

I would not describe my feelings as "dismay" or "fear" but rather of "extreme caution" -- if that makes any sense.

With that said, I'm going to step away from this computer and go play with my dog.

> This outlook is a stark contrast to the era I grew up in. From 2010 to 2020, tech optimism was at its peak.

The first time in human history someone was more optimistic when they were younger.

If you're looking at this as someone who enjoys technology and what it allows on a personal level, it's never been better. The recent arrival of 3d printers and desktop CNC mills means that you can build almost anything.

Even with the recent price hikes, compute power of even a small machine dwarfs that of large organizations 50 years ago for less than a day's wages.

We've got persistent global internet, mostly. You can build your own community without relying on the tech bros, if you want.

It's scary in the short run, but I think the future is still bright.

Agreed this is a real issue, one compounded by constant negative news cycles.

My little contribution in helping solve this issue is building and launching Clarion, an AI curator that filters for rational progress rather than noise -

https://clarion.today/

I see it. I think that a couple of large things happened in the larger society, and tech is inside of that.

The American Dream kind of died. It died in two ways, and it's important to keep them separate.

First, the American Dream died (or at least got very sick) in that the path from high school graduate to high-paying job got very narrow. This was because other countries rebuilt after WWII, and outsourcing happened, and the US culture changed from more "we're all in this together" to more "I got mine, you can starve".

Second, the American Dream died even for those who got the well-paid jobs. They found out that it wasn't enough - that they needed something more than more money. Material prosperity is not enough, and more material prosperity won't fix it. Humans need something more, and we aren't getting it.

We're not getting it from technology, either. We don't need better graphics and instant movies. We don't even need social media - or at least, we don't need what social media has turned into, making us a slave to dopamine hits.

With that going on, how do people view tech? As a way to get rich? Well, that's probably not going to work out, at least not for most of us, and even if it does, all it gets me is money. As a means of making the world better? Yeah, how's that working out?

We're feeling the lack of something, and money isn't going to fix it, and tech isn't either.

I think that's what changed. People thought that tech could make the world better, and make them rich along the way, and now they see that tech can't fix what we need fixed, and being rich isn't enough.

It's just aging. If you were aware of tech climate in the 2010s, means you are past 30 years old and getting jaded. Young people are very enthusiastic about the AI.