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0 pointsBuckRogers6y ago0 comments

I've definitely considered that thought over the years, again and again. I do think there truth to it and plays some role here, but overall would respectfully disagree with it as a flat out conclusion if used as a dismissal in this case. It's worth expanding on because you're not just wrong outright, it's impossible to objectively state that nostalgia isn't a factor, but I truly do think I'm onto something here on witnessing the home PC market first-hand from the beginning. It really was special because of the intimate nature of it, "home PC" market.

The reasoning that immediately comes to mind is two-fold.

The first is the obvious point I made, where from the very start I place books as the supreme medium, and are far before my time. The written word can be information dense, puts your mind and imagination to work and if in a book, never needs recharged. :) It's just underrated, underappreciated. Books are "inferior technology", which to me is the ideal abstraction layer for our species. I think we'll continue to see back to basics as a movement as corrosive societal effects from "social media" plays out. We need real community, the kind humans evolved for, not that marketing nonsense chewing people's brains up and spitting them out only left with capacity for short-term attention spans. Most people don't need help with that. Facebook is the new smoking. Things don't always get better with every generation for billions of years, nor do most witness great change. You're assuming that because the last 300 years have been relatively action-packed. Mostly thanks to Europe's astonishing leap forward around 1600AD in and out into the world. Things are objectively worse today from the 20th century, everyone knows it or can definitely feel it. The deck is stacked against a young person with opportunities slowly dwindling. That trend may continue if we don't solve capitalism collapsing on itself in the western world, discover new antibiotics, among numerous other very serious challenges that aren't being effectively addressed. Our big, impressive move lately (speaking for the US) is simply cutting taxes when already at historically low rates. Brilliance.

The second thought I had is that the home PC space undeniably hit it's stride from ~1980-2000. That's just when that market had its golden age. Combine it with the arcade experience of the day, and you had a sensory experience that really isn't even widely available today anymore. You can't really explain it to someone who didn't see it. It's not just generational placebo. It's like the circus. They hardly exist now, but they were worth the trip and I regret many kids may never go to one. Someone who did miss the way it was before would likely insist I'm just a fool, but Netflix and Youtube is not a fair replacement for these things. They're just not.

You have to go hunting for an arcade today, and I'm not even sure if there are any truly modern ones around. A kid just won't get that sensory experience, which isn't just technological but the social element of all the kids being there too. That goes without mentioning the loss of comic books stores that kids rode their bike to(!), toy stores, candy stores, Saturday morning cartoons and all the waiting, anticipation and excitement attached. Just nostalgia? Or is it real. The examples sound real.

Back to addressing your point, certainly the cotton gin, the steam engine, home electricity (which my grandma told me about when they were the first house in town to have it installed because her dad was so enthusiastic about it), among others, were more monumental on a macro level than seeing the home PC space explode from 1978 to 2000. Yet I have my doubts that an old timer was passionately reminiscing about "seeing the cotton gin come to be", and how amazing it was. It harkened great change to society, but I'm not sure people were living their lives in a way at that point to personally experience rapid iteration as people witnessed in the home PC market. Being a market specifically targeting them/us. It really is different today than it was then, it has normalized, there's less excitement for sure, and it's far more difficult to be impressed with advancements.

We're at the point now where we need to go back to step one, bring back creativity. That's why I circled back to books being the ultimate medium. What good is an 8K TV is there's nothing good to watch? Zero. I'm back to hunting for good books instead. Choose Your Own Adventure were better than what Hollywood is putting out today. Writers often do the best job at expressing thought-provoking creativity, which without that human spark of creativity injected into your technological medium, it would all be pointless.

From our human perspective at least, once they're unleashed, our AI overlords won't care.

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badpun6y ago

> Things are objectively worse today from the 20th century, everyone knows it or can definitely feel it.

That may be true in the US (although of course it's debatable). In the global scale however, things have improved tremendously. For example, my region, Central and Eastern Europe, has been freed from comunism and flourished for the most part after 1989. But that's small change compared to vast improvements in living standards of hundreds of millions in Asia (China, India, other countries). So, it'd say the boom is far from over, it's just getting more evenly distributed now, as opposed to most of the XX century, where the US was in an unique position to get so much richer than almost everybody else.

BuckRogersOP6y ago

Indeed. My point of view is fixated on a working-class perspective from the USA. I wouldn't say things here feel like hell, it's just more effort and people aren't used to studying or instilling discipline in their children so they can get up to par. There's no more jobs where you have no advanced education or specific skillset, where you walk in and walk out buying a house, motorcycle and 2 cars. People aren't used to not having that available. I've spent most of my career trying to be skills-based to not fall out of the middle class here. It's no longer easy, and it was felt after 9/11 and definitely after 2008.

I certainly dislike the shift of money out of the US (and western Europe, which is really in the same boat as we are), but tough to wish poverty, dismay or anything of the sort on the rest of the world.

In my career so far, I've worked with many people from Bulgaria, along with India. Really enjoyed the experience to be honest. I'm a best-person-for-the-job sort of guy (a concept that is actually falling by the wayside in the increasingly job-strapped USA in favor of nepotism and cronyism), and don't fret over macro-economic issues that I don't control. Just do my best to survive in the environment I was born in like everyone else.

I wouldn't say everyone is getting a great deal out of the US's economic system eating its own people, plenty of the world is being ignored outright. Eastern Europe and Asia are definitely some hotspots gaining though. I think global scale might be a stretch. But I could be wrong, just thinking about the parts of the world where capitalists aren't investing as much.

I love talking to folks from Bulgaria and such about their lives from the Soviet era till today. One told me that "we didn't have much, but you didn't care or notice because everyone else was". Lack of envy etc, that individual was actually admiring his previous life in ways, which I understand given how miserable so many people appear today..

Very interesting perspectives on life and the world, to me at least. I also enjoy teams with folks from India, usually upbeat and smiling and that's (almost) all I ask for. I also suspect working with developers in Latin America would be a similar experience. The culture differences get a little abrasive though once you move out of India into the rest of Asia.

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