←back to thread

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

36 points shubhamjain | 5 comments | 07 Dec 25 14:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.396s | source

I see people all around me who have this bleak, pessimistic view of where everything is going. That art/originality is fading, that technology is causing more harm than good, and that most jobs now exist to feed some mindless machine where sole goal is to get people addicted. Tech roles feel drained of purpose, and non-tech roles are being eaten away.

This outlook is a stark contrast to the era I grew up in. 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—breaking old monopolies and building better systems.

Now we have AI, arguably the most transformative technology of our lifetime, yet a lot of times the reaction seems to be exhaustion rather than excitement. Sure, people love using it, but unlike the early Internet, AI doesn't seem like a medium for creativity. The core value feels just about compressing the time it takes to do what we were already doing.

Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s just me. And maybe I am bitten by false nostalgia. But I’m curious: how are others seeing this shift?

1. kingkongjaffa ◴[07 Dec 25 14:32 UTC] No.46181922[source]▶
> 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.

replies(4): >>46184068 #>>46184077 #>>46185217 #>>46187429 #
2. ◴[07 Dec 25 18:56 UTC] No.46184068[source]▶
3. pesfandiar ◴[07 Dec 25 18:57 UTC] No.46184077[source]▶
The signs of techno-feudalism have always been around in fragments (platform/cloud landlords, rent-seeking, gig work, ...), but the promise of hitting gold, the idea of democratized innovation, and the reliance on mass tech labour fueled the techno-optimism. Now, the heavily power-centralizing nature of AI and the shrinking reliance on tech labour have diminished the optimism.
4. AnimalMuppet ◴[07 Dec 25 21:14 UTC] No.46185217[source]▶
Hmm...

  One net to rule them all,
  One net to find them,
  One net to bring them all
  And in the darkness bind them,
  In the land of NorCal where the shadows are.
That's the vibe I'm getting from what you're saying - creating the lure of progress through technology, but when we make the tech, it becomes a way of enslaving us.

And it may even have been true... for some people. I don't think that the bulk of the Silicon Valley hope/dream was just a thin veil for most of the people there.

5. JojoFatsani ◴[08 Dec 25 01:54 UTC] No.46187429[source]▶
Uber is good for everyone except taxi medallion owners, it could be better if they paid the drivers better. But those jobs simply wouldn’t exist otherwise due to the medallion system.