←back to thread

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

36 points shubhamjain | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 14:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | 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?

Show context
desdenova ◴[07 Dec 25 14:26 UTC] No.46181882[source]▶
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.

replies(1): >>46184132 #
1. raw_anon_1111 ◴[07 Dec 25 19:03 UTC] No.46184132[source]▶
As far as Uber, was it better when there was both a medallion system monopoly in cities like New York and less access to cabs? Where people had to rent overpriced medallions and couldn’t make any money

Or sometimes depending on what you looked like, where you were going or where you were coming from, you couldn’t get a cab at all.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/race-cab-hailing-ride-black-white...

I have used Uber all over the US and in a few other countries. Most Uber drivers I talk to like the flexibility.

Half the “benefits” that people bemoan that Uber drivers don’t get shouldn’t be the responsibility of any private employer. For instance health care shouldn’t be tied to your employee anyway.