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

36 points shubhamjain | 2 comments | 07 Dec 25 14:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.408s | 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. _DeadFred_ ◴[08 Dec 25 06:47 UTC] No.46189185[source]▶
If there was tech progress, you would be listing obvious wins. We did that prior to this. I knew my life was better in 2010 than 2000 than 1990. I didn't have to try to convince myself then. All of the ideas we thought were going to lead to something cool have been weaponized against us to maximize corporate profits.

How many apps do you actually use on your phone? The theory was cool, the reality is it's a little addiction slab not really used for the 'cool' ideas.

Airbnb exploited loopholes in local laws to move hospitality into neighborhoods, with detriment to them.

Amazon literally has a plan for when it runs out of low paid workers because it is so bad. Yet it's plan isn't 'be a less shitty company to work for'.

If you did home automation stuff, how much of that is still around, working, and useful? I have a really complex system to turn my front light on at dusk using the internet, something a light sensor did at my parents house in the 90s. And that's about all I have left working.

When you stop your car at a stoplight, and instead of having buttons you have a big screen with an ad, that is also selling all of your movement info, are you experiencing progress?

Netflix, Amazon, etc use to have algorithms that made what you wanted rise to the top. They now all make what Netflix/Amazon/etc want rise to the top. Every tech company's main focus is 'how shitty can I get away with if shitty gets me more money'? Instead of giving me relevant, they now either sell add positions (Amazon) or chose position based on how profitable it is to them (Netflix/Spotify financial/licensing considerations come above an algo taylored for me like they used to have).

We literally have seperate recipes from American companies now. Slop for the domestic American market, and the 1990s actual food grade recipes for Europe.

For our grains now, instead of traditional harvesting, we spray Roundup/glyphosate (tested and approved for earlier in the crop cycle) to kill the wheat/etc to better control harvest. We literally added as a final step for our food to pour questionable glyphosate/herbicides on it all.

America now has more private equity than McDonalds, build on a business model that would have made Reagan era cocaine filled corporate raiders blush. What once made for scandals for movies is now more common than McDonalds. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/private-equity-consolidation...

replies(1): >>46199686 #
2. ◴[09 Dec 25 00:22 UTC] No.46199686[source]▶