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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: 0.198s | 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. markus_zhang ◴[08 Dec 25 15:38 UTC] No.46193498[source]▶
I think we had a good run with computer technology since the 50s and accelerated by the 80s when micro computers made history.

My view of technical climate change is: it's usually good for the ordinary, educated people in the first few decades, because diversity and competition make the old caste difficult to keep up so they need to adjust and wait until the whole movement slows down. And then they swallow the whole thing down.

We have had a good run and now it is time for them to reap the fruits.

The other thing that I'm a bit more worried is, each technological advance first IMPROVES but eventually REDUCES the rate of success of violent revolutions. And violent revolution is the antidote for human societies.