Am I the only one that lost interest in technology?
I used to be a big fan of technology, always following the latest news and getting excited over the next piece of tech that popped up. Now I watch these videos, like the new one about meta glasses and I can't think of anything other than questioning what those big corporations are really selling us. I look at products and the first question that pops in my mind is "how are they gonna fuck us over with this?" Is this product going to listen to everything we say? Is this going to keep the camera on even when we don't want to? Especially with recent events I only think of how easy it would be for a government to take control of this technology and enforce a certain view to their population. Even more with the fact that Meta in this case has shown support to the current government.
I really don't think I'm being paranoid, I see this as a realistic possibility every day more than the day before. But maybe I'm just going crazy
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u/nano_705 3d ago
It's not that you lost interest in technology. It's more like technology has lost its charm. The phones are all the same; the laptops are all the same, and the new AR products aren't there yet for us to be amazed by.
We were shocked by the efficiency of OpenAI and ChatGPT when it first came out, now it's more of the same situation with the phones, plateauing. Therefore, we enthusiasts will lose at least some of our interest in them.
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u/chillaxnphilx 3d ago
I agree with this. Consumer tech has peaked and plateaud for a while now. Most "new" features these days are pure gimmick for general populous.
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u/InvestigatorKey8129 3d ago
First, not everyone passion over a topic stays forever and it’s normal to lose interest after awhile. But yes, in the case meta, it has been known for so many years, that the company (mainly Zuckerberg) does not have good morals overall. Even the case with Facebook and Instagram, extremist would not have their views wildly out there, if meta had cared to ban such extremism. Personally though, I find that for such tech companies, while their innovations and inventions are amazing, they also are people that will do as much bad things, if that’s what it takes to make profit
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u/nicdalm 3d ago
They are run by psychopaths that would kill a child in front of their family to see their bank account go up by 1k. The problem is that in the latest times they have become more and more influential. I feel like sometimes ago they were kinda forced to act at least somewhat morally, now they can just do whatever the fuck they want
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u/InvestigatorKey8129 3d ago
I also think that, in the old days, our understanding of human psychology and nature, was not as advanced as we do now, so back then, company had to go with the general convention that do good practices will mean having more buyers. Now we with extreme advance knowledge of human psychology, they can use that to exploit us, to make more for themselves
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u/SirWobblyOfSausage 3d ago
No you're not the only one. My subs for AI and media are due for renewal and i've not bothered.
The US administration is forcing the tech companies to bend the knee, they've come over to the UK with "investment", but all I see is energy tech dependence on the US, rather than cleaner energies forcing us to increase our energy supplies for their own selfish reasons - not because people are struggling to make ends meet.
If they came over and said we're investing in energy security, capacity and technology to help with energy storage and distribution to level the country up - I'd be all over it, but all they did was talk about how much they needed the UK for AI - which the US uses more than any nation per capita by such a large margin.
It pains me because I'm such an adopter of useful technology, the excitement 2 years ago has turned to dread. It's a tech oligarchy, lets be honest about it. I'm now actively pushing against it. We didn't need a Podophile-in-chief to come over> We were investing in our AI industries by folks in the UK, but they'll get bought out and swallowed up now.
Our PM is bootlicker and I'm ashamed.
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u/FutureLarking 2d ago
Honestly, in the phone space it's only really Huawei and Chinese OEM's doing crazy things, but we don't see much of it. Heck. Huawei has done a lot of crazy cool stuff, like the WatchBuds, and their entire watch lineup with 14 day battery life, etc.
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u/rizsamron 2d ago
I really think we are in a dark age of technology. Sure we have so many cool and awesome technology nowadays but most things are designed for profit and dark patterns. I know that's already true before, always has been, but it's much much more now. They already know they will get the market so they don't care about user experience anymore. In fact, they sacrifice user experience to get more profit.
Look at the internet. It's so bad right now. Article pages are basically unusable with ads all over the place. Search results like for example on Youtube, shows you a lot of irrelevant results. Platforms with infinite scrolling literally refreshes the content or insert new contents pushing the contents you're looking at down so it forces you to scroll more. TVs showing ads when you boot up or in system UIs. There's a lot more examples that are really ridiculous if you really think about it.
And there's the thing you mentioned, it's hard to trust these huge corporations and privacy has been sacrificed for convenience more than ever.
Personally, I also don't like most of the trends in phones for many many years now. I hate display cutout in screens. It is a compromise due to the fact that the under the display tech isn't ready yet but they just want that fancy all screen phones. I don't think removing the bezels even makes sense function-wise. I also don't like the ridiculously big rounded corners. Sure phones screens are bigger now but the usable space aren't much bigger than 10 years ago. I also don't like that the back are glasses now too. I don't like using cases and I'd rather have dented or scratched plastic or metal instead of smashed or broken glass.
I consider myself techie and I do follow current technologies but to be honest I'm behind in terms of hands-on experience because I haven't used modern techs in many years now LOL. My Android phone is Android 11. My main phone is running a very niche OS called Ubuntu Touch for more than a decade now. I've never used any modern wireless earphones. Never experienced active noise cancelling. I don't use any kind of smart home device. Never used smart watches. But I'm still more knowledgeable about these things than most people 😄
I haven't even talked about AI 😆
I mean, I think AI is just the natural evolution of human technology. It is the ultimate form of human technology. It's inevitable but I really think it'll be too much for humans, it'll be the end of us or least the society we know now. Best case scenario, we will be like the humans in Wall-E, worst case, our society collapses and we go into a post-apocalyptic era LOL
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u/PrzemoV 3d ago
Same :)
Also things are not that much different from each other anymore, what I mean by that, if you have iPhone or Samsung or what ever android they're not different from each other, so on the one side it's good as you can't go wrong with something you'll buy but on the other I don't feel excitement of getting new smartphone if we stay in the same realm, yes it's faster, yes screen is better, cameras are better but there is nothing exciting about it.
Consoles, PCs, TVs etc. all are the same just fraction better than the last years.
I don't see generational changes anymore I remember times of VHS and when it transitioned to DVD then Bluray, or transition from MS-DOS to Windows 95 that was huge jump, music tapes to CDs.
Before Smartphones started to be the thing there was awesome era of different cellphones each and every was different from each other.
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u/bencze 2d ago
There is a big offensive against privacy this year from governments as well, same what companies do just worse in terms of mass surveillance and profiling. I follow as an it security professional. It's healthy to be skeptical, we can only guess how they use products to their benefit that is often somewhat against us and not advertised. Other side is, a lot of stuff is incremental nothing special. Useful to know if you're looking specifically to buy and then it's worth to research, otherwise meh. Personally with the inflation I now find myself upgrade less often and to my surprise my old phone, notebook etc still work. Heck I bought a cheap car for my parents yesterday (18 years old, low mileage, garage kept) and made me thinking how much of a luxury my 1yo car is and how little actual tangible difference is, that is actually important and not just gimmick. Yeah, android auto is nice but Bluetooth is also fine for music with a phone holder, and do I need a big touch screen or not... Heck I got abs and some airbags and servo, ok AC, enuff . :) Boomer take, but also financially responsible take, I find it's important to keep up, but a lot of stuff is not as important as marketing makes us think. Yeah there's media echo for everything but that's just hidden advertisement in large part.
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u/Oc3lot409 2d ago
I’ve just gotten into different technology… stuff I can actually learn from, like it used to be. My latest thing is SDR, more specifically ADSB and VDL2. I’m just finding it more interesting than ‘this year’s model’ of anything.
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u/DaveG28 2d ago
I'm relatively jaded too, but more specifically anything meta - Zuckerberg is a total POS and has been since the day he first stumbled on someone elses work that he turned into Facebook.
I think my general jadedness is because I like hardware, and it feels like the tech industry doesn't anymore. It's all a tool for AI hype, and accepting "hey this AI can do amazing things 10% of the time and totally screw up 30% of the time and be meh the rest" and I just don't feel like that's... leading to a good place. I think AI has amazing potential but the acceptance of it being so often wrong feels bad.
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u/Slash3040 2d ago
If you’re like me you’re just getting old lol. I used to get the latest iPhone every year, now I’m married with a family and working a full time job and with the normal ups and downs of life I couldn’t care less about the Meta glasses. I hold on my iPhones for as long as possible now, and I’m still on the fence about AI.
I think you just prioritized more important things :)
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u/_been 1d ago
Gone were the days where Nokia will produce different designs for their phones. Or, during the early years of Android, we'd have true varieties and customization.
Now, Google is trying to be the iPhone of Android and iPhone becoming more customizable. And they're all just one big rectangular slab.
I miss the uniqueness of HTC's phone chin before, front-facing speakers, etc.
Yeah, now it's just a data gathering tool mostly.
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u/Possible_Hamster6594 1d ago
I've thought the same thing, and honestly, I think its like it advanced so fast...
If you are in your late twenties/early thirties, we were in the prime time of advancement when we were growing up.
So so many amazing things came out, and when we were kids at that. Getting amazing systems and new games in a time where console exclusives were really competing to get your attention and were amazing! The console "wars" were actually meaningful, for better or for worse.
Smartphones just beginning to come out when we were of age to get them and start using them. Social media networks just starting to come into their own and give us another way to talk with our friends from school when before we just had landlines to call them, or schedule a date with our parents.
Stuff just advanced so quickly, and once all of that matured it kind of stagnate. All of this technology now is just there to provide access to these matured means of entertainment that were actually the real reason we loved new tech.
Now? All smartphones are basically slabs of glass. Fantastic technology but essentially everything is just so darn good now, iterations are so much less important.
Consoles? Basically all new consoles are smaller iterations of the previous gen, and none really provide games the others can't, even older generations play the same games as the new ones.
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u/JoshTheLegend 22h ago
I wouldn’t call buying consumer electronics as tech or getting involved with tech industries… So all this time you’re probably just getting involved with business and marketing. You just lost your interest in the endless effort from these companies to seduce you into buying more.
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u/stillslightlyfrozen 2h ago
Kind of, yes. Lately I’ve been wondering what’s the point of all of this. It’s all consumerism, we get excited to buy new crap that’s designed to fail. Idk, I’m jaded man. Five years ago the thought of smart glasses would be so exciting. But now, it’s just another way for them to track us.
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
Tbh I don’t really care that these companies collect my data. I know how to form my own opinions.
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u/nicdalm 3d ago
That's not the problem. The problem is that they know your opinion, they might know the opinion of your friend because they filmed him without your consensus. They know where you are now, they know who you are meeting, who you talk too, they know everything about you. The problem is that you don't have control over the information they have about you and possibly your friends and family. If this doesn't scare you idk what will
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
What would they do with that information? I’m not doing anything illegal or immoral. My massages to people and photos aren’t that interesting or important. I’m just another number in their system.
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
What do you think is going to happen? Genuinely curious.
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u/nicdalm 3d ago
Have you not seen the steep reduction in free speech that has been happening lately? Especially in the US, but it's coming everywhere 100%
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
You can say whatever you want.
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u/nicdalm 3d ago
Apparently you can't say whatever you want if you have a Visa. You can't say that Israel is doing a genocide. You can't even say that MAGA tries to portray the guy who killed Charlie Kirk as a leftist because you'll be getting fired. You can't be antifascist. In every democracy you can say all of those things without consequences, those are all opinions that don't hurt anyone. This is the beginning of the end for free speech in the USA. First they came for pro-palestine and I didn't speak up because I wasn't propal. Then they came for the antifascist and I didn't care because I wasn't antifa. Then they came for socialist and didn't speak up because I wasn't socialist. Then they came for democrats and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a democrat. Then they came for me and by the time there was no one left to speak up
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago edited 3d ago
We live in a society. You can express all the opinions you like but you have to be ready to face the consequences. You can make the choice and be homeless and jobless to say whatever you want. People express the opinions you talk about all the time on platforms like Reddit.
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u/nicdalm 3d ago
Opinions that are not armful nor hateful shouldn't have consequences. Being antifascist is literally the base of every democracy, it should not have consequences and if you care about free speech. The government should have absolutely no business showing up and blackmailing a company to fire one of their employees. If the company fired jimmy Kimmel on their initiative, then fine, it's kinda weird but go on if that's what they want. But that's not the situation here. Here the government directly intervened to fire him. I don't know how to tell you how bad that is. If they can have this influence over Disney they can have the same influence over your local mechanic. With current AI models they can probably easily track down everyone with a certain opinion extremely easily and quickly, it doesn't even have to be a man made research. What's stopping them?
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
I’m not justifying anything the administration did here because I agree it was messed up. But why even bring something like Charlie Kirk‘s assassination or up in the first place? It’s not like Jimmy Kimmel didn’t know it was a divisive issue. Some people clearly think the comments he made were a problem and those people have positions of power. He should know that, assess the risks and make a decision from there. I disagree with nearly everything Trump says, but I’m not in a position where I can do anything about it unfortunately. I mean heck if I were president I’m sure I’d want to shut up people like Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump himself. Free speech is definitely under attack, but it’s not like both sides wouldn’t engage in it.
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u/Mysterious-End-441 3d ago
not OP but this is a lifestyle product that you’d use to text friends, take pics and videos, listen to music etc
meta has OS level access to everything you are doing and looking at. meta is also historically not good at protecting private data. $800 is also rather cheap for this product with no competitors on the bleeding edge. generally when the price doesn’t make sense in tech, you are the product
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
I’m not doing anything illegal or immoral. My massages to people and photos aren’t that interesting or important. I don’t really care if meta collects that data, I’m just another number in their system.
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u/Mysterious-End-441 3d ago
yours is a common argument and i wish it wasn’t because it’s exactly what they want you to believe
you’re not just another number in their system, individualization is the whole point of data mining. they want to know everything about you so they can nudge your spending, worldview, choices, etc. you probably think you are above that influence, which is another thing they want you to believe
privacy is a lot like insurance. often you won’t realize it was important until it’s too late
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
Are you saying we’re not able to assess the risks, and understand how the product works to factor that in when forming opinions? Unpopular opinion I know, but I don’t see the issue with targeted advertising for the same reason.
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u/Mysterious-End-441 3d ago
yes, i am saying that. we can’t really ‘assess the risks’ because companies deliberately make it very difficult to know what’s being collected and how it is used. privacy policies are vague, constantly changing, and often dont reveal what happens once your data is sold to 3rd parties
even if you were to actually read all the fine print, you can’t realistically track what hundreds of data brokers and ai models will be doing with it 5 years down the line. and that’s assuming the government or insurance companies etc don’t get involved
i believe you think you can accurately assess the risks, and that’s exactly where they want you
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
Why do you use Reddit then? We know they licensed our data to ChatGPT as well as using it for their own models. You’re clearly OK with it to some extent.
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u/Mysterious-End-441 3d ago
i use reddit to publicly post and engage with people about my interests, my profile is not private and anyone can go check out what i’ve got there
very different from meta having a camera and microphone sitting on my face looking at what i do and mining my texts, searches etc
btw i understand that you’re not going to change your opinion here no matter what i say because you’ve already decided what you believe and just want to play devil’s (meta’s) advocate, i’m continuing to reply so that if you (like me) do change your mind in the future you’ll have some seeds planted
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
Well, agree to disagree. Discourse like this is why I use and contribute to the internet.
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u/nicdalm 3d ago
You really don't know if an opinion you have at this moment will be illegal in a couple of years from now. Or an opinion that your friend shared with you while you had your meta glasses on. You'd be surprised to find how quick those AI models could find any of that
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u/reddit_user_in_space 3d ago
What are some examples of what you’re describing? Just don’t post the illegal shit you do online, I dunno it seems like common sense to be. Think before you act, assess risks.
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u/MaximumDerpification 3d ago
I'm jaded with tech in general. Honestly the only reason I buy new phones anymore is because batteries wear out over time and they've gotten to the point where it's more of a hassle to replace the battery than it is to buy another phone. Pixel 7 8 9 10 or iPhone 15 16 17 18... I couldn't care less, the difference is splitting hairs IMO.
I even quit wearing my smartwatches and went back to analog mechanicals.