I disagree. I think back in the late 2000s to early 2010s, many of us were eager to adopt the bleeding edge of technology because we were in the middle of tangible year-over-year progress. Twitter was a great way to broadcast updates to mobile devices with fledgling data plans. Instagram rode the wave of camera development in smartphones, allowing people to do something the increasingly higher quality photos they were taking. But in our rush to adopt these user experiences and stretch our wings, we ignored all of the potential pitfalls of creating these large, centralized repositories of heuristic and tracking data. We sold our single family homes on the open web for the opportunity to rent an apartment in a massive building with a few nice amenities like a gym with a heated pool.
Ten to fifteen years later and the rent has been increasing by huge amounts every year on that apartment, our maintenance requests go unanswered, and the neighborhood outside has gone downhill. Meanwhile, the same property management company is trying to get us to sign a perpetual lease in their new building just down the block. Is it really a surprise why people aren't jumping at that the opportunity?
We are very much still in the middle of tangible year over year progress. LLMs are changing the world in big ways, and the progress has never been faster. On the programming side of things, the libraries and frameworks and languages have never been better and yet still have a long way to go. Consumer hardware has never been better and continues to rapidly evolve.
TikTok has changed the way people communicate and interact more than Twitter or Instagram ever did. I agree that not all things have gotten better and some have gotten worse, but it’s mostly just that the world has changed and it’s required a lot of adaptation. The same could have been said 20 years ago too.
Ten to fifteen years later and the rent has been increasing by huge amounts every year on that apartment, our maintenance requests go unanswered, and the neighborhood outside has gone downhill. Meanwhile, the same property management company is trying to get us to sign a perpetual lease in their new building just down the block. Is it really a surprise why people aren't jumping at that the opportunity?