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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

There's a good Douglas Adams quote that explains this;

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

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I like pithy quotes like this, but I can’t help feeling we over rely on them/take stuff like this too seriously.

There is no rule that everything has to get boring after 35. If you think like that it’s kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.

I can’t help feeling we over rely on them/take stuff like this too seriously.

Douglas Adams wrote comedy books so I think we're safe.

But the quote is being used as an explanation and not as a joke.

It's an observation of human behavior, not a rule, and noticing it makes it easier for us to do something about it.

I dunno I'm only just 30 and I am way less excited by tech than I was 10 years ago. Less and less of it is stuff that caters to me... For example I got one of the second generation kindles and it was fantastic, and after that finally died I got a Kindle Voyage because it had the page press pseudo buttons. I'd have preferred actual buttons but better than nothing.

Now I am terrified about what happens when that Kindle Voyage dies the only option I have for one that has page turn buttons now is the Oasis which only has them on one side, which doesn't sound too bad, but because I'm left handed I am more capable of using both hands for stuff than most people so when reading with a kindle I pass it between hands all the time. Sure I could do that with an Oasis, but I'd have to rotate it 180 degrees and wait for the orientation to change instead of just passing it across.

I know this is an incredibly nit picky complaint, but it's an example of a category of tech gadget I feel let down by.

Phones are similar, Samsung's new flagships don't have SD card slots or audio jacks AFAIK, meaning they are following a trend away from the things that made me go with them in the first place.

I can't remember the last time I saw new bit of tech or device and thought "wow I want one" really and it makes me really fucking sad. I have a good job now, I can actually afford enthusiast level tech... but now I don't want any of it really and whenever I buy anything I feel like I'm choosing the least bad option instead of buying something exciting

> Phones are similar, Samsung's new flagships don't have SD card slots or audio jacks AFAIK, meaning they are following a trend away from the things that made me go with them in the first place.

If I had to get a new phone today I'd be looking at this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Xperia_PRO-I

It has SD card support and a headphone jack. I've got a Samsung device now, but they aren't very trustworthy. My first Samsung phone shipped with a keyboard that was logging what I typed and sending that data to a 3rd party whose privacy policy said it was used for things like market research and to make guesses about my cogitative abilities. My second one was filled with so much spammy garbage (like pre-installed facebook) I had to spend a long time disabling stuff using ADB commands before I was comfortable using it at all. At this point I'm not even mad that Samsung is moving away from features I depend on; I'm ready to move away from Samsung. I can't promise Sony is any better, but I'm willing to follow the features I need to give them a shot at disappointing me.

And the updates keep reinstalling things like facebook. It's awful. One of the updates actually uninstalled the facebook messenger app for some reason, no idea why it did that.

EDIT: sorry I forgot to say thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out

I think this is it. While things have changed in the last couple of decades (how could they not?) - it's still largely a matter of perception. Personally, I'm still excited about tech, even if I'm probably in the same age range as OP. Is there a lot of work on "boring" things? Probably, but what may seem "boring" to you can still be really amazing to somebody else. Not to mention all the ongoing work that I think almost nobody finds boring in areas like AI and robotics. And everywhere, really, there's a lot of cool stuff going on in tech. At least to me.

This absolutely describes me. Except coincidentally, the things invented after I turned 35, like NFTs, actually are stupid and against the natural order of things.

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