Tell HN: Dont tie your life to your tech | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Dont tie your life to your tech

10 pointssamstave5 comments

Ill keep this as short as I can.

I am 48. I have built/helped build a lot of infra you rely on - not in a high-level way, but in an non-insigificant manner... but in a treasonous manner...

That said, Dont fall into the cyber-hole myself, and so many others have....

When growing up in the 80s and Neuromancer, and so many other fantasy and cyberpunk concepts were being delved out... it was awesome.

We oft thought ; "wouldnt it be cool if...."

We have built that '*IF*' and it is not cool.

but the problem is our outcome with that. Look at Zuck, as an example, He didnt grow up in the "*Wouldnt it be cool if*" - he thrived on what we thought would be cool.

But Anime SAW this coming in the 70s 80s 90s and wrote that which we foundationalize upon.

mega-corp, eyes everywhere, hyper hackers, 100% surveillance - etc...

Dont grow your kids on the turbulence of tech, nurture your kids on the love of nature.

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Food delivery apps where the owner/CEO are largely unknown are vastly seen as a super cool net benefit.

The problem is that winners take all markets exist and they are all novel markets.

The population looks at the person who is in charge (or is purpoted to be in charge) of the winning organization, they see a face different than their own and then start shitting on the service.

Facebook is still the most used social media, and the one which is most useful because people use it to contact their friends or establish groups pertaining their interest in their local community.

I don't think cool back then meant an hyperpolitical social network where the only goal is to dunk on the next person (twitter) and not even a social network whose only use is to daydream of a life you don't have (Instagram)

Just a nit-pick, we don't really have the world of Neuromancer we have some combination of Snow Crash and Brave New World. We're all hypnotized constantly, we've outsourced most of what matters to big tech, and we're all to lazy to care about it. Neuromancer was cool, fencing hot RAM and implants and Turing registry. Instead we have NFTs and sex changes and chatbots.

I'm only doing this shit for the money, but I don't know if I can weather the bullshit.

It honestly just sounds like you're mad at capitalism for setting conditions for success that harm the consumer. I agree, but you're awfully late to the party if only now you think it's "not cool".

I think the better advice is to not stake your life on things you don't control. Technology can be built in a holistic and transparent way when people agree on it, but that's not what our economy says is smart. So naturally, the most successful businesses gravitate towards surveillance and advertising and lock-in. This was the basis of most cyberpunk fiction that I grew up on, exacerbating corporate control to it's logical conclusion. The idea that any of this is "cool" in the first place speaks to an unfortunate reality, that most of us will ignore dystopia if the design is pretty and the little logos all glow bright enough.

It's never too late. As I write this, there are people that can't put their phone down for any significant amount of time and many that are starting to get addicted.

Right now there are companies that are working hard to replace the real world with cyber-fantasies. What an ugly future that will be, if it ever takes off. I equate it to an Opium den of the past.

Whether you are a user or part of the system that creates it, it's always good to remind people that tech can ruin lives and big tech controls too much of our every day experiences.

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