[khr]

I feel the same way. I think this explanation of the transition has been mentioned on HN before:

1) The Internet was created. Early adopters are generally optimistic about its potential to share knowledge and data, and form communities around mutual interests. 2) People begin to realize different ways to create money from this popular new technology, leading to very obvious attempts at creating revenue at some expense of users attention (e.g. advertising), followed by more hidden ways of revenue creation (e.g. selling data).

I also find it hard not to despair. There are still online communities that are still more motivated by communicating and sharing for their own sake (HN included), which I think should be the aspiration of online communities. Most people here have probably just settled into the online communities/blogs that serve these more optimistic goals. The unfortunate thing is that as soon as these communities become relatively popular in any way, other motives start to come to the fore to take advantage of that popularity. As those motives become clear, cynicism is inevitable. It seems to me that you might need something like benevolent community leaders that want to pour their own resources (time and/or money) into online communities without expecting anything in return.

I guess this comment didn't really offer ways to deal with cynicism regarding technology, if anything I justified the cynicism and suggested an option to create communities that would not breed cynicism.