[nobodyandproud]

I disagree. The nostalgia here isn’t a pushback on the technology, but against a social belief that proved flawed and perhaps a yearning for the times when things appeared to be on the up.

The 1990s to aughties were highly optimistic times. Things like LGBT rights would’ve struggled in any other decades, but we really believed that open borders and accessible communication would break down barriers; and for a time it look liked it would.

Even weirdoes like myself, who had serious personal reservations about enabling China or Russia began to have doubts.

Fast forward to now: Technology is one very easy way to push back against those that benefit in the current economic and political outcome. And entire generations thinking they’re “cooked”.

Edit: I wonder how many HN under 40 even understand the term “fast-forward”.

[torginus]

I think you went for a socio-political angle, I was talking more about stuff in the tech domain.

Back in the mid 2000s, as a teen, I had a PSP, which was supported by the biggest studios and had amazing games - no equivalent device exists today (the steam deck and switch are much bulkier). Likewise, I had a Nokia smartphone that ran Symbian, and could do the vast majority of stuff my current iPhone does. It had a music player, a camera that was decent for the time, it could connect to various chat services etc. It also had nice physical buttons.

If you look at operating systems, both Windows and Mac UX hardly changed.

Since then we had a huge computing revolution, with exponentially increasing compute and a huge array of tools, but my personal opinion, is that a ton of things introduced in tech since the mid 2000s, was either not super impactful, flawed in some way, or ignored eventually. Some geniunely impactful and good stuff, simply disappeared (like Flash)

This is in stark contrast to the development that took place from the mid 80s to mid 2000s.

Considering nobody thought 'this is as far as we would get' cca 2005, I think we made some blunders, which I think are worth reflecting on, and possibly correcting.

[nobodyandproud]

For sure, we made and doubled down on tech blunders.

I still use cash or credit cards, refuse to use online/direct bill pay, insist on paper bills, and in general avoid consolidation. Low tech payment and paper trails.

It’s a real pain in the ass (and the nagging…), until things go very wrong; then redundancy or separation is a godsend.