Ask HN: Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years?

I like to read about the Industrial Revolution a lot, and I think a thing that’s lost in the the way we talk about luddites was the change from guild/skilled labor to factory labor. Software engineering is a lot like that old guild labor, you understand the whole of your craft (at the time called “mysteries”) and work to build things understanding that entirety.

When things changed to factory / assembly lines, sure, products got a lot cheaper and more plentiful for everyone else, but if you were a blacksmith or stone mason or etc. you lost both your middle class income, status in society, and day to day joy from being an expert with autonomy — we talk a lot about how engineers value autonomy when building engineering cultures. With AI that’s starting to slip away.

I actually think the twentieth century is a global culture-tech inflection point, and while I’m reluctant to say things will just continue to get worse (there are a lot of years ahead of us and lots of eras and changes to go through). The one thing I’m sure of is that for all the benefits technological change brings they’re not evenly distributed.

So as many I think have pointed out, if you like spending 8+ hours a day on the nuts and bolts of software engineering, and you’re really invested in the sort of late nineties to early 2020’s technological paradigm, subjectively —- things are probably getting worse from here on out.

I see it. I think that a couple of large things happened in the larger society, and tech is inside of that.

The American Dream kind of died. It died in two ways, and it's important to keep them separate.

First, the American Dream died (or at least got very sick) in that the path from high school graduate to high-paying job got very narrow. This was because other countries rebuilt after WWII, and outsourcing happened, and the US culture changed from more "we're all in this together" to more "I got mine, you can starve".

Second, the American Dream died even for those who got the well-paid jobs. They found out that it wasn't enough - that they needed something more than more money. Material prosperity is not enough, and more material prosperity won't fix it. Humans need something more, and we aren't getting it.

We're not getting it from technology, either. We don't need better graphics and instant movies. We don't even need social media - or at least, we don't need what social media has turned into, making us a slave to dopamine hits.

With that going on, how do people view tech? As a way to get rich? Well, that's probably not going to work out, at least not for most of us, and even if it does, all it gets me is money. As a means of making the world better? Yeah, how's that working out?

We're feeling the lack of something, and money isn't going to fix it, and tech isn't either.

I think that's what changed. People thought that tech could make the world better, and make them rich along the way, and now they see that tech can't fix what we need fixed, and being rich isn't enough.

I'll try my theory:

In the west, the last decades have been marked by prosperity. After the big wars, there was abundant energy, relative geopolitical stability, so everything was improving for everybody (we can use more energy to build more machine to produce more stuff that becomes cheaper so we own more and we are happier).

Now we see that we have:

1. An energy problem (we're reaching the peak of fossil fuels, that shows in the economy, and we don't have a viable solution for saving the growth).

2. A climate problem, which means that even if we discovered an infinite source of fossil fuels that could save the growth, we would still be screwed because climate change will eventually destroy society as we know it (and probably kill many (most?) of us).

3. A biodiversity problem, which means that even if we discovered an infinite, clean energy and somehow saved the climate, the very consequence of our growth is habitat loss. We're living in a mass extinction that's orders of magnitudes faster than the one that killed the dinosaurs. It's a fact, it's measured. Say we could have a fusion reactor in our smartphones, we could still not eat it.

It used to be that everything was going well, and therefore technology was just allowing us to own more and be happier. Now we realise that all of this is not sustainable. And technology is what allowed us to get where we are, and it doesn't look at all like it can save us. The sustainable way is "doing less with less".

I think it’s all about balance. In my free time I do “slow” programming: I read the timeless books of our craft (e.g., TAOCP), I spend lots of time writing code by hand, debugging, using pen and paper to think, etc. I love it. All the crap we have now (AI everywhere , technofeudalism, etc.) doesn’t get to bother me. Now, at work, I use AI , I get things done and call it a day. I can do that because I have fun outside work.

The pretense of mega tech corps of being altruistic future forward harbingers of a new golden age is dead. They pulled the mask off; get to work serfs. Not sarcasm.

A lot of art from the middle ages is anonymous. Painting itself is an extension of the artist, containing the intension of the person producing it and hence no name is necessary. This is a theoretical state of quality, where activity is not measured in numbers or on a scale but is seen as expression of a particular unique human being. Then comes the renaissance and painters begin to attach names to their works. Here starts a crucial shift - a turn from quality to quantity. Certain artists are better than others and hence quality itself is now measured (quantified) using a name of the person. After that the name becomes so prevalent that some works begin to be valuable only because a certain name was responsible in producing that work. Think - Picasso. Quantity starts to take over. Then comes film and comics and ads where the painter is expected to have no individuality, and he is praised for having a style and technique that is replaceable. Same is true for corporate software development by the way. Here the name (the intermediate state connecting quality and quantity) starts to disappear and is often replaced by a name of a "golem" - a corporation. Quantity dominates - more and faster is better, and the more "nameless" the better. Ten years ago one might think that this is the limit of dehumanisation and it cannot move any further. But now we have AI - where a work of art (or other kind of work) cannot be associated with any quality (cannot be given a name) in principle. And quantity (more, faster, cheaper) dominates. When you think in these terms, the "techno-optimism" is just a place somewhere in this arrow moving from quality to quantity. Or in other words moving from a qualitative anonymity (my work is an extension of my being) to quantitative anonymity (the work is not associated with any being). Hence, it is not a stable position.

Techo-optimism peaked in the 1960s. After that people became much more cynical or realistic about technology.

The last three recent major technological advances in term of impact on everyday life are the internet and mobile phone in the 1990s and then the smartphone as ushered by the iPhone in 2007. All three are intertwined and really what makes today different from 1990.

Amazon is a 1990s company. In the 2010s it was fully established and a giant. It's a retail and logistics company that understood the impact and possibilities of the internet.

AirBnb (founded 2008) understood and exploited that the internet and smartphone allowed a new approach to holiday lettings but isn't doing anything hard technologically.

Uber (founded 2009) has done the same for taxi cabs. Nothing technologically hard but making full use of the ubiquitous smartphone.

Perhaps you remember the 2010s as more exciting because it was when the smartphone was new so there was this burst of apps and services to make use of it.

Tech went from solving problems for the Everyman or for every day things, to all in on gambling and other perverse shit.

I honestly believe that 2008-2019 was the Golden Age.

There were apps for so many things popping up. Services for making life better. People got paid. Dev tools for actual work. Etc.

Fast forward to 2025. Betting on stupid shit. Buy now, get fucked. People who actually unironically want to live in cyberpunk 2077.

In 2018 I felt like a million dollars meant something. Today I feel like nothing when someone mentions they made 100M or even 50B. I genuinely loved my Tesla when I first got it. I thought my iPhone was amazing.

Now it’s like how can I extract more money from you or enslave you to my platform.

It’s all wack. I hope there’s such a massive financial crash that all these assholes are wiped.

The only nice thing has been agentic coding. It’s like having an on demand rubber duck for when I’m solo working.

I think we had a good run with computer technology since the 50s and accelerated by the 80s when micro computers made history.

My view of technical climate change is: it's usually good for the ordinary, educated people in the first few decades, because diversity and competition make the old caste difficult to keep up so they need to adjust and wait until the whole movement slows down. And then they swallow the whole thing down.

We have had a good run and now it is time for them to reap the fruits.

The other thing that I'm a bit more worried is, each technological advance first IMPROVES but eventually REDUCES the rate of success of violent revolutions. And violent revolution is the antidote for human societies.

It's like the glass of water, while we are seeing the most amount of technology ever in our existence, several issues that we grow up thinking that technology will solve like health, hunger and others, are still unresolved. But the potential is real and up to us to take us there. While the amount of bad things Ai/technology is being used is also on an high (attacks and deceptions) it is still a tool like a knife.

> From 2010 to 2020, tech optimism was at its peak. Despite the flaws, companies like Airbnb, Uber, Amazon, and countless SaaS startups felt like they were genuinely improving things

These are some legendary American companies whose service made life more convenient, however I never felt they were earth shattering in the way other American inventions like the plane, the Internet, the mircochip, nuclear power, the light-bulb and the laser have been. Not to mention the personal computer and the smartphone that were also invented in America. I always thought the aforementioned inventions carried more heft. AI seems to me to be the only advancement on the same level of importance today.

> This outlook is a stark contrast to the era I grew up in. From 2010 to 2020, tech optimism was at its peak.

The first time in human history someone was more optimistic when they were younger.

Not only from 2010 to 2020, I would say from 00s to 20s, starting with the so-called "Web 2" era. There was this incredible optimistic force. We were in a golden age and we didn't know. Now, it should be clear we are in full decadence, towards dark ages.

It's just less mainstream, not a part of the agenda, and therefore some people actively judge you if you happen to be a techno optimist. Also, some "techno optimists" out there definitely don't help.

It's just aging. If you were aware of tech climate in the 2010s, means you are past 30 years old and getting jaded. Young people are very enthusiastic about the AI.

If you think of 'tech' as computers and the internet, then yeah, it's hard to be optimistic. It's no longer the shiny new thing and has become boring. But it's an overly limited view of tech.

I think one of the reasons people are drawn to Elon Musk (despite his political views) is that he's an optimist, with big goals and vision. Self-driving cars, reusable rockets and cheap space travel, cities on Mars, etc. Even if only some of it becomes real it will be amazing. So no, not a pessimist.

IMHO, "tech optimism" reached its peak in 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon.

We watched them walk on the Moon on live TV.

After seeing them perform that impossible feat, it seemed like we could use technology to do anything.

As far as the Digital and/or Internet revolutions, the changes have been so fast and widespread that people have not come to terms with them, at least I haven't, and I've been pretty deep into both.

My particular concerns are around atrophy of basic skills (reading, research, writing, etc.,) the authenticity/trustworthiness of "knowledge" obtained from various Internet sources (misinformation, fake news, deep fakes,) and lack of personal contact and interaction in a world where peoples' only connection to others is through a screen (fakebook, instagram, tiktok, etc..)

AI is not going to make any of those any better.

I would not describe my feelings as "dismay" or "fear" but rather of "extreme caution" -- if that makes any sense.

With that said, I'm going to step away from this computer and go play with my dog.

I was a JavaScript developer for 15 years. I grew to hate it and will never go back. It has nothing to do with AI.

Most of the people employed to write JavaScript are really, and I can’t stress this enough, really shitty at it. That comes with a tremendous amount of messes to clean up and really immature expectations.

I love writing JavaScript applications. It’s the reason I stayed at it so long for employment. Now I work in unrelated technology and continue to write JavaScript applications just for personal use.

I'd say it is saturation fatigue. 20 years ago, people who were online were kinda power users. Nowadays, internet is full of normies. Nothing wrong with that but it also means competition for everything has increased ten fold. Social networks used to be filled with smart people, now they are filled with average people and smart people are now just static noise in the background.

Jobs in IT are the same. Instead of 5 smart people competing for one job, now you might have hundreds and thousands and as employer you might not be able to distinguish the good/skilled one from the average one. And now employers have to hire based on your skin color instead of skill, among other things, which dilutes the potential for a company to be successful in inventing, creating, competing disrupting...

You used to be able to create some fun side project and get few customers to pay your bills. Nowadays, everything is monopolised and behind red tape with insane cost of entry. Which discourages competition and creativity of an individual.

Software has hit a plateau with social networks, online communication, programming languages and whatnot. Now it is all about AI(which it is not but it is being sold as such) because that is the last software paramount.

Hardware stopped advancing too, mostly due to AI again. We had the smart phone revolution, tablet revolution, online video streaming revolution... then Elon Musk did some work with SapaceX(rockets + internet) and electric cars. But that is about it. Not much new came after that. Definitely nothing ground breaking or revolutionary. Again, likely because most effort and investments go into AI hardware.

So we are in a limbo when it comes to both - HW and SW. We've reached peak saturation in user base, we've hit ceiling in programming and hardware and there is nothing interesting behind the corner. Maybe except new-age nuclear reactors(smaller, more efficient) and quantum computing(though that is still decades away from commercial use and production).

But I think all of this is mostly because economic and demographic factors. The societies have peaked, at least the "western" ones, and are now heading into correction period that will stifle technological progress as the "west" overplayed the globalization card and has to pull back and start shifting towards manufacturing and blue collar jobs, as it became heavily service-based economically.

Also it is important to factor in the feminism and DEI aspect of modern societies that is causing (white)men to graduate less, partake in STEM less, be more absent in white collar jobs, HR departments hindering creativity at the work place and so on. It's a whole bowl of spaghetti of societal issues that has to get unwound and levelled before we can bounce back up.

If there was tech progress, you would be listing obvious wins. We did that prior to this. I knew my life was better in 2010 than 2000 than 1990. I didn't have to try to convince myself then. All of the ideas we thought were going to lead to something cool have been weaponized against us to maximize corporate profits.

How many apps do you actually use on your phone? The theory was cool, the reality is it's a little addiction slab not really used for the 'cool' ideas.

Airbnb exploited loopholes in local laws to move hospitality into neighborhoods, with detriment to them.

Amazon literally has a plan for when it runs out of low paid workers because it is so bad. Yet it's plan isn't 'be a less shitty company to work for'.

If you did home automation stuff, how much of that is still around, working, and useful? I have a really complex system to turn my front light on at dusk using the internet, something a light sensor did at my parents house in the 90s. And that's about all I have left working.

When you stop your car at a stoplight, and instead of having buttons you have a big screen with an ad, that is also selling all of your movement info, are you experiencing progress?

Netflix, Amazon, etc use to have algorithms that made what you wanted rise to the top. They now all make what Netflix/Amazon/etc want rise to the top. Every tech company's main focus is 'how shitty can I get away with if shitty gets me more money'? Instead of giving me relevant, they now either sell add positions (Amazon) or chose position based on how profitable it is to them (Netflix/Spotify financial/licensing considerations come above an algo taylored for me like they used to have).

We literally have seperate recipes from American companies now. Slop for the domestic American market, and the 1990s actual food grade recipes for Europe.

For our grains now, instead of traditional harvesting, we spray Roundup/glyphosate (tested and approved for earlier in the crop cycle) to kill the wheat/etc to better control harvest. We literally added as a final step for our food to pour questionable glyphosate/herbicides on it all.

America now has more private equity than McDonalds, build on a business model that would have made Reagan era cocaine filled corporate raiders blush. What once made for scandals for movies is now more common than McDonalds. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/private-equity-consolidation...

Airbnb, Uber and Amazon were already making everything worse. We're past the "bleak threshold" for over 10 years now.

Airbnb is inflating the real-estate bubble everywhere. Apartment building now are mass produced, tiny, and expensive, targeting investors who are only interested in Airbnb.

Uber/ifood and other transport/delivery apps are just working around labor laws, undoing centuries of progress towards worker rights and approaching slavery-like situations.

Amazon is just another monopoly, not sure why you put it beside the others, but it's one of the companies lobbying to make the world a worse place.

Then came crypto"currency", which started the "age of anything goes", where tons of money are thrown in the trashbin for the next speculative pseudo-tech bubble.

AI is just the bubble that came after crypto, little practical utility with lots of hype from billionaires who threw money at it.

After it bursts, there'll probably be another.

If you're looking at this as someone who enjoys technology and what it allows on a personal level, it's never been better. The recent arrival of 3d printers and desktop CNC mills means that you can build almost anything.

Even with the recent price hikes, compute power of even a small machine dwarfs that of large organizations 50 years ago for less than a day's wages.

We've got persistent global internet, mostly. You can build your own community without relying on the tech bros, if you want.

It's scary in the short run, but I think the future is still bright.

I think the future is both bright and dark. It has never been this easy to create anything yourself. Anything from software to hardware, you can buy and build the tools and make something amazing in your spare time that would only 20 years ago would take a small team with some funding.

There are 2 kinds of companies: 1. The greedy kind that always want more. They see extracting money out of their customers as their sole purpose. 2. The kind that want to build good stuff and help people.

A lot of companies start out as nr 2, but with time and growth, greedy people have a tendency to climb the ladder and turn the nr 2 companies into nr 1 unless the original team knows about this and resist such change. This also means that the founders must be okay living their whole life without owning a Bugatti. VC companies make it hard to stay as nr 2, because even if you are good, if you make a deal with a VC firm that wants to 100x their investment through you, then you have already let the greedy devil through the front door.

A nr 1 company will over time turn into a parasite. Once they extract more value than they give, it is a downward spiral of destruction on the way down. A big part of the US tech economy (as seen from Europe) have "evolved" into parasites. They say they fuel the economy. What they actually mean is that they cause a lot of money to flow around. A parasite that suck a lot of blood will also make a lot of blood flow, so it is not a good measurement of health.

The good news are that parasites die eventually. A lot of people (especially outside US) are very much aware about how toxic american companies have become. In Europe there is right now a whole sector growing rapidly that is doing "X but European" and it looks very promising. This is not only a Europe thing, the same is happening in Asia, but European laws and culture have accelerated it.

What this means is that you will see a lot of destruction and downfall as these giant parasites have to die or kill their hosts. Don't be the host. Don't rely on them. Don't do business with them. Don't work for them. Avoid them like the plague, and don't stand in their way when they fall. They will cause collateral damage, regulators should have stepped in a long time ago, but greed prevented that. These companies are already leaving big billion dollar holes in the market. They can't win those markets back, because in business trust is everything and they have lost trust from these markets. As they continue falling, they need to continue sucking out more blood of their remaining hosts which will further erode trust and create new bigger markets looking for a non toxic alternative. Be that alternative. It has never been easier. The future is bright if you want to.

Random info: "money is the root of all evil" is false. It is actually "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil". If you dig into the original bible texts, it is clear that it is not talking about money as being evil. It is talking about a spirit (mentality) that in English would be more accurately translated as "greed". It is very clear that greed causes destruction and suffering on all levels. From companies managing to erode the middle class to Putin wanting more land. There are companies that steal (legal with greedy corrupt leaders) water only to sell it back to the local population. Why? Greed. It caused Boeing planes to fall from the sky, it caused the 2008 crash and it will cause the AI crash. No matter how much they eat, they remain hungry without limits. This is what greed does. Greed weaponizes good companies with good ideas and turn it into a money sucking machine with no limits. If you want to resist this, you have to start with yourself. Everything starts with one person. Be that person.

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[flagged]

> Airbnb, Uber, Amazon

literally none of these are good for society.

> countless SaaS startups felt like they were genuinely improving things

> false nostalgia

I think so... the more time that passes the clearer it becomes that techno-optimism and silicon valley were really just a thin veil, and techno-feudalism was the real motive the whole time. See Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin et al.

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