Does anyone else feel like tech peaked around 10+ years ago?
Does anyone else feel like tech peaked around 10+ years ago?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does anyone else feel like technology - specifically consumer tech - kinda peaked over a decade ago? I'm 37, and I remember being awed between like 2011 and 2014 with phones, voice assistants, smart home devices, and what websites were capable of. Now it seems like much of this stuff either hasn't improved all that much, or is straight up worse than it used to be. Am I crazy? Have I just been out of the market for this stuff for too long?
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Nah, people always think thing "peaked" during their era. Its probably nostalgia. Tech back then is, in my opinion, terrible.
I was born around 2000-2003 (not giving exact year for privacy reasons)
Examples:
When I got my first phone (like around 2015 or so), it was an android phone that didn't have great encryption. You had to manually enable encryption and its not File-Based encryption like in today's android phones, its Full Disk Encryption which mean alarms dont work if you reboot your phone. And it takes like an hour or 2 to first set up the encryption.
Phones have so much vulnerabilities. Stagefright, Blueborne, etc. Luckily, I never got hacked (or at least not that I'm aware of) but it was just unsettling to know your phone is vulnerable, and you're even already on the latest update. Also there was a lot of screenlock bypasses. Updates typically is only 1 year OS update and 2 year security updates, if even that. Updates were also very slow to get rolled out.
Security was so bad, I can root my android phone with a random app I downloaded by searching "Android Root", don't even need to connect to a pc. Like can you imagine a random app being able to just take root privilages on your phone.
Nowadays, phones are much more secure, even the cheapest samsung phone has 4 years of OS updates, 5 years of security updates. With better encryption.
Phone plans were expensive AF, well I was a kid, but the normal plans had those "Unlimited Data" but with a huge asterisk, data slows after like a certain amount like 5 GB or something, I was unlucky, my parents were a bit cheap so the family plan that I was on only had 30MB of 4g internet, then throttled to 128kbps. Unusable unless you are at home and have wifi.
Nowadays, unlimited plans have become the norm, the plan that I was on even got a free upgrade to unlimited high speed data.
Oh and HTTPS wasn't default in most sites, some didn't even have it. And no HSTS as far as I remember.
Back then, there were no such thing as Airtags or Samsung Smarttags that are so cheap and allows tracking misplace items or even your pets. (I mean there are privacy concerns... still, very useful if not misused)
There were no smart watches that can detect a heart attack. (They're not exactly accurate, but still...)
There were no phones that detect a car crash or even use satelites to make a sos call. (I'm talking about the iPhone 14)
I mean yes we have so much enshittification today, but that's not really a tech problem, its a corporate greed problem not doesn't just affect technology.
Technology isn't bad, its just the way we use it.
Like nuclear technology can be use to build bombs to destroy, or used in power plants to create energy.
Older nerd, just fyi: problem is that tech is just keys. They unlock the gates, positive for society or negative, sometimes simultaneously.
It's just interesting how the bags of cash are always behind the "bad for society gate"..