We talk a lot about enshittification of technology, so tell me about technology that is getting better!
I personally love the progress of electric scooters. I’ve been zooming around on a 400$ escooter for a year and it works so well. It has a range of around 20 miles and top speed of 15 mph, so it works just super well for my uses, and 10 years ago scooters with that range/speed/price were no where near a thing.
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Open source software in general is getting incredibly complex. While big companies mopolized the software industry at the end of the century, now the most widely used technologies are completely open source (kvm, linux, docker, apache, ssh, c++, rust), which means that everyone has access to it and can use it for personal or light commercial use without too much cost and hassle. Sure, companies still monopolize, but only because they offer hardware and services at a big scale, if you want to have an indipendent space on the internet, this would be the perfect time
The advances in material science and manufacturing in sports equipment in the past 15 years has been amazing.
That means boots, bindings, and a snowboard that would have seemed like alien technology to me when I started riding. Same goes for all the saftey gear, knee pads, helmets, integrated wrist guards in gloves.
The performance, comfort, and saftey offered by modern equipement means I can still enjoy my favorite sports at 50. The thought of getting on a hill with gear I had just 15 years ago makes me shudder.
Damn… I still snowboard in my gear that is over 20 years old. Has it really changed that much? I only go a few times a year so I never wanted to spend the money on new stuff. Lift tickets already cost an arm and a leg.
It’s like going from moms station wagon to a high end sports car. Do I need the performance sports car? Usually no, but those few times you push it, it’s ready for all that and more.
Thermal form boots are a must, though I guess that tech is more than 15 years old in ski boots at least. I no longer cringe and grunt when I put on my boots, they are as comfortable as any footwear I’ve owned.
The flexibility in modern plastics means the straps and bindings themselves are stiffer where they need to be, and have give where they don’t. Combined with the boots there are no more pinch points at all, and all the force you put into riding goes where you want it.
I ride almost exclusively in the midwest US, so hard, rough, icy conditions that most people wouldn’t consider snowboarding in are the every day. A board with reverse camber, often called banana, and magna tractions, serrated edges for holding grip on ice, are a must.
“Turns ice into powder”, well I dont know if I’d go that far. I can lay into turns in the worst conditions and completely trust the edge to hold. When you get that horrible downhill edge that wants to catch and slam you into the ground, the newer complex curves in the camber means more often than not you will pivot out instead of hanging up. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt that edge wanting to catch and end my day, only to slip around switch and get away with it.
I’m sure there are more now, but a product called 3DO gel was the first I saw. Flexible and soft normally, it turns ridged under force. I have pads of that stuff basically all over my body, knee and elbow pads, but also tail bone, forearms, and in the liner of the helmet. Saw a demo where they were hitting a guy with a shovel and instantly thought “That’s for me”.
If I had to pick one, a board with C2 or C3 gen camber from lib tech, or its equivalent makes the biggest difference. The over all package of a new setup bought and sized together for my cough, um, “modern” weight requirements, took riding from a painful and nervous experience, and made it relaxed and enjoyable again. Due to many old injuries, I used to ride an hour, maybe two, and had to quit. Now I can ride a full evening, and feel good about doing a few hours the next day as well.
Displays/screens, especially OLED these days. My phone screen uses this technology, my smartwatch, my tablet and my Alienware ultrawide PC monitor for gaming and movies.
LED technology has progressed massively and is now at the state where you can carry a device with the lighting power of a car headlamp but it only consumes 10W, weighs 200g and fits in the palm of your hand. I can ride my bike through the woods at night, as if it were daytime. All we need now is some technology that makes the woods less creepy after sundown and we’ll be all set.
Another big one for me is Wikipedia and the information sphere in general. I forgot what it’s like to have to physically go to a library to look something up or learn a new skill, amazing power at our fingertips. Showing my age a bit here.
What else? Computer aided engineering tools, cordless power tools, phones and computers in general, lithium ion batteries, my automated coffee maker kills it, drug technology, I like it all.
Synthesizers and music technology in general.
I could write an essay or two about how much has changed in the past fifty years. Most of it for the better.
Linux is pretty sweet. I haven’t got a new computer in over a decade, and don’t plan to, and this OS just continues to work like a dream.
this is the year of the linux desktop after all
I’ll catch downvotes, whatever.
Is there too much hype in the AI space? Yes. Is it still absolutely incredible, the advancements we’ve made since 4chan made gpt2 racist?
We got LLMs that can one-shot code up simple games like snake and minesweeper. I can throw 12 pdfs at a single prompt and ask which of them talks about an idea that might not be explicitly mentioned in any of them and not only can it identify it, it can summarize it and expand on it.
Am I sick of seeing it shoved into everything? Yes. Is it basically magic? Also yes.
Yeah definitely this. The improvements are insane compared to 10 years ago. It’s just annoying that techbro’s and CEOs have decided that it’s the next big thing and will shove it into anything. To too many people AI is a tool that’ll solve any problem, even if it’s usually a very wasteful and unpredictable solution.
Luckily we seem to be hitting the hype plateau and people are getting increasingly sceptical. I’m just hoping it won’t lead to another AI winter. There’s still plenty to gain and figure out, but we don’t need the insane hype that exists now.
Machine Learning or as the non-techies call it, AI. It’s incredible what open source models can do these days.
