I like technology (mostly pre-2010), but I think there’s been a philosophical shift in the things that modern tech companies prioritize. AI is a huge part of the problem obviously, but it’s more of a symptom than a cause.
I want something that I can repair and modify. I want the internals to be easy to access and made out of parts cheap enough for me to replace. I want to be able to play pretend like I’m Terry Davis and not have to deal with UEFI bullshit telling me what I can and can’t run on my computer.
It’s all a move to walled gardens with very limited access to the OS or hardware, where the focus is on touch screens and amplified UIs. I’m the kind of person who customized Xmonad and Vimperator (RIP, I know there are dupes but it’s not the same) to never even bother with a mouse, and so it all feels unnatural. I spend so much time fighting my autocorrect when I’m on windows or Mac products, another one of those “helpful” features that is forced and obnoxious.
It’s a move from computers as toy (LEGO set) to computers as toy (needoh squishy). They’ve become machines designed to deliver content and extract data while you zone out. Some of the most fucking fun I’ve had in my life has been spending 6 hours writing PERL to do something I probably could have done manually in 30 minutes or strange journeys into the windows registry as I try to figure out why all of my / changed into ¥, and that’s just not the vibe of anything in modern technology. Everything is designed to hide as much of itself from you.
I guess if you consider the word "Amish" to be negative? I mean I despise Amish because of how they treat their animals, but I don't consider it negative. I'd assume most people don't.
I think that it’s not that people refuse to use new tech, I think it’s more that most of what is coming out is just worse in terms of usability and functionality in a lot of ways. Not so much a rejection of innovation, but a rejection of the priorities that major industry players have decided on. Like, “improvement” is relative, and what people care about isn’t being improved or actively being regressed.
They’re making bad products, and people don’t want them.
I am so overwhelmed by the visual clutter of Win 11 and the bizarre choices MS made. It's like every time I want to do something fairly basic I have to relearn everything.
I'm driving a rented car for work this week. It's a 2025 Chevy Traverse. Not a single engineer was involved in making this car. It's one of the worst cars I think I've ever driven.
The gear shift is on the steering wheel where the windshield wiper control arm would be normally.
Shifting requires pulling in that bar and then moving it up or down. To put it in Park, you press a button on the tip of it.
The parking break is also a button. But it doesn't work unless the car engine is on. The car engine turns on by also pushing a button.
Windshield wipers? Button press. Windshield wipers plus cleaning fluid? Same button, but press it harder.
You want to adjust the treble or bass of the music you're listening to? You can ONLY do that when the Radio is on. Then turn it off. Then switch to Spotify, etc for added Bass.
Near collision detection? It's got the normal lights that light up. But it ALSO has a rumble pack in the driver's chair that vibrates the left or right side of your balls if something is near that side of the car. How near? Someone walking by it on the sidewalk triggered it when I was at a stop sign, and literally jostled my nuts for 20 seconds.
This car literally sexually assaults you during near collisions.
Which I guess might be great if you're suicidal and want to nut while almost dying.
I'm not going digital Amish, but I'm trying my best not to let tech oligarchs hoard wealth that they can use to pursue their take on techno feudalism.
Most things could be nice if they were done environment consciously with something else than profit-oriented data harvesting in mind: social networks, LLMs, even smart glasses.
Ever heard of Wwoofing? There are tons of not christian international communities with their own vibe around. There's also many more not listed aka you just kinda need to know people.
I think you meant to say "people are saying it's because of slop" - no sane person that I know refusing to work with this shit is dumb enough to call it "AI"
I'm not going totally "Amish", but I've become a cranky bitch about technology nowadays. I was very passionate about tech throughout my teens and early twenties. Since then, I've watched every major tech company go to shit. Services I used forever go to shit or die. Companies harvest more and more of our data in creepier and more invasive ways. They went from "don't be evil" and creating interesting new tech or shaking up an industry (Google fiber, for instance) to doing anything as long as it saves a dollar.
The only thing giving me any hope or interest in this space is FOSS and hosting things myself. It was confusing to me at first and still is in some ways, but not only can I solve my own issues, I can offer a lot of it to my friends and family. Having 10 different streaming services and finding where a show is within them is expensive and annoying, but I'm enjoying managing a library and hosting it on jellyfin. Then I can tell a few people, hey get jellyfin and type in this url, I'll find whatever you want. I recently setup seerr so now they don't have to feel like they're bothering me when they want something, they can just request it (and see what's new, upcoming, where something already is streaming if they already have that service, ratings, etc). Yeah it doesn't support the show or movie but it's a much more enjoyable experience. I stopped paying for Google drive and have all my pictures and videos (which is what used up all that space) syncing right to my PC, which then backs up to jotta cloud (not foss). I got off windows entirely (except at work) and use Linux now. I'm probably going to setup nextcloud and get a few people on there soon, since i have the space and it'll save them a subscription.
Sounds like nice people. Cant fault them for it, tech has gone down the drain over the years and newer stuff isn't really worth the cost anymore.
Are they recruiting?
Though why specifically 2021? What exactly happened at that specific year?
The kids today will ask a sort of rhetorical questions out loud and say something like, "chat, should I (under whatever nonsense here)". In this instance, they're pretending to be streamers and ask the viewers. But if someone says, "I'll just ask chat to write my paper (or whathaveyou)." That's ChatGPT. The difference is contextual.
Normally I'd say you can ignore it because it'll change soon enough, but I think "ask chat" will become synonymous with "ask ai" similar to how "Google it" is now considered personal research/look it up.
Well, 'chat' is Internet Chat, as it's been known for 30 years when it moved from academia to mainstream.
'Pop off' is just this year's slang for "rapidly gain popularity", and it'll be replaced by something equally ephemeral (like with 'fetch', 'fleek', some level of 'rizz' or 'cap') soon.
Thank you, but that still doesn't really explain why 2021. Chatting services we're popular way before that.
Something must have happened in the year 2021 in relation to technology so that this specific year was chosen as last decent production year for technology.
I saw a comment somewhere else on Lemmy saying they heard someone refer to asking chatgpt something as "asking chat." So I think it was a meta reference to calling AI chat.
And yes, since chatgpt was released in 2022 my cutoff for searches is also 2021, so it makes perfect sense to me.
I think they were referring to ChatGPT being let loose on the general public. That kinda marked the start for the current AI bubble and the enshittification of every new tech product with some sort of LLM bullshit.
Oh, yes! I was thinking why someone would do that, but cars are a very good example. I wouldn't want a smart car that can't drive without an internet connection, or an android tv that pushes ads on every menu option. I choose the "dumb tech"
Im not kidding one bit when I say, "We need open source Vehicle & Engine Manage System software and hardware!"
I want to be able to flash my Car's ECU with custom FOSS software. Yes, you can already replace the ECU with custom tuneing opetions that cost an arm and a leg. I want there to be Open Source Software and Hardware for consumer vehicles!
My current phone is an iPhone 12 mini. Am happy multiple companies, commodore, clicks etc are working on more limited phones. It all takes too much out of a day.
Also, I want my electronics to have buttons. Not screens.
My induction hob comes with physical handles, and so does washing machine. And for them, it doesn't make sense to do otherwise - wet fingers don't go well with sensors, and I don't know who came up with that terrible idea.
For the smartphone, though, touch controls allow for the precision and speed of input unmatched by any other input method. They also allow to maximize the screen space on a very small device, allowing better interfaces and reducing eye strain.
The quality of an OS and the developer incentives are different matters entirely, though.
I was just thinking about how this is likely my life going forward. The last tech I bought was a first round preorder steamdeck which was a lot longer ago than I want to think about. If I need a phone I buy 5 year old refurb flagships instead of the overpriced disposable "budget" slop they make these days. New hardware is now a luxury item for the petite bourgeois so they can make slop to satiate the poor. AI has sucked up both more money and physical resources than it would have taken to globally eliminate poverty.
No thank you. I'd rather live off grid in the woods with some solar panels so I can emulate every game from the last 40 years. More than a lifetime of games. I don't need anything new.
Recently I've taken to modding consoles. Turns out a 360 can play every game made for the entire original Xbox line as well as its own and that's not mentioning emulating older things like the n64 and it's predecessors. Between that and a modded ps4, you'll never run out of games to play.
I really wish to get to that level. I already avoid a lot of corporate internet sites, but I still have to deal with whatsapp and, to a lesser extent, discord. My car is is an old piece of junk because that's what my salary can sustain, if/when i get a new one, I'll want the same amount of "smart" features as everything else in my home: zero. Computers (also phones and tablets) only connect to the internet via firewall.
Daily reminder of Luddites demands and the realization they were not against technology, just being exploited by it.
Wage cuts- Employees were fighting for their (economic) survival as wages sank while food prices were skyrocketing. They used collective bargaining to demand higher wages.
Price cuts - Textile goods were becoming cheaper, reducing the value created by highly-skilled textile workers. They asked local magistrates to enforce price limits.
Deskilling - As their work was being replaced by low-skill labour they asked employers to protect their jobs during trade depressions.
Quality standards - They opposed the production of cheap, shoddy goods that undercut the market for quality textiles and degraded their trade. They asked the government to enforce quality standards in textile production.
Breaking traditional labour practices - Employers were abandoning apprenticeship systems and customary agreements about wages and working conditions. They advocated for the prosecution of employers who violated these norms.
This is not true, they did not hate the machines. Please stop spreading misinformation about their movement. They negotiated because they had a place at the table. It was only after they had exhausted every avenue that they turned to destruction.
I like technology (mostly pre-2010), but I think there’s been a philosophical shift in the things that modern tech companies prioritize. AI is a huge part of the problem obviously, but it’s more of a symptom than a cause.
I want something that I can repair and modify. I want the internals to be easy to access and made out of parts cheap enough for me to replace. I want to be able to play pretend like I’m Terry Davis and not have to deal with UEFI bullshit telling me what I can and can’t run on my computer.
It’s all a move to walled gardens with very limited access to the OS or hardware, where the focus is on touch screens and amplified UIs. I’m the kind of person who customized Xmonad and Vimperator (RIP, I know there are dupes but it’s not the same) to never even bother with a mouse, and so it all feels unnatural. I spend so much time fighting my autocorrect when I’m on windows or Mac products, another one of those “helpful” features that is forced and obnoxious.
It’s a move from computers as toy (LEGO set) to computers as toy (needoh squishy). They’ve become machines designed to deliver content and extract data while you zone out. Some of the most fucking fun I’ve had in my life has been spending 6 hours writing PERL to do something I probably could have done manually in 30 minutes or strange journeys into the windows registry as I try to figure out why all of my / changed into ¥, and that’s just not the vibe of anything in modern technology. Everything is designed to hide as much of itself from you.
Make it 1994 and I'm fine with it. Couldn't care less. I'd trade it all to be back in 1994.
Is "digital amish" meant to be a pejorative of some sort?
They say it like it's a bad thing?
I guess if you consider the word "Amish" to be negative? I mean I despise Amish because of how they treat their animals, but I don't consider it negative. I'd assume most people don't.
Didn't people do the same thing when cars turned from awesome (60s/70s muscle cars) to shitty 80s cars?
Enshittification isn't new. It's just new to us because we weren't there last time this song played.
Who said it was new?
Whoever sets up the first anti-AI town is going to do very well for themselves.
I think that it’s not that people refuse to use new tech, I think it’s more that most of what is coming out is just worse in terms of usability and functionality in a lot of ways. Not so much a rejection of innovation, but a rejection of the priorities that major industry players have decided on. Like, “improvement” is relative, and what people care about isn’t being improved or actively being regressed.
They’re making bad products, and people don’t want them.
I am so overwhelmed by the visual clutter of Win 11 and the bizarre choices MS made. It's like every time I want to do something fairly basic I have to relearn everything.
100% confirm.
I'm driving a rented car for work this week. It's a 2025 Chevy Traverse. Not a single engineer was involved in making this car. It's one of the worst cars I think I've ever driven.
The gear shift is on the steering wheel where the windshield wiper control arm would be normally.
Shifting requires pulling in that bar and then moving it up or down. To put it in Park, you press a button on the tip of it.
The parking break is also a button. But it doesn't work unless the car engine is on. The car engine turns on by also pushing a button.
Windshield wipers? Button press. Windshield wipers plus cleaning fluid? Same button, but press it harder.
You want to adjust the treble or bass of the music you're listening to? You can ONLY do that when the Radio is on. Then turn it off. Then switch to Spotify, etc for added Bass.
Near collision detection? It's got the normal lights that light up. But it ALSO has a rumble pack in the driver's chair that vibrates the left or right side of your balls if something is near that side of the car. How near? Someone walking by it on the sidewalk triggered it when I was at a stop sign, and literally jostled my nuts for 20 seconds.
This car literally sexually assaults you during near collisions.
Which I guess might be great if you're suicidal and want to nut while almost dying.
I'm not going digital Amish, but I'm trying my best not to let tech oligarchs hoard wealth that they can use to pursue their take on techno feudalism.
Most things could be nice if they were done environment consciously with something else than profit-oriented data harvesting in mind: social networks, LLMs, even smart glasses.
If the Amish weren't Christian, I'd be tempted to join them...
Ever heard of Wwoofing? There are tons of not christian international communities with their own vibe around. There's also many more not listed aka you just kinda need to know people.
A lot of them live in severe poverty.
Even if that's true on an individual level - they often pool funds as a community to those in need (mutual aid).
The Amish where I live are doing better than most people with their businesses, which are thriving in this economy.
Extreme religious austerity tends in that direction without eider community support.
people are saying its because of AI, but its actually because they refuse to get any information regarding technoblades death
I think you meant to say "people are saying it's because of slop" - no sane person that I know refusing to work with this shit is dumb enough to call it "AI"
slop is often used to refer to things that were not made using generative AI
but yeah, AI is the wrong term
Fair enough, I only started reading the term when it was used to express disdain for machine learning systems being wrongly marketed as "AI"
I end up scare-quotes a lot in text and saying "so-called AI" when speaking.
they are AI though
how would it be wrong marketing?
see - when they sell statistical gibberish generators as "AI", gullible people will believe it. You just proved my point.
they are selling statistical gibberish generators as AI because AI is a very broad term that includes machine learning
I'm not going totally "Amish", but I've become a cranky bitch about technology nowadays. I was very passionate about tech throughout my teens and early twenties. Since then, I've watched every major tech company go to shit. Services I used forever go to shit or die. Companies harvest more and more of our data in creepier and more invasive ways. They went from "don't be evil" and creating interesting new tech or shaking up an industry (Google fiber, for instance) to doing anything as long as it saves a dollar.
The only thing giving me any hope or interest in this space is FOSS and hosting things myself. It was confusing to me at first and still is in some ways, but not only can I solve my own issues, I can offer a lot of it to my friends and family. Having 10 different streaming services and finding where a show is within them is expensive and annoying, but I'm enjoying managing a library and hosting it on jellyfin. Then I can tell a few people, hey get jellyfin and type in this url, I'll find whatever you want. I recently setup seerr so now they don't have to feel like they're bothering me when they want something, they can just request it (and see what's new, upcoming, where something already is streaming if they already have that service, ratings, etc). Yeah it doesn't support the show or movie but it's a much more enjoyable experience. I stopped paying for Google drive and have all my pictures and videos (which is what used up all that space) syncing right to my PC, which then backs up to jotta cloud (not foss). I got off windows entirely (except at work) and use Linux now. I'm probably going to setup nextcloud and get a few people on there soon, since i have the space and it'll save them a subscription.
I like that DDG lets you put date perameters on searches. Usually when looking for reciepies, I seach only from 1998-2016.
lemme get some of that sweet old internet
Fr?! Cheat code!
Lemmy
Whew, we’re safe guys
It's not all tech. Just the shitty tech like AI or that benefits shitty people.
I'm not going say I'm not tempted
I'm actually happier rolling back to older tech options and sticking with open source apps and OS's.
My car has no computer, I go talk to humans at banks, I avoid large companies. No AI, I vet everything I utilize for privacy, My brain is at peace.
Sounds like nice people. Cant fault them for it, tech has gone down the drain over the years and newer stuff isn't really worth the cost anymore.
Are they recruiting?
Though why specifically 2021? What exactly happened at that specific year?
AI started to become good enough to be marketable.
Chat started to pop off
Chat, ? Pop off?
Can you elaborate a little more on that?
"Chat" is ChatGPT and "pop off" is popular or gaining traction.
I promise I'm old, I'm just going back to university and am surrounded by children lol
Doing HW is why my response lagged, my bad.
Thank you for explaining. Language does seem to evolve faster than i can keep up with it.
The kids today will ask a sort of rhetorical questions out loud and say something like, "chat, should I (under whatever nonsense here)". In this instance, they're pretending to be streamers and ask the viewers. But if someone says, "I'll just ask chat to write my paper (or whathaveyou)." That's ChatGPT. The difference is contextual.
That's good to know. Thank you. Yeah context can change a lot, but not even knowing the context can make it rather hard to guess any meaning.
Normally I'd say you can ignore it because it'll change soon enough, but I think "ask chat" will become synonymous with "ask ai" similar to how "Google it" is now considered personal research/look it up.
Well, 'chat' is Internet Chat, as it's been known for 30 years when it moved from academia to mainstream.
'Pop off' is just this year's slang for "rapidly gain popularity", and it'll be replaced by something equally ephemeral (like with 'fetch', 'fleek', some level of 'rizz' or 'cap') soon.
I thought pop-off was like 10 years old
Maybe for certain groups of people. It's decades old.
All fads circle back
Can confirm. I'm 40 (oldest Millenial) and shit was poppin-off back in 2010.
Stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen.
This comment is streets ahead.
Thank you, but that still doesn't really explain why 2021. Chatting services we're popular way before that. Something must have happened in the year 2021 in relation to technology so that this specific year was chosen as last decent production year for technology.
I saw a comment somewhere else on Lemmy saying they heard someone refer to asking chatgpt something as "asking chat." So I think it was a meta reference to calling AI chat.
And yes, since chatgpt was released in 2022 my cutoff for searches is also 2021, so it makes perfect sense to me.
Yeah that does make sense, thank you.
This might be my "woosh" moment. But I'll bite.
I think they were referring to ChatGPT being let loose on the general public. That kinda marked the start for the current AI bubble and the enshittification of every new tech product with some sort of LLM bullshit.
Yes this
No, I'm genuinely curious why such an odd number, like 2020 would make more sense as it's the beginning of a decade.
ChatGPT was released late 2022. So it cant be that one either. Maybe some other AI chat service was released around 2021?
Yeah. Or maybe they just got the number wrong, like I did.
Idk framework 16 seems pretty nice
Hey that's me! I actually specifically bought a 2019 kia because it has less digital controls than the 2021 they had for the same price.
Oh, yes! I was thinking why someone would do that, but cars are a very good example. I wouldn't want a smart car that can't drive without an internet connection, or an android tv that pushes ads on every menu option. I choose the "dumb tech"
Im not kidding one bit when I say, "We need open source Vehicle & Engine Manage System software and hardware!"
I want to be able to flash my Car's ECU with custom FOSS software. Yes, you can already replace the ECU with custom tuneing opetions that cost an arm and a leg. I want there to be Open Source Software and Hardware for consumer vehicles!
YES! PLEASE GOD GIVE ME OPEN SOURCE CARS!
My current phone is an iPhone 12 mini. Am happy multiple companies, commodore, clicks etc are working on more limited phones. It all takes too much out of a day.
Also, I want my electronics to have buttons. Not screens.
Buttons and the aux hole.
I don't know why everyone just accepted that we don't get those things anymore.
I hate cordless earphones, I doesn't make any sense at all.
Could you elaborate? Do you miss tackle controls so much you'd rather have that vs screen space, or you genuinely don't want a bigger screen?
Cooking plates come with (janky) touch panels instead of physical buttons, my laundry machine too.
Also actual feel of good buttons on for example amplifiers etc actually is a nice feel. Also buttons are replaceable if broken.
Generally if no screen is needed (fridge) it can just go.
Also a screen should be if it’s there dumb. Eg a TV should not come with an OS that will serve me shitty apps and advertisements.
My induction hob comes with physical handles, and so does washing machine. And for them, it doesn't make sense to do otherwise - wet fingers don't go well with sensors, and I don't know who came up with that terrible idea.
For the smartphone, though, touch controls allow for the precision and speed of input unmatched by any other input method. They also allow to maximize the screen space on a very small device, allowing better interfaces and reducing eye strain.
The quality of an OS and the developer incentives are different matters entirely, though.
I refuse to buy a car made after 2013, so I believe it.
I like my cars dumb and with an actual key. Bonus points for being easy to work on.
You can go a little newer without the bullshit. Mines a 2016. Same make/model is good til about 2019
`09 shitbox FTW
'07 shitbox checking in. Was at the scrap yard last week getting replacement parts.
I was just thinking about how this is likely my life going forward. The last tech I bought was a first round preorder steamdeck which was a lot longer ago than I want to think about. If I need a phone I buy 5 year old refurb flagships instead of the overpriced disposable "budget" slop they make these days. New hardware is now a luxury item for the petite bourgeois so they can make slop to satiate the poor. AI has sucked up both more money and physical resources than it would have taken to globally eliminate poverty.
No thank you. I'd rather live off grid in the woods with some solar panels so I can emulate every game from the last 40 years. More than a lifetime of games. I don't need anything new.
Recently I've taken to modding consoles. Turns out a 360 can play every game made for the entire original Xbox line as well as its own and that's not mentioning emulating older things like the n64 and it's predecessors. Between that and a modded ps4, you'll never run out of games to play.
After that, it's 3d printing every board game.
Are we? I wasn't aware
This is probably unfounded extrapolation of https://openpath.quest/2026/i-am-retiring-from-tech-to-live-offline
Some people also refuse to interact with venomous snakes, for the same reason.
I really wish to get to that level. I already avoid a lot of corporate internet sites, but I still have to deal with whatsapp and, to a lesser extent, discord. My car is is an old piece of junk because that's what my salary can sustain, if/when i get a new one, I'll want the same amount of "smart" features as everything else in my home: zero. Computers (also phones and tablets) only connect to the internet via firewall.
They're Luddites 2.0.
Daily reminder of Luddites demands and the realization they were not against technology, just being exploited by it.
Wage cuts- Employees were fighting for their (economic) survival as wages sank while food prices were skyrocketing. They used collective bargaining to demand higher wages.
Price cuts - Textile goods were becoming cheaper, reducing the value created by highly-skilled textile workers. They asked local magistrates to enforce price limits.
Deskilling - As their work was being replaced by low-skill labour they asked employers to protect their jobs during trade depressions.
Quality standards - They opposed the production of cheap, shoddy goods that undercut the market for quality textiles and degraded their trade. They asked the government to enforce quality standards in textile production.
Breaking traditional labour practices - Employers were abandoning apprenticeship systems and customary agreements about wages and working conditions. They advocated for the prosecution of employers who violated these norms.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Luddites/
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w3kjXWmgos56e3Z4u/learning-from-the-luddites-implications-for-a-modern-ai
Some of them. The rest just hated the textile machinery, and thought it was plagiarizing their work.
This is not true, they did not hate the machines. Please stop spreading misinformation about their movement. They negotiated because they had a place at the table. It was only after they had exhausted every avenue that they turned to destruction.
They can call themselves luddites when they start blowing up data centers.
Ned Ludd didn't fuck around and neither should we.
Hasan Minhaj had an interview with the "Gen Z Luddite" movement
https://player.fm/series/hasan-minhaj-doesnt-know/the-gen-z-luddites-rebelling-against-big-tech
honestly non open source stuff from basically the teens going forwared Im not wild about.