The Luddites got a bad rap. They weren't anti-technology. They just knew that the technology was being used to push their wages down and make their hours longer.

Ned Ludd knew that smashing the machines was sometimes the best option!

Not amish.

Moral compass.

The only technology developed after 2021 was LLM's and Stable Diffusion

This is the understanding of a "tech enthusiast", not someone who's actually interested in how computers work.

Someone is pushing a very stupid narrative about those of us who see the situation as anything other than progress.

Thats a bad way of describing enshitification. Yeah people are not interested in buying stuff they already had but for a monthly subscription. That's literally the only idea anyone in tech has had this decade. Do the same thing for a subscription and slap AI all over it. Get series A funding and sell the company.

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 grew up with nearly every stage and major leap of our modern tech. I saw dialup internet and windows 95 and the major shift to XP. I had an original Nintendo and gameboy, and got to witness the evolution to handheld and 3D gaming. I had a flip phone with T9 texting, and saw the first smartphones come about. For me, tech peaked in like 2012, and hasn't done anything worthwhile or innovative since, with the exception of the steamdeck. The internet has only gotten shittier since, cell phones and PCs have only gotten more expensive and complex, without any major increase in capability. Sure they're more powerful, but they can't really do anything new, and all software has only gotten shittier and less efficient. It's honestly depressing to think about how much hope I had for the tech space in the 2000s and how far we've fallen since then.

Everything modern I buy just breaks in a year

Tiny minority very vocal on lemmy

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?

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.

In my mind it is not the age of the technology, but its owner or lack thereof.

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'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.

Lemmy 

• Developer: LemmyNet
• Initial release: May 5, 2019

Whew, we’re safe guys

I draw the line at 2000.

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.

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.

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

Whoever sets up the first anti-AI town is going to do very well for themselves.

I refuse to buy a car made after 2013, so I believe it.