The Downward Spiral of Technology
Tech downgrades, it's just business, becoming a billionaire, and building useful things for useless people
After writing last week’s post, “A Frictionless World Is Boring As F*ck”, I came across a few more interesting pieces that add another element to this issue. The crux of all of them can be boiled down to the following theory:
“At first I didn’t believe it. But the evidence is overwhelming. For the first time in history, technology is getting worse, not better.”
Tech Downgrades
The quote above comes from the always eye-opening
and his recent article What Happened To My Search Engine?:“I recently bought an expensive new computer. And after a few weeks, I went back to my old computer—it ran better than the new model.
I didn’t expect that. I’ve been buying new computers for decades, and always assumed that newer is better.
And until recently it was.
But here’s the new reality: Upgrades are now actually downgrades. At first it was just software—those dreaded updates!—but increasingly it’s hardware too.
For a while, I resisted returning to my old desktop model. I assumed the problem had to be wi…