alt Hacker NewsPeople just forget the before times. No one wants to go back to printing out driving directions or emailing photos. We take all these things for granted now but I am 100 certain the technology we have now has saved hundreds of millions of lives through downstream butterfly effects.
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It's possible to have both internet maps and photo web sites, and not have unregulated* social media.
*Or rampant or whatever other word you feel fits the current state of social media.
How does not printing directions save hundreds of millions of lives?
That's because you're measuring yesterday's worlds with today's demented expectations.
Because there was no faster way to do it, it was okay to wait for someone to send you those photos via email. If you were late for a meetup somewhere new, that was okay because people knew you might have missed the street a few times stopped for directions etc.
We have more convenient things, sure. But they come with increased and rather frenzied expectations.
It was always an option to have the technology without the bullshit. We can have GPS without allowing Google or Apple to track our every movement. We can have useful websites without allowing the people running those websites to mine every scrap of data we upload and sell our private information to anyone willing to pay for it.
It's not a requirement or law of nature that every technology sold must be used against the customer, we just haven't reached a point where we say enough is enough and outlaw such consumer hostile practices. Instead we've been allowing the corporations who seek to screw us over at every opportunity to gain more and more influence over the governments that could constrain them making it harder for us to fight back against the abuses we're subjected to.
Those were wonderful times, I see no problem with driving by a paper map, emailing photos, and sending gpg-encrypted e-mails, which all the surveilling scum could go fuck themselves about, at all.
Convenience is the glue that got all the frogs stuck to their boiling pots.
> the technology we have now has saved hundreds of millions
Oh wow, are you sure it's not billions?
Has it? If we've saved hundreds of millions, then I would argue simply the amount of money spent in AdTech could have saved billions.
The Internet of the 90s and early 2000s was amazing. The Internet today is a dumpster fire of attention hoarding, regurgitated content and, now, slop.
Society as a whole may be better off without a lot of the convenience features we have, but I also don't agree that it's all or nothing. We could have an amazing tech relationship today. But a select few wanted to monetize it for themselves. Here we are, welcome to the free market.
Yes, I am from the olden times, the dark times… Times of fear and terror, printer not working, having to write things down by hand, ach, the horror… Today much better, says me, yass the foundations of democracy and fabric of society has been eaten away like by millions of worms, teenagers constantly fighting with mental illnesses, lies and disinformation, young strong lads drug or gambling addicts… but, the minor conveniences, my lad! Ach, those I would not live without. The minor conveniences…
> $230 notebooks, digital cameras and tiny dollhouse furniture: How Gen Z’s desire to get offline is a boon for businesses
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/03/going-analog-gen-z-desire-to...
I am not so sure. The world of printing out driving directions or emailing photos sounds a lot more calm. Also, simply quite enjoyable. The current world is cramming too many events in too little time, it seems. Stress is quite bad for health so I am not so sure about these hundreds of millions of lives saved. It may also have costed quite a few.