It took me a few thought cycles to put down that question.
In my understanding, we, as a civilization, are on a high wire number over a pit of knifes. The AI craze is full throtle as we speak, with conflicting indicators that it may/will cause the worst economical crash ever - becoming third in less than twenty years, where each was always reported as an unprecedented and irrepeatable event - while at the same time infiltrating companies in ways we are still to discover how ruinous may prove and spreading over the internet like a grotesque parasite, rendering services unsuable and leaking sensible data.
If the great AI companies tank (I can only hope) and the services they provide - whatever those may be - faill, how much is it going to affect companies? There is really no sense of consensus; some say it was the best thing ever, others are registering neglictable improvements, others failed miserably and had to return to the original state of affairs.
Then there is the constant attack from agents on the net, rendering websites, more or less important, more or less useable or stealing, destroying or corrupting valueable data.
I’ve reached a point where I am willing to forego internet and even computers. Even technology in a wide sense. At best, I may keep an air gapped machine, to use for writing and printing documents. But will others do it? And if so, will 8t happen in an organic fashion or will things devolve to a point where something cracks and things just get ugly? Because people are tired. Tired of datacenters popping up like poisonous mushrooms everywhere, destroying everything.
People are getting tired. Everywhere.
I’m dreaming of fully open, fully modular (comparatively) low-tech computers in the MHz and 50 nm structures range each country has a few fabs around. We could do that, if we don’t carry 50 years of computing history around and don’t emulate things for (misplaced) compatibility that ought to be robust, in hardware.
So, basically yes.
To some degree but not in the way you’re imagining.
I share your hope of a catastrophic crash for AI and a dramatic loss of consumer sentiment. However, in the worst case we’re talking about a 10 or more year “great depression” in which industries stall and so on. There’s not going to be an “internet doesn’t work” type crash.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a large portion of the children of today (gen alpha ?) eschew technology to the same extent that millennials embraced it.
Theres an interesting article on Collapse OS that I reference quite a bit.
https://collapseos.org/why.html
Personally I think the answer is a big NO. Because theres just so much tech out there.
BUT we may see little collapses all over in our lifetime. The latest computer cost going up is just one. I remember not being able to get certain items from time to time because of something globally happening. Its always a good thing to come up with alternatives just in case. Because in my lifetime ive had issues with getting:
- Electricity out for more than a week (California brownout/power failures)
- Water (main pipe blew out in apartments, no water for a couple of days)
- Food (many, many, many recalls)
- Pandemic
- Strange weather (ash falling from the sky, toxic chemical air for a bit, etc…)
Its good to have a grab and go bag. Its good to have a plan. Its NOT good to see the above list and think: This is the new norm. It shouldn’t be. It probably wont be.
Analog technology is great and we should always have alternatives.
Ngl I only read the post title cuz I have a headache and should prob stop looking at my phone, but I have to say that I really miss buttons. Like, clicky buttons that depress when you push them and sometimes even make a nice little sound. Also knobs. Nice turny knobs, maybe the ones that do that little click every 5 degrees rotated. Yeah.
No.
Convenience is king.
Analog tech is inherently slower, more expensive, etc.
This is like asking if farming by hand is better than farming using machinery.
The only reason people think this is way is because they didn’t live through analog tech, for them it is retro or nostalgia and they romanticize it because when they do use it, there are no downsides.
Just like the people who think farming by hand is better than farming with machinery are people who don’t farm, or they are those investment banking types who ‘retired’ to go start a farm in upstate NY for fun and pretend it’s a viable commercial enterprise.
The only reason people think this is way is because they didn’t live through analog tech, for them it is retro or nostalgia and they romanticize it because when they do use it, there are no downsides.
Yeah…no…sorry. But you’re deluded.
I’m exactly that generation that you speak of. I grew up Analog, came of age in my early twenties with the first popularization of the internet, and am now getting old while the internet enshitifies.
You are correct that early tech is better than analog, most definitely. Those early days of just about everything (internet, smartphones, computer gaming, etc…) were amazing and I loved them. It was new and exciting. We built the fucking internet with our bulletin boards, and myspace pages, and blogs and forums.
What you are referring to; what we’re living in now, is NOT that. We’ve gone past the phase where technology was legitimately better than Analog and we are well into the phase where the technology doesn’t work for us anymore. It works for the billionaires
Somewhere in the mid 2010’s, we stopped being the reason technology keeps progressing, and we became the product that the internet was selling to companies (our data, our tracking, our metrics).
Would I dearly love to go back to an early to late 2000’s version of the internet and tech in general, maybe all the way up to 2012. Absolutely. But if that’s not possible, than yes…Analog is definitely better than what we have now, even if it does take a bit more time.
Convenience is only convenience if you don’t have to sell your soul to get it. Maybe you’ll figure that out when you’re a big boy.
You’re confusing technology and politics.
Tech is always getting better. You just are getting as many of the fruits of those advancements due to politics and economic policies deriving form those politics.
analog wasn’t better, it was that economic policy was different. the 1980s economy was vastly different than the economy we have today.
but keep insulting me if makes you feel better I guess? clearly I’m ignorant and if we go back to tapedecks instead of spotify that would somehow mean billionaires would stop existing or something… I mean, yeah, please go out and buy one of those retromod tapedecks they sell on for $200 if you want, that will surely ‘show’ Bezos or something…
You just are getting the fruits of those advancements due to politics.
I’m not entirely sure what you are meaning with that. So forgive me if I’m misunderstanding you. But the fruits of those advancements (loss of privacy, destruction of the environment, etc…) are not political (or at least they shouldn’t be). They are very real and very dangerous consequences of an economic system that demands continuous growth for the benefit of shareholders.
Think of it this way. In project management we learn about stakeholders. When making corporate decisions, a stakeholder is defined as “any person, entiry, or thing that will be affected by that decision, good or bad”. If a company decides that they are going to cut health benefits, who is going to be affected by that decision. The employees, negatively. The shareholders, positively. The consumer, potentially positively if those savings equate to lower costs for the company’s products.
When techology was new, the decisions that were being made included us the end-user. We were a stakeholder that was considered when facebook/twitter/google would decide to add a feature, or remove a feature, or whatever. Around the same time that advertising revenue overtook subscription models and premium services as the way for these tech companies to make money, WE stopped being stakeholders. Any tech advance after that, stopped being about us and started being about profit extraction. If we didn’t like the change, well fuck us…we were now just the product because the advertisers were the ones paying the bills.
Just because on the rare occasion, these corporations happen to put out a product that has potential to improve things, doesn’t make it better, because WE, the users were never asked whether we wanted it, or whether or not we were willing to accept that tradeoffs that came along with it.
It’s like building a new sweat-shop in India in order to put out a new style of running shoe without bothering to do any market research to figure out if your customer base actually wants it or not. Because we, the customer base don’t fucking matter anymore.
You think Microsoft considered you a stakeholder when they released MS-DOS in 1981?
Customers aren’t stakeholders. They are customers. Your understand of economics and business here seems to be a lot of idealistic projection about how things should be, not how they are/were.
No idea what you are on about. Every product I use in the IT space is continually getting better than it previously was. Just because folks are mad things like subscription models doesn’t mean they are offering an inferior product. You never owned software in the first place, it was always a limited license. True that the ‘illusion’ of you owning it is gone in a subscription model because it’s no longer on a physical disk, but legally it’s the same.
What customers want is irrelevant and often erroneous. Most of my users say they want x, but if you given them x they freak out, and if you give them y they are happy, because well, they don’t know what they want and they especially don’t know what is good for them. It’s my job as their admin to make those choices for them. They mostly just hate change, even if the change benefits them overwhelmingly and have nostalgia for old inefficiencies that benefited nobody.
Kind of wild that as software has literally gotten worse by locking features behind awful subscriptions, stealing your data, spying on you, etc, that you defend it as better than ever.
Wild that as most appliances now have Wifi or other bullshit features for no reason and also breakdown after 3 years you say everythings better! Planned obsolescence is good I guess???
Do you even live in the real world? Were you born yesterday? You are outright lying and anyone who lives in the real world can feel it.
CEC barely works half the time. Plugging in my vynils analogy cables NEVER FAILS.
Don’t be so disingenuous, it’s embarrassing. Boots don’t need licking.
Convenience is king for people who forgot that life isn’t about being productive.
Y’all are weird and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
Take a minute and enjoy something for once.
“Convenience is king” is exactly why the world is so fucked up right now.
No, it’s hardwired behavior. all animals want to use less energy when they can.
the only weirdos are the ones who expend tons of energy on unproductive useless stuff, like running marathons, biologically speaking.
You are lost.
That people can think we only exist to be productive is a sad fucking state.
Fix yourself, you are the problem with this world.
You will optimize everything until you sit there and wonder why the fuck you’re still unhappy, completely missing the point of everything in your life.
You’ve been convinced by people with infinite greed, that greed is hardwired into us.
It’s this belief that is leading the world into regression after decades of progress.
People are getting tired. Everywhere.
Speak for yourself. You’re free to drop out, but if everyone feels like that then why is AI development continuing? Money is pouring in because there are people with money who want this stuff. Capacity is being built because capacity is being used.
Why is AI development continuing?
There is demand, but that demand only exists because consumers aren’t being exposed to the actual price of AI. It’s all being subsidised by investor hype.
Not one of the frontier AI companies have made a profit as of today, not a single one..
The only ones making profit are those exploiting the subsidised pricing for business (or to pull huge scams) and the guys selling the
shovelscomponents for data-centres, like Nvidea - who are desperate to keep the investor money flowing, to the point that they themselves are pouring some profits into their own AI company customers in the unofficially dubbed great AI Investor circle-jerk.… And though this Bloomberg report was from January 2026, if you look hard enough you’ll notice this circular financing hasn’t stopped, in-fact Nvidea even acknowledged this circular fimancing themselves not even two months ago.
If the only way this keeps going is propping up the industry with investor money and circular financing, then when one of those eventually give and the public are exposed to the true price of AI - what happens then?
A bit into conspiracy territory now, but it’s what has me suspecting that a lot of the news we hear about AI going rogue and what-not isn’t as accidental as it seems. Any publicity is good publicity and keeps AI on the forefront of investors minds.
