Tech nostalgia

I think about this a lot wrt to tech in general. I graduated university in 2002 and i felt like the tech between then and 2012 was so exciting and i was so optimistic about it.

There was this awesome search engine that came along that worked so well and seemed to prioritize its users so much. And then they came out with gmail and blew away all the other email providers. (I bought my beta invite on ebay). And they seemed so fun and silly! Remember the April fools day pranks?

And then there was the iPod! It was so slick and easy to use compared to every other consumer electronics device. And then were going to make a phone with the same sensibilities? Yes!

Even social networks felt fun and exciting.

Since then it’s been google getting worse, being more “enterprisey”, Apple’s bad developer relations, weird products i am not at all excited about like the Vision Pro, “services revenue.” Bribing Trump. On and on. It all just feels so much grosser lately.

BUT. I was in my freaking early 20s when all the stuff I described was coming along. I felt like I could take on the world, and was optimistic about everything! I fell in love with my now wife then too which colours all of that time with big emotions in general too.

So was it just the nostalgia and optimism of youth compared with my current cynicism and general tiredness of middle age? It’s so hard for me to separate.

But (apart from the new Mac mini which is hovering perpetually in my cart since it came out) the stuff I’m more excited about these days is the indie stuff. I had a lot of fun spinning up my own open source blog with Hugo. I continue to follow indie blogs (as well as awesome sites like this very enterprise.) I still generally love Apple stuff (and begrudgingly use Google stuff). But my hope right now is in the independent creators, the open source projects, and small communities, again like this one!