Come on over to the open source free software world. Things are exciting and shiny and new while also working better every day. My most recent install of EndeavourOS took about 20 minutes with all drivers and boot stuff working correctly first try, as opposed to the multiple hour installs of 15 years ago. CalyxOS is awesome and has some really cool isolation between apps, not to mention ad blocking. And free hardware is becoming a real option with the newer RISCV stuff coming to market, allowing many more SOC designs to flourish.

I have been in to tech for about 25 years and it has never been cooler than right now with Valve bringing immutable Arch as a base for their OS and making proton work so well that I don't even check before trying things.

Also, man, some of the stuff coming out of the 3D printing works is just amazing. There is a guy who I follow who is working on solid state propulsion, another is working on 3D printed rocket engines, and another working on prosthetics. Cool things are still happening, just not on Windows or Mac.

All the tech is now a service and users are constantly getting the rug pulled out from under their feet with changes to terms of service, availability, privacy, and cost. It's a shit show.

The problem with tech is that it doesn’t directly serve the users interests. It also serves the interests of business.

You can’t really serve two masters as the saying goes, so tech tends to prefer business over the individual which isn’t very healthy.

1.a. Modern tech is awesome because you can basically get a device to do anything, just by sticking a CPU in it.

1.b. Modern tech is boring because you can basically get a device to do anything, just by sticking a CPU in it.

1.c. Modern tech is terrible because to get a device to do anything you need to stick a CPU in it.

2.a. Modern tech is awesome because you get updates which fixes bugs delivered straight over the internet.

2.b. Modern tech is terrible because you get updates which fixes bugs delivered straight over the internet, making it acceptable for companies to deliver a buggy product.

3.a. Modern tech is awesome because it just works!

3.b. Modern tech is terrible because it might just not work, and you have limited error information and even more limited tools to slove the issue.

4.a. Modern tech is awesome because we have so powerfull hardware that we can just power through complex problems.

4.b. Modern tech is terrible because we have so powerfull hardware that we have forgotten to optimize code, reducing the effectiveness of moderns computing power.

You're not wrong.

But also, I'm old enough to remember being into tech as being part of the subversive counterculture. Having a modem, sharing schematics and software via BBS, automating processes with naught but solenoids and a soldering iron, these were things weird people did. I could relate to Data from the Goonies or David Lightman or Wayne Szalinski or Chris Knight, because I was into that shit.

Today, everyone is into tech. The douchebros that drove Camaros and wore sharkskin suits are now techbros selling AI-infused engagement algorithms that tweak the user's dopamine processes and accelerate KPI growth quarterly.

So now we return to our roots. The mainstream pathways are overrun with profit-seeking data hoarders, so we need to abandon the market leaders. Discover new FOSS and jailbreak your hardware. Communicate off the grid, and build something solely for the sense of adventure.

Eschew convention. Abandon Meta and Microsoft and Alphabet and Xitter. Be a part of the underground, and lend your effort to the revolution.

Some day, someone will monetize what we're doing and bring the slavering masses to this new frontier. And when that happens, we should be glad to have people follow the trail we blazed. Because that's a good thing. It's good now that everyone recognizes the value of technology. It's good that schools teach STEM in Kindergarten and the gender barriers are slowly eroding. It's good that everyone is expected to be able to connect a device to the internet and search for an answer to common questions. It's good that anyone can share their voice and join the international community. It sucks that commercialization and exploitation have turned these things into nightmare versions of what they used to be, but that's not a reason to lament building them. It's a reason to dive back into the fray and try to create a newer and better tech that is harder to commercialize and exploit.

It's moving faster than ever from my perspective, but literally sprinting in the wrong directions. So much wasted time and cash on marketing tech.

I'm with you OP. But this isn't just with technology. Companies are trying to pull a maximum of profit out of everything right now when they already have so much.

Life right now feels like we're approaching the end of a Monopoly game and we're not winning.

Not to sound like a broken record, but your problem is with late stage capitalism. That said, nostalgia does have a tendency to erase the memories of the bad and preserve only the good parts. There was a lot of shit going on during those years that sucked just as much as things suck today. Gates was raping the tech sector, Microsoft was in the whole EEE model, there were anti-trust lawsuits, Steve Jobs was nothing but drama after drama (Pixar, Apple, worker's suicides in China). ISPs had quickly consolidated into oligopolies that still abuse users today. HP was spying on their own employees. Facebook was a shit show constantly moving from drama to drama as well. Exploding smartphones. Scam biotech companies. Video games in general have always just been shareholder dick size competition that end up hurting the users. Media conglomerates eating each other alive. Blackberry boomed then collapsed. The dot-com bubble bursting. Not to mention millions of dollars scammed out of people during the first days of Bitcoin, endless data breaches, and the beginning of mass surveillance on a global scale.

A lot of awful definitely not fun stuff happened. We just naturally tend to forget about details. Think about this, Android is older than iPhone, is just that Android wasn't on phones. But almost no one remembers that detail because we instead stay with the vibes and feelings.

Games were new and interesting

The indie game scene is great, and old games are more accessible than ever. Here, I respectfully disagree.

I feel like we've arrived at a low point of personal computing, whereas the arrival of the Amiga marked the high point. "Here, have some affordable hardware and software, we leave you alone to run wild." And people did, resulting in amazing outbursts of creativity. Of the people, for the people. In fact, I'd liken it to the discovery of fire or writing.
Nowadays, computers are a lot more powerful, but they are not equally more empowering. Unless you think making or watching trite, interchangeable ~~corporate puppet~~ influencer videos is worthwile. Software is bloated, repulsive, intrusive, and you have to fight ads, upselling attempts and recurring fees on a daily basis. It appears to be a losing battle...

If all you're following is Big Tech this is the case, but there's still neat things happening in many other places: see also federated social media ;)

How I feel like is that at some point they reached what was at the time peak-practicality and since there was nothing more to imporove on, they started focusing on other things which seems to be trendiness. Then we started seeing indestructable materials like plastic being replaced with fragile glass and slippery aluminium, buttons and the headphone jack being removed from a more sleak look etc. It's like you have a perfect wrench but you want to make it look nicer so you replace tool steel with brass and now you've got a worse tool that looks cool.

I left tech 6 years ago and tried to get back in 2 years ago and noped out again

Go off cuz it's all 💯

You literally are walking around with a supercomputer in your pocket, with the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips in a moment's notice.

Stop expecting that you need to buy every shit new product, and literally just stop. Tech is fine, it's the people who constantly get roped into 'fashion tech' that are the problem. Buying a new phone because if you don't you won't look cool, etc.

I got an Android phone from 2018, and it still works as good as ever. I still play modern games on a desktop PC, and uBlock Origin/Firefox means I never see a single ad. I don't use applications with ads. You shouldn't either. Start focusing on swapping yourself over to F/OSS stuff, and this world you're so frustrated over -- it goes away. Just stop consuming everything.

I think we have more than enough apps/applets and hardware can keep going (especially VR/MR) and what I want now is integration, I want my google account to talk to my insurance company so I don't have to process things manually. I want my banks to talk to each other to pay bills. I want all of my groceries tracked and my bank account create a budget for me.