Ask Slashdot: Were Developments In Technology More Exciting 30 Years Ago?

dryriver writes: We live in a time where mainstream media, websites, blogs, social media accounts, your barely computer literate next door neighbor and so forth frequently rave about the "innovation" that is happening everywhere. But as someone who experienced developments in technology back in the 1980s and 1990s, in computing in particular, I cannot shake the feeling that, somehow, the "deep nerds" who were innovating back then did it better and with more heartfelt passion than I can feel today. Of course, tech from 30 years ago seems a bit primitive compared to today -- computer gear is faster and sleeker nowadays. But it seems that the core techniques and core concepts used in much of what is called "innovation" today were invented for the first time one-after-the-other back then, and going back as far as the 1950s maybe. I get the impression that much of what makes billions in profits today and wows everyone is mere improvements on what was actually invented and trail blazed for the first time, 2, 3, 4, 5 or more decades ago. Is there much genuine "inventing" and "innovating" going on today, or are tech companies essentially repackaging the R&D and knowhow that was brought into the world decades ago by long-forgotten deep nerds into sleeker, sexier 21st century tech gadgets? Is Alexa, Siri, the Xbox, Oculus Rift or iPhone truly what could be considered "amazing technology," or should we have bigger and badder tech and innovation in the year 2018?

Comments

Depends on how old you are

[crgrace]

This question reminds me a lot of people who say "Music was so much better in the 1990s" or "Comic books are garbage now but they are so innovative in the 70s". Basically these people were more passionate about their hobbies (music, comics, computers, or whatever) when they were young than they are today. Therefore, anything going on "back in the day" was - almost by definition - so much more amazing than the pedestrian stuff we have today.

I would say the idea that there were more exciting developments 30 years ago is ludicrous. In the last few years we have virtually the whole of human knowledge at our fingertips, we've had a huge resurgence of neural nets, we have rockets that can land themselves (!), actually useful brain-machine interface (for example deep-brain stimulation for epilepsy), self-driving cars, actually cool VR, electronic communications becoming ubiquitous, cheap single board computers that even a child can use (e.g. Raspberry-Pi), electric vehicles becoming mainstream, a technology for currency that is actually threatening to upset the applecart, and on and on and on.

I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s and was deeply passionate about technology. I was excited about the Amiga, Unix, and C++. Those days have NOTHING on today.

Re:Depends on how old you are

[Junta]

People do tend to have greater reverence for things during their formative years. However I will say that easily technology has obviously progressed, but in terms of creative endeavors, there's a lot of room for different dominant expressions. For example, if you were a fan of the adventure game genre, then you would really like the 90s. Similarly for space flight sims, it faded out. If you wanted an over the top action shooter, for a while there games started taking realism too seriously. Same for music, there's some good music from before I was born, and I would say some of the worst music was when I was a teenager, and music that dominated later was pretty good.

The other thing is who dominates the information outlet. Up until the mid 90s, the business-for-business sake folks didn't really sink their teeth into the industry, and it was dominated by people who were in it because they wanted it. Nowadays there are a lot of people in it to get money drowning out the continued substantive advancements.

Old

[RazorSharp]

You're just old. It's common for things to feel fresh and exciting when you're young and then you feel cynical and apathetic when you're old. Young nerds are always excited about the new stuff. Old nerds tend to shrug off the new stuff because they were there to see what preceded it. I mean, you can feel like a trail blazer because of the computer work you did in the 80s, but that's no different than how my dad boasted about being a trailblazer for the computer work he did in the 70s. You can keep going back until you get to the nerd that invented the abacus.

Ah the good o'days

[bfmorgan]

To answer the question, yes, the passion was different then and not just in the developers, but with the users/clients. The users/clients were excited about the new techologies promises and look to the developers to lead them to the promised land. The developers were there because they wanted to be, not just because of the promises of riches or there high school counselor said CS would be a good job. Many of the people I worked with in the 80s and 90s were self taught even before getting into college. The passion was organic and the exicitment of the new computer paradym feed that passion.

Peaked with the current level of technology

[llamalad]

We reached peak smartphone with the iphone 5. Past that, it's more crap we don't need (eye candy, tendrils of the surveillance state, ever more pixels).

Alexa devices and Homepod are just a commercialized version of what geeks were doing 15 years ago, minus privacy and autonomy and self-sufficiency.

The interesting stuff, imho, is happening outside of obvious IT stuff and more where it intersects with other niches. Electric cars, sure. But electric bikes, too. Drones. Blockchain.

If phones were about serving their owners or make the world better they would use their location-awareness to mute their ringers in offices and movie theaters and waiting rooms and turn off their creepy "Hey siri" crap in bedrooms. There'd be undefeatable-via-software LEDs to indicate when cameras were being used, we'd have exact control over what apps got what data and to whom they could send it. And they'd have user-replaceable batteries.

Re:Yes

[AmiMoJo]

Things definitely seemed to move faster. I was watching a video about the 8 bit ZX Spectrum today. It ended production in 1992, and by 1995 we had the Playstation. In comparison my current computers are mostly over 5 years old and the latest models are not really noticeably better for most tasks.

Short answer: yes and no.

[hey!]

In some ways it was more exciting back then, in other ways it's more exciting now.

In terms of what you can actually do, there's no comparison: today is much better. And a lot more is known about how to do things like testing and integrating large systems. But you don't so much stand on the shoulders of giants today as you do on great masses of talented but basically ordinary people. Back in the day if you didn't like the way a library worked you made your own routines. Today the volume of source required to produce the kind of applications we use today is so large you pretty much have to resign yourself to working around the mistakes of others.

One big difference back then.

[AbRASiON]

There was hope, well for me at least.

Future was ever possible, Star Trek, Star Wars, amazing technological leaps, nothing bad could happen. I had no idea of the world we live in, economically, ecologically, socially. This place, I have no faith anymore, I have none. I do not in any way suspect we'll "make it". Not as we are, not as we've been. The inertia of global warming, the attitudes of the common man. The decisions of government.

The only thing which could excite me right now would probably be a a rogue planet on a collision course here, aka Melancholia.

Slightly less sombre, I said to someone just this past weekend, the only thing which could give me faith for our future, would be an Arrival (movie) situation, we might stand a chance then. If someone were to come, peacefully and offer us advanced, seriously, incredibly advanced tech. Maybe we'd figure shit out.

Unlikely though, extremely.