I typed this up in a reply in an anonymous thread and didn't want to lose it, so I'm repastaing it here, in case anyone else wants to throw a hissyfit with me about it.
I just had a go at this when trying to explain to my teenage niece about how we've taken a step-backwards in technology and we've just been re-hashing the same tech making it smaller, faster, etc.
I tried to do it as best as I could but was told by my sister "look, she's not even going to get 2% of that" which I think is an insult to her but I don't know how to vocalize it any better:
With literacy we were able to communicate one-to-one without any interference or any filter whatsoever. Technology improved on that with typewriters, the Gutenberg press and so on. One person could own an item be able to reach a mass scale of people in a way that improved on one-on-one communication.
Then we had radio and television and because of the radio spectrums that these technologies required we were relegated back to one-to-one scale (through Ham, Citizens Band, etc.) while the mass scale were for corporations of people and as a result they produce content to appeal to the widest majority of people and it was heavily filtered because of the government involvement of the "airwaves" but filtered even tighter because of those producers dependence on advertising.
The personal computer on the scene returned us to the idea of the ability to one-to-one communicate with simplicity and over greater distances without fear of disruption, the typewriter. When Bulletin Board Systems were created they became our Gutenberg press. You could say and create whatever you wanted, but the only people that had access to your content were those that you invited to access your stuff.
In the mid-nineties to mid-aughts everything changed with the web. The same device that you used to access information was the same device that could be used to store that information, and the intelligence necessary to operate either had crossover. This made for an explosion of information because anybody that had access to view information had equal opportunity and ability to create information, to curate it, to host it, produce it, whatever.
When the iPhone came out in 2007 this all went out the window because instead of the operating systems we had been using, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, which all could equally be depended on to create and serve up content, instead we got iOS and later Android which were built from the ground up to not be equal to those other systems but to only consume and present information. And since they were not conducive to be used with email, message boards, other decentralized services that hundreds of thousands of different people hosted, social media companies cropped up, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to tailor their presentation to best fit on these new devices that specialized in presenting information.
So we looped back around again, to where it was just like the radio and television broadcasters in the 40s, 50s and beyond where instead of any person wanting and equal footing with others then had to submit to the wills of these social media companies and the producers of these devices through their app stores, and could only say and produce what they want them to say and produce, only when dealing with radio and television broadcasters getting a pass on your content didn't mean you were marked for the rest of your life, but social media companies removing you from their services will mark you in ways that they will turn those who play by their rules against you.
As a result, we had an opportunity to technologically advance in the 90s and blew it. 2007 came and it was the 1940s all over again and we'll be stuck in gradual loops of innovation as the television did (higher resolution, bigger screen sizes, different display technology, color) but ultimately be the exact, same, stagnant thing as these dumb "smart" devices with no true innovation in the last 13 years (higher resolution, bigger screen sizes, different display technology, faster processors, etc).
After all, I picked up an SE, and then a few months ago picked up an iPhone 8 for cheap from someone, used it for a week and realized it provided no benefit over my SE from 2016, and switched back. The reality is that there is no obsolescence in use unless the software made for it is flagged to only support a particular operating system version, ultimately for no reason, and will just stop working. Something that was unheard of when it came to PCs, as you could expand on a platform decade for decade by just upgrading the components of the device at your choosing.
The generation that attained cognizance after 2007 knows no other way and I think that dooms us.
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[–] Tallest_Skil 1 point 1 point 2 points (+2|-1) ago
MFW. Yeah, okay. I get it now.
I mean, I applaud your initiative. I’ve been out of touch with the kiddos for a long time now and didn’t have a “standard” childhood myself… Thirteen… does she have any other hobbies? Feminine ones? She’s at the age where she’ll want to rebel against the world; what better way than to make her realize how “self sufficient” she can be–not as a “strong woman who don’t need no man,” but rather–as a traditionalist woman who can cook, sew, manage a household, and gets a squoombly in her wombly whenever she thinks of future children?
Fortnite was created as an addiction facilitator to farm whales for cash. She doesn’t know this, nor would she care about it. But she’s at the age where she would (or should) start to be caring about the kind of boys she spends her time with. It’s a good time to hijack her desires to get her to understand “If this is the kind of interaction he wants to have with you now, he’s not going to be there to provide you with a deeper relationship when you want more out of him.”