Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does anyone else feel like technology - specifically consumer tech - kinda peaked over a decade ago? I’m 37, and I remember being awed between like 2011 and 2014 with phones, voice assistants, smart home devices, and what websites were capable of. Now it seems like much of this stuff either hasn’t improved all that much, or is straight up worse than it used to be. Am I crazy? Have I just been out of the market for this stuff for too long?
What? No. lol. Tech is still improving. You’re just thinking of the bad new stuff and good old stuff. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Phone’s batteries and resolutions are much better than they were in 2014. Voice assistants never really took off. Smart home stuff is maaaaybe a little better now but there are also a shit ton more brands now and most are crap. But that also means cheaper and more widespread.
I just got a new phone, and the ai voice assistant is actually good. It’s what people imagined it was going to be when they first came out. It doesn’t have access yet to a lot of things, so it can’t ‘act’ on things, but it actually gives consistently relevant info.
One thing I’ve used it for recently is I was in a game and knew there was a secret chest and it could accurately tell me what to do to get it Way better than looking up a video.
The thing is that 10 years ago the phone I had was very similar to the one I have now, the laptop I had was very similar to the one I have now, and up until very recently I still had parts from the desktop I used to had back then installed on my current desktop, I also visited lots of the same sites I do now and played some of the same games. But if you go back another 10 years it’s very different. In 2004 I didn’t had a cellphone, by 2014 I had a Google Nexus, now I have a Google Pixel. In 2004 I didn’t had a laptop, in 2014 I had a 8GB RAM 512GB dual core laptop, now I have a 32GB 1TBB 6 core one. In 2004 My desktop had 256MB RAM 10GB single core 1.6GHz processor, in 2014 it had 16GB RAM 1TB 6 core, now it has 32GB RAM 3TB 6 cores.
Obviously my computer now is much better than the one from 10 years ago, bit not by the same amount than the one form 2014 was from the one from 2004. To try to put it in perspective I would need to have around 500GB of RAM for it to be the same leap in RAM amount.
Phone screen pixel density actually went down in the last 10 years due to bigger screens.