I mostly agree with Jon, but I'll be a contrarian for the sake of exercise.

I can't speak to games, as I don't play them. I'm sure downloading updates to some $70 you just bought can't be fun. (I will say that it is insanely cool that much of the US has access to terrestrial gigabit or high-speed broadband and those that don't can Starlink. I used Starlink on a Royal Caribbean cruise recently. It was FAST. Way faster than the bullshit they had before. Crazy that you can get fast Internet literally anywhere now.)

Social media telemetry is definitely invasive, and misinformation spreads faster than ever. But on the flipside, there are plenty of TikToks and Instagram accounts that are educational and useful, and it is very easy to find niches for literally everyone.

Also, social media has made it really easy for businesses and customers to interact. The only reason why we do cool shit is because my wife gets notified of stuff on the socials.

Also, much of the work done to make social media profitable (did anyone REALLY think that the FB of old would last? No-one would pay for FB outright) has led to an unbelievable amount of really cool tech that makes problems that were really difficult ten years ago child's play now (gRPC/Thrift/protobuf come to mind, and that's before frameworks like React or even standards like HTML5).

Touchscreens are harder to develop muscle memory around than knobs and buttons. But now we have ELECTRIC cars that are unreasonably fast that you can fill up every day at home that get insane updates over the air like iPhones. I think that's pretty cool. I also really like the idea of not needing to completely upgrade my entire car just to get new key features.

Yeah, subscriptions are everything these days, and I hate how predatory sites have become in getting you to convert. However, I also remember $99 getting you basically the most neutered version of Office ever, with no ability to upgrade. If you wanted a capable version of Office, you either paid the $300 or whatever it was (PER MAJOR RELEASE!), you got it free from school or employer, or your sailed the high seas and downloaded sweet wArEz with super cool happy hardcore music playing in the background while they produced serials that you hoped worked. These days, no need for serials because you can just pay $7/ month of every Office tool you need until you don't need it anymore, or you just do the free trial.

I really really like the fact that software and contracts in general are super non-committal. (Remember when cell phone companies would only allow you to pay $69.99/mo for some BS 2-year plan with a BS phone that was WAY more expensive than it should have been and your only way out was a cool $500?)

Netflix is garbage and half of their shows are trash quality. But I remember when pirating was the new hotness and ALL of the cordcutters wanted a la carte TV (i.e. paying for the channels they watched instead of paying $139.99/mo for 700 channels of garbage), and now we have that! It sucks that shows are spread out across a billion streaming apps, but I personally find that better than being forced to a single provider with artificial channel packages (not like my opinion matters here; I don't watch TV).

That's before considering the absolutely insane amount of content out there that would have NEVER gotten airtime in the traditional entertainment industry. Do you think MKBHD, LTT or Try Guys would've gotten their own shows on the big three?

VR, MR and ChatGPT are fucking terrifying, but at the same time I can see these technologies unlocking a lot of potential for humanity. Imagine MR assisted surgeries that derisk previously-impossible procedures, or freeing journalists from writing boring stories so they can focus more on investigative journalism, or having chatbots that actually fucking work.

Everything is awesome and terrible. Always has been!