we spent a decade being told we were building the future, and now the future is a subscription fee and a quarterly layoff email

You used your most prized mental faculties to build software: logical intelligence, creativity, etc to make someone else rich

There is certainly ample precedent for this. How many stable hands lost their jobs as people switched from horses to automobiles?

In 1923 there were 863,000 coal miners in the US. There are less than 45,000 today.

I read about an experiment with pigeons. The birds were given a target. For one iteration if a bird pecked a target it would get a piece of corn. For another it got nothing and for a third... sometimes it would get piece of corn and sometimes it would get nothing.

Tech for me is that third variation. Sometimes you get nothing and sometimes it totally delivers (and more!) on what it promises. This is as a user and even as a provider. You take various bits and bobs and suddenly with a slightly clever idea and you've got something that's more then the sum of the parts. Sometimes. Other times it just never comes together.

I'm not sure if that makes me happy or sad. Bit of both I suppose but I keep going back to the well because you never know.

I think we shouldn't be depressed, but work on ideas and concepts of how this could be changed into something good.

I see a lot of people hyping AI and condemning it, but very few seem to be interested in working on what our future should look like.

I quit tech a couple of years ago to become a high school teacher. No regrets.

With or without AI, if I had to talk about EBITDAs for my job, I too would have to take up knitting to feel like I’m doing something real. I’m sure Charlie Munger would agree.

Because of the *gap* between the enjoyment of "discovering, learning and practicing tech" and the capitalistic use of tech and the consequence it has on people AND how tech is used.

I dont think it will happen

Things are going to change once again. It's been a long time ago since things really changed. In the 70s, probably. And before that maybe in the 1920s. It will be a generational change. Life went from quaint 19th century stuff to airplanes and medicine and plate tectonics and knowledge of galaxies and washing machines and the contraceptive pill and antibiotics in one or two generations. Then there was a bit of breathing room and things are picking up once again. Life is never constant. It is something you prepare for and deal with. For reference, people in Europe over the last hundred years lived through extreme ups and downs. Cities flattened to the ground. Entire families exterminated. Properties expropriated. All streets renamed multiple times. Entire ideologies swapped out multiple times. The US has enjoyed relative constancy. But now the entire world will change once more. It's not the first time. But history is back. Whether you prepare or put your head in the sand.