from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you keep your sense of purpose during rapid tech revolutions?

by febin on 10/31/23, 8:07 AM with 2 comments

• by jauntywundrkind on 10/31/23, 8:53 AM

  To me, most of what's happening isnt very important. I still love & feel a deep purpose for tech, but most tech has devolved into wonkery that does not help the somewhat-slimbering personal computing revolution. And so most of it doesn't mean much to me.

  I'm a bit of a Luddite in the sense that I want people to feel empowered by tech, feel in control, instead of tech controlling us. Ursala Franklin wrote aot about the technological society, and she distinguished between work technology which we use, and control technology which uses us. We need revolutions, but they ought be towards what Ursala called holistic technology, which works under the hand of the operator. And that is just in short supply.

  There's such a rift, where we so readily market computing as hard, and our readymade solution as the final last antidote that will forever eliminate all that effort of learning computing. It's falsity. What we haven't spent much time doing is exploring how to expose & make accessible & malleable general computing.

  There's just a couple folks out there trying to make a real meaningful revolution. https://malleable.systems

• by gregjor on 10/31/23, 8:14 AM

  My “sense of purpose” has never had anything to do with my career in software. Family, friends, children and other interests give me sufficient purpose. Tech is for getting an income.

  If you work in the industry long enough you’ll notice very few actual revolutions or even innovations. Just a lot of recycling and fad and fashion, with the occasional actual new idea.