Ask HN: Does anyone else have the sense that “the good bit is over”?
Looking ahead, it feels like there's less interesting things and less opportunity and less potential.
Consumer hardware, phones and computers seem to be "good enough" so demand is falling.
There seem to be fewer obvious ideas for changing the world with the Internet, as evidenced by the things like home food delivery being big news.
Dunno. It just feels like the future of technology isn't so exciting.
Does anyone else feel this way?
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Well, I remember a time when it "felt" like everyone with an ounce of ambition, a computer, and the most rudimentary know-how should feel entitled to spin up something with an impact.
I don't know if that was every really the case. But it's clear that it's certainly not the case now.
Also, the Internet (remember when you used to capitalize it?) is not the end-all of technology. And when it came out, most folks didn't realize how powerful it would be until much after. So what's next? Maybe we just have to try harder to define our own success - find something you care about contributing to. It's not "disruption" in the way it's portrayed in the tech-tabloids, but in the end it's about how you choose to spend your time and energy before you die.
So when it isn't irrelevant, it's because things have snuck in to change the status quo. The internet, I think, is a big enough idea that it's still not really seen it's full impact yet - today we just see the waxing phase of the second attempt to lock down the network under the thumb of a few centralized players. (the first one being AOL et al.) but networks are really quite powerful, and I have faith that the pendulum will shift again.
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