Also - 90s tech generally didn't try to charge you rent for existing. Either you paid them a price for some fairly tangible benefit to your life, or they gave you the service for free fueled by VC dollars (which we now recognize as nurturing dependence so they could charge you rent for existing, but it felt very different in the moment).

I think a lot of the complaints about tech these days come from the feeling that it's trying to own your life rather than improve your life. Things like tractors that won't go if you don't pay their subscription fees; cars that won't go if you don't pay their subscription fees; music collections that you don't actually possess and that go away if you don't pay their subscription fees; photo & backup services that make all your childhood memories go away if you don't pay their subscription fees; proprietary defaults that auto-opt-you-in to these services so you don't realize you can't access the photos without paying their subscription fees; SaaS vendors that hold your business hostage until you pay their subscription fees; search advertising that holds the path to your customers hostage unless all your profits go to them; search/AI engines that are ~70% accurate but don't provide any good way of seeking out alternative information; E-commerce platforms that take your money but give you junk instead; building contractors that take your money but give you junk instead; insurance companies that take your money but don't actually pay out claims; rent that keeps increasing by the maximum amount each year but never bothers to service habitability concerns with the place; and so on.

I think a lot of the frustration today comes from the feeling that people are treading water not to improve their lives, but to make somebody else rich, oftentimes people who aren't working at all.

> Sure, AI (not LLMs) are literally going to cure cancer

If AI cures cancer it will likely do so in a world of such horrible inequality that only the rich will be able to afford the cure

You could argue that millennials walked into social media and the mobile app explosion with open arms, but were burned at every angle. Photo proof of your keg stand that your upper management now see. Proof of you making drunk (or high) comments on Twitter when you were 18 or 19 that you forgot about that a decade later and got you fired for.

I definitely remember a moment of endless leaked dick pic stories that came out back in 2010 or 2011.

As a millennial looking outward, gen-z seems to have embraced a full attachment to technology in a very open way. They almost act like their value as a human being is determined by the visibility of their online presence.

> I was watching a video about Gen Z versus Millennial views on this subject and they talked about how when Millennials were in high school and college, tech innovation was moving fast and delivering really useful, fun technology. It was also a lot less pervasive and all-encompassing in scope. It wasn’t a massive machine of surveillance capitalism, or at least, not in the same way. Figuring out which banner ads resonate with each user was a lot more innocent than private surveillance cameras on our streets doing Minority Report-style policing.

I think millennials are even more upset by this than other generations. They grew up with a version of internet technology that was useful and non-exploitive, then watched greedy tech companies and CEOs about face and burn it all down to make extra billions.