When I was young and starting out with computers, programming, BBS’ and later the early internet, technology was something that expanded my mind, helped me to research, learn new skills, and meet people and have interesting conversations. Something decentralized that put power into the hands of the little guy who could start his own business venture with his PC or expand his skillset.
Where we are now with AI, the opposite seems to be happening. We are asking AI to do things for us rather than learning how to do things ourselves. We are losing our research skills. Many people are talking to AI’s about their problems instead of other people. And they will take away our jobs and centralize all power into a handful of billionaire sociopaths with robot armies to carry out whatever nefarious deeds they want to do.
I hope we somehow make it through this part of history with some semblance of freedom and autonomy intact, but I’m having a hard time seeing how.
When I was a kid being interested in computers was a sure-fire way to avoid getting laid.
Yes, I remember the day I quit the football team and started hanging out with the nerds. I lost a lot of friends and coolness points, but I was so much happier sitting in the library for lunch playing with computers.
Don’t get me wrong - I spent many a lunchtime in the library and the computer lab. Loved it. But by 16 I had to repress it and get into drinking and music (which, honestly wasn’t hard), just to fit in and meet girls.
The taboo of IT stayed with me, so I never openly discussed my interest in it.
Happily, online life has been normalised and teens and adults game all the time without it being seen as odd.
Ironically, despite being into 16-bit games in my teens I never really allowed myself to get into gaming in the suceeding years.
I regret that now, as I reckon I missed out on a Golden age of gaming that I would have enjoyed had I just been born a decade or so later and been less uptight about what people think.
Yeah I also started partying in my teens and met lots of girls… Also kept my IT hobby mostly to myself. But gave me a great career and as you say, now it’s fully normalized so no need to hide it too much, though there aren’t a huge amount of 50 year olds that are into gaming and home automation as I am outside of forums like Lemmy.