… In my experience there's still plenty of people out there tinkering just for their own personal satisfaction, but of course there's almost certain a whole load more people out there 'tinkering' to try make a profit.
Original discussionWe Are the Last People Who Know How It Works270 source comments · at importThe financialization of everything is what's ruining everything. In the computer and internet realm, there's warm nostalgia from hours spent tinkering, building one's own PC, reformatting C drives due to malware, searching for "snippets" to add a forum or pimp a myspace page. But inevitably the money incentives come to dominate. It's all of our doing, we all dream of a better life to put it charitably. Now everything is a means to a commercial end. Tinkering for fun and knowledge just isn't profitable. And it matters less and less what each our stance is on money and capital if the people that optimize for money and capital gobble up all the money and capital. Of all that's going on, the wealth gap is what's most troubling to me, closely followed because it's closely related is "post truth". I think post-truth is roughly caused by the fact that people are happy to believe what they want …
Full originalBring your own experience to the conversation.
Agreed, I'd say tinkering for profit has become the defacto optimization and tinkering for its own sake is less fashionable because it commands no attention. and everyone is obsessed with the modern currency: attention. To be clear, I'm seeing this as an observed phenomenon, not that everyone made up their mind that they hate tinkering and love money. I just think it's getting really really hard to exist in the world as a normal person when the entire human collective is getting pumped commercialized hyper-media from all angles at all times now 100X'd by genAI bots. It's really exhausting and so you either opt-in to the game, monetize your now AI side-hustle to pay the rent, or opt-out and live in the woods. and get packages delivered by Amazon. heh.
Full original> 'tinkering for fun and knowledge' was never meant to be profitable That's why it's "for fun and knowledge" and not "for profit".
Full originalRespect different perspectives. Share concrete experiences.
Sign in to post, reply, repost, and quote.