> The 2010s were a decade that “disrupted everything but resolved nothing,” as Andy Beckett wrote, and I tend to agree.
These kinds of sentiments are great for drawing attention and might be true on a macro level, but I do not agree at all. Although there is currently a lot of nonsense going around, there are also great things going on if you look carefully.
For example, I think that electric cars do have their problems about battery minerals and such, but the idea that we can use solar and wind to locally put energy in the car is mind blowing. Some car makers, such as Lightyear, Sono Motors, and Aptera, are actually putting the solar panels on the car itself. Also, cars like the BYD Seal can drive 550 km / 340 miles on one charge and go from 0-100 / 0-60 in about 5 seconds for 35 000 dollars.
Furthermore, SSDs and processors have come a long way since the start of 2010. EUV systems are producing chips below 10 nm. Partially due to this, HDDs cost less than a cent per GB nowadays while SSDs are at about 5 cents per GB according to https://diskprices.com. The Crucial 1 TB costs 53 dollars! I've looked in my order history and payed about the same for a 120 GB SSD in 2016.
Also, note that GitHub was founded in 2008. Although I'm not so optimistic about the vendor lock-in taking place, I am very optimistic about the quality of the work. For example, Rust appeared for the first time in 2010!
Finally, what also makes me optimistic about the future is what Michael Dell stated nicely in a commencement speech (https://youtu.be/sIyGA1MlbwY). He said he is optimistic about the future because he has never met such an involved younger generation who care about the world and care about changing it. I think this also holds more generally, for example, since 2010, climate change is taken much more seriously (for example, see https://news.gallup.com/poll/1615/environment.aspx).
So no, I do not agree at all with the "resolved nothing" sentiment. A lot of bad stuff happened for sure, but a lot of great stuff happened too.
I don't think TFA meant "resolved nothing" as a literal nothing, and they meant in a more general sense of the world, not just seen from the tech point of view.
Sure, we made cool things in tech during this era, but was it worthwhile on a global scale, on a social level, in an economic sense? That is debatable.
It is nonsensical to say that the creation of the SSD or Github has created a more fair society. Apples and oranges.
> Sure, we made cool things in tech during this era, but was it worthwhile on a global scale, on a social level, in an economic sense? That is debatable.
Globally, I do think that it's getting more and more difficult each year for organizations and countries to hide immoral behavior. For example, the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 was kept secret from the West for a few days (maybe a few weeks) whereas I nowadays would imagine a Western satellite on top of it within a few hours to days. Similarly, the situation with the Uyghurs is well known and other countries do take that into account when interacting with China. With an optimistic hat on, I would say that at least knowing about immoral/inhuman actions is better than not even knowing about them. And then I come back to the SSD and chips. They help in gathering and sharing information.
> Similarly, the situation with the Uyghurs is well known and other countries do take that into account when interacting with China
... by ignoring the situation.
In essence, the situations you describe are an illustration on how the tech changes some things (like gathering and sharing information about atrocities) that demonstrably turn out to be not really relevant and not causing a meaningful change, since, as it turns out, the underlying reasons for actually implementing difficult political change (or refusing to do so) don't change just because tech makes it easier to talk about it.
How do you know? I wouldn't be surprised if many individuals and organizations have changed their behavior based on some country's actions. Being unwilling to export to the country as well as being unwilling to buy from the country are definitely things that are happening right now. In effect, this results in the country having less power.
These kinds of sentiments are great for drawing attention and might be true on a macro level, but I do not agree at all. Although there is currently a lot of nonsense going around, there are also great things going on if you look carefully.
For example, I think that electric cars do have their problems about battery minerals and such, but the idea that we can use solar and wind to locally put energy in the car is mind blowing. Some car makers, such as Lightyear, Sono Motors, and Aptera, are actually putting the solar panels on the car itself. Also, cars like the BYD Seal can drive 550 km / 340 miles on one charge and go from 0-100 / 0-60 in about 5 seconds for 35 000 dollars.
Furthermore, SSDs and processors have come a long way since the start of 2010. EUV systems are producing chips below 10 nm. Partially due to this, HDDs cost less than a cent per GB nowadays while SSDs are at about 5 cents per GB according to https://diskprices.com. The Crucial 1 TB costs 53 dollars! I've looked in my order history and payed about the same for a 120 GB SSD in 2016.
Also, note that GitHub was founded in 2008. Although I'm not so optimistic about the vendor lock-in taking place, I am very optimistic about the quality of the work. For example, Rust appeared for the first time in 2010!
Finally, what also makes me optimistic about the future is what Michael Dell stated nicely in a commencement speech (https://youtu.be/sIyGA1MlbwY). He said he is optimistic about the future because he has never met such an involved younger generation who care about the world and care about changing it. I think this also holds more generally, for example, since 2010, climate change is taken much more seriously (for example, see https://news.gallup.com/poll/1615/environment.aspx).
So no, I do not agree at all with the "resolved nothing" sentiment. A lot of bad stuff happened for sure, but a lot of great stuff happened too.