I really never have believed times improved, and i am almost positive things will only get worse.
30 years ago we had a future to look to, the unshittified internet, great music, affordable land/housing, affordable durable cars, people actually interacted in real life, no social media trash. Now, we have billionaires and LLMs. I don’t see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.
Yes, everyone will say “civil rights improved” and yes thats maybe the only thing that has changed, however it’s getting taken away every day again so I don’t think you can even use that point anymore.
30 years ago the Internet was tiny, and to this day you can largely get the same experience if you opt to ignore some of the more frustrating Internet. In practice it is a problem that extremist views can come closer together without the moderating influence of those physically near you. would definitely appreciate a harder push back towards federation and a break from subscription based software, though compared to 30 years ago, the free software today is better than anything we had back then.
Our cars were not durable, drive trains can take a whole lot more negligence than they used to and hoses and gaskets last longer than they did back then. There have been struggles with some cars adding turbos for efficiency, but even those are way less problematic than they used to be.
We can interact in real life, we just largely don’t. As an adult I probably interact with peers about as much as my parents did when they were my age, not much at all. Constant hanging out goes away with age for most people.
There’s a lot of regression in the world but that pendulum swings back and forth.