{"id":104565,"date":"2026-09-03T05:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T09:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104565"},"modified":"2026-09-02T15:25:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T19:25:18","slug":"enshittification-of-technology-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/enshittification-of-technology-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Enshittification of technology today"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his Substack, Ted Gioia<\/a> provides nine rules to measure technological innovation based on the work of the late Wendell Berry:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(1) The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a very persuasive selling point for new technology. And for most of my life, tech companies worked hard to lower prices.<\/p>\n

I still recall my parents scrimping and saving in order to buy a color television when I was seven years old. It cost almost $500 \u2014 a huge amount in those days.<\/p>\n

They probably should have waited. A few months later, RCA dropped prices to $399. Prices continued to drop in later years. You can buy a high tech TV today at Best Buy for less than what my parents paid in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Computers also got more affordable \u2014 at least until recently. I got my first computer (an Apple IIE) when I was in graduate school \u2014 it was an expensive gift from the Boston Consulting Group in exchange for accepting their job offer.<\/p>\n

The list price back then was $1,400. I could never have afforded to buy it on my tight student budget.<\/p>\n

But, over a period of many years, each subsequent computer I acquired was better and cheaper<\/em> than my previous model. Alas, that happy trend has now ended. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

(2) It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is another good reason to upgrade your setup. And tech did get smaller for many decades.<\/p>\n

Guess who played a key role in that? Yes, Steve Jobs again. Because of his obsession with product design, we now carry a huge amount of advanced tech in our pocket.<\/p>\n

Just consider this remarkable fact: Every device featured in this Radio Shack advertisement from 1991 has been replaced by your tiny phone. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But this, too, changed soon after Jobs died. (Are you noticing a pattern here?)<\/p>\n

The thinnest iPhone ever was the iPhone 6 (2014) \u2014 at a slim 6.9mm. The company continued to launch “mini” models for a few years, but stopped after iPhone 13.<\/p>\n

Tech is now bulking up. It’s not just the devices \u2014 wait until you see those AI data centers. A single facility can spread over two kilometers. <\/p>\n

(3) It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the most obvious requirement for new tech. It needs to work better than old tech.<\/p>\n

But Silicon Valley has totally abandoned this ideal. Every web interface I use has gotten worse over time \u2014 from search engines to social media to software to shopping apps.<\/p>\n

Google is worse than ever. Social media is worse than ever. Amazon is worse than ever. Facebook is worse than ever. Everything<\/em> I get from Microsoft is worse than ever.<\/p>\n

So here, too, we see that new tech previously fulfilled Berry’s requirement \u2014 but stopped doing so around the time Steve Jobs died.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On his Substack, Ted Gioia provides nine rules to measure technological innovation based on the work of the late Wendell Berry: (1) The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. This is a very persuasive selling point for new technology. And for most of my life, tech companies worked hard to lower […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,15],"tags":[160,109,140,1563,174,58,27],"class_list":["post-104565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-computers","tag-design","tag-enshittification","tag-innovation","tag-internet","tag-iphone"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-rcx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104565"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104569,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104565\/revisions\/104569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}