A change in perspective might be helpful. If you only look for the bad, that's all you'll see.
We have, among countless other things:
- mobile devices, networks, and services that are allowing developing countries to leapfrog their progress in the world
- development toolchains and frameworks that empower a single person to create an order of magnitude more output, enabling smaller teams or even solo enterprises to create major value
- reusable rockets bringing high quality and affordable internet access to the underserved
- mass produced electric vehicles for goodness sake!!
And that's only a few tech-related advancements, the world is largely moving in the right direction in so many areas. I'd never bet against the steady drumbeat of technological progress.
We need to look at what we can improve. Of course things have improved, but not uniformly across all domains and many things have gotten worse.
If we keep patting ourselves on back, these too will degrade. Using hindsight to definitively say what has gotten worse is how we improve including the things you are mentioning.
I kind of think of progress as navigation on a complex multidimensional domain space filled with lots of local optima. To not consult hindsight (gradient) is a bad strategy. Similarly, to not explore is to stay at the same spot. Sometimes, it is important to roll back and go to the old days and try to explore in another direction.
But all of this has it's rise and it's stagnation and bloat-fall.
What does a new flagship phone do better, compared to a 2year old one? A slightly better camera, maybe more storage space, and that's it. "Back in the days" we had phones with 9,10 7-segment displays, then single line lcd screens, multiline, graphical, color, touchscreens and smartphones (each step taking only a couple of years), and since then (so, the last ~5 years) not a lot of "new stuff", that would warrant buying a new phone (except the failing battery on the old one).
Websites have got massively bloated and slow, even on modernish computers, and show even less informations than they did in the past (fscking gallery pages). We've gone from text-only sites, to basic html (with images!), javascript, to 'web 2.0' with dynamic loading... to bloatware.
As mentioned... word has gone from a five, ten...ish megabytes to hundreds of megabytes while not offering much more compared to older versions. Yes, it's a bit more polished, some things are easier now... but not a lot. Going from text to graphical mode was a "revolution", but again, not a lot new after.
Even operating systems... what does windows 10 do, that windows 7 didn't?
I mean... we do get a new feature here and then, but the push to "make a new version" is stronger than the actual need for a new version.... not at first, but once the software gets mature enough, there's (almost) "nothing new to add".
There is plenty of good to appreciate in every moment of every day, and it's helpful to do that. Even in software, there are a few standout gems which were not around just a few years ago.
However, this particular thread seems to be about the quality of user-facing software, which, overall, has been on a continuous nosedive for about 10 years, and every time I think it can't get any worse, someone figured out a new way to make it suck.
One quiet improvement has been cloud-backing & sync. Remember 12 years ago when Dropbox was revolutionary? But today, I can fluidly migrate between a phone, table, PC, and laptop, changing as I move through the day, and (other than open tabs) everything is just there, accessible on every machine.
I think this is one nice thing that is very easy to take for granted.
Yet another perspective is looking for how things can be improved.
Mobile connectivity is a wonderful thing as long as it is a means rather than an end. Sometimes it takes a glance into the past to understand the former, to realize that networks were created to enable communication rather than to captivate audiences.
Modern development toolchains are great, yet they typically cater to professionals who have the time and incentive to learn them. We don't have to look very far into the past to realize that there was a time when accessibility was as important as productivity.
Creating a world that everyone wants to live in requires a great deal of reflection regarding what we need and how to accomplish it. Letting technological development run amok may achieve some of those goals but it can also be regressive.
I've heard of someone only using wifi, and disusing the cell networks, keeping the device in airplane mode when not in use. It saves battery, and the devices can stay powered up for days without charging.
We have, among countless other things:
- mobile devices, networks, and services that are allowing developing countries to leapfrog their progress in the world
- development toolchains and frameworks that empower a single person to create an order of magnitude more output, enabling smaller teams or even solo enterprises to create major value
- reusable rockets bringing high quality and affordable internet access to the underserved
- mass produced electric vehicles for goodness sake!!
And that's only a few tech-related advancements, the world is largely moving in the right direction in so many areas. I'd never bet against the steady drumbeat of technological progress.