Has technology been progressing or regressing in the venture capitalist era, let's say the last 15 years?

Inspired by this thread - The robotaxis are coming... the driverless car, AV thread. Waymo, Zoox, and others

Putting it here as a poll but more interested in responses. What exactly has improved?

- Automation of anything is hard
- Accidents will always happen
- The capability of human beings to adapt to new circumstances is possibly our greatest attribute
- Every technological advance we have ever had has been met with fatalistic doom by a vocal contingent

― my favorite herbs are fennel and Drake (DJP), Thursday, 26 June 2025 18:53 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

maybe should save it for the doomposting thread, but the VC era (let's say 2009 onwards) has seen very few advances, everything feels like an unfulfilled promise, many things seem to actually be getting worse.
― Proust Ian Rush (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 26 June 2025 20:01 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I would argue that one of the bad things about VC is that the failures and almost-successes get more press than the actual successes, because the things that are actually successful are either not flashy enough for anyone to care about and thus get no press, or become too successful and end up as targets for disruption by the churn machine. (The popularity of the failures should be self-evident; everyone lives a good hubris-driven faceplant.)

― my favorite herbs are fennel and Drake (DJP), Thursday, 26 June 2025 21:04 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This is just not true with this tech, or ride sharing in general, it was a genuine need in places where cabs were terrible (like SF) and mass transit, while around us and effective, aren't exactly NYC subway quality. With driverless cars, it's pretty wild to see them, and their very presence and efficacy demonstrates to many, with their own eyes, that tech is changing and improving in dramatic ways. I often see tourists photographing their trip in or out of a Waymo.

― octobeard, Friday, 27 June 2025 00:17 (fifteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Every technological advance we have ever had has been met with fatalistic doom by a vocal contingent

It's interesting how fear of being in this contingent makes people champion any old crap (not the topic of this thread specifically but it's a major subtext with AI boosters imo).

It's also worth unpacking how much this contingent gets cast as just scaredy cat busybodies when historically it's often included groups whose livelihoods were erased by these advances, and how in a society that is less SHINY THING NOW a lot of advances we've had could still have happened, at a slower pace perhaps but at the cost of much less human misery.

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Friday, 27 June 2025 10:11 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink