New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Was tech always so scammy?

Ask HN: Was tech always so scammy?
7 by voidhorse | 8 comments on Hacker News.
I doubt I'm alone in feeling that several of the recent big hype cycles in tech, crypto, nfts, metaverse, now large language models and chat style AIs have all had a certain "snake oil" salesmenesque quality to them. That's not to discredit the underlying achievements and benefits these technologies could bring, but it really does feel like we've experienced a few recent waves of technological mania in which contingents of people have overpromised, overfit, and underdelivered. The discourse around these technologies is quite hyperbolic and free of the more rational, reserved expectations and reasoned discussion I might expect to find around technological developments. Companies seem to be rushing to shove chat AIs into absolutely everything, even where it doesn't make much sense, just to get a blog post out at the detriment of their products. It feels like we're in a sort of gold rush wherein most of the gold is of the fool's variety. Is this a recent thing, or am I simply not remembering similar vaporware hypestorms of the past?

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