"We live in an amazing world and it's wasted on the crappiest generation..."

For reference:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494066" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494066</a> 42 comments<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003875" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003875</a> 2 comments<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495561" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495561</a> 2 comments<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474588" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474588</a> 1 comment<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918637" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918637</a> 0 comments

This video gets reposted here about once every three to six months, and I upvote it every time. To be clear about how deeply I appreciate this video, <i>I am a member of this "crappiest generation"</i>. I'm 24. Hi-speed cable and mobile phones became ubiquitous while I was growing up, and I <i>know</i> that I take my entire life brutally for granted. Anyone in my generation who watches this video and says, "What a jerk! I don't do that!" is either a filthy liar, or they weren't born into the predominantly white-upper-middle-class privileges that Louis C.K. is making fun of.<p>This usually is posted with the title, "Everything is amazing and no one is happy," which I think is far more poignant and fitting, because while my peers <i>are</i> largely guilty of the kind of "convenience entitlement complex" that Louis C.K. is talking about, it is hardly restricted to just us. The fact is, we <i>do</i> live in amazing world, where man can soar above the clouds while taking a dump, and satellites that cost scrillions of dollars to get into geosynchronous orbit are used to send naked pictures zipping across continents in the blink of an eye. I love this video so much, because if you listen with an open mind, it forces you to take a step back and look at what we're really missing.

Yes, it is only this latest generation that takes things for granted.<p>I wonder if he wakes up every morning utterly flabbergasted that his home is comfortably warm, he has clean running water, and wild animals haven't tried to kill him in the night. Somehow I doubt it.

The clip is comical in tone so the premises are inexact but it touches on something very important. As we watched the evening news the other day, my flatmate said 'what a terrible world we live in.' Since the news had just reported several abductions and murders, this may seem like a reasonable assertion. But my flatmate's problem is he <i>never appreciates the good</i> of modern society. He simply does not <i>consider</i> all the good things that happened today when he forms the equation. And this goes for a lot of people. All the benefits of technology, etc, are somehow not REAL benefits to us because some corporation is making profit, therefore everyone else must be sustaining some sort of net loss and there's no point feeling good about it.<p>I'm not suggesting everyone should be permanently ecstatic - everyone's happiness is at root based on achievement of goals they set (or don't set) for themselves, and will fluctuate accordingly, and normalize to the social context. But equally there is no reason to hold a constantly pessimistic and critical world-view.

<i>"how quickly the world owes him something that didn't exist ten seconds ago"</i><p>99% of the internet users today :)

[Louis C.K. on Conan] Some of the best and truest words about technology, its convenience and just how much more miserable (or unappreciative) we are.<p>I'm sure most of you have seen this, but it is worth repeating and watching. Love it.<p>Nuggets: - Rotary Phones (and hating people with 0's in their number) - Life before common credit-card use - Cell phones and impatience - In-flight wifi - Air travel - and funny in-betweens

I'm fine with this being reposted every month or so. In fact, I wouldn't mind if it were pinned to the top of the page.

Jesus people, it's a fucking joke, stop taking it so personally.

This observation is pretty hilarious.<p>But surely the reason that technology progresses so fast is that there are always people complaining and striving to improve on these trivial inconveniences. I have no doubt that the motivation for the development of these technological wonders was due to some ungrateful jerk who insisted that the amazing could be even better.

A different take:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJjUVIIYptE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJjUVIIYptE</a>

2010: Wow, in-flight wi-fi! It's even fast enough to use YouTube!<p>2012: Wow, this in-flight wi-fi is slow. I'm barely going to get all these files into PowerPoint in time for the presentation...

His best analogy was people complaining that there flight from NYC to LA was "delayed an hour" and comparing it to the fact it often took years to cross the country ("people dieing and babies being born in the group you traveled with").

I agree that we do live in an amazing age we live in, even though I wouldn't put too much emphasis on being able to fly (as this has been around for about 60 years now). I think technologically speaking, a major breakthrough was definitely the internet and mobile communication.<p>However, I would like to say something about the current generation. I believe the reason they are whiners is maybe because many youngsters in the west are facing the perspective of not being better off financially than the generation of their parents, putting lots of pressure upon them.<p>I think many people (at least here in Europe) are skeptical of technology because they perceive globalization, outsourcing, technological advancement and increasing competition as interlinked factors, which do not necessarily improve their quality of life, but rather present them with additional unknowns.<p>Again speaking for Europe, technology would be more widely accepted and hopefully appreciated, if there was a way to give the current generation more certainty that there will be enough water to flow all boats.

There's something to be said about how fantastically developed the world is relative to even a decade ago let alone 100 years or more.<p>That said; progress isn't made by mass contentment. We must always do analysis on the margin. Even if what people complain about is trivial compared to how far we've come, we don't go further without these goals. Large or small.

Funny, I thought that the technologies he (clearly) enjoys (and appreciates) today were built by people who were thinking along the lines of: oh shit, it takes 30 years to walk to California, why couldn't we just fly there?<p>It's ok to appreciate things, but it's also ok to expect (and ask for) the best possible service instead of settling for less.

Every generation can say something to this measure about the one before it. If we were happy and content, we would have never made it this far. It is our unhappiness that serves as a driving force to make things even better. Depression and assholitry are not setbacks, they are the driving evolutionary force.

You're sitting on a chair in the sky.

It's very interesting to see how (almost) all these links have less than 15 points when it is the same content....<p>I guess there is nothing better than an attractive headline<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494066" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494066</a> <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003875" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003875</a> <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495561" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495561</a> <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474588" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474588</a> <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918637" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918637</a>

Two more contrasting views on technological progress:<p>Brad Paisely - Welcome to the future: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Yg9wjctRw" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Yg9wjctRw</a><p>Lindsay Mac - Rain: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5KMmVLkzvw" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5KMmVLkzvw</a>

What a great video. Louis CK is one of the funniest comedians out there.

Thanks for reminding me about dialing zeros... Forgot that artifact of pulse dialing.

I assume he is talking about the baby boomer generation? He doesn't specify the age of the people he's complaining about in his stories.

This is a general problem with infrastructure. Once something cool is built, it becomes an expectation. The same is true of the Internet.

Oh look, another typical aging misanthrope complaining about whatever generation is after him. Improvements in tech has made life easier but that doesn't necessarily mean the world is AMAZING, especially for a lot of young people in this economy.