Up until about 1 or 2 years ago, I paid pretty close attention to technology-related news. I tried my best to keep an eye on new and upcoming hardware, software, and cool gadgets. Like many other people out there, I accomplished this by being active in certain online communities as well as simply reading all of the interesting news stories that ended up in front of my face. However, this habit of mine has tapered off to an almost non-existent level as of late. As I was considering this whole notion today, the following reasons came to mind.

5. Technology news has become much more mainstream. It’s all over TV, magazines, and countless websites (with countless new ones popping up everyday). It used to be that you would actually have to do some snooping to find out the latest and greatest information, but these days it is practically thrown in our faces.

4. Recent technological advances (like the $100 laptop, for example) have made much of the news seem less important. It’s like hearing about car crashes on the local TV station; it means something to somebody, but when you look at the big picture, car crashes occur all the time so it is impossible to actually care about every single one. To put it another way, whether you have a $100 laptop or $10,000 Alienware powerhouse, you still go to the same internet with the same broadband speed and watch the same Youtube videos.

3. Not surprisingly, many of the sources where I used to get my news became increasingly commercialized. They start out as small outfits that work really hard to provide quality and unbiased information about all aspects of the technology world. Then their hard work ‘pays off’ and they grow, attracting the attention of the tech companies who see them as prime opportunities to push their products. Thanks to that increased revenue, they stop working as hard, decrease quality, increase bias, and generally suck more. It’s as if the perfect technology news source is an oxymoron that can’t really exist for any significant period of time.

2. The capabilities of consumer-level technology are actually meeting all of my needs. A few years ago, each new advancement in graphics, CPUs, RAM, or internet service meant that I was that much closer to being able to play whatever video game held my attention at the time. Of course, there are still games and other software that push the limits of current hardware, but it seems as though there aren’t as many and they aren’t pushing the limits as hard.

1. Recent technological progress seems to be focusing less on actual capabilities and more on aesthetics. I feel like I should’ve seen this one coming because, after all, you can make phones, laptops, and other techy gadgets only so small before they become unusable or so fast before the difference becomes unnoticeable. Now, with the avenue of ever-shrinking techno-toys coming to a dead end, companies are trying to find new ways to package up and interact with the same damn device. I don’t care if you can sneeze at your computer and it will tell you the turn-by-turn directions to Chattanooga in a foreign language while simultaneously teaching you said language…can you check your &^%#ing email on it?