Rant: Back in the pre-2000’s era, if you wanted to find out which product or service was of a given quality (low, mid, high) – you would have to reach out to the experts in society to help guide your research and information. Then, when technology came about, I switched my reliance onto two big giants called Google and Amazon. On these platforms, I was provided with the proper tools and mechanisms to search and research which products and services were of a certain specific quality-level and price-point before acting upon it. This process worked for me for a number of years, however, I am now running into what many have described regarding irrelevant Google search results (lost knowledge) and cheapening Amazon product listings (lost quality). I am now finding that in order to get to the exact knowledge on product quality in life, I either have to search Google for Reddit posts/comments and/or call an expert in real life to try and extract that experience, knowledge, and expertise that a person has built up over the years (assuming they haven’t retired yet). Things seem to be getting harder instead of easier as life and time go on — something I didn’t expect to happen when I was a kid growing up with all this once amazing technology!

Edit: Cory Doctorow has been covering this issue in a multi-part series under a new term ~ https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2d6d57306072