Which pieces of technology have actually improved instead of getting worse? – 17 gadgets that have defied enshittification

It’s all too easy to feel like some technology is getting worse. And with companies like Apple supposedly designing their products with obsolescence in mind, who can blame us for thinking that way?

This isn’t the case across the board though. Ouralarmclock was compelled to find out which pieces of technology have actually improved after this meditative moment with his remote control:

‘I was looking at my remote for my TV, and while the TV is absolute garbage, the remote is slim, has a built in rechargeable battery, and even has a solar cell on the back which seems to work well enough from the ambient light coming through the window. I think I’ve plugged it in maybe twice since we got the TV 5 years ago! It gave me a little bit of joy knowing that was something that’s actually been made better vs the remotes of 20 years ago.’

So stop pining for the days of Betamax tapes, these replies prove we’re living in a golden age of tech after all…

1.

‘We went from 1.44 MB floppy disks to 1 TB memory sticks the size of a fingernail. That’s almost a million times more space!’
-monserrath0

2.

‘Optics, whether it’s rifle scopes or space telescopes, we’ve had huge improvements over the past 100 years and things keep getting better.’
-BeastyBaiter

3.

‘Lights. LEDs are far superior to the old ones.’
-VIP_NAIL_SPA

4.

‘Power banks. They went from bulky bricks to pocket-sized lifesavers’
-Onadfick

5.

‘Robotics, and it’s kinda terrifying. The humanoid robots coming out of China are willlld.’
-Just_Hunter9331

6.

‘gps. remember when it told you to drive into a lake and you were like ‘ok bet the robot knows a shortcut’? now it clocked you slowing down at that one intersection and judges you. the audacity’
-peachy_keee

7.

‘Car battery jumper box. They used to be the size of a gallon of milk and were super heavy and had to be charged with a special cord. Now they’re hand held can fit in your pocket are usb rechargeable and can jump your car in an emergency.’
-Hegiman

8.

‘Mobile phone service. You used to either have to pay per text message, and were limited to 150 characters if you didn’t want to pay twice, or you were on a contract with a fixed number of texts per month. At New Year the networks would crash because of the number of people texting each other.

‘Then 3G data came out and you paid per MB or had a fixed number of MB per month to go with your fixed number of texts and call minutes. Then unlimited texts came out and it was a huge luxury.

‘Now, I pay £12/month for unlimited texts (that I don’t use anymore anyway), unlimited minutes, and 100GB of data that I barely scratch the surface of.’
-I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS

9.

‘Combustion Engines! We now have much smaller engines producing several thousand times the power of older and much bigger engines, at an unparalleled fuel efficiency and even much lower pollution. Couple that with hybrid systems and we’re probably going through the golden era of automobiles that still use conventional combustion engines.’
-FellaVentura