Anecdotally, I usually hear this kind of comment from people who are deeply conservative in their beliefs (not necessarily politically Conservative with a capital C, but more...ideologs). For some people, when reality doesn't line up with their internal ideals of how the world should be, they want to incessantly scratch at that itch even long after it's become a festering wound...when walking to the store and getting some itch cream would have solved it all.
Onward, outward, forward...progress is scary stuff. Otherwise functional adults often have deep rooted terrors that cause them to want to withdraw into the known.
I do consider myself conservative. But I don't understand why some feel the need to "progress". Why not just live and enjoy your life instead of constantly wanting to progress to the future. Are you that depressed about your current life that you need to strive for technological improvements to make it bearable?
Would you still be able to live a happy fulfilled life if absolutely NO "progress" was made during it? I would.
1) The world changes, progress or no. Tomorrow is different than today. Someday, something will change and that tomorrow is the one that's going to make your steady state suck. And that will be just the first of many changing tomorrows. The harder you cling onto your desire to keep yourself and everybody else's world trapped in your comfort zone, the harder it will be to catch up to the accumulated tomorrows that have occurred.
2) Your life, whatever it is and I mean this without intention of offense, stinks for me. I don't want it, and the world that makes your life comfortable makes mine unbearable or at least unbelievably irritating in some aspect somewhere. For you to have your comfortable life forever means mine has to suck somewhere and sometime.
HN is about building things and changing the future...and if you're really clever, getting paid for it. If those things aren't of interest to you, and the world you've built around yourself is just fine and you can live in that world till you die, more power to you, but you're probably in the wrong discussion forum.
(you joined HN about two months ago, telling me that your assertion that your world is happy and completely fulfilled is obviously and trivially false, or you wouldn't have bothered joining up in the first place.
Something about your life is unfulfilled, social interaction, business, technical know-how, whatever, and you sought an improvement in your life out.
The difference between what you keep saying in your comments and what you actually do is probably going to mean some hard self-evaluation before you can resolve that fundamental cognitive dissonance and be a healthy minded contributor to a place like HN.)
Lets not pretend that anything web startup related really changes the future that much. Is twitter really improving peoples lives and happiness? Probably the reverse.
Has Reddit proven itself as a net gain for us, or have billions of hours of productivity been squandered laughing at the latest meme or lolcat.
I actually joined HN a few years ago, but decided to leave my old account. I would probably stop looking at when people joined as some measure of their worth if I were you.
As for your last statement. I like playing on computers. I love building fun things. But I would be equally happy if the internet didn't exist, and I was fulfilling that 'building' desire someplace else. I don't "need" it to be happy.
Onward, outward, forward...progress is scary stuff. Otherwise functional adults often have deep rooted terrors that cause them to want to withdraw into the known.