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Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

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Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#41

Post by amanfredi »

PieSquared wrote: post #32
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but that's pretty broad. Are we talking: -Learning materials? ie- textbooks -Learning software? ie- someone just kill blackboard already

Our county got smartboards in every school, and, the thing is, about a third of the teachers can actually use them effectively. And they cost 6000 dollars to lease . And our county is short on money anyways, so all in all people aren't really too happy about them... But at least it's a step towards progress.

It's not really a step towards progress, it's administrators trying to make it look like they're making progress without actually having to do anything other than spend money.

My aunt teaches at a school where they accidentally threw away all the power cables for the smart boards before they were even used.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#42

Post by alanthonyc »

Business Accounting

The current quarterly system of reporting finances was (I believe) developed as a result of the Great Depression, to help inform the public of company status.

The recent banking meltdown shows how inadequate this system is.

Something more realtime is needed.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#44

Post by grinich »

PieSquared wrote: post #32
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but that's pretty broad. Are we talking: -Learning materials? ie- textbooks -Learning software? ie- someone just kill blackboard already

Our county got smartboards in every school, and, the thing is, about a third of the teachers can actually use them effectively. And they cost 6000 dollars to lease . And our county is short on money anyways, so all in all people aren't really too happy about them... But at least it's a step towards progress.

At MIT we still use chalkboards. They seem to work pretty well, even with new curriculum.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#45

Post by vaksel »

byoung2 wrote: post #4

Education

they just need to stop teaching useless shit.

Take math for example, why are we teaching kids how to do calculus using a piece of paper, when in the real world they'll be using an Excel spreadsheet?

Math, Chemistry, Physics, Finance, pretty much any course that requires calculations wastes 90% of the course, teaching the kids how to do the calculations by hand, in most cases without even a calculator.

Excel is being widely used in the real world, yet you never see it taught in the classroom. Why? Excel is what the kids will be using in their jobs, shouldn't you be teaching them the skills they'll actually need? Instead of teaching them outdated concepts? Why don't you teach them how to do calculus using an abacus?

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#46

Post by Kaizyn »

jacquesm wrote: post #18

Software development. And no, that's not a joke. We really are roughly where we were in the 70's, we have not been able to make good use of the increase in machine power. It would be nice to see something really fresh. I'm holding out for 'fleet', or something like it. A radical departure from what we think is 'best practice' and the ways to do things. Something that will turn software development into a true enginee…

Alan Kay with the Viewpoints Research Institute is doing some interesting work. If you have a chance, you should check out their released papers:

"STEPS Toward The Reinvention of Programming" http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf

"STEPS Toward The Reinvention of Programming, 2008 Progress Report Submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF), October 2008" http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2008004_steps08.pdf

The idea here is to rebuild the existing software infrastructure that goes into a fully-functioning system such that the source code is at a minimum an order of magnitude smaller than systems are today. To do so, they claim, requires building the software stack on top of the right abstractions. So far, it seems they've made some excellent progress.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#47

Post by michaelkeenan »

Government. It has a high barrier to entry (win an election/revolution) and a high consumer switching cost (move far away, get a new job, learn a new language). If the governing industry were more competitive, I think its quality of service would be better.

The Peter Thiel-funded Seasteading Institute is trying to decrease the start-up cost and the consumer switching cost. Paul Romer has another approach with the Charter City proposal he's advocating.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#48

Post by maxwell »

jacquesm wrote: post #26
joeld42 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but that's a culture problem and not a technology one. (I don't know what this 'fleet' you speak of is, however)

http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/ivan.talk-the.fleet.archit... You think software is not technology ? Throwing away the structure that we have today and rethinking software from the ground up is definitely technology, not culture.

Software is only "technology" as painting once was. Much contemporary software is reminiscent of Medieval mosaics: big representations of highly conservative traditional models and crude depictions of people, built by a legion of anonymous workers, from monotonous fragile pieces. They feel like they were approached as engineering problems.

In Renaissance art, the new non-church wealthy elite still commissioned religious imagery, but they seem to've been after beauty more than direct reinforcement of their authority. This dynamic seems mirrored in the current divide between the products of startups and internal projects of enterprises.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#49

Post by gry »

It seems to me the largest industries -- the ones bound by regulation or the way it's always been done are the ones most ripe for change.

News, real estate, health care, automotive and agriculture come to mind. We're seeing some of these change because of technology. Hopefully, the ones that survive will be stronger for it.

Re: Ask HN: What industry needs technical innovation?

#50

Post by kirubakaran »

olefoo wrote: post #33

Housing & Home Construction Most house construction in the industrialised world is still done by semi-skilled hand labour. There are few radical advances in materials or methods that have gained traction with the industry. Partly this is because the building industry is held back by antiquated construction codes that specify acceptable means and materials rather than the minimum performance constraints that buildings…

May be this has to be first done in a country where it is possible (lax codes; not enforced; with corrupt officials etc - there are plenty of those) and made it a great success. May be after that the First World will catch up. You just have to make sure it doesn't get branded as Third World crap.
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