Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What We Get Wrong About Technology

timharford.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 127 posts

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#81

Post by adrianN »

caseymarquis wrote: post #77
adrianN wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum computers are still in the "we have discovered the basic science, but the engineering is lacking" phase. If we'd manage to make them work as amazingly well as classical computers we could do some things we're currently struggling with much better. Foremost anything that has to do with quantum mechanical simulations, for example designing new drugs, creating useful protein nanomachines, predicting material pro…

That sounds a bit dangerous to the lay person...

Anything that makes a good propulsion system for a space ship is a bit dangerous.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#82

Post by vinchuco »

icebraining wrote: post #43
vinchuco wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big effect in a small area vs a small effect in a large area [?]. The same volume of water in two cylinders of short and long width. We have prizes for big problems in mathematics and science, but rarely focus on enablers. The tribe rewards the hunter when he comes back with deer, not so much the one that perfects the hunting spears (tools).

Sure we do, they're called patents.

That's a protection, not a reward. It has a cost, and is often abused.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#83

Post by mozumder »

kbart wrote: post #64
mozumder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why people like Elon Musk are completely mischaracterized as innovators and leaders of the tech scene. Today's tech-bros go for the most obvious nerd-bait, like electric cars, rockets, and solar panels. This is stuff that, if you asked any tech-bro today, or 20 years ago, what would impress them, they would answer with that obvious stuff. Meanwhile, the ACTUAL world-changing innovations are things like pinch-…

What? Do you honestly think that pinch-to-zoom is more world changing invention than solar panels? I could totally live without pinch-to-zoom or even momentum scroll, but I doubt we, society as we know it, would survive very long without clean and renewable energy sources.

> What? Do you honestly think that pinch-to-zoom is more world changing invention than solar panels?

Yes.

> I could totally live without pinch-to-zoom or even momentum scroll, but I doubt we, society as we know it, would survive very long without clean and renewable energy sources.

You can live without solar panels. You likely do.

Meanwhile, you became far more productive because of UX.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#84

Post by larsiusprime »

dalbasal wrote: post #47
donw wrote: post #9

I suspect that it is easy to fixate on fantasies of massive technological leaps forward, because the truly revolutionary changes that underpin our lives are like air: so common that we overlook them all the time. If you were to sit down with a person from, say, 1750, and wanted to explain the modern world, you would probably tell them about things like antibiotics, cars and planes, snapchat, that sort of thing. All t…

I think we over-emphasize elements that seem more “technological,” overestimate their importance. The printing press example is great. We credit the press because it’s mechanical and complex, but not the paper (or ink or literacy or religion). For peaches in winter, most people think of botany, refrigeration, airplanes… science. Fewer people would think of joint stock companies or shipping containers as important ena…

Indeed! We also tend to discount the unintended consequences. For instance, the printing press was probably a major catalyst in sparking witch hunts, which perhaps has some lessons for modern day social media: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept09/2009/10/31/unintended-con...

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#85

Post by lukeholder »

Animats wrote: post #12

The article mentions "Jennifer", which is the real-world implementation of Marshall Brain's "Manna 1.0". Here's a video of it in action.[1] This is another example of "machines should think, people should work.". The computer is the boss. That may be the future. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-ReBX0icU

When I was younger I worked in a supermarket warehouse and picked items into a pallet for shipping to a store with a system just like this. (Woolworths Supermarkets, Western Australia)

The voice had 4 speeds, and all the experienced pickers would have it turned up to the top speed.

Once you were experienced enough though, you would learn the confirm codes for the different bays, and speak though the pick to the voice system 5 steps ahead just so it didn't slow down your pick.

Workers that came from a paper sheet pick list in the previous factory prefered the paper as they could memorize the pick sheet with a single reading, and thus pick faster - and if they did want to double check at the end they had the sheet in front of them to do so.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#86

Post by worldsayshi »

donw wrote: post #24
jfarlow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the supermarket is very much possible only because of the technologies behind planes, antibiotics and snapchat. It's curious. I think the hard part, as noted, is not necessarily the materialization of 'new tech', but very much how that tech plays with all the other new tech to produce a very new society. And in that you are exactly right, the most curious parts of that new society are not the technological to…

Absolutely; Neal Stephenson's latest book ("The Rise And Fall Of D.O.D.O.") touches on this, in asking what series of "small" changes it would take to unravel the modern world. Was a good read. From where you sit, what is the impact of the intermix between those two technologies? As a layperson, I can see tailor-made medications becoming cheap and common over the long run. Not only might that read "goodbye, cancer!",…

> tailor-made medications

And at the same time we are moving towards a world of tailor-made anything. From cars and clothes to user interfaces and lifestyles. If we can handle the complexity of it all.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#87

Post by duncanawoods »

jameshart wrote: post #79
duncanawoods wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems overly broad - a surviving old city tourist area might be well preserved but elsewhere, post-war city rebuilding programs were cheap, rushed and ugly. Even later development is unloved because "high-design" of the time was infected by Brutalism. These already troubled urban centres were then hollowed-out by economic troubles in the 70s leading to areas of dereliction. Over the past few decades, urban regen…

We don't keep those buildings because we value their architecture, we keep them because we are using them.

That isn't true. We protect valuable architecture with preservation orders. Usage isn't really a factor - tenants of actively used buildings will be given notice and the site redeveloped if doing so is legal and profitable.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#88

Post by [deleted] »

jameshart wrote: post #79
duncanawoods wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems overly broad - a surviving old city tourist area might be well preserved but elsewhere, post-war city rebuilding programs were cheap, rushed and ugly. Even later development is unloved because "high-design" of the time was infected by Brutalism. These already troubled urban centres were then hollowed-out by economic troubles in the 70s leading to areas of dereliction. Over the past few decades, urban regen…

We don't keep those buildings because we value their architecture, we keep them because we are using them.

[deleted]

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#89

Post by Cybiote »

titzer wrote: post #59

FTA: "Why not unbundle the task and give the conscious thinking to the computer, and the mindless grabbing to the human?" The article was pretty good overall, but this one's a pet peeve of mine. We're offloading our thinking to computers and this magical "AI" in hopes that all that hard work (and possibility for error!) is going to be avoided. But we're going to find out--or perhaps not, as we slip below the dumbness…

An AI can be like an electric bicycle, multiplying your existing ability. It can be like a car, working side by side. Or it can be like a self-driving car, leading your driving skills to rot with time.

You're assuming the only form is the last kind. As a human, I most prefer the electric cycle but I expect most will tend towards some kind of car. For the foreseeable future, only cars and cycles will exist because we don't yet know how to achieve deep understanding.

The algorithms understand in the sense of a set of rules to follow, transforming inputs to desired outputs. The rulebook doesn't merely consist of a look up table of all sentence pairs therefore at least some kind of understanding must be present. The algorithms can't turn words into stories with actors and predictions about their internal state, so I agree the understanding is shallow and far from human like.

Humans can often, even if not all choose to, step outside the system by integrating various modalities, propagating errors, to realize they're being forced to learn garbage. The machines can't reason outside the system. Compare with an animal of pure instinct (which are less common than many have supposed) whose behavior displays an implicit understanding of its environment's statistics.

DeepL translate: Das heißt: wenn zwischen Sprache A und Sprache B unbedingt etwas übersetzt werden muss, wird 2017 ein Zweisprachiger den Boden _absolut mit maschineller Übersetzung wischen.

At first I accidentally left in the underscore with Bing Translate I got:

Zum Witz: Wenn etwas absolut übersetzt werden muss zwischen Sprache a und Sprache B, in 2017 wird eine zweisprachige Person noch _absolutely MOP die floor_ mit der maschinellen Übersetzung.

Removing them, Bing Translate: Zum Witz: Wenn etwas absolut übersetzt werden muss zwischen Sprache a und Sprache B, in 2017 eine zweisprachige Person wird immer noch absolut wischen den Fußboden mit der maschinellen Übersetzung.

I don't speak German but mixing and matching between the three, I'm guessing the ranking for this example is Bing, DeepL, Google.

Re: What We Get Wrong About Technology

#90

Post by joosters »

k__ wrote: post #49
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What would probably really impress the hell out of them would be a supermarket, though." At the end of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's film Tout va bien there is a very long take, a panning shot that sweeps back and forth across a Carrefour hypermarket from just outside the cashiers, showing you the whole breadth of departments: fresh veg, canned goods, clothes, etc. I was amazed by this – the whole hypermar…

Sure these super/hypermarkets are a thing for long time now. I know them since I can think. What has changed in the consumer market is delivery. I mean I can buy a huge amount of stuff from all over the world via Amazon and get many thinks delivered at the next day for just 60€ a year prime costs. This is as insane as the hypermarkets were back in the 70s I think. And it gets better every year. With self driving truc…

IMO self-driving trucks are more like an android/fusion style of future prediction, rather than paper/containers.
Post reply on HN