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Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

latimes.com

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Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#121

Post by kohanz »

mrlala wrote: post #110
jrochkind1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your theory of how the internet has "lifted so many people out of poverty". I'm not saying I disagree with it necessarily, I don't even understand what you're suggesting enough to disagree or agree with it. It's definitely not _obvious_ to me that the internet has somehow lifted so many people out of poverty, I just don't understand what you mean.

Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Maybe this can count as more of a smartphone thing an internet thing.. but it's still largely an internet thing that would allow someone in a rough spot to still be able to connect with people online and look/apply for jobs.

> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right?

Not that I know the answer, but I would have to see a source on this. Why would a device that may increase access to job postings, but a non-homeless job candidate is much more likely to have than a homeless person, increase the chances of said homeless person in getting a job? I'm not even sure that the ability to access job postings is the main problem there.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#122

Post by lucideer »

mrlala wrote: post #110
jrochkind1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your theory of how the internet has "lifted so many people out of poverty". I'm not saying I disagree with it necessarily, I don't even understand what you're suggesting enough to disagree or agree with it. It's definitely not _obvious_ to me that the internet has somehow lifted so many people out of poverty, I just don't understand what you mean.

Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Maybe this can count as more of a smartphone thing an internet thing.. but it's still largely an internet thing that would allow someone in a rough spot to still be able to connect with people online and look/apply for jobs.

> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right?

Do they? How?

Are you suggesting that online jobs website make it easier to find a job? A homeless person with a smartphone isn't the only one with access to the jobs website. Nor does the existence of such a website intrinsically create the jobs behind the ads on it.

A sibling commenter talks about the existence of the internet facilitating job creation through other means, but I don't think homeless people having smartphones has much bearing on this.

It's worth noting that income inequality has steadily increased in the last ~40 years at leastm (in the US), so talk of the internet lifting people out of poverty has to be considered in that context.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#123

Post by [deleted] »

mrlala wrote: post #110
jrochkind1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your theory of how the internet has "lifted so many people out of poverty". I'm not saying I disagree with it necessarily, I don't even understand what you're suggesting enough to disagree or agree with it. It's definitely not _obvious_ to me that the internet has somehow lifted so many people out of poverty, I just don't understand what you mean.

Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Maybe this can count as more of a smartphone thing an internet thing.. but it's still largely an internet thing that would allow someone in a rough spot to still be able to connect with people online and look/apply for jobs.

[deleted]

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#124

Post by _jgdh »

adim86 wrote: post #103

I find this post quite disappointing. I don't mean to come off harsh but it is quite naive and utopian and I cannot take the call to arms seriously. Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents. For every powerful force in the world, it will be a source of good and bad things. The internet has changed the world, increased communication, allowed peopl…

Small nit - a person can learn Hindi (the language) or Hinduism (the religion) but not Hindu.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#125

Post by pastor_elm »

codegeek wrote: post #41

Personally, I think the internet has changed millions if not billions of lives for the better. Yes, it has introduced quite a few bad things like spam, malware, surveillance etc. but with most good things, comes a few bad things. Overall though, Internet has been tremendous in lifting so many people out of poverty AND creating jobs that otherwise people could not dream of before the internet. I can work for anyone ov…

Capitalism creates jobs. The internet is just something Capitalism latched on to.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#126

Post by jefftk »

ineptech wrote: post #86
workthrowaway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

something definitely went wrong, imo. when that pizzahut website link was posted a few days ago, i felt nostalgic about old web pages. most of them were about favorite topics, shows, hobbies and links! friends (the show) had thousands of fan made websites. websites linked to other websites with similar interest. now it's all about "us" and "me". we don't even link to other websites anymore. blog rolls and guestbooks…

> we don't even link to other websites anymore. blog rolls and guestbooks have gone extinct. I've felt this too. Example: I made a pointless little humor website that got mentioned on HN once. I got a bunch of nice replies, and a few thousand visits that day. Since that day, none. Zero other than robots, literally. I'm not complaining that it didn't go viral, I'm saying, in the old days, a brief spurt of popularity t…

Alternate explanation: the competition is better now.

In the early days of the web if you put some time into making a funny site there just weren't all that many other funny things to link to. You were one in 1k or in 10k. But now there are so many other options, many of which publish new funny things every day, that you're one in 100k or in 1M.

A link to a neat site your friends haven't seen yet it still a valuable thing (and more or less the premise of HN, Reddit, etc) but the bar is higher.

(This is a good thing!)

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#127

Post by winternett »

ThomPete wrote: post #104
jrochkind1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your theory of how the internet has "lifted so many people out of poverty". I'm not saying I disagree with it necessarily, I don't even understand what you're suggesting enough to disagree or agree with it. It's definitely not _obvious_ to me that the internet has somehow lifted so many people out of poverty, I just don't understand what you mean.

Created jobs, increased global trade, allowed for people to teach themselves, new types of products available, higher awareness about what is going on around you, technology share, open source, free products etc.

These jobs are shrinking as low level apps get dumbed down... The process of creating a simple web site has gotten much much more complex as scripting languages have changed. I still can't believe we're compiling code for simple phone and web sites and apps.

Corporations have lobbied to take away Net Neutrality, and to institute throttling and make running a personal web site much more expensive. Social media sites de-prioritize regular users under corporate (paid) marketing posts...

These days you have to pay to be seen, the Internet was originally based on having everyone on an equal playing field, and now everything is being based around the new rules to prevent us from going back.

The Internet is becoming less effective because it's no longer an equal playing field. Its becoming much more expensive and complex over time to run an independent web presence, when in the past it was simple and inexpensive, I think that's the major issue.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#129

Post by _jgdh »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #111
ThomPete wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Created jobs, increased global trade, allowed for people to teach themselves, new types of products available, higher awareness about what is going on around you, technology share, open source, free products etc.

OK. Except for possibly "created jobs", it's not obvious to me most of those things lead to "lifting so many people out of poverty." (For instance, I suspect very strongly that "new types of products available" has nothing to do with lifting people out of poverty). I am gonna want some analysis based on actual numbers of some kind that shows the internet did those things, and it lifted so many people out of poverty.…

Increasing global trade leads to better outcomes for those producing those goods. The greatest alleviation of poverty and creation of the largest middle class in the history of humanity happened in China starting the early 90s and that was fuelled by increased global trade made possible partly by the Internet.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#130

Post by ianhawes »

_jgdh wrote: post #124
adim86 wrote: post #103

I find this post quite disappointing. I don't mean to come off harsh but it is quite naive and utopian and I cannot take the call to arms seriously. Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents. For every powerful force in the world, it will be a source of good and bad things. The internet has changed the world, increased communication, allowed peopl…

Small nit - a person can learn Hindi (the language) or Hinduism (the religion) but not Hindu.

And there’s our smudgeness.
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