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The End of the Computer Age

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Re: The End of the Computer Age

#41

Post by Animats »

chrisco255 wrote: post #25
sologoub wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California (can’t speak for other states), much of that “stuck in ” is largely driven by NIMBYs and at what point the place became more or less affluent. SV seems to have figured out that some land can be redeveloped into apartments relatively recently, but otherwise it looks like 60s was a pretty active development era and most of that stuff is still here. By contrast, in LA much of 50s - 60s sprawl has been repl…

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, because it's absolutely true that much of CA is stuck in the mid 20th century in terms of real estate development. The zoning laws and NIMBY-ism are very important to call out for restricting progress. Somebody above tried to blame the market. It isn't the market when you own a piece of property but you are restricted to building a single-family home that meets 200 different…

Bear in mind that 1) only a few areas of California are increasing in population, and 2) the SF bay area has had two huge empty-house plenty-of-downtown-parking foreclosure-signs-everywhere recessions in the last 20 years. Next one is probably coming up soon.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#42

Post by Animats »

josephg wrote: post #22
blueyes wrote: post #6

Thiel's talk starts around 10m40s, after the throat-clearing intro. This is not his most articulate talk, fwiw. Thiel's smart and sometimes very clear, but not here. This feels off the cuff, where he's falling back on pot shots and sound bites.

Its very long, but I enjoyed Thiel on The Portal (Eric Weinstein's podcast) a few months back: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-thiel/id146999... I don't know how this compares to talks he's given, but there were a lot of small ideas in there which I thought were really interesting - like the idea that we're in a period of relative technological stagnation compared to a couple decades ago. And how obviou…

We're in a period of relative technological stagnation compared to a couple decades ago.

Kind of. There's no new "must have" consumer electronics product. 3D TV was a flop, robot vacuums were a dud, VR goggles make 5% to 15% of the population nauseous, and everybody has a smartphone. The "lose money on every sale and make it up on volume" model (Uber, etc.) is coming apart. Self-driving cars don't work yet. Moore's Law has hit a wall. Wafer fab cost is so high that the next node may be unaffordable.

There's lots of stuff to do, though. Solar panels and batteries work pretty well, and there's a few trillion dollars of those to be deployed. But it's not a Make Money Fast business. Electric cars and charging stations work, and those need to be deployed. The battery manufacturers need to get their automation act together and start pumping those things out at high speed at very low cost.

There's also lots of room for progress in bioengineering. Editing DNA is just beginning.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#43

Post by beetwenty »

Animats wrote: post #42
josephg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its very long, but I enjoyed Thiel on The Portal (Eric Weinstein's podcast) a few months back: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-thiel/id146999... I don't know how this compares to talks he's given, but there were a lot of small ideas in there which I thought were really interesting - like the idea that we're in a period of relative technological stagnation compared to a couple decades ago. And how obviou…

We're in a period of relative technological stagnation compared to a couple decades ago. Kind of. There's no new "must have" consumer electronics product. 3D TV was a flop, robot vacuums were a dud, VR goggles make 5% to 15% of the population nauseous, and everybody has a smartphone. The "lose money on every sale and make it up on volume" model (Uber, etc.) is coming apart. Self-driving cars don't work yet. Moore's L…

The sense I get from all of it is that there's a phase shift in technological progress occurring, not dissimilar to the 1970's one where we ceased seeing the bulk of disruptive developments occurring in vehicles and energy, and started seeing them in IT fields. That initial boom produced a lot of new product categories, and then successive decades saw a lot of consolidation and transformation away from nuts and bolts and simple efficiencies towards services and IP holdings and consumer marketing. And we know the nature of that market very well today since everyone present has breathed in it for most or all of our lives at this point.

But the nature of the next market is, of course, much harder to glimpse. Like looking into pier glass, it takes effort to get a fragmented view of things. It's not as easy as Thiel's view: AI and surveillance, for example is more broadly authoritarian than it is any specific ideology. And infrastructure often leapfrogs stages in the developing world, and that can be true of a developed country like the U.S. too.

There's plenty of good work being done quietly in the current market. The word I'd pay the most attention to is sustainability, though. It's been more-or-less entirely a marketing term for decades, never delivering on the promise, but then, often it takes a while for the products to catch up to the marketing.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#44

Post by buboard »

fadisaleh wrote: post #13

"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…

As long as prices keep going up there s no motive. And if people want to see modern tower architecture they catch a flight to asia

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#45

Post by buboard »

droithomme wrote: post #29
fadisaleh wrote: post #13

"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…

> you're riding a subway that's 100 years old ... a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts Is he saying there is something wrong with electric subways? It seems an excellent solution to transport in a dense urban area. And metros have kept up with technology fairly well. What is the better solution to the subway for the problem it solves in the places it solves them? Yes, we've had subways f…

the i486 was an excellent processor, too

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#46

Post by [deleted] »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #3

"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…

[deleted]

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#47

Post by buboard »

This talk mostly reiterates his basic talking points so it feels a lot like rambling. And the title is not justified by the argument.

There is, however, a case to be made that the computer tech age has reached an end. Tech companies turning to investing in banking and real estate is not a good sign.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#48

Post by ssalazar »

perl4ever wrote: post #33
davidivadavid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what's unclear about what he's saying. a) Harvard is a pure signaling mechanism that doesn't provide education as much as exclusionary credentials. b) AI/Big data is a way to solve the economic calculation problem that was once seen as one of the main theoretical hurdles against communism. That a country like China favors AI and punishes crypto tells you something (that it's a communist dictatorship). It…

Well, but China doesn't use AI to centrally plan the details of its economy. Corporations, prices, and competition are undisputed features of the economy there. Whether you want to call it communist or not, the computational problem is still as intractable as ever. There's a difference between monitoring and regulating society with computers and solving the classical economic calculation problem. And Harvard is a way…

Rightly or not, Thiel is conflating communism and totalitarianism- China is indisputably a leader in using AI to perpetuate the latter.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#49

Post by buboard »

_bxg1 wrote: post #14
fadisaleh wrote: post #13

"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…

I think the market is what silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough; software isn't more important, just more profitable. And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters.

> silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough

the main culprit is regulation. There are other markets which build modern cities at breakneck pace

the same thing is going to happen to tech now that regulation is kicking in

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#50

Post by fallingfrog »

bitwize wrote: post #17
mcphage wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters. I don't think it's the spending that the US is allergic to, it's the collecting the money to spend.

Ever been to Connecticut? I-84 is still constantly in rough condition, even as property and income taxes climb.

Part of the issue is that wealthier people are self segregating themselves into their own separate towns, do that their property tax dollars don’t have to go to maintain the roads that everyone else drives on.
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