The current computing paradigm is all about "data entry", you are your own "sysadmin". Slowly enriching others by working for them. Yes saved time is valuable for you, but also, you create value for "them". We have moved from mainframe to phone with very little design change. The current wave was about convenience. There is a coming wave of redesign that is people centric. Interfaces will be vastly different. This article is just a lack of imagination.
The End of the Beginning
111–119 of 119 posts
Re: The End of the Beginning
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow? I still have the childish dream of wanting to change the world. Specifically, I want to be involved in certain kinds of political activism that will likely piss off a number of people, and I want to have enough money that I can support my family without needing to back off if my income source is…
Do you feel like you'll graduate to 'political problems are human problems and human problems boil down to idiots having children, idiots raising children and society being unwilling to rid itself of humans who have convincingly shown to be counter-productive to society', coupled with 'for society to function long term, it needs to have a shared goal, vision, not selfish goals of one house, two cars, fence, big tv an…
I think that dismissing large swaths of the population as “idiots” is overly simplistic.
There are many groups with power that benefit from keeping people misinformed and unable to rationally determine what is truly in their own self interest, all the way from childhood indoctrination on through to old age.
I’d want to neutralize some of the most egregious uses of such misinformation before simply blaming the people entirely themselves.
Re: The End of the Beginning
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's evidence is pretty straightforward: you can take wikipedia's list of important inventions and plot their frequency on a chart. Of course, there are debates around which inventions count as significant. And there is recency bias. Never underestimate the power in something easy to communicate.
> "Never underestimate the power in something easy to communicate." Yes, I suppose that's the biggest thing with these "futurologists": their predictions are both tantalizing and easy to digest. I reserve the right to remain skeptical about any of these Silicon Valley religions though.
This is not limited to Silicon Valley. Every predictor since before Nostradamus has used this to their advantage. Those who haven't lose their audience, because predicting the future in concrete terms is really hard. So hard that nobody can do it regularly. Which causes people to stop listening.
Re: The End of the Beginning
#114I've been thinking along the same line, albeit on a more personal take as a software engineer. Basically, starting around 15 years ago, there's the proliferation of bootcamps teaching fullstack development, because software startups were the new hot thing, and they desperately need generalist engineers that were capable of spinning up web app quickly. Rails was the hot thing those days because of this as well. Hence…
The low hanging CRUD apps may have been done but there are still less low hanging CRUD apps like Flexport (rails) and the advance of AI is opening up loads of new opportunities.
If tools keep getting better, the barrier to entry for simple CRUD apps goes down, and you have a new class of journeymen programmers who do simple work not unlike construction.
The specialty jobs still exist. Planning is still another pay grade. But the average labor cost goes down and the volume goes up.
There are so many apps that could be written but the profit potential is too low to be worth it.
Re: The End of the Beginning
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Never underestimate the power in something easy to communicate." Yes, I suppose that's the biggest thing with these "futurologists": their predictions are both tantalizing and easy to digest. I reserve the right to remain skeptical about any of these Silicon Valley religions though.
This is not limited to Silicon Valley. Every predictor since before Nostradamus has used this to their advantage. Those who haven't lose their audience, because predicting the future in concrete terms is really hard. So hard that nobody can do it regularly. Which causes people to stop listening.
Agreed!
What strikes me as particularly interesting about Silicon Valley and some techie circles -- as opposed to Nostradamus -- is that many of these people self-identify as hiperrational, agnostic, atheist or wary of traditional religions, yet here they are, building their own religions under a more palatable technological guise (I could list ideas like the Singularity, Super AI good or bad, immortality, "we're living in a simulation", "every problem in the world can be fixed with the right app", etc, but if the list of absurdities goes long enough I'm sure to hit some raw nerve, so I'll stop here).
These modern day Nostradamuses also tend to overinflate their own importance in the wider world. Outside of techie circles Kurzweil is a nobody, and the notion that his theories are some bar that other theories must somehow pass is laughable.
Re: The End of the Beginning
#116Thats a very bold claim, that goes against Ray Kurzweil's hypothesis tech is accelerating. Maybe (unlikely) that cloud/mobiles is the end game for silicon. But what about quantum? What about biological? What about Nano? What about AI? Literally there are a ton of potential generational changes in the making that could turn everything on its head again
I think this is a crucial point. Based on Ben's premises, his conclusions make sense. But what if you alter the premises, for example, by assuming that compute will happen on another substrate? If you choose a biological substrate, then you can move compute from inside one's pocket, to inside the body. And for many functions, you wouldn't need the cloud. I doubt that the dominant companies in silicon-based tech today have the expertise to make that shift.
A lot of work is being done to make bio-silicon fusion real, with use cases like creating olfactory sensors.
And our increasing control over both brain and genes may be the pathway to more general biological computation.
Re: The End of the Beginning
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not limited to Silicon Valley. Every predictor since before Nostradamus has used this to their advantage. Those who haven't lose their audience, because predicting the future in concrete terms is really hard. So hard that nobody can do it regularly. Which causes people to stop listening.
Agreed! What strikes me as particularly interesting about Silicon Valley and some techie circles -- as opposed to Nostradamus -- is that many of these people self-identify as hiperrational, agnostic, atheist or wary of traditional religions, yet here they are, building their own religions under a more palatable technological guise (I could list ideas like the Singularity, Super AI good or bad, immortality, "we're liv…
Sure, some people are not critical thinkers. I am not a worshipper of Kurzweil and not into Transhumanism, but I liked the historical charts he drew showing exponential acceleration over a wide time interval and tech domains. I feel his evidence of historical exponential progress was compelling, but what u do with that evidence is up to you. If you have something to say about that point I am happy to hear it, but you mostly seem to be lashing out at 'silicon valley' types which is a mischaracterization of who you are talking to. I respect Kurzweil because he is a real engineer, entrepreneur and a helper of those less fortunate (the blind in-particular).
Re: The End of the Beginning
#118I've been thinking along the same line, albeit on a more personal take as a software engineer. Basically, starting around 15 years ago, there's the proliferation of bootcamps teaching fullstack development, because software startups were the new hot thing, and they desperately need generalist engineers that were capable of spinning up web app quickly. Rails was the hot thing those days because of this as well. Hence…
The tragedy of people who want to make money and believe it will be 'life changing', is that no matter how many times they are told it won't be, they think 'ha, you only say that because you got yours'. What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow?
Independence...
Re: The End of the Beginning
#119while new I/O devices like augmented reality, wearables, or voice are natural extensions of the phone. I don't agree with this at all. This is like saying "the internet is a natural extensions of the operating system, therefore Microsoft Windows will remain all powerful and the sole route to consumers" Bill Gates in his famous memo realised that this wasn't the case, and Google realized that mobile did to the interne…
Interesting point about Garmin. I wonder if it would ever make sense for Apple to just buy them...