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There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

wired.com

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Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#41

Post by geofft »

flohofwoe wrote: post #35
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agreed. What drivel. I couldn't even finish reading the article. We have senators grilling tech CEOs that don't understand the difference between an iPhone and an Android device. This is unacceptable to say the least.

To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer? Both can make phone calls, both can display web pages, both can run apps. There's one fairly irrelevant difference because it's an historical accident so it will probably be eliminated soon: one platform owner already controls the platform completely, and the other not yet…

The difference is that proposed regulation against Apple affects iPhones and not Androids.

You may as well ask what the difference is between Huawei and Cisco in terms of functionality - and certainly there's no difference to a customer - but that difference matters a lot to the US government.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#42

Post by sradman »

> Members of Congress clearly don’t understand the tech companies they’re supposed to regulate. But neither does anyone else.

Siva Vaidhyanathan [1], the author of this Wired article, seems to be a fine representative of the humanities half of what C.P. Snow called The Two Cultures [2].

The ability to craft sentences is an admirable skill, one I wish I had, but innumeracy and the inability to grasp causation seems to be a badge of honor among the non-STEM elite.

The question is not whether regulators understand tech, it is whether they understand the principles that limit regulating consenting adults.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siva_Vaidhyanathan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#43

Post by ozim »

sien wrote: post #4

Yes there is. It's everyone on Hacker News! Just post about about some Unicorn here and at least half a dozen people are pretty confident they know more about the company in question than the founders or the people running it. In the future Congress can just post questions here.

Wait until uncle Jim comes to the wedding and gets two shots of whiskey. He will tell you how all those talking heads in the TV know nothing about life and he should be running the country and those stupid tech companies.

In plain words I would say it is quite common in the population and not specific to HN.

Just ignore it, take a shot with the uncle and tell him that he is right, carry on with your life.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#44

Post by icebraining »

sien wrote: post #29
mdoms wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never stop being amused by the original post about Dropbox here on HN, where a large contingent of the audience was so critical of it, it was destined to fail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/Apple-releases-i...

cmdrtaco was giving his personal opinion on the device, not predicting its commercial success or lack thereof. Slashdot wasn't focused on "the market" nearly as much as HN is.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#45

Post by aaron695 »

hyko wrote: post #13

“I am not a tech expert” != “There’s no such thing as a tech expert”. Edited to add: all of science is beyond the comprehension of one person, but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. I think the shock experienced in these kind of hearings has more to do with leaders and law makers being hopelessly out of touch with common technologies that are used by most people every day; it’s akin to them puzzling…

> but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore.

Yes we do.

They don't exist as we have romantically understood them. Scientists used to take risks, play with the entire world, question things, actually be open, actually play with science as a child.

Now they join the Facebook group "Fuck I love science" and be done with it because they are pushed into STEM as an ultra narrow career and don't actually understand or want to understand science. The real scientists may still exist hidden somewhere but you never see them.

For Tech, I've never seen a correct understanding of the Russians online influence during the 2016 elections on HN. I don't know what it is, and I've never seen anyone explain it with authority other than vague hand waving trying to sound like they know, this is from both links and comments on HN.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#48

Post by Nursie »

ben_w wrote: post #36
flohofwoe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer? Both can make phone calls, both can display web pages, both can run apps. There's one fairly irrelevant difference because it's an historical accident so it will probably be eliminated soon: one platform owner already controls the platform completely, and the other not yet…

For a normal customer with no tech skills? Android is the one which comes in a full range from “cheap” to “premium” while Apple only comes in “premium”. You also get to choose which app store you get, Apple or Google, but I’m not sure if normal people know what one of those is .

The new iPhone SE is definitely a mid-market play, blurring it further.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#49

Post by willis936 »

aaron695 wrote: post #45
hyko wrote: post #13

“I am not a tech expert” != “There’s no such thing as a tech expert”. Edited to add: all of science is beyond the comprehension of one person, but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. I think the shock experienced in these kind of hearings has more to do with leaders and law makers being hopelessly out of touch with common technologies that are used by most people every day; it’s akin to them puzzling…

> but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. Yes we do. They don't exist as we have romantically understood them. Scientists used to take risks, play with the entire world, question things, actually be open, actually play with science as a child. Now they join the Facebook group "Fuck I love science" and be done with it because they are pushed into STEM as an ultra narrow career and don't actually under…

Spoken like someone who doesn’t interact with any scientists. I work at a university and have a friend group of chemists PhD students. Every single one of them fit your requirements for the romantic vision of a scientist, yet have far more accurate models at their disposal than previous generations of scientists.

“You never see them.” because you choose not to look. You look at your algorithm driven feed and shape your worldview around it. Incredibly dangerous. We are one second from midnight on the cyberocracy doomsday clock.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#50

Post by MaxBarraclough »

cblconfederate wrote: post #16

Ha! Imagine writing this about medicine. Computers are 100% deterministic, from top to bottom. Even their effects of society can clearly be tracedback.

> Computers are 100% deterministic, from top to bottom.

Not in every respect. Concurrency and C's undefined behaviour spring to mind.

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