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Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#191

Post by colechristensen »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #184
colechristensen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived in "luxury" apartments lately and they're all filled with the cheapest possible materials. More "advanced" in that as much as possible things are build of engineered materials which end up being a sort of wood and glue foam which are definitely not meant to last.

“Luxury” is simply a marketing term and has no importance. The relevant question is how do the cheapest materials today compares to the cheapest materials in the 1980s?

I dunno, spending $4000/mo in Mountain View, you tend to have a few expectations. (in other words, it is more or less impossible to rent anything of actual quality)

The garbage materials of today didn't exist nearly as much in the 80s so they'd have to have used at least cheap solid wood instead of sawdust foam.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#192

Post by nine_k »

kareemsabri wrote: post #135
angarg12 wrote: post #123

One thing I don't see mentioned often is that productivity in software development has skyrocketed, but it's hard to appreciate. Today's services are much more sophisticated and complex than just a decade ago. Even if some of that complexity is incidental and undesirable, it's undeniable that today a small team can pump out a much more refined app that entire companies did back then. This isn't only guess work, here…

I'm genuinely curious about this, and would like to see some data. When I started coding professionally the LAMP stack was the go-to, and your program would generally just do all the "work" in the context of a web request and then render an HTML page in response. Now, the systems are much more complex for sure (queues and asynchronous processing, event buses, microservices, multiple databases for different purposes)…

Look at: Google Maps, Figma, any advanced enough web mail, Office 360.

Think about implementing these using the LAMP stack + Javascript from 2000.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#193

Post by pessimizer »

dilyevsky wrote: post #168
Barrin92 wrote: post #122

Because new technology is as Thiel often quips limited to the world of bits rather than the world of atoms. Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth gives a similar example, what if you went into a time capsule between say 1890 and 1950 compared to 1960 and 2010? In one…

> Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? It’s clear to me krugman never held a hammer in his life bc that is just laughable statement

Are there a lot more hammers now than in the 80s?

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#194

Post by musicale »

SoftTalker wrote: post #133
angarg12 wrote: post #123

One thing I don't see mentioned often is that productivity in software development has skyrocketed, but it's hard to appreciate. Today's services are much more sophisticated and complex than just a decade ago. Even if some of that complexity is incidental and undesirable, it's undeniable that today a small team can pump out a much more refined app that entire companies did back then. This isn't only guess work, here…

Yes, but a person can write a paper just as well in Wordperfect 5 as the latest Google Doc or Office365 Word. How many millions of dev-hours have been expended on stuff that fundamentally doesn't do anything new ? Edit: saying they don't do anything new isn't right. They do, especially with regards to collaboration. What I really mean is that they don't make the essential task -- the actual writing -- much easier. Th…

> write a paper just as well in Wordperfect 5 as the latest Google Doc or Office365 Word

Google docs and Overleaf have dramatically improved my collaborative writing workflow.

Long-distance collaboration is also drastically cheaper and easier than it used to be.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#195

Post by foobiekr »

kareemsabri wrote: post #139
IshKebab wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Well yes, because we have solar panels and heat pumps and battery powered power tools and vacuum cleaners and dishwashers and microwave ovens and smart lights and ... You wouldn't expect walls and carpets to change.

> vacuum cleaners mainstream since at least the 1950s > dishwashers 1970s > microwave ovens available but fairly expensive in the 80s, ubiquitous in the 90s

Hmm, in the US anyway they started to get inexpensive by 1980 or so, same as VCRs.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#196

Post by lotsofpulp »

colechristensen wrote: post #191
lotsofpulp wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Luxury” is simply a marketing term and has no importance. The relevant question is how do the cheapest materials today compares to the cheapest materials in the 1980s?

I dunno, spending $4000/mo in Mountain View, you tend to have a few expectations. (in other words, it is more or less impossible to rent anything of actual quality) The garbage materials of today didn't exist nearly as much in the 80s so they'd have to have used at least cheap solid wood instead of sawdust foam.

That is related to supply and demand of land/housing units. I do not see what it has to do with progress or lack thereof in building materials.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#197

Post by version_five »

Barrin92 wrote: post #122

Because new technology is as Thiel often quips limited to the world of bits rather than the world of atoms. Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth gives a similar example, what if you went into a time capsule between say 1890 and 1950 compared to 1960 and 2010? In one…

It's funny to see all the replies missing the point. I agree there have been few "step changes" in the way we do things. The biggest real one I can think of is the capabilities of small motors, that enable things like drones and battery power tools. But not a step change, just an incremental improvement.

People had high hopes for mRNA, (no doubt people will take this the wrong way) but so far it seems to have been way overhyped. That kind of thing - the ability to arbitrarily protect against viruses - would potentially qualify.

Overall I think the world is in decline progress wise, even as we make incremental gains in previously discovered tech, we lose e.g. Concorde or moon landings or even open borders. And soon the availability of internal combustion engines to the masses if elites have their way.

Other than the neotlithic and industrial revolution, humanity has mostly languished. We could easily be in for more of that.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#198

Post by pessimizer »

LatteLazy wrote: post #80
morninglight wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you regularly visited China over the last 30 years, you would have a clear and dramatic understanding of productivity. .

No, I'd be even more confused: I'd look at huge building projects and millions of resulting apartments that were built but now had no buyers and were sat empty on some zombie bank's balance sheet. And I would not know whether they were worth sticker price (and China was very productive) or nothing (and China was very unproductive) or anywhere in between. I'd look at FoxConn with >350000 workers making some of the wor…

> I'd look at huge building projects and millions of resulting apartments that were built but now had no buyers and were sat empty on some zombie bank's balance sheet. And I would not know whether they were worth sticker price (and China was very productive) or nothing (and China was very unproductive) or anywhere in between.

That's just being confused by propaganda. If you look back at all of the Chinese ghost city stories and note the names, virtually all of those cities are full and productive now. I always thought the stories were a line to make excuses for US lack of investment in infrastructure.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#200

Post by jbay808 »

analog31 wrote: post #169
lotsofpulp wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Yes. Even the cheapest house built to code will be noticeably better than one from 1980s. The quality of materials, technology of materials, wiring, plumbing, flooring, insulation, etc will all be better. > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry…

My house was built in the early 60s, has hardwood flooring throughout, copper plumbing, the wiring is all in hard conduit, the 2x4's are actually a bit thicker than today's, and of a higher grade. The original windows are still functioning, though not as efficient as modern ones. The appliances are modern because they've all been replaced. Today's house in the same region uses lower grade lumber, carpeted floors, Rom…

Quality seems to go through ups and downs, probably in line with economic cycles and periods of scarcity. Here, houses built in the 20s and earlier were made with high quality lumber that is scarcely available these days. I notice that rebuilders and renovations of these old houses are careful to maintain the base wood layers even when they completely strip the facing and almost everything else.
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