Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 603 posts

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

#201

Post by andrekandre »

meow_mix wrote: post #157

When I think about the productivity adds from tech from the last 20 years, I'm often left wondering why we aren't working less . Others have mentioned us navigating faster, having neat new gadgets, etc, but fundamentally what I and many others want is more free time

  > I'm often left wondering why we aren't working less
isn't that in direct conflict with expectations of compounded annual growth?

what does our economic (and political) models say about that?

because less work == less growth to many people...

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

#202

Post by systemvoltage »

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…

I agree, instead of critiqueing and truly reflecting on what went wrong, and what to do to fix it; technologists are obsessed with over-praising of how things have gotten better. It misses the point that "We could have done a lot better" if we weren't so stagnant.

America was a powerhouse of innovation in 1950-1970 both in private and public sectors. The progress was impossibly exponential.

First step is admission of failure. Even the valid praise that "World of bits has seen tremendous innovation" should be followed by "Why did it not progress even faster and why is there so much malaise in the world of bits (ad tech)?"

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

#203

Post by ceeplusplus »

vkou wrote: post #128
npc12345 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also people with no high school diplomas making 6 figures from advertising on those very same social networks.

A good hustler can make six figures in a sales job without any diploma. Sales doesn't care about your credentials, all your boss wants to know is if you can close deals.

Emotional intelligence is still intelligence. You need high EQ to be a good salesman. So still on the right side of the bell curve.

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

#204

Post by lr4444lr »

acjacobson wrote: post #174
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…

I mostly agree, though I think there are differences you'd notice rather quickly (but nothing as big as moving from 1890 to 1950) If you removed all the screens you'd probably first notice what's missing as opposed to what's different. In many of today's homes you wouldn't see things like tape / record players, stereos, VCRs, telephones, books, maps, yellow pages, rolodexes, calendars - all of these having a digital…

Much of that is consumption, though. I don't want to knock consumption, but it's not productivity.

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

#205

Post by kareemsabri »

Retric wrote: post #164
kareemsabri wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The point was vacuums etc have gotten a lot better over time. Electric motors are noticeably lighter, more powerful, and more energy efficient today. Yes vacuums in the 1980’s worked but they where significantly heavier, louder, and far more power hungry not to mention more expensive. It might not seem like much but I remember the exhaust from the family vacuum being noticeably warm. It’s even more noticeable with co…

I don't think that was the point. The OP said "we have [them]", not "they've gotten better".

I agree, Dyson is quite a bit better than the vacuum my parents had (though central vac was pretty damn good).

Dishwashers are quieter, though not that different. Microwaves seem about the same.

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

#206

Post by lotsofpulp »

jbay808 wrote: post #200
analog31 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, there are billions more people who demand wood for their shelter. Is it reasonable to expect that quality of wood, which I assume is almost purely a function of time, to maintain the same accessibility?

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

#207

Post by kareemsabri »

nine_k wrote: post #192
kareemsabri wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't that just saying browsers have gotten better?

OP was talking about overall system complexity.

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

#208

Post by avgcorrection »

ipnon wrote: post #99

The right side of the bell curve can now program an application worth many dollars per month and zero marginal reproduction costs. The left side of the bell curve is incapable of extending these technologies but increasingly consumes them due to their low cost. This can explain the seemingly paradoxical phenomena of the rich becoming fabulously richer, wage growth stagnating on average, and productivity barely improv…

Siri, give me the most HN comment on productivity development. (Golly gee, this consumer technology sure is swell)

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

#209

Post by analog31 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #206
jbay808 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, there are billions more people who demand wood for their shelter. Is it reasonable to expect that quality of wood, which I assume is almost purely a function of time, to maintain the same accessibility?

That wood doesn't exist any more. It's water under the bridge.

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

#210

Post by musicale »

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

>> vacuum cleaners >mainstream since at least the 1950s

Canister vacuums date to the 1910s and were probably mainstream by the 1930s (wasn't Herbert Hoover mocked by connecting him to Hoover Vacuums?)

Battery powered vacuums are ubiquitous now and were not in the 1980s (for example the first Dirt Devil model was corded.)

Post reply on HN