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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?

#231

Post by moron4hire »

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…

> Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago.

50 years ago, the average person did not cross the Atlantic at all. Flights were so expensive they were completely inaccessible to the vast majority of people.

Today, most of the middle class can eventually afford a European vacation, if it's something they want to prioritize. I'm not rich and I've been to Europe three times in my life.

The way in which we travel is also significantly safer and more efficient. For as much as I hate airports and airlines, I can't deny that the state of things today is still at least an order of magnitude better than "decades ago".

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

#232

Post by thatfrenchguy »

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…

> The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet

I grew up in the late 2000s driving manual cars in France. My electric Hyundai Kona is a wildly better experience by a lot. It accelerates easily, corrects my mistakes with emergency braking / lane centering, and it's stupid easy to park or start on a hill with it.

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

#233

Post by swat535 »

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 don't think your comment does justice to how much we have advanced since 1960..

Today..

* we can have pretty much any food delivered to me with a click of a button

* We can have a ride at anytime to any destination with a click of a button

* Communicate instantly with millions of people with a click of a button

* Huge automation in business operations and logistics

* AIs that can literally draw pictures and write sentences

* Practically look at any place across the globe, find directions in any country and translate nearly any text to any language

* Listen to unlimited amount of music and entertainment with a tiny wireless thing in my ear that can also make calls

* Automated vacuum cleaners that run on schedules, mop floors and dispose their trash

* Cars that are much more efficient, can detect pedestrians, red lights, road signs, have blind spot monitoring, can warn you when you are drifting off, warn you if you risk collision, ..

* MRNA vaccines and breakthroughs in many areas of science (CRISPR for example)

* SpaceX, Starlink satellites and adoption of electric cars

* We literally have 3 rovers and 1 lander currently in operation on Mars, transmitting images and data

I could go on but I think I've made my point.

To claim that we have not progressed is ridiculous. Yes, we need screens and internet to accomplish some of these, but we also need fuel and electricity to build a lot of tech in 1960. Some technology simply require other technology and I think that point is irrelevant.

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

#234

Post by majewsky »

tunesmith wrote: post #170
Quinner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally move through the world vastly differently thanks to digital maps. Many people (and in a few years, the majority) are doing so in cars that use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. One way to tell whether you're in an 80s house would be to look…

I think your last sentence is unnecessary. What purpose does it serve?

Once an argument has been laid out in detail, providing a poignant summary in one sentence leaves a more lasting impression on the reader.

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

#235

Post by rowanG077 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #129
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…

There's a weird disconnect with computers. The software we use is 1000 times more complex than it was 20 years ago, leading to performance that really have not improved a lot, and a lot of functional stagnation. Many applications are slower to start today than they were 10 years ago, because back then they were binaries and today they are Electron apps. Your average web based word processor with cloud storage perform…

> The limit is human perception.

I couldn't disagree more. The general choppiness a modern application has is noticeable by literally everyone. I'm so bothered by it that I even went back to a wired mouse recently because the latency of my bluetooth mouse made me uneasy. And another point is that VR is rewriting entire technology stacks JUST to get lower latencies, precisely because a lot of people just get sick if it isn't good enough. 120Hz+ displays are becoming more commonplace thank god. And I could go on.

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

#236

Post by AndrewKemendo »

humanrebar wrote: post #176
SoftTalker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Collaborative editing is an essential task in my job. Go back twenty years and folks were emailing copies of copies of drafts back and forth. Today, two authors use two keyboards and two screens and just type. That's very different.

The vast majority of the world is still doing the emailing back and forth method.

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

#237

Post by damon_c »

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…

Probably the main innovation is in how many people have access to those things compared to in the 1950s...

Sure, the rich people of the 60s had cars and dishwashers. Now many more millions of people do.

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

#238

Post by dmitriy_ko »

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…

Modern houses have PEX plumbing. It has some advantages over copper, e.g. it won't burst if it freezes. But the main advantage -- it's less labor to install.

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

#239

Post by rowanG077 »

amelius wrote: post #216
marginalia_nu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a weird disconnect with computers. The software we use is 1000 times more complex than it was 20 years ago, leading to performance that really have not improved a lot, and a lot of functional stagnation. Many applications are slower to start today than they were 10 years ago, because back then they were binaries and today they are Electron apps. Your average web based word processor with cloud storage perform…

And the "async programming" that is advocated everywhere is still the same as Windows 3.1 cooperative multitasking, just with better branding.

Depends on what you mean by async programming. If you literally mean async and await as available in Haskell, Rust, C#, JS, Python etc. Then no that's definitely not the same thing as windows 3.1's cooperative multitasking.

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

#240

Post by njstraub608 »

lkrubner wrote: post #74
uejfiweun wrote: post #2

I have a hard time believing this thesis that modern technology doesn't help productivity. Think about CRM software. Could you imagine having to go through hundreds of filing cabinets and massive systems just to get information about a customer? What about 100 SDRs doing this at the same time, every day? How about trying to meet with someone on the other side of the country? Or having to hire hundreds of assembly lin…

“”””But the BENEFITS from these enormously productive technologies only seem to go to the richest of the rich”””” You misunderstand how labor productivity is calculated. It’s simply the the total amount of wealth generated by a worker per hour. So for instance, a worker at a McDonalds restaurant generates $150 in wealth per hour, and gets paid $12 per hour on average. Total wealth is created by productivity and is th…

> If you doubt how much computers destroy productivity, then simply visit a hospital and you can see it with your own eyes. My mom was recently in the hospital so I got to see this myself. Mistake after mistake because of bad information either put into the computer, or codes being misinterpreted.

I would argue this isn’t necessarily because of computers but a byproduct of an antiquated system and process being codified into a computer. The reason for this seems to be that there are structural inefficiencies built into our healthcare system that create a ton of added complexity that is near impossible to unwind because of legal (contractual and privacy-related) risks. For example, any attempts at improving efficiency in patient care creates potential liabilities for medical professionals. People are scared to innovate in this space, so the programs are just digital translations of an existing process. This requires a time investment to learn the “new way” of doing the same thing, and builds inherit laziness because steps are still require that should have been automated away. Medical notes are a good example of this; it’s required to be documented in an extremely specific way and of a certain length because of insurance so it just ends up being copy and pasted, free text, by the physician to meet this requirement.

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