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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?

#321

Post by machinerychorus »

bovermyer wrote: post #258
nanomonkey wrote: post #252

Speak for yourself. I feel like I have riches of new tech at my disposal. Currently have 10 gbs fiber internet for $45/month, in one second I can download the contents of my first hard drive. My laptop has 64gb of ram and 8tb of ssd. I don't even know what to do with that much compute as I mostly use Emacs and Firefox for everything. Meetings are completely online, so I no longer need to travel to visit other offices…

But humans are still limited. Until we accelerate our evolution, we'll be stuck at the speed of glaciers in terms of our potential.

Memetics is much more potent than genetics. We're about to achieve much more than people could 2000 years ago, not because humans have genetically evolved to be that much smarter, but because we have memetically evolved much more sophisticated social structures. Genetics is still important, and augmenting individual intelligence should still be pursued, but memetics is in the driver seat now.

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

#322

Post by vanilla_nut »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #137
humanistbot wrote: post #134

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? > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. Energy efficiency and fuel economy have made massive gains. Materials are stronger and lighter. Batteries last ages compared to 30 years ago.

Also they go wrong a hell of a lot less often. 80s cars were mostly complete shit and no one was sorry to see them go. Also if you crash one, you're vastly less likely to die.

Absolutely agreed, as someone who's driven around in an 80s deathtrap car quite a bit.

However, it IS unfortunate that we've shifted the risk to people AROUND those vehicles instead of the driver. People drive around in their noise-insulated, airbag-laden tanks these days and they're definitely safer. But it's unfortunate that pedestrians and bicyclists around those cars are actually more likely do die in the event of a crash now because vehicles are so ridiculously tall and overbuilt.

If you ask me, I'd rather that driving was more dangerous for the driver than people around the vehicle. They're the ones taking the risk when they drive poorly. It's unfortunate that the externalities are imposed on those around them instead, now.

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

#323

Post by denimnerd42 »

mymythisisthis wrote: post #302
nerdponx wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point you're trying to make here? That somehow people were better off for having to spend hours thumbing through books instead of searching things on the Web?

The fastest way of learning something is to have a professional teach you. Not even the Internet can beat that. Because of cut backs to education, we have fewer good mentors. Because of loss in manufacturing in N. America there are fewer skilled professionals to pass on their knowledge.

Plenty of professionals are out there teaching on youtube. I can fix my car, my plumbing, my electrical, I can frame an addition to my house, I can setup an irrigation system. Rebuild a chainsaw, build my own furniture, refinish my floor, fix my drywall, concrete flatwork. These are all things I've done in the past year. The proliferation of digital video, high quality cameras, microphones and editing software has made it easier than ever to learn from professionals. Books just aren't the same thing.

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

#324

Post by syntheweave »

Technology is popularly misunderstood as "gadgets and lab science". But the root of the word is shared with technique.

That is, if I have a technique for applying leverage, and I use it to make a lever, that's a simple technology. If I define a new system of organizing my home according to some principles, that's a technology. And so on.

It is certainly the case that we have found new techniques and technologies in recent decades. But in defining a "tech sector" and relating it to measurements of GDP growth we have tokenized a particular mode of it, one which some parts of society propose is increasingly irrelevant to the quality of our existence. It's often pointed out that wars are "good for the economy" in that more stuff is manufactured, overlooking the destructive aspects of war.

And so the definition of productivity is also worth questioning, because it's tied to a model of society based around the firm and its capacity to produce quantities of assets and trade them for money. This model has been in place for a few hundred years now(see early merchantalist writing) and is in need of reassessment. Much of what the economy has done since the beginning of industrialization is simply in the realm of creating more monetizable spaces and optimizing towards the "frictionless" everything-for-sale optimum.

It worked for a while, but at this point, we're basically hindered by the frameworks used to define value and enforce sale. There are huge realms of technical innovations that don't get explored because we don't have a place for them. Instead we have to aim to "fit in" with the legacy system.

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

#325

Post by Jensson »

lovich wrote: post #211
wincy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems immoral to give it to the bottom 10% of people in the US, who are relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world. Why not give $15,000 each to the 300 million poorest people in the world, or $5000 to the 1 billion poorest?

I see this come up as a gotcha every time redistribution of wealth is ever discussed, but surprisingly the left can be just a nationally minded as anyone else. I’d be concerned with involving those people in the calculation when we’re under the same political body. As long as we’re in separate nation states that’s kind of an in house issue they need to decide on how they want to deal with it

But the billionaires in USA are international, they "stole" wealth from workers all over the world, your solution to give that to Americans still results in those workers having their labour stolen by Americans. Constantly stealing labour from workers all over the world and giving it to American workers seems just as unethical as giving it to American billionaires, both situations results in a small number of people hording all the wealth.

And then if you distribute it fairly among all the workers who actually did the work to amass that wealth, then there is very little left per worker. And you do it so the poorer gets more since they got less initially, then the American workers wont get a single cent since they are all rich and most of the labour is done in China and India.

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

#326

Post by dendriti »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #265
gcanyon wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> performs about the same as MS Word did on a 486 with a floppy Except (gdocs for comparison) I now can: 1. Effortlessly access the doc on multiple devices, wherever there is cell or WiFi. 2. See a visual history of every change I've ever made to the doc. 3. Collaborate with many other people in real time. 4. Easily incorporate images, tables, drawings, and other files. 5. Compare documents. 6. Use other character se…

Right, but how many things are actually central to document processing?

Literally 100% of the documents I process are sent to other people. So collaboration and sending documents are core functionality.

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

#327

Post by dredmorbius »

wolverine876 wrote: post #173
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…

> a person can write a paper just as well in Wordperfect 5 as the latest Google Doc or Office365 Word That seems hard to believe; try printing, or formatting. It's like saying 'a person can fly just as well in a 1930s biplane or a current 737.' Sure, they both fly. On the other hand, am I more productive in 2022 Emacs than I would be in 1985 Emacs?

As Robert Gordon notes in his The Rise and Fall of American Growht, an air traveller in 1936 headed from New York to Chicago, could have made the trip in 3h 55m gate-to-gate, vs. 2h 35m today. But in 1936, arrival at the airport need only be 10 minutes prior to departure, gates were immediately next to the terminal entrance, and taxis or a chauffeured Cadillac limousine were 5 minutes from the gate --- the latter cost $10.50 in 2014 prices.

The 2014 traveller must arrive an hour prior to departure, it takes 20 minutes merely to get off the plane on average (from the middle of the plane) on arrival, and 5--10 minutes to get to the taxi line. The net trip is only 20 minutes shorter than in 1936, despite the faster in-flight leg. Much more of that time is spent standing, waiting, or walking.

Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth (2015), pp. 396-7.

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

#328

Post by rfrey »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #180
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…

You can still get those things from your 60s house, it will simply cost more (adjusted for inflation). But I do not see how quality of life are any worse with LVT flooring instead of wood, or PEX plumbing instead of copper, or wiring in a hard conduit instead of not wiring in a hard conduit. I would even say quality of life is better. Why would I want to wax wood, and have a more difficult to repair floor. An LVT pie…

Homes today are cheaper than the 60s? The 60s where a single earner family, where the earner was a schoolteacher, could afford a house before having kids?

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

#329

Post by titzer »

Jensson wrote: post #325
lovich wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this come up as a gotcha every time redistribution of wealth is ever discussed, but surprisingly the left can be just a nationally minded as anyone else. I’d be concerned with involving those people in the calculation when we’re under the same political body. As long as we’re in separate nation states that’s kind of an in house issue they need to decide on how they want to deal with it

But the billionaires in USA are international, they "stole" wealth from workers all over the world, your solution to give that to Americans still results in those workers having their labour stolen by Americans. Constantly stealing labour from workers all over the world and giving it to American workers seems just as unethical as giving it to American billionaires, both situations results in a small number of people…

Almost any redistribution scheme you come up with is going to look unfair from some perspective. I shy away from "immoral" because that's just a triggering word. What we're really trying to decide are the terms of the social contract, and despite my libertarian past, I am now 100% on board with introducing a personal wealth cap significantly under $1 billion. No person could really spend that much money in day-to-day meatspace activities in a lifetime; it can only be hoarded, squandered, and splurged on flamboyant things, none of which I think we should allow until we get out of climate crisis mode.

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

#330

Post by anthk »

mymythisisthis wrote: post #302
nerdponx wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point you're trying to make here? That somehow people were better off for having to spend hours thumbing through books instead of searching things on the Web?

The fastest way of learning something is to have a professional teach you. Not even the Internet can beat that. Because of cut backs to education, we have fewer good mentors. Because of loss in manufacturing in N. America there are fewer skilled professionals to pass on their knowledge.

I have books on math from encyclopedias from parents from the 80's weighting more than 4 KG each.

Now I can just fire up a browser and understand a hard math concept in minutes in a much easier way. With free as in freedom CAS tools and such, and with a netbook bought at a ridiculous price 20x cheaper than the book volume set itself, which back in the day costed A LOT.

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