Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by vermilingua » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #37

mikkergp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The call center seems to be like the standard MBA case of a cost center to optimize but where efficiency is only half correlated with positive customer experience. I mean if you can route people to the right place, and get peoples questions answered quickly it's great, but that leaves a long tail of people in the nightmare situation of digging through phone trees, dealing with untrained staff, or having someone try t…

The only real advance in call center tech in the last twenty years (imo) has been the “press 1 to be called back in the order your call was received”.

The only real advance for the customer (if you don't count voiceprint authentication, natural language IVR, agents having all your customer details ready as the call connects saving lots of tedious dictation).

On the business side, you have real-time load metrics to feed your automatic workforce management, rerouting of calls based on staffing and load, highly accurate transcription and sentiment analysis that's always on (even when you think you're on hold, always mute your phone), the accessibility of enterprise-grade contact centres to SMB, and about a dozen other things that weren't possible 20 years ago.

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

#392

Post by philosopher1234 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC

kqr wrote: post #385

lazide wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, everyone I knew got lost and then tried to figure out where on the paper map they were while trying to not get into an accident. GPS, you just wait a second for it to update and you barely miss a beat.

This sounds like poor navigation skills to me. You should be able to find out roughly where on the map you are purely by dead reckoning. So maybe if we by "productivity" mean "can get away without acquiring useful skills" then sure, "productivity" has definitely gone up.

How would that skill be useful to me? I’ve never needed it in my entire life. You sound like a Luddite.

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

#393

Post by fourseventy » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #253

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…

> 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. Honestly, it seems like you're just picking some incremental o…

A Tesla is a fucking space ship compared to the cars people had in the 50s...

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

#394

Post by jjeaff » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:50 AM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #310

lukeschlather wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I try to turn GPS off as much as possible but I also frequently consult it even for routes that I know well. And come on, maps are excellent, there's no garbage there. Last weekend I was frustrated that Google was unaware of a road reroute but that is leaps and bounds ahead of the days of paper maps. Yeah, there's a lot of garbage on the Internet but it's also remarkably easy to find high-quality informati…

> Personally I try to turn GPS off as much as possible but I also frequently consult it even for routes that I know well. I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm just saying it's not as big of an advance as it's being made out to be. > And come on, maps are excellent, there's no garbage there. I've above clarified, but my "garbage" comment was not referring to maps, but other kinds of material you'd fine online. Maps are…

Not only gps, but just being able to find nearby hotels and check vacancy and prices. When I was a kid, we would pull in at multiple hotels and someone would have to go in and ask for prices and if they had vacancy. My mom would usually go and ask for the price because my dad felt like they gave her better prices. In fact, a few times they did - as he sent her in after he asked.

So not only convenience and leveling the information playing field, but pricing fairness. I'm sure quite a few minorities would have some testimonials about the benefits of getting quoted the same price as everyone else.

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

#395

Post by torginus » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:51 AM UTC

Quinner wrote: post #151

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…

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…

With regards to books, this is such a weird take - high quality, well curated books had (and have) such a density of good information, that a stack of paper had all the information you could possibly look on a given for in a concise, reliable manner.

For example, when I tried picking up electronics as a curious high-schooler, I managed to pick up a clearance sale copy of The Art of Electronics - it had all the information I could possibly look for (and I'm pretty sure once could make a career in Electrical Engineering using nothing but that book as a source even today). I'm pretty sure I'd be hard-pressed to find such an accurate and comprehensive reference on that topic anywhere on the internet.

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

#396

Post by _trampeltier » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:53 AM UTC

Because now for ex. everithing needs at least one or two klicks more. You wanna save a file in office. Now they try to force you to use Onedrive. If you wanna save it local, extra mouseclick. Windows menu, the animations are so slow .. I often clicked already a second time and the menu close right again, after it showed slowly up. Don't even start with Browser based apps ..

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

#397

Post by HKH2 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #365

danans wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously he was referring to the existence of conveniences of the homes (dishwashers, laundry machines), not how they were built or the finishings. There have been very few big changes in how homes are built since that time. A little more insulation, and they've gotten even bigger, but they are otherwise pretty static.

Ok, with unlimited power what would you change with your home?

I want a machine that can:

1) Identify any small parts (no need to try and remember what something is and if it is useful).

2) Sort things into boxes.

3) Give me a matching object (e.g. I want a screw with the right length/diameter/pitch).

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

#398

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:00 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #217

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…

Exactly. Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth spells out the details of what real innovation looks like. Peter Drucker used to make about the same point, putting the emphasis on the 60 years leading up to 1914, which he considered the most innovative 60 years in human history: photography, telephones, radio, electricity, the combustion engine and therefore cars and trucks, airplanes, the modern textile dye…

Really a teriffic time period; Semmelweiss suggesting handwashing was just before it in 1847. Kamerlingh-Onnes work on Superconductivity in 1911. Rutherford splitting the atom in 1911. Modern 'safety' bicycle, 1876 and practical pneumatic tyres 1888. Lord Kelvin and the analogue computers predicted tides, 1872. Tsiolkovsky proposes space exploration by rocket in 1898 and liquid propellent in 1903. Just missing 1917, Gillies and the first modern skin grafts / plastic surgery[1]. Darwin and "On the Origin of Species", published 1859.

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_invention... - Pasteurisation, dynamite, barbed wire, ballpoint pens, radio waves, x-rays, polyethylene, incandescent lights, Zeppelins, laminated glass, vacuum cleaners...

[1] https://www.oddee.com/item_98767.aspx

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

#399

Post by chii » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #97

We are more productive. We are doing more with less people. It doesn’t seem like we are more productive because most people are overworked which creates an illusion of unproductivity. Most of those jobs that were lost in 2008-2009 were never replaced, everyone left just had to pick up the slack which tech helped facilitate The other aspect is that a lot of our tech is vapid entertainment. As buzz aldrin said, “They p…

I think somehow people have managed to conflate higher productivity with better quality of life. There's no such connection imo. The quality of life of a lot of people might have decreased, and because they mentally have a connection between productivity (of the country) vs their own quality of life, they feel that productivity increasing not leading to their own quality of life increasing, is a bad sign.

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

#400

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

Rury wrote: post #388

dredmorbius wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range question was addressed by 1960. Costs fell markedly from 1930 -- 1970. Far less so since. It's popular to point to how much airline ticket prices have fallen since dregulation (under Democratic president Carter) in 1979, without also noting that 1979 was a local price peak driven by the Iranian oil embargo of the same year. Safety has increased, of course. That's largely been a continuous function from the…

There's also quite a bit more people who travel by airplane today than in the 1930s. This adds complexity in trafficking, which works to slow things down, rather than speed things up. The fact that overall trip times are marginally faster, despite added traffic volume & complexity, largely explains things here. But despite this, I mostly agree with the broader premise.

Gordon notes that air passenger miles are effectively an inverse relation to costs. Lower costs -> more passengers.

Total passenger miles have been largely flat since 2000. Total departures actually fell during the aughts, along with jet fuel consumption. Some of that's due to more efficient flight booking (appropriately sized aircraft, higher seat utilisation), though a large share is decreased seat pitch, which is to say, far less comfortable travel.