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

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

#401

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #380

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…

> Safety has increased, of course. Come to think of it, security too. Hijackings weren't unusual news items in the 1970s; now, it's hard to remember the last one. And that partly explains the slower airport experience today (which is really due to nobody investing in the resources to speed it up). > It's popular to point to how much airline ticket prices have fallen since dregulation (under Democratic president Carte…

You're largely right.

Early air travel externalised numerous costs, and those have been internalised.

"Big Sky" air traffic policy was proved nonviable over the Grand Canyon (1956) and Park Slope (1960).

Bombings and hijackings of the 1960s and 1970s lead to increased departure-gate screenings. Those increased further after 2001.

Noise complaints lead to use of quieter high-bypass turbofan engines (with their own MAX failure modes).

Increased fuel costs in the 1970s also prompted higher-efficiency engines (again, high-bypass turbofans serve this role), as well as curtailment or cancellation of planned commercial supersonic transports.

Gordon also discusses similar apparent retrograde trends in automobiles. Here again I see formerly externalised costs (emissions, safety, handling, noise) being internalised and included in purchase costs. Electrification is a similar trend.

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

#402

Post by ciconia » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:12 AM UTC

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…

David Graeber made a similar observation in one of his talks [1]. I find it very interesting and pertinent to the current difficulties humanity is currently facing, especially with regards to climate change.

One the one hand, humanity is totally capable of destroying our planet. On the other, we've already reached, so it seems, the limits of whats is physically possible. Both problems made us abandon reality and instead embrace virtual reality, and virtual "space time".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q84ar89Oxo

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

#403

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:13 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…

> Electric cars? Come on. They're barely even a change from a consumer perspective. Someone from 1950 wouldn't even notice the difference, unless you told them exactly what they were looking at.

Wut? I call major bullshit on this. Yes, obviously electric cars generally do the same thing as ICE cars, but the consumer experience is so much better for me is that after owning an electric car I will never, ever even consider owning an ICE car.

I mean, by your analogy, an ICE car is just an "incremental or marginal improvement" over a horse and buggy. Heck, I've got to feed my horse grass and clean up after its poop, and I've got to "feed" my ICE car gas and clean up after its oil leaks. What's the difference, right?

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

#404

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:18 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #372

dredmorbius wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

You should instead ask " how long must a rich person show up before their flight" I have not read the book, but from your quote selection so far it seems to mismanaged comparisons of the 1% to the 80% of the population. If you looked at the poorer part of the population that things are generally much faster since they get to travel by plane at all.

The general public was flying en masse by the 1960s, though the pace picked up greatly through that decade.

Gordon's point is that the best commercial-grade service ... didn't move much in the seventy-eight years* from 1936--2014. It's been nearly another decade and that story's largely the same.

In a world which obsesses over Moore's Law and doubling improvements every 1.5 -- 3 years, no appreciable movement in 8 decades* is something to take note of.

Put another way, the 1936 experience was in a DC-3 (or similar) aircraft. The 2014 experience is in a turbofan-powered plane. It turns out that approaching the speed of sound is a pretty hard limit for most aviation --- commercial aircraft tend to max out at about Mach 0.85 or so. The laws of aeronautical engineering aren't going to move that much, at least not for reasonable quantities of fuel (hence: cost) and noise (externalities).

There's also the fact that other factors, call them "frictions", begin to appear: airport and air traffic congestion, security requirements, etc.

Even private-charter aircraft might find themselves further curtailed if they are utilised in, say, future terrorist attacks. Or find themselves vulnerable to attacks themselves in ways commercial aircraft are not. (This resembles a plot point in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future.)

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

#405

Post by torginus » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

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…

And to bring the analogy into the realm of computing, I feel like progress isn't lightning fast here either.

I just watched this video of Office 3.0 from 1992:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsTydF09hbg

This looks and feels like the Office I use everyday.

Likewise, I feel like the changes in the realm of software development, a purportedly fast moving, tech and investment heavy industry, have been a mix of sidegrades, new paradigms enabled by faster hardware, and just stuff as it ever was before.

If a 2005 programmer, who knew C++,JavaScript,Java,HTML,C#,Python,Bash etc. would have been frozen and thawed yesterday, would be able to be brought up to speed on modern iterations of technology and tooling.

Growing up in the 2000s, I hung out on internet forums instead of Reddit, chatted with people on IRC instead of Discord, and used MSN messenger instead of Whatsapp, but these programs almost served the same social purpose.

Considering video games, a canary in the coal mine for the bleeding edge in software and hardware (at least it used to be that way), one could be forgiven for mistaking Crysis, a 2007 game for one that came out yesterday. Halo Infinite released just last year, with almost identical gameplay to the original 2001 Halo.

I feel like the pace of improvement has slowed considerably starting with the 2000s, and I'd be hard pressed to point out anything life-changing that came out in the last decade.

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

#406

Post by somenameforme » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

philosopher1234 wrote: post #392

kqr wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is a risky side to take. Consider that your argument isn't all that far from a kid wondering why they should learn math. After all if they ever needed to use it, they could just use a calculator, like the one they bought from the clerk who whipped our her trusty calculator to determine how much change to give for the 120 coin calculator that was paid for with 200 coins.

Navigational skills are likely not only improving our mind in ways we might not otherwise appreciate, but also serves a countless practical scenarios. Something as simple as getting around at a large market or mall often comes down to the exact same skills as reading a map. In fact that is what you're often literally doing as you find a floor map to locate the location you'd like to go to.

There are also examples on the other side. Read this [1] warning from the national parks service about GPS and Death Valley. Multiple people blindly following GPS there have lost their lives because of it, and countless other similar locations that are quite remote and where what your GPS tells you, and what reality tells you may often contradict.

Finally, if we ever enter into a war against another major power - on day one of the war, all GPS is going to cease to exist for the foreseeable future (with the internet not far behind). Those satellites are sitting ducks and are going to be high priority targets. This shouldn't even be an argument, but this scenario is looking increasingly likely with every passing day.

[1] - https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm

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

#407

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #403

tablespoon wrote: post #253

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

> Electric cars? Come on. They're barely even a change from a consumer perspective. Someone from 1950 wouldn't even notice the difference, unless you told them exactly what they were looking at. Wut? I call major bullshit on this. Yes, obviously electric cars generally do the same thing as ICE cars, but the consumer experience is so much better for me is that after owning an electric car I will never, ever even consi…

You know electric cars aren't a new invention, right? First ones came about in the 1880s, and they were quite common in the early 20th century.

Sure, not common in 1950, but the user experience difference between an ICE car and electric is, to a 1950s or 1910s person, basically noise. The ICE car is noisy, electric not. The acceleration, ride comfort, features - all are similar enough to be interchangeable to someone far removed from this time.

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

#408

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:24 AM UTC

fourseventy wrote: post #393

tablespoon wrote: post #253

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. 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...

So is a Jag, or Ferrari, and a Lamborghini may well actually _be_ a spaceship. The method of propulsion isn't what would make them point and go "spaceship"

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

#409

Post by jcims » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:26 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #403

tablespoon wrote: post #253

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

> Electric cars? Come on. They're barely even a change from a consumer perspective. Someone from 1950 wouldn't even notice the difference, unless you told them exactly what they were looking at. Wut? I call major bullshit on this. Yes, obviously electric cars generally do the same thing as ICE cars, but the consumer experience is so much better for me is that after owning an electric car I will never, ever even consi…

In the context of the question being posted electric cars don’t move the needle for productivity. I spent three glorious days with a Tesla performance M3 in Texas recently. The driving experience is, for me, unparalleled. But it was definitely not more productive by any metric I’d use.

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

#410

Post by tluyben2 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:28 AM UTC

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…

We had one frontend engineer in the 80s/90s doing TP and Delphi frontends, and he was also doing some backend work because frontend work was very easy and fast. We now have 10 frontend devs and I don’t find it an improvement. It looks somewhat better sometimes, but it’s slower, more inconsistent (you can jump from 1 of the 100s of applications we did in Delphi to a random other and immediately understand it all if you use Windows) and incredibly costly compared.