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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?

#421

Post by nfbyte »

torginus wrote: post #395
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…

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 inform…

> I'd be hard-pressed to find such an accurate and comprehensive reference on that topic anywhere on the internet

You can find The Art of Electronics on the internet... And you can put it on an old tablet with dozens of other reference books.

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

#423

Post by alaricus »

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…

Today's services are indeed much more sophisticated, but not necessarily better. This is because better and cheaper hardware made people sloppy, not because we have much better services.

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

#424

Post by Ekaros »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #413
jcims wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never going to the gas station? The fact that the per-mile cost is much lower? Isn't that pretty much the definition of productivity?

Potential downsides entirely ruin the concept. Think of having to find charging spot every week, potential waiting for days if not weeks for one to open up. The continuous degradation of range. The charge time on longer trips, with the potential of having to wait the mentioned days or weeks on each charging session.

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

#425

Post by fomine3 »

Spivak wrote: post #359
dendriti wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s even stronger than you suggest, the actual “word processing” bits turned out to be a vestige of a paper world and “collaborative text editing” was actually the killer feature.

I wonder why we use paper layout on Word/GDocs despite it never be printed.

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

#426

Post by blenderdt »

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…

For me the navigation example is a bad one because I still navigate like 30 years ago. I also don't have internet on my phone other than Wi-Fi. I don't want to be connected all the time.

What I see is that people have no clue anymore about where they are. They rely on GPS. Is this an improvement? As long as GPS is working, yes.

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

#427

Post by Hypocritelefty »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #413
jcims wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never going to the gas station? The fact that the per-mile cost is much lower? Isn't that pretty much the definition of productivity?

No post body was provided.

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

#429

Post by rramadass »

syntheweave wrote: post #324

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…

Well said!

Are your ideas from Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul#On_technique

Would appreciate some sources.

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

#430

Post by fomine3 »

IshKebab wrote: post #132
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…

> 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.

Heat pump mini split is a thing in 80s.
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