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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?

#511

Post by cudgy »

pixl97 wrote: post #355
jart wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It serves the utility of not being able to hear people breathe on the other side of the home. Speaking as someone who grew up in old New England colonial houses, I'd say that if anyone wants to understand why Californians build so many tech products without privacy, one needn't look any further than the lack of privacy to which they grew accustomed in their homes.

That has exactly zero to do with the lumber. Nothing at all. In fact heavy dense lumber would transmit sound better than a light wood. I have a new house built from this 'crap' wood you distain, and you can't hear people in the next room because it has sound deadening materials in the walls.

If your house has sound deadening material inside the interior walls, then you must have a custom built home. Almost all spec homes have nothing but air in those interior wall spaces.

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

#512

Post by cudgy »

mountainriver wrote: post #223
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 find this statement absolutely insane. We’ve made huge progress on just about every facet of life I can think of and continue to. It’s cool some guy wrote a book on it but it’s a pretty narrow and contrived view of the world.

“huge” progress does not equal innovation. Being able to order a pizza in 60 seconds using an app is huge progress versus calling the store and ordering with your voice, but it is not a significant innovation. Now, printing a pizza using a digital recipe from a restaurant on my food printer would be something else.

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

#513

Post by Retric »

Ekaros wrote: post #434
XorNot wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dishwashers use a fraction of the water they used to. It is more water and power efficient to use a dishwasher then to wash dishes by hand. [1] In all these responses what I'm noticing is people missing the vast gains in efficiency from our appliances over the last few decades: everything we have gives more, and uses less. [1] https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2008/data/papers/1_1...

On the other side the water and energy use has been trade off for time use. Living in country with plenty of fresh water I might prefer to waste some for faster cycle time. So in sense things have actually gotten worse.

It’s not really about water use. Dishwashers require very hot water, so less water directly translates into dramatically less energy use.

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

#514

Post by cudgy »

throwaway981572 wrote: post #435
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. The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can do online many of the things you needed a car before. The speed difference is between minutes or hours to milliseconds - much more than the difference between cars and horses. The whole aspect of looking at cars is funny. It’s l…

Telephones, video conferencing, and internet were available 30 years ago. It is just more available today due to the hardware improvements based on processors using instruction sets that have been around for decades.

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

#515

Post by UncleMeat »

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.

Why is that not an appropriate form of productivity?

And I've never seen somebody who learned to navigate on a map effectively actually locate their position in moments.

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

#516

Post by patrickjd »

aj7 wrote: post #475
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…

Try 1960 surgery sometime. Or 1960 chemo, or cardio imaging, if you’re really unlucky. Or 1960 airfares or jet engines. Or 1960 machine shop equipment. The last 30 years? I can exhaustively research a technical subject at home, without getting dressed, thanks to that Russian lady. My Google Drive has a departmental library, suitable for the old Bell Labs, of books on lasers and optics. A CAD (design) and CAM (send ma…

RNA Vaccines too!

The above comments seem to assume that progress is limited to consumer goods.

As for progress in terms of atoms (rather than bits) behold the elaborate global supply chain.

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

#517

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

> that a stack of paper had all the information you could possibly look on a given for in a concise, reliable manner

The World Book entry on enormous subjects of great importance was still maybe a few pages long. Today, a fair amount of primary source material in archives on different freaking continents is available online.

Printed documentation for hardware and software was frequently not exhaustive and there was no way of asking for help quickly. Maybe you had a help line. Maybe you knew hobbyists in a local meetup group. But that old DOS manual wasn't anywhere near as useful as what is available today.

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

#518

Post by UncleMeat »

asah wrote: post #250
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…

bogus! I was there, and let me tell you, I get so much more done each day, it's shocking: - cellphones, the internet and GPS saves insane amounts of time coordinating RL events. I'm never gonna get back the 1000+ hours I spent with paper maps trying to find places, playing "phone tag" coordinating activities, etc. Kids these days, they just have no idea. - remote work & learning = 2+ hours PER DAY. I used to pay $500…

The home improvement stuff is huge. I just recently bought a home and talking to my parents about how they did home maintenance using printed materials was incredible. Compare even basic information like "learn to recaulk a shower" via a black and white book with grainy photos and 10,000 high definition videos of people doing it. Let alone a job of higher complexity.

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

#519

Post by FunnyBadger »

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…

So true.

Hardware/Physical innovation also takes 20 years delay "lab to fab" - you can't cheat it or speed it up. It simply takes time.

And more importantly: if you don't continuously (not continually) fund that 20 years of work (financially, human effort, etc.), the delay goes to infinity.

In general, that "pipeline" has emptied out in the US as manufacturing was outsourced overseas. And so anything you start today merely starts the 20 year clock but if and only if you have the infrastructure in place to support it.

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

#520

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

> Your average web based word processor with cloud storage performs about the same as Microsoft Word did on Windows 3.1 on a 486 saving onto a floppy.

It is now trivial to embed high definition photographs in a document. There is a figure-creation tool right there in the application. I can make notes and comments and mark up a document. I have an automatic and recoverable record of the history of my document. I can collaboratively edit that document with people from across the world. I have spellcheck that works across dozens (perhaps hundreds) of languages.

In the sense that we have a WISIWYG editor whose primary interaction is a keyboard typing letters - sure. But I wouldn't describe this as "about the same."

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