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

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

#551

Post by corrral » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:05 PM 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…

> The computerized "knowledge at your fingertips" is a common slogan of computer-age propaganda, but it's probably true that a greater fraction of that "knowledge" is in fact garbage and overall may just be a marginal improvement.

IMO the Web has done a terrible job of realizing all the wonderful knowledge-spreading and educational purposes it was supposed to.

What it has done is make it so idle, trivial thoughts that would hardly have reached the level of consciousness before, become an itch until I find out the answer—because now I can find out the answer ("who was that one actor in that one show"). And it's great at answering those kinds of questions.

It's 2022 and in tons of fields you'll still run out of material on the Web as soon as you go past the barest surface of a topic, and have to go track down some books (which may have no digitized version, so I mean actual books). I have niche reference books from decades ago that are exactly the kind of thing that an online catalog-of-knowledge ought to be good at, but what's on the web is far less complete than them. That kind of thing.

All that, plus it's so crammed full of spammy shit that using it is like trying to track down a poorly-marked Little Free Library box on the Vegas strip.

Physical libraries with inter-library loan remain much more valuable overall—and university libraries, especially—which is kind of pathetic.

The most valuable sites on the Web are probably piracy websites like Library Genesis, and they still can't deliver everything you can get on dead trees. But they come the closest.

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

#552

Post by mountainriver » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #512

mountainriver wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

huh? Progress requires innovation, the two are tightly linked

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

#553

Post by passivate » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

rr808 wrote: post #291

lotsofpulp wrote: post #154

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? Yes. Even the cheapest house built to code will be noticeably better than one from 1980s. The quality of materials, technology of materials, wiring, plumbing, flooring, insulation, etc will all be better. > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry…

> Even the cheapest house built to code will be noticeably better than one from 1980s. The quality of materials, technology of materials, wiring, plumbing, flooring, insulation, etc will all be better. This is definitely not true. Old houses have solid lumber, new ones are lightweight softwoods. Copper pipes replaced with plastic. Maybe Marble kitchens are nicer? More energy efficient is likely. Certainly 30 somethin…

If it is "definitely not true" as you claim, surely someone has done an analysis and published data on electrical, flooring, structural strength, etc. Lets see some of that. Data is easier to discuss than opinions.

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

#554

Post by corrral » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #479

jjeaff wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Actually, I recall being able to haggle prices at hotels before the online booking sites became prominent. Also, there were travel agents (a rare breed these days) who could assist with booking flights, hotels, and sightseeing. There seems to be advantages and disadvantages to each era. However, I largely consider technology advances to be rather unimpressive, especially services and apps built on the internet. Acces…

> Actually, I recall being able to haggle prices at hotels before the online booking sites became prominent.

On family trips in the 90s, I'm pretty sure my dad almost never paid the asking price for our rooms. If you were coming in from about the mid-evening on, without a reservation, but they still had some rooms unlikely to be filled, and there were any other hotels with vacancies around, they'd gladly knock off a few dollars if you asked, since the alternative was likely having $0 of income for that room, that night.

What I've noticed traveling more recently is that there seem to be fewer vacancies if you try that "just show up and find a room" thing (which used to almost always work out fine, except at extremely popular places on very busy travel weeks), like the whole industry's running with way less slack (i.e. more efficiently). But also room prices have gone batshit crazy, even more so than general inflation, so the savings from that efficiency doesn't seem to be reaching customers.

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

#555

Post by staticman2 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

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.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that heat pumps and vacuum cleaners and microwaves didn't exist in the 80s.

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

#556

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

fieldcny wrote: post #501

dredmorbius wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not happening as a matter of course in the 1980s. The basic mechanism to reduce such risks was established in the '80s. The 1880s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)

Have you ever looked at 1950s electrical wiring? How about electrical appliances from the 1950s? We used to have Christmas tree lights from the 1950s that were passed down from our grandparents. Two unshielded wires and no fuses, we burned out many an outlet and tripped the breaker every year.

The original claim was house fires in the 1980s of electrical origin. That stock would generally have been built since the 1950s (largely 1960--1990, for the decade of the 1980s).

Candes, fireplaces, cigarettes, and cooking stand out in my memory.

A current industry report puts cooking as the greatest risk, followed by heating equipment. Electrical ranks third:

https://www.nfpa.org/News%20and%20Research/Data%20research%2...

I don't have trending data at this point. If you or others care to provide any, that would be appreciated.

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

#557

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

guyzero wrote: post #284

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 to get your cancer treated in 1960 and let me know how much you like 2010

Cancer treatments are highly specific. There's been marked progress in some areas (breast, bladder), and remarkbly little in others (pancreatic, brain, lung).

A very close friend died of a cancer in the early 1990s for whom treatment has advanced little from the late 1960s, and is largely based on compounds developed in in the 1910s, for chemical warfare during the Great War. Other than genetic sequencing now telling us what specific chromosomal mutation is responsible for the disease, the situation remains largely unchanged to this day.

(This is one of the messages I continually send Past Me, who was as is all to typical, bombarded with "information" about "novel treatments" promising to aid in their disease. Those were, and are, utter bildge.)

The largest improvements in health outcomes, measured by decreases in mortality and increases in life expectency, occurred during the decades of the 1910s (women) and 1920s (men). The largest increases since have largely come about through improved healthcare access (especially to the poor and minorities, with Black women and men making huge increases in life exepctancy since the 1950s) and through te elimination of risks: air pollution, asbestos, lead, cigarettes, reductions in alcohol consumption, IV drug use, overdoses, unprotected sex, and the like. AIDs and other novel infectious diseases have been a counter-trend.

5-year survival for my friend's cancer was and remains about 1 in 5. 60 years after 1960.

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

#558

Post by dunefox » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

MrMan wrote: post #499

systemvoltage wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced by this lengthy rebuttal, in fact it just solidified OP's point. OP/Thiel's point: It's not that we haven't made any progress, but rather the progress since the cold war has been disappointing . I'm a bit ambivalent about Globalisation and whether that can be considered progress. We globalized several times (Early trade routes, 14th century, British empire and then again in post-modern era).

thiel gave us a payments company, a shitty hedge fund and a government contractor doing consulting work. not to be reductionist, but his complaining doesn't register for me at all. for god's sake he tries to get people to quit Stanford to start businesses that necessarily can only coast on previous achievements, instead of doing science.

This ad hominem doesn't change anything about the quote.

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

#559

Post by helloworld11 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

nwienert wrote: post #271

chrisco255 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS is nice and all, but I would not say we move vastly differently compared to 30 years ago or even 70 years ago (basically, since interstate highways were developed). And electric motors are just a horizontal change in technology. They may have better acceleration than ICEs, but we're still going to be fundamentally traveling the same way. Only if and when self-driving becomes a thing, or personal drone transport v…

I upgraded from a 95 4Runner to a 22 Outlander and it’s like a spaceship on wheels in comparison. Literally every piece of the car is in a different class and the tech is insane that just didn’t exist then, I mean it basically drives itself. It’s dramatically safer, more efficient, comfier, faster, quieter. I no longer hate long drives, they’re quite nice. The speakers are amazing and the road noise is basically gone…

But let's see how well your 22 Outlander functions in 26 years. Also, if you were in a poorly developed, remote area with simple infrastructure and no fully-modern auto mechanic shops, then your lovely car breaks down. How would you handle that? The 95 4Runner would be a much easier car to deal with.

We often buy nice, comfortable, complex things with the assumption that the comfort and niceness of now as well as the infrastructure that lets them function well are static things that will never cease. Of course, they're not, and sometimes they can recede very abruptly.

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

#560

Post by lazide » Wed, May 25, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #406

philosopher1234 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I used to be a (literal) boyscout. I spent a lot of time camping in the backcountry of Death Valley (Butte Valley) before it got closed off, and even more in the Utah Badlands. I got my orienteering patch, and also wander around A LOT in the wilderness (legit, no cell phone, poor GPS stuff) to this day. And I don't always bring a GPS or a phone.

It's been over 2 decades since I got lost outdoors (and then only for about an hour), but I do sometimes get lost in a complex urban environments. Which street goes where again? Especially when I'm on a continent I haven't been on for awhile. I've been told I have an excellent sense of direction.

I also grew up before hand held GPS was a thing, let alone smart phones.

Even back then, almost no one had a decent sense of direction, people got lost and delayed getting to new places all the time, etc. If you asked someone which way was North, at least 75% of people would have no clue or thought they knew and then pointed the wrong way.

The way people dealt with it was by NOT GOING TO NEW PLACES MUCH, or by bringing someone who had been there before, or just being late a lot the first few times.

I also think it's dumb to suggest someone be trying to juggle a (usually outdated) paper map and orient themselves that way, ESPECIALLY in traffic with little notice, instead of just using GPS. And if you think people are going to be able or willing to pull over somewhere to pull out the map and look, well, go watch what people actually do in traffic now and tell me again. A lot of people don't seem to be willing to even go to the next freeway exit when they miss theirs, preferring to rampage across dividers instead.

It also used to be people would bring someone along to be the navigator because it was so difficult. Now people can explore on their own easier.

In the event of a war and GPS gets taken out, solar apocalypses, etc. it's going to suck for that and many other reasons, but it's not like it helps suggesting they use the old terrible way in the mean time. Because even on a good day, that was pretty terrible.