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

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

#581

Post by lazide » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #567

UncleMeat wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not talking about cold starts, to be clear. I'm talking about the situation where "one minute ago I was here, and I have moved at roughly this speed in roughly this direction for that minute. Where's the centre of the small circle I'm probably in now?"

If someone knew where they were (with any decent certainty), they wouldn't be lost.

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

#582

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 12:29 AM 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…

The point is not "how smooth your ride is" or "how nice your stereo system is" or what incremental bougie feature was added to standard cars in the ensuing 30 years. Fundamentally, you're not able to go anywhere with your 22 Outlander that a 95 4Runner wasn't able to go. You're not able to get anywhere quicker. Ok, manufacturers started caring about quality again after functional obsolescence faded away due to consumer tastes and competition.

These are all iterative changes. You still stop at red lights. You still sit in traffic. You still have the same speed limit as everyone else. While someone from the 90s airdropped into 2022 would be impressed with the stock features of a '22 car, they would not experience any fundamental shift in the movement of goods and people. We still using the same barges, shipping containers, trains, cars & highways, and jets that we were back then.

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

#583

Post by nwienert » Thu, May 26, 2022, 4:37 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #582

nwienert wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point is not "how smooth your ride is" or "how nice your stereo system is" or what incremental bougie feature was added to standard cars in the ensuing 30 years. Fundamentally, you're not able to go anywhere with your 22 Outlander that a 95 4Runner wasn't able to go. You're not able to get anywhere quicker. Ok, manufacturers started caring about quality again after functional obsolescence faded away due to consum…

It goes much faster (acceleration and confidence at high speeds), using half as much gas, at least 2x safety, while able to be more way productive while I drive, if I choose to (I mean I can call video call anyone at any time - show that to someone in the 90s and their mind would be blown). The car stops for me if I forget to stop behind cars, and it auto drives even in traffic, even to a stand-still in bumper-to-bumper.

Having just done two 12+ hour road trips, each, in both cars, I can say that it's not the same. The 4Runner I arrive tired, angry, back hurting, and dizzy from focusing on the road every second, having spent way more on gas. With the new car, I basically enjoy podcasts and movies on my dash while keeping an eye on the road and it does the rest.

We literally have mostly automated driving while turning cabins into ultra-premium dens filled to the brim with every comfort from massage to heat, and people claim it's not tangibly different. It's so, so different.

Even lives saved due to all the safety features and hardware is like hundreds of thousands of human-years of productivity. Reducing it down to "technically they go the same speed" is a silly game to play, I can reduce any opposing argument down in a very narrow and specific way and "win", but that's not the game.

I stand by cars being a great example of progress, and again we're talking velocity of change - compare 1968 car to 1995 cars to today, and it's not really debatable which one is a bigger leap.

Finally, this bits vs atoms is stupid. It's another arbitrary way of slicing things to win an argument. But even if we did want to cut out computers, phones, AI, high speed internet, etc - which we totally shouldn't - you only have to look to SpaceX, or all the crazy new manufacturing tech like industrial 3D printers and AI-powered robotic arms that are actually driving all the innovation in things like cars.

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

#584

Post by nwienert » Thu, May 26, 2022, 4:37 AM UTC

helloworld11 wrote: post #559

nwienert wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok swap in a 22 Tacoma. You're arguing the specific when you should argue the general.

Your second point is shifting the entire conversation to something else entirely.

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

#585

Post by nwienert » Thu, May 26, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

hammyhavoc wrote: post #545

nosianu wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get to your conclusion you ignore 99% of what my comment si about and concentrate on a single thing, cars. I don't like these kinds of arguments where people carefully select one minor thing and pretend it's the main point. I wrote about quite ab bit more, and cars were not even close to the center of my post! > I call friends and family, enhancing connections and communicating more. I also question the validity o…

Just my perspective: I don't feel like I know my friends or family very well these days, despite being friends for almost thirty years with some. Twenty years ago we would talk on MSN or email and arrange to do something or hang out. These days you just see photos of their lunch. I also feel like a lot of folks are scared to hang out, even pre-COVID, because they have nothing to talk about that isn't already on Faceb…

My perspective is quite the opposite, people travel to see each other way more, video chat way more, and we talk about more diverse and interesting stuff.

They have more hobbies and more interesting hobbies (the internet has really exploded the ability to learn about and try things, and new tech like kite surfing is popular with my friends). My wife learned how to sew during the pandemic using just YouTube.

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

#586

Post by utrack » Thu, May 26, 2022, 4:53 AM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #574

utrack wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always come to the less technologically advanced country and haggle all you want. I'm in one of those countries right now, and believe me, it's a lot worse when you actually need to do that every time you try to use any service. After moving there I've started to appreciate a decent, frictionless, fixed price service a lot more.

I find some of these platforms to be far from frictionless. Try doing a basic sort based on price in AirBnb; it does not include the fees in the sorted price making it difficult to find the best deal. Many sites have false reviews that are manipulated to increase their ratings and push an undesirable hotel into a “deal” that hides the actually hotel for instance. Priceline, for example, is no longer the deal that it…

I mean, yes, there's a lot to improve because of bad actors and review manipulations. But for example, you can find a taxi through Uber relatively easy instead of wasting half an hour finding a driver who will a) get you where you want and b) take what's advertised through Uber instead of 4x-5x of that price.

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

#587

Post by Ma8ee » Thu, May 26, 2022, 5:49 AM UTC

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?

Of course electric cars are a big improvement in many ways. But it’s not revolutionary in the same way as cars compared with horses. The usage pattern between ICE and electric cars are more or less he same, while a horse require care for significant time several times a day whether you use it or not. Not to talk about the space requirement, speed, range or power.

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

#588

Post by watwut » Thu, May 26, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #573

altcognito wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few cars made today ride as smoothly as a 1970-80 land yachts made by Cadillac and Lincoln for example. Active (electromagnetic) suspension systems are a huge improvement over the 1970-80 land yachts that couldn't corner to save their lives. Better yet, you can adapt your suspension system to ride however you want.

Perhaps. But the old Cadillac is/was much cheaper and who needs to race around corners in a land yacht. Those fancy new adjustable suspensions are notorious for failing and cost as much as the car to replace. Know someone that just sold their 5 year old car with one of these systems that failed due to the $5000 to repair out of warranty. Cadillac would be new shocks/struts on all four wheels and out the door for less…

Basically, if we ignore all improvements in comfort, speed and safety, there are no improvements in comfort, speed and safety.

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

#589

Post by spupe » Thu, May 26, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #548

spupe wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote above: > 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. The fact that total passenger miles has been largely flat since 2000 (is that even accurate? [1]) has no bearing on that claim. Furthermore, the number of passengers has basically tripled in the last 20 years al…

There are two separate questions under consideration here. One is the capabilities of commercial general aviation air travel in terms of total elapsed travel time. The second is the general commercial utilisation of air travel. In the case of the first, advances in aircraft speed have been all but entirely offset by increased frictions in other parts of the air transport system. 2014 travel between NYC and Chicago is…

> 2014 travel between NYC and Chicago is only barely faster than it was over 80 years ago.

Your issue is twofold: you are focusing solely on one metric to measure efficiency, arguably the worst one (speed), and you then further narrow the scope by saying efficiency gains must come from one dimension of the business ("aeronautical" advances).

There are obvious reasons for speed to not increase further, namely the speed of sound as you already mentioned, so this is a non-starter. We are simply not trying to make commercial planes faster anymore because that would be useless.

Regarding the second point, I think it is remarkable that you present data that directly contradicts your hypothesis and fail to realize that. If we are starting more flights, carrying more people and using the same fuel, the precise definition of it is an efficiency increase. To achieve that we had improvements in booking, avionics, crew training, business models (Ryanair and other low-costs), etc. The fact that we could make a few flights at incredible cost 80 years ago does not mean that we routinely achieving far safer, cheaper and frequent flights at the same speed today is stagnation, rather the opposite in my view.

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

#590

Post by nosianu » Thu, May 26, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

nwienert wrote: post #488

nosianu wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, I use a phone to look up transit info and it's 100x more convenient. I'm a bit baffled, what does your reply have to do with either of my previous comments? I mean what I actually wrote, I'm aware I prominently mentioned such a convenience feature. It's just that there was no question that it was convenient.

It's a direct response to this: > It was when I looked at the tram station not far form my house, which for a year or so has been upgraded to have a display with the expected arrival times of the next three trams. > It sure is very convenient! However, compared to a similar transport system of fifty years ago, which achieved the same thing, we now have a lot of additional effort to maintain such infrastructure. It go…

> It's a direct response to this:

I still don't see how the reply fits to the comments I made. You missed the point of my example by miles, is my impression still. I think I already expressed it well enough even in the original comment, so I have no idea how to re-express it for you.

> 40 years ago you had to ask around, or call to ask about the times of tram

No you didn't. The train or bus schedule was and still is posted at each station, and pocket watches have been a thing for a very long time. I find your style of a bit tiring to be honest.

> You made up some arbitrary thing

Even more misrepresentation! I did not make up anything! That happened!

> Realizing you brought up like 5 different things, and now every time I refute one you're motte and bailey-ing to the next thing. Realizing you brought up like 5 different things, and now every time I refute one you're motte and bailey-ing to the next thing.

You keep ignoring my point and keep talking about deliberate misrepresentations of some minor examples that merely serve as illustration!

> The difference is so stark, and yet you focused on signs at the station when the revolution was in your hand.

Given what the parent comment is about, the really huge difference e.g. between tech such as gas lights and electricity, or horse carriages and modern transport, your claim of a "stark" difference seems unjustified to say the least. You still get from A to B in about the same time and with at best a minor improvement in efficiency and convenience. It is certainly not a game changer to have computerized timetables compared to paper schedules plus watches and clocks, unless a transport system is so grossly broken that it barely ever runs anywhere close to the posted schedule.

I see no basis for you claims of "stark difference" and "revolution", given the context of this entire discussion. The Internet and computerization are, but not replacing paper tram schedules with electronic boards. Again, unless your experience is from some place where the paper schedules were completely useless and trains and buses ran randomly and you had huge random wait times. In which case they would still be far better off fixing their broken transport system so that the schedule actually has meaning.

> I don't owe you to refute every point you put out

You keep "refuting" what there never was to begin with. For example, as if I had said "there is no benefit" (of changes), a point I never made.

Never once did you even acknowledge (or ever even see?) my point, which is the position in a larger context. You keep attacking positions I never took. I will not repeat them here, since I already mentioned them in my original post.