Utopia Is Creepy • Hacker News Board

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#61

Post by ippisl » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:29 PM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #40

It looks pretty lonely and soul crushingly transactional. A world where we know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Why don't we invent technologies that let us spend more time with friends and family and less time worrying about the production of goods and services? Wouldn't it be much more fun for the mother and child to spend time together baking something, than sliding recipes around the world? They…

>> Why don't we invent technologies that let us spend more time with friends and family and less time worrying about the production of good and services ?

Those things aren't achieved by technology. In the 18/19 century , peasants in Russia worked all summer , and in the whole winter they rested in the house with family.

Those things are achieved by a decent social order combined with frugal mentality by individuals and societies.

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#62

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:35 PM UTC

Ha. In this "future" of theirs people still go on business meetings with planes, stay in hotels and get there with a taxi.

No they won't they will get eaten by leaner companies who waste a lot less time with the occasional 30 min Skype meeting.

But of course they can't fathom it because it is so far from the world they live in that it would never occour to them.

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#63

Post by kmm » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:36 PM UTC

Sapient wrote: post #49

Vivtek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed it was driven by a white man in Johannesburg, too.

I didn't pick that up, but it explains the Melktert recipe.

I noticed it because the first voice you hear sounded like gibberish, and a second later my brain recognized it as Afrikaans and I understood it. It's crazy how what is at one moment unintelligible noise can suddenly have a meaning.

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#64

Post by jodrellblank » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:47 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #47

civilian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all-- the technology was shown helping the bellhop in the microsoft video. My friend works in a warehouse. It's not glamorous, and it's refrigerated, so it's maybe 40 F the whole time. A lot of the warehouse is automated, so he spends most of his time making sure that the equipment is doing what it needs to be doing. So, just one more anecdote about how technology is becoming a part of blue-collar work.

Oh, I'm well aware that technology has pervaded all walks of life - that's kind of my main beef with this video. It seems to wrap itself up entirely in this mythical environmental-engineering company, along with the very wealthy denizens of it, as if that will be the bulk, or even the theme of the world in the future... and in the end come off as rather sterile and soulless. More interesting than whiz-bang animations…

What more substantial info does the bellhop need? One of the problems with displays of numbers like that is that they are mostly a curiosity unless something breaks, then what you need to see is whatever indicators of brokenness are relevent to identifying and fixing it. And not much is going to break there unless she arrives at a different time or is moved to another room. A future full of attention grabbing displays of data just because we can is not utopian.

Perhaps the cab cost submitted to the expense account happened behind the scenes - why would she need to be alerted about it at all? I imagine the cab was pre-paid by whichever of her staff planned the trip, or provided by the hotel. We don't know, but if this is a display of techno-efficiency around her trip, she doesn't need to know or care either. On problem solving, it takes loading a dataset into a brain and then time thinking about it; it can't really be shown on a slick video and it doesn't need a particularly futuristic office except to the extent that we see people looking at screens of data/information. "A smaller pump would be more efficient"? As if the software which calculated that needed two people physically meeting to say so.

By necessity, a video like this can't display happenings which don't fit video as a format, and that seems to me to be a lot of everyday life experiences on the smallest scales.

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#65

Post by suivix » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 3:10 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #28

xianshou wrote: post #4

One of the main problems about technological visions of utopia is that they so often assume that perfection is the absence of problems. Perhaps, but the more a world approaches that perfection, the more limited it becomes by necessity. Hence, the glimpse of Microsoft's world of optimal productivity is a glimpse of an intellectual and spiritual desert: meetings without purposes, productivity with nothing to produce. H…

To be fair, they seem to be having a serious biological problem - the nutrient absorption chart seems decreasing (assuming the x axis means time)

Yes, but it's in some abstract, distant part of the world that hasn't yet been transformed by MS technology. So this company is trying to do the right thing and help them from afar, in the end goal of spreading Utopia, connectivity, and screen technology.

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#66

Post by evilduck » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 3:23 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #58

rbanffy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The guy in the office is using a keyboard. The curve is one of Microsoft's finest products. I like the natural better, but, when space is constrained, it's a great choice.

Funny how someone can disagree that Microsoft sells excellent keyboards. If, however, someone else makes keyboards better than the natural or the curve, I want to know.

You were probably modded down because your comment was totally tangential to the discussion, not because they disagree with you.

Re: Utopia Is Creepy

#67

Post by rbanffy » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

evilduck wrote: post #66

rbanffy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how someone can disagree that Microsoft sells excellent keyboards. If, however, someone else makes keyboards better than the natural or the curve, I want to know.

You were probably modded down because your comment was totally tangential to the discussion, not because they disagree with you.

I think the fact Microsoft considers one of its current models to be futuristic enough to figure in that video relevant to the discussion. They think people will use keyboards in the future and they'll be small, wireless and curved.