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The dictatorship of the articulate

florentcrivello.com

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Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#121

Post by danw1979 »

camillomiller wrote: post #113
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

I mean, this is purely libertarian populism. Someone quoting “Uber cultural values” should be a dead giveaway that they have no damn idea what they’re talking about.

Exactly. As if Uber is some kind of revolutionary invention anyway. It’s an exact example of “no running water” that TFA starts out with.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#122

Post by masswerk »

Hum. While (or because?) I love the sentiment of "still no running water", too much of available resources has gone and is going into putting existing things in software and a rather small number of classes of products around this. Inevitably, this also means a gradual narrowing of infrastructure, which, again, asks for more of the same solution. Still, we like to refer to this method of evolutionary copying of existing things at ever increasing scale as disruptive. This is also, where the money is. I'm not to the least surprised of the lack of fundamental innovation.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#123

Post by secretsatan »

rwl wrote: post #120
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

There was also a cost in human life. I saw a photo exhibition [1] about the construction of the Bay Bridge once, containing many beautiful shots from the point of view of the workers. The photos were taken by Peter Stackpole, a 20 year old kid who basically just talked his way onto the boats that took the workers out to the site. He took photos of the towers as they were being riveted together, of the cables being wo…

Was going to say this, human life was cheaper. It's quite worrying to see now a trend trying to praise this attitude as fearless workers, where as the ones we have now are all wimps, views usually espoused by people who have never, and will never work a job that could be dangerous

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#124

Post by danw1979 »

becquerel wrote: post #84
1dry wrote: post #63

Unspoken and underlying the author's entire worldview seems to be, "the more new things, the better," a not uncommon tunnel view in the engineering world. The purpose of regulation, ideally, is to ensure that whatever activity/process is being regulated is worth the cost(s) for the majority of people. Defining those terms and making that decision is precisely the job of regulators, who are ideally accountable to a de…

Is access to these resources really an engineering problem, rather than a matter of political fact? The people with the power to expand access, politicians, don't have any real incentive to.

Underlying the political will to do something would be the implementation of that thing. To continue the running water example, you can imagine many technical challenges to distributing fresh water to the parts of the world that don’t already have it.

This undoubtedly needs talented engineers across the disciplines, definitely not just software.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#125

Post by hourago »

rwl wrote: post #120
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

There was also a cost in human life. I saw a photo exhibition [1] about the construction of the Bay Bridge once, containing many beautiful shots from the point of view of the workers. The photos were taken by Peter Stackpole, a 20 year old kid who basically just talked his way onto the boats that took the workers out to the site. He took photos of the towers as they were being riveted together, of the cables being wo…

> We don't accept that kind of risk anymore in the US, which obviously drives up construction costs.

It drives cost up for the building company, it drives cost way down for the community. Economy is not just one company but a complex interconnected system including all participants. It is the same case for dumping pollution into a river, it would be cheaper for the company to dump everything the closest possible but then other people is paying off for the loss of the river.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#126

Post by v4dok »

becquerel wrote: post #84
1dry wrote: post #63

Unspoken and underlying the author's entire worldview seems to be, "the more new things, the better," a not uncommon tunnel view in the engineering world. The purpose of regulation, ideally, is to ensure that whatever activity/process is being regulated is worth the cost(s) for the majority of people. Defining those terms and making that decision is precisely the job of regulators, who are ideally accountable to a de…

Is access to these resources really an engineering problem, rather than a matter of political fact? The people with the power to expand access, politicians, don't have any real incentive to.

I would argue that its an engineering/technology problem at heart. If access to those things was easy and cheap politicians would have no/less incentive to hold it back. It's probably not the same if it's a limited and restricted resource.

If we had more people trying to optimize food production, water distribution, Healthcare scaling and management etc, those things would become materially better, fast.

But we are more concerned with optimizing ads so we can buy shit we don't need so..

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#127

Post by hourago »

secretsatan wrote: post #123
rwl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a cost in human life. I saw a photo exhibition [1] about the construction of the Bay Bridge once, containing many beautiful shots from the point of view of the workers. The photos were taken by Peter Stackpole, a 20 year old kid who basically just talked his way onto the boats that took the workers out to the site. He took photos of the towers as they were being riveted together, of the cables being wo…

Was going to say this, human life was cheaper. It's quite worrying to see now a trend trying to praise this attitude as fearless workers, where as the ones we have now are all wimps, views usually espoused by people who have never, and will never work a job that could be dangerous

> by people who have never, and will never work a job that could be dangerous

It may be even worse. Quite often people that suffers from dangerous jobs will also support the situation as they fear the uncertainty of what change may mean. That a worker in a dangerous environment is willing to accept it to get food on the table does not mean that it is the right work environment.

But, of course, the main proposers of unsafe working environments is the people that gets the profit but does not share the risk.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#128

Post by ngc248 »

1dry wrote: post #63

Unspoken and underlying the author's entire worldview seems to be, "the more new things, the better," a not uncommon tunnel view in the engineering world. The purpose of regulation, ideally, is to ensure that whatever activity/process is being regulated is worth the cost(s) for the majority of people. Defining those terms and making that decision is precisely the job of regulators, who are ideally accountable to a de…

>>> it's not gonna be colonizing mars, building tunnels under LA, whatever, it's gonna be access to resources we already have. Healthcare, clean water, clean air...

This exactly ... incremental improvements on existing infrastructure, increasing access etc would benefit more people than big bang, sexy stuff like hyperloop.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#129

Post by spoonjim »

rwl wrote: post #120
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

There was also a cost in human life. I saw a photo exhibition [1] about the construction of the Bay Bridge once, containing many beautiful shots from the point of view of the workers. The photos were taken by Peter Stackpole, a 20 year old kid who basically just talked his way onto the boats that took the workers out to the site. He took photos of the towers as they were being riveted together, of the cables being wo…

Only 11 people died during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge which is fewer than the number of people who jump off of it every year.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#130

Post by _glass »

This is why I hate the dichotomy between business and IT, that is so prevalent in the consulting, and my work. I had a neat idea about how to fix some common problems that we had. My smart manager told me: Do it.

But we had to wait for project portfolio management to put it in, and then it had to be prioritized. Well, it fell off the plate. At that time, I've already moved on. Companies want to be innovative, but as the article stresses, innovations are fragile. Especially if companies want to become more digital, they have to let go of grand schemes, employ builders, and give them space to build.

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