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The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

cacm.acm.org

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Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#21

Post by ethbr1 »

dTal wrote: post #9
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

While this is true and arguably of more importance, the thesis of the article was something quite specific: "the economic cycle that has led to the usage of a common computing platform, underpinned by rapidly improving universal processors, is giving way to a fragmentary cycle, where economics push users toward divergent computing platforms driven by special purpose processors". This is likely to exacerbate the issue…

From a hardware perspective, the ACM cycle discussed is tightly tied to continued general purpose CPU performance gains.

There are many pure-performance classes of software, where more performance = more value. Those classes have been diverging since the 80s (media playback), 90s (graphics), 00s (mobile), and ~10s (gpgpu).

But there are other classes that are functionality limited. E.g. electronic medical record or enterprise resource planning.

If software functionality were more plastic or expanded in those, the same general purpose performance would then be more valuable, and investment would also be incentivized.

Accepting the inevitability of divergent, harder to user-program platforms, when we still have a lot of value on the table feels premature.

And like it bodes badly for further losses of user computing-sovereignty as hyper-optimized hardware makes cloud platforms more attractive and kills off user-owned processing.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#22

Post by jiggawatts »

makeitdouble wrote: post #17
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

There's many situations where manually dealing with 100+ records is a decent tradeoff. I feel people in our field overestimate the actual complexity of many dumb looking tasks. From your bank employee example, it looks like your solution would be to open the bank's internal tool to her excel instance, have it somewhat find the right records and inject the right value, while checking the listed codes. That looks like…

It’s basically a JOIN, the most fundamental data manipulation operator. If you can’t automate this, then you don’t “get” computers at all.

I once had two guys arguing next to me about how it was impossible to produce a simple report about VM storage utilisation in under a month. I produced the report, printed it out, and shoved it in their hands just to shut them up while they were still busy arguing. A “month” of work required five joins.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#23

Post by ethbr1 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #17
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

There's many situations where manually dealing with 100+ records is a decent tradeoff. I feel people in our field overestimate the actual complexity of many dumb looking tasks. From your bank employee example, it looks like your solution would be to open the bank's internal tool to her excel instance, have it somewhat find the right records and inject the right value, while checking the listed codes. That looks like…

We were able to fix it up with some automation in a couple days.

Critically, still running visually on her machine, and with internal resources for lifecycle support if the process changes.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#24

Post by userbinator »

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

What the fuck are we doing as a society, that this lady, with a machine that could compute the above in a fraction of a second, has to spend a decent chunk of her work time doing this?

To put it bluntly: do you want her to be unemployed instead?

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#25

Post by radlad »

jiggawatts wrote: post #22
makeitdouble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many situations where manually dealing with 100+ records is a decent tradeoff. I feel people in our field overestimate the actual complexity of many dumb looking tasks. From your bank employee example, it looks like your solution would be to open the bank's internal tool to her excel instance, have it somewhat find the right records and inject the right value, while checking the listed codes. That looks like…

It’s basically a JOIN, the most fundamental data manipulation operator. If you can’t automate this, then you don’t “get” computers at all. I once had two guys arguing next to me about how it was impossible to produce a simple report about VM storage utilisation in under a month . I produced the report, printed it out, and shoved it in their hands just to shut them up while they were still busy arguing. A “month” of w…

> It's basically a JOIN

The comment you're replying just explained why this is not "basically a JOIN." There are two unrelated systems (not SQL databases) which don't expose any APIs to the analyst.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#26

Post by tuatoru »

userbinator wrote: post #24
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

What the fuck are we doing as a society, that this lady, with a machine that could compute the above in a fraction of a second, has to spend a decent chunk of her work time doing this? To put it bluntly: do you want her to be unemployed instead?

This is the "lump of labor" fallacy.

If she turns up to work reliably, and stays on-task, there are no end of other things she could be doing that increase general welfare more than this.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#27

Post by radlad »

ethbr1 wrote: post #23
makeitdouble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many situations where manually dealing with 100+ records is a decent tradeoff. I feel people in our field overestimate the actual complexity of many dumb looking tasks. From your bank employee example, it looks like your solution would be to open the bank's internal tool to her excel instance, have it somewhat find the right records and inject the right value, while checking the listed codes. That looks like…

We were able to fix it up with some automation in a couple days. Critically, still running visually on her machine, and with internal resources for lifecycle support if the process changes.

Finding internal resources to fix the tool when things change is very prescient.

Growing up, my mom performed a job where she would essentially copy car crash data from one system into another, row by row. As a teenager learning to program, it was obvious to me this could be easily automated. She (perhaps rightfully) didn't want to run anything I cooked up on her company's computer!

A year or so later she was laid off a long with many others in the company performing similar roles.

And this is the problem, isn't it? Once the job is automated, the analyst is no longer necessary. You really need to "learn to fish."

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#28

Post by NikolaNovak »

userbinator wrote: post #24
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

What the fuck are we doing as a society, that this lady, with a machine that could compute the above in a fraction of a second, has to spend a decent chunk of her work time doing this? To put it bluntly: do you want her to be unemployed instead?

I was going to say that - I'm increasingly subscribing to "bullshit jobs" theory :

* productivity for goods is high and availability is high (we can discuss inequality and distribution)

* we just don't need everybody to work 40hrs a week to obtain collectively good standard of living

* but as a society we are uncomfortable with universal basic income

* so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary jobs

That's my current perspective at least. As I continue to grow older and slide into cynicism though, I'm likely to switch to "everybody is idiots and everything is screwed up" theory more and more :-D

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#29

Post by troupe »

ethbr1 wrote: post #23
makeitdouble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many situations where manually dealing with 100+ records is a decent tradeoff. I feel people in our field overestimate the actual complexity of many dumb looking tasks. From your bank employee example, it looks like your solution would be to open the bank's internal tool to her excel instance, have it somewhat find the right records and inject the right value, while checking the listed codes. That looks like…

We were able to fix it up with some automation in a couple days. Critically, still running visually on her machine, and with internal resources for lifecycle support if the process changes.

Do you have any guess how long it will take to break even? Presumably you charged some amount to spend a few days automating it and hopefully it frees her up to do something more valuable for the company.

Sometimes the reason things aren't automated is because there isn't anything more valuable for that person to do so automation doesn't have a positive return on investment.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#30

Post by radlad »

tuatoru wrote: post #26
userbinator wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the fuck are we doing as a society, that this lady, with a machine that could compute the above in a fraction of a second, has to spend a decent chunk of her work time doing this? To put it bluntly: do you want her to be unemployed instead?

This is the "lump of labor" fallacy. If she turns up to work reliably, and stays on-task, there are no end of other things she could be doing that increase general welfare more than this.

Maybe, but I'm not sure everyone has the inclination to become a programmer.

And the whole thread was about how computers should work for everyone, including this lady whose job could be automated.

Which begs the question: do most people actually want general purpose computing? Or does the average human prefer "apps"?

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