Big tech products are mostly useless • Hacker News Board

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#11

Post by philipodonnell » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the 100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see aren't helping by covering it rabidly.

He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press in general for years, so I'm not sure its bringing anything new to the table on HN.

But at the same time, "some of these will surely turn out to be revolutionary eventually" isn't a great excuse to treat everything as revolutionary before it has a chance to even be seen in the field.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#12

Post by SiempreViernes » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #7

The big picture innovations take longer and arrive slower, but the small, life-enhancing improvements deliver so smoothly and consistently that you don't notice until they're taken away. It's only when you have to use a 5-year-old phone or application that you realise how much worse things were back then.

Five years ago I had a phone with buttons and rarely had to stop the impulse of trowing it into a wall because google kept installing updates to apps I don't want and can't do more than factory reset.

Sure, I didn't have a fancy app to look at the timetable for the bus, but there was a wap-page I could use and frankly the apps are about as frustrating but now because touch interactions so often go wrong without real buttons.

And I use both vim and ssh daily, rarely wishing I had an new app to replace them with.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#13

Post by ribchinski » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

Well... I don't particularly agree with everything this guy is saying, but he is right about the internet of things. In my experience, it is quite useless, and it is a danger to privacy. One of the my friends constantly uses Amazon Alexa and Siri for even the most basic questions like, "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Either I am a person who likes to make things more inconvenient for myself, or I just don't understand modern technology.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#14

Post by mrob » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #7

The big picture innovations take longer and arrive slower, but the small, life-enhancing improvements deliver so smoothly and consistently that you don't notice until they're taken away. It's only when you have to use a 5-year-old phone or application that you realise how much worse things were back then.

I use a 6 year old phone. It has a third party extra thick battery and a microSD card slot. It does the core functions of a phone just as well as a modern one (voice call, SMS, clock, calculator, flashlight, music player). The camera is worse, but if I cared about quality I'd use a standalone camera. As for apps/Internet, it's roughly the same as modern phones: a whole lot of barely usable garbage only suitable for emergency use when you don't have access to a desktop. It seems to me that any modern phone would be a downgrade.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#15

Post by icebraining » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

jannes wrote: post #5

icebraining wrote: post #2

Unfortunately, this article seems as empty and uninteresting as the products it's criticizing. The Guardian should ask idlewords to write one for them instead.

For us living inside the feedback loop of the tech world it might be hard to see the relative importance of some of the things. I think he brings up an interesting topic from the perspective of someone living outside of the tech world.

I don't disagree that the topic is important, I just think we have much better critiques being written on that topic regularly, from both inside and outside the tech industry.

Also, the SV reality distortion field hasn't infected all the tech industry. In the companies I worked, nobody was convinced we were changing the world, we're just writing some tools for cash.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#16

Post by sharemywin » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

philipodonnell wrote: post #11

The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the 100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see aren't helping by covering it rabidly. He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press…

I think it's the scale. Be in love with the future products we're using your money to play with don't focus on our actual products because they're really just more expensive than before(no control over life cycle, same features as before) and don't actually add much value but have huge margins.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#17

Post by redleggedfrog » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

Let's remember this, from the last few years, written by numerous major media editorial pages (paraphrasing, of course): "Silicon Valley never tackles the big issues. They just invent frivolous new gadgets which no on really needs, or some new app that shares pictures of cute kittens or is the next social network. They should focus on big picture issues - hunger, housing, crime, etc."

Those are harder to approach and solve, and you need more patience for results. Now we see complaining that the nifty gadgets aren't coming like they used to. Hmm.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#18

Post by markatkinson » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

I feel like more than half the earths population already talks in 'preordained cliches'.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#19

Post by philipov » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

redleggedfrog wrote: post #17

Let's remember this, from the last few years, written by numerous major media editorial pages (paraphrasing, of course): "Silicon Valley never tackles the big issues. They just invent frivolous new gadgets which no on really needs, or some new app that shares pictures of cute kittens or is the next social network. They should focus on big picture issues - hunger, housing, crime, etc." Those are harder to approach and…

Hunger, crime, these are not technological issues solvable by tech companies, unless your idea of a solution involves building a more effective police state. These are political issues our leadership has neither the will nor incentive to solve.

For example, Housing isn't a problem, it's an investment opportunity. The people donating to your campaign wouldn't like it if their investments were pushed down in value.

An app can't fix your economy being dominated by bad actors.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#20

Post by tvanantwerp » Mon, May 21, 2018, 1:14 PM UTC

ribchinski wrote: post #13

Well... I don't particularly agree with everything this guy is saying, but he is right about the internet of things. In my experience, it is quite useless, and it is a danger to privacy. One of the my friends constantly uses Amazon Alexa and Siri for even the most basic questions like, "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Either I am a person who likes to make things more inconveni…

I think IoT doesn't yet deliver an order of magnitude value-add over analog technologies. It's really not so hard for me to flip my own light switch or find some music to play without issuing voice commands. And I never have to worry about a light switch getting borked by a bad update or malware or connectivity issues.

When my home is smart enough to cook all my meals and do dishes and fold laundry, then I'm ready to buy into it.