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Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
The bemoaning by corporate media is hardly surprising. They want people to stay in one place. It fits the meme they know
But to quite the late Anthony Bourdain, “Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
Do we really need to babysit this much permanent infra that are massive office buildings and shopping malls?
Surely we need spaces to work and trade physical goods, especially if we’re on the g
I think this is the next step of globalization
Look at the Cold War era. Of course it made sense to hunker down. Where were you going to go? Europe and Japan were bombed to hell. The USSR?
This is the last 60 years coming to an end
Time for new patterns around what work and life should look like
People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.
Is that true, do most people like doing the same thing every day? It certainly is not true for me. EDIT: A few repliers clarified that it's probably about the stable and reliable income, and not about the nature of the work that's done every day. I can agree with that!
Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
There’s plenty of demand for healthcare services and infra, but no social will to force the political will to fund it
Everyone has an opinion about how the rest of the world isn’t doing what they think it should, given some high level abstract view
Few offer concrete ideas
People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe productivity metrics aren't a perfect measure of society. On many qualitative dimensions we have a much higher quality of living now because of computers: You can talk to anyone almost anywhere in the world for free, instantly. You can recall any information or media instantly. The list goes on..
Continuing the beer theme of my sidethread comment, I read a piece years ago making the point that the then-current explosion of microbreweries looked like a productivity disaster -- microbreweries produce a gallon of beer for a much higher cost than Anheuser-Busch does, so when an economist working with national-level data divides "beer produced in 2011" by "dollars spent producing beer in 2011", it looks like beer…
Economics is such a tragedy, because on the one hand it's so elegant and satisfying, but on the other it seems sufficiently incomplete to be considered broken. Maybe it's the newtonian version of something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe productivity metrics aren't a perfect measure of society. On many qualitative dimensions we have a much higher quality of living now because of computers: You can talk to anyone almost anywhere in the world for free, instantly. You can recall any information or media instantly. The list goes on..
Continuing the beer theme of my sidethread comment, I read a piece years ago making the point that the then-current explosion of microbreweries looked like a productivity disaster -- microbreweries produce a gallon of beer for a much higher cost than Anheuser-Busch does, so when an economist working with national-level data divides "beer produced in 2011" by "dollars spent producing beer in 2011", it looks like beer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting that this thread and the "chatbots aren't so great after all" thread hit the front page on the same day. Anyone who actually thought people gave a shit about chatbots was either deluded, a chatbot API salesman, or a manager/owner trying to cut costs by downsizing their call/chat support center. Anyone who actually thought the gig economy was helping anyone but business owners was either deluded or a shill…
Or they did the Fiverr ads for the NYC subways. There’s one that makes fun of people with white collar careers by calling them “chained down” and declaring that working for Fiverr in the gig economy is better.
Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
This is a good comment. It is interesting to consider how much rhetoric there is about robots and AI and Machine Learning and how these technologies can revolutionize work and lead to big productivity gains. And yet, in reality, the economy shows no sign of this. Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant.
In the end, a designer can make a product people get more use out of.
Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
This is a good comment. It is interesting to consider how much rhetoric there is about robots and AI and Machine Learning and how these technologies can revolutionize work and lead to big productivity gains. And yet, in reality, the economy shows no sign of this. Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant.
That's not true; the first decade of the 2000s rivaled the post-war era in terms of TFP growth:
https://www.bls.gov/lpc/nfbbar.gif
Even Brynjolfsson's ultimate thesis was not that "computers don't induce growth in TFP", but rather that "computers and business practices need to converge in order for computers to have an effect on TFP".
