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Stop tech-driven problem-solving

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Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#61

Post by icebraining »

davidivadavid wrote: post #49
icebraining wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm actually arguing for eliminating cars from small towns: The solution is public transport; it seems you already have a train that goes to Jacksonville, though it's rather slow; the Brussels-Bruges line is about the same distance and takes only 1h, even with intermediate stops. As for not having delivery, that's solved by the question itself: if people didn't have cars, they would definitively deliver! As…

You still need to go there. Which is a 2 hour round-trip. Not practical.

Yes, and so do you with a car, and it also takes 2h round-trip, as virmundi wrote.

Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#62

Post by todayispotato »

jesperlang wrote: post #58
todayispotato wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have a point. The article was written to be thought provocative, to make people consider what they are doing. The actual underlying issue however is that finding and identifying problems to be solved is _hard_. It's much easier to focus on something concrete like a piece of technology. An example is, well, your example. The problem "How do we build car free cities?" is already much better than "How do we av…

Yes! I was deliberately phrasing my problem finding as "how to build car free cities", which is too tech, phrasing the problem in relation to tech! But you will quickly get to even bigger questions like "why do we move", "why do we work" which will quickly lead to thinking about deep political issues..

Exactly. And then the trick becomes scoping and problem selection. You can't solve everything after all!

Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#63

Post by cr0sh »

le-mark wrote: post #33
bitwize wrote: post #20

Funnily enough, microcomputers themselves were once the technology solution in search of a problem. The "home computer" fad of the 80s promised lots of applications that didn't quite pan out, including finance, "helping kids with the homework", "the little lady can store her recipes", and home automation. The only ones that really panned out were games (including edutainment), spreadsheets, word processing, and maybe…

>> the little lady can store her recipes That's a great perspective, and I'm really glad you mentioned this in particular. It's one of those things that was so often repeated, and I always found it to be really bizarre. Recipes? Really? I'd add music synth to your list of real world uses, in some sense that was a killer app for microprocessors.

This machine - a 16-bit computer from 1969 (!) - was marketed as a "kitchen computer", among other things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316

Seriously.

Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#64

Post by marcosdumay »

savman wrote: post #26
justadeveloper2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shut your mouth--I can't keep charging $250/hr. unless people BELIEVE! But seriously, I just came off a project last year that used Hadoop "because" and for no other discernible reason. I personally did a ton of studying on Data Science and then...crickets. Couldn't find anyone who really wanted that kind of work done. Maybe in time.

I'd be curious if anyone else has had the same experience re: Data Science. From what I've seen so far it seems like the super big tech companies pay _all the money_ for ML/DS people; outside of that the pickings seem to get slim quick.

In all fairness, the super big companies (not only tech) are the only ones with any big data.

Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#65

Post by gaius »

lvoudour wrote: post #10
marktangotango wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked at a large financial services company and a large medical billing company who both thought they could use big data and machine learning to monetize customers(!) data. Niether had expertise with either. One muddled through with local talent, the other brought in a ph.d ML guy. Both spent millions and got nothing in return. Anecedotal, but representative I believe.

I don't know how big those companies are, but they may qualify for big data if they have millions of users or enormous datasets to analyze. The question is, what's the advantage compared to other methods? Is being "left behind" a valid concern for the company's business or is it just a teenager's version of "left behind"?

The fundamental problem of Big Data is that the low hanging fruit has already been picked. Geezers (in a non gender specific sense) with 30 years in industry X have already either intuited it, or it has been uncovered by traditional KDD techniques. What do Big Data, Machine Learning or Data Science have to offer there? The remaining fruit may be very high indeed, and not economically pickable anyway...

Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#66

Post by bitwize »

davemp wrote: post #57
bitwize wrote: post #20

Funnily enough, microcomputers themselves were once the technology solution in search of a problem. The "home computer" fad of the 80s promised lots of applications that didn't quite pan out, including finance, "helping kids with the homework", "the little lady can store her recipes", and home automation. The only ones that really panned out were games (including edutainment), spreadsheets, word processing, and maybe…

> finance, "helping kids with the homework", "the little lady can store her recipes", and home automation. The only ones that really panned out were games (including edutainment), spreadsheets, word processing, and maybe small single-user databases. finance -> spreadsheets "helping kids with the homework" -> word processing "the little lady can store her recipes" -> small single-user databases Sounds to me like they…

"Helping kids with the homework" I meant more in terms of using the machine as a study tool. Aside from edutainment titles, this didn't catch on until online encyclopedias and then the internet took root.

Using a computer to store recipes was wildly impractical. Using it to do basic CRM or point-of-sale tasks with a small relational or navigational database was much more appropriate.

Re: Stop tech-driven problem-solving

#67

Post by bitwize »

le-mark wrote: post #33
bitwize wrote: post #20

Funnily enough, microcomputers themselves were once the technology solution in search of a problem. The "home computer" fad of the 80s promised lots of applications that didn't quite pan out, including finance, "helping kids with the homework", "the little lady can store her recipes", and home automation. The only ones that really panned out were games (including edutainment), spreadsheets, word processing, and maybe…

>> the little lady can store her recipes That's a great perspective, and I'm really glad you mentioned this in particular. It's one of those things that was so often repeated, and I always found it to be really bizarre. Recipes? Really? I'd add music synth to your list of real world uses, in some sense that was a killer app for microprocessors.

> I'd add music synth to your list of real world uses, in some sense that was a killer app for microprocessors.

You're right. The Altair 8080 famously didn't do anything useful at all upon its release. It wasn't until someone in the Homebrew Computer Club discovered that the radio interference its CPU generated could play tones on an AM radio by buzzing the CPU in loops that a use was found for it.

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