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Big tech products are mostly useless

theguardian.com

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Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#71

Post by tarunkotia »

Eridrus wrote: post #58
mLuby wrote: post #45

"It’s years since Silicon Valley gave us a game-changer. Instead, from curing disease to colonies on Mars, we’re fed overblown promises" Come on. "We don't have a colony on Mars yet" doesn't mean there isn't crazy innovation going on with extremely tangible benefits. Any of the following is a game-changer. 1. Dec'15 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on land. 2. Apr'16 SpaceX performs first ever…

"Why is Elon Musk wasting his time getting us to Mars when there are problems on Earth that need fixing?!?"

Same thing can be said about lunar exploration project which in hindsight brought the personal computing revolution.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#72

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

loblollyboy wrote: post #29

Of course, like raking leaves in your lawn, you’re going to run into a kind of diminishing returns situation. So I agree, albeit with an obvious point, My only qualm (beyond the banality of the thesis) is that this dude is forgetting about some other cool advances, such as the sharing economy (Uber/Lyft and airbnb) which kind of changed the world a little, messenger apps (which made day to day life a little more conv…

It's not obvious the sharing economy is actually a win. It's certainly a change, but particularly with Uber and with gig-economy delivery services, drivers aren't necessarily happier, better paid, and less stressed than they would have been with a less disrupted job.

Sometimes the consequences take a while to work through. What will Amazon do after it kills bricks and mortar? How many customers will it have when most of the population is barely scraping by with gig economy now-you-see-it-now-you-don't income?

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#73

Post by ryanmonroe »

amelius wrote: post #63
Zak wrote: post #47

Now, when was the last time you came to book a haircut or restaurant table and concluded that the task was so onerous that you would ideally delegate it to a machine? And even if you can easily think of a scenario, would there not be something ethically questionable about doing so, if the person at the other end had no idea who or what they were talking to? I hate talking on the phone. If I can't fill out a web form…

Yeah, but I guess the bigger question is: is this convenience so large that it justifies that a single company puts a wall around a market with a gate with their name on it?

What do you mean? Has Google patented the use of computer-generated voices / language to contact a business?

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#74

Post by mLuby »

chengiz wrote: post #66
mLuby wrote: post #45

"It’s years since Silicon Valley gave us a game-changer. Instead, from curing disease to colonies on Mars, we’re fed overblown promises" Come on. "We don't have a colony on Mars yet" doesn't mean there isn't crazy innovation going on with extremely tangible benefits. Any of the following is a game-changer. 1. Dec'15 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on land. 2. Apr'16 SpaceX performs first ever…

Sounds like a list of things pulled from a SpaceX brochure, not sure how exactly they are game changers.

Well sure, any company that makes game changing advances is going to list them in its brochure.

Assuming positive intent rather than sarcasm, so here's why they're game changers:

1.2.3. landing and reusing orbital rockets will deliver a huge increase in launch frequency and a huge reduction in cost, both acting to increase humanity's practical access to space. It's the difference between building a plane that flies once and building a plane that files a hundred times.

4. Falcon Heavy allows us to launch higher payload missions that was possible before. Especially since nobody assembles spacecraft in orbit, this raises the cap on how massive a spacecraft humanity can operate.

5. Giving America the ability to put humans in space without relying on the Russian Soyuz is a political and strategic victory for the US.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#75

Post by romaniv »

swalsh wrote: post #69
romaniv wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think though that AI is the last "fundamental" change information technologies will bring though. There are wast continents of mostly unexplored or abandoned territory in IT. Moreover, some of them are well documented. Some of them were documented in 1970s. The fact that IT professionals today don't know about them and can't imagine anything more significant than "AI" for pizza ordering, is unsettling. Just to…

You misunderstand what I mean then. I view "AI" as a series of technologies which can be applied to a problem space. You're right in that there is a lot of open problem space, and there's definately a lot of additional technologies which can be discovered in the indivudal categories of technologies. I just don't know what the next "major" category of technology is. For your example, automated system integration is th…

> automated system integration is the combination of existing technologies.

Which ones? As far as I can see, it's all manual right now. Service integration is probably the largest area of IT at the moment and it sucks in more and more engineers every year. So maybe the notion of "web services" and "APIs" simply aren't the right ways to go about it.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#76

Post by jannes »

Larrikin wrote: post #26
jannes wrote: post #6

I predict that AI has 5-10 more years of "mostly useless" ahead until it suddenly becomes interesting. Another thing he criticised was the Internet of Things and other gadgets: I agree with the author on that one. I hope it dies a quick death. If there's a tradeoff between an internet-connected device that lasts 1-2 years and a not-connected device lasting 20 years, I would always chose the longer-lasting one.

The crowd on here seems to have a valid complaint against the IoTs while being very short sighted on what actually can be done. Currently most companies want to be Facebook or Google and collect all the data they possibly can while putting out a mediocre/bad product with no security that only works when there is an internet. No consumer actually wants this. Instead of killing the industry, we need a new generation of…

You are describing the ideal. But for some reason all that companies can come up with are closed "ecosystems" where systems work well with each other as long as you buy everything from the same manufacturer. Interoperability and open standards seem to be in no companies' interest. Where is that new generation of companies going to come from?

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#77

Post by amarkov »

redial wrote: post #37
bertil wrote: post #32

Wait, is that article simply ignoring that self-driving car are now commercially available in Phoenix? That’s probably a bigger revolution than the steam engine, and someone’s take on this is “That’s it?” Let’s ignore the shattering impact of incredibly convenient video streaming, content filtering via image tagging, electric cars, transportation or food on demand, having contactless payment available to anyone for p…

> Wait, is that article simply ignoring that self-driving car are now commercially available in Phoenix? That’s probably a bigger revolution than the steam engine, and someone’s take on this is “That’s it? Are you being ironic? The steam engine literally reshaped the world. I think you express exactly what the author is talking about: Acting as if just by announcing it, it has already succeeded.

But imagine someone sitting there in 1804 Wales, looking at the first steam train, saying "slow down buddy you haven't actually changed anything yet". It seems like there's a sense in which this is short-sighted.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#78

Post by amarkov »

mcphage wrote: post #38
galieos_ghost wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hunger- Has been mostly solved thanks to GMO increasing crop yields. crime- Is strongly correlated with poverty, which has been rapidly reduced globally thanks to technological innovation Housing- Will be solved by tech making remote work viable and thus reducing demand in cities. Automation and some form of income stipend could also allow people to live in more affordable places rather than cities. Your view of "tec…

> Will be solved by tech making remote work viable and thus reducing demand in cities Remote work is viable, and yet the major tech companies are focused on hiring developers in a small number of overcrowded cities (or moving developers that it hires into those cities). I expect no solution to housing or remote work from them.

Isn't that exactly why we should expect a solution from them? Google knows first-hand why some leaders are opposed to remote work, and stands to make a lot of money if they can overcome it.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#79

Post by dexen »

Eridrus wrote: post #58
mLuby wrote: post #45

"It’s years since Silicon Valley gave us a game-changer. Instead, from curing disease to colonies on Mars, we’re fed overblown promises" Come on. "We don't have a colony on Mars yet" doesn't mean there isn't crazy innovation going on with extremely tangible benefits. Any of the following is a game-changer. 1. Dec'15 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on land. 2. Apr'16 SpaceX performs first ever…

"Why is Elon Musk wasting his time getting us to Mars when there are problems on Earth that need fixing?!?"

You jest, but it's worth referencing the "Why explore space?"[1] letter. Penned back during the Space Race, as a response to a nun concerned with apparently wasteful spending, contrasted to poverty suffered by the people she was working with.

On a lighter note: we've put people on the Moon before we've put wheels on the luggage[2]. Exploration before comforts.

[1] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

[2] https://betafactory.com/what-came-first-wheeled-luggage-or-a...

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#80

Post by jannes »

Larrikin wrote: post #26
jannes wrote: post #6

I predict that AI has 5-10 more years of "mostly useless" ahead until it suddenly becomes interesting. Another thing he criticised was the Internet of Things and other gadgets: I agree with the author on that one. I hope it dies a quick death. If there's a tradeoff between an internet-connected device that lasts 1-2 years and a not-connected device lasting 20 years, I would always chose the longer-lasting one.

The crowd on here seems to have a valid complaint against the IoTs while being very short sighted on what actually can be done. Currently most companies want to be Facebook or Google and collect all the data they possibly can while putting out a mediocre/bad product with no security that only works when there is an internet. No consumer actually wants this. Instead of killing the industry, we need a new generation of…

> I'd love to know that I seem to use way more energy than other people around me. Perhaps I have a bad AC, or my insulation is particularly bad.

Or perhaps you are running too many always-on IoT devices :-) SCNR

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