71–80 of 112 posts
If you use the hate of crypto on HN as a metric, then yes.
A few of them got it, but for most people what didn't exist when they were teens is some heresy that threaten society. Yet as usual, society will move on, and those unable to adapt will be left behind.
I will admit it, I prefer the downslope of the Hype Cycle. I choose boring technology. At the end of the day, I am trying to solve problems, and playing with new stuff often doesn't pay out for solving those problems.
I related this once on another site: we had this process that was heavily manual and the people performing the task would want this part at the end automated, or maybe a reminder email at the end, or some instructions here ... can we just do that part by computer? Bit by bit, the process maxed out on automation.
And then the people who asked for the automation were fired and replaced with minimum wage intern types. Also, the final product was inferior but hey ...
I think technology can be marvelous but we often do stupid things with it, ending up in unemployment and some crap results, like "American cheese."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not against technology Neither were the Luddites! The Luddites were a labor movement who wanted to ensure that workers in textile mills were being treated fairly. Many Luddites were highly skilled and happy to work with automated looms, they just didn't want factories to fire all the skilled labor and pay pennies on the dollar to unskilled labor. (While holding cloth prices steady.)
Luddites destroyed machinery because the new technology was threatening to replace them. They were most certainly against this technology. Fortunately, the explosion of affordable textiles resulted in many more jobs in textiles, which were unskilled. So the luddites were right - they were not worth the cost of their skilled labor. They did get replaced. But society as a whole gained a lot, as is usual for new technol…
Absolutely not. They were absolutely willing to operate the machinery. They could have produced more cloth at the same price, or distributed more of the earnings back to the workers. It's not a boolean outcome where it's either "the machines or the Luddites". There are plenty of ways to solve the problems they raised without doing away with either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not against technology Neither were the Luddites! The Luddites were a labor movement who wanted to ensure that workers in textile mills were being treated fairly. Many Luddites were highly skilled and happy to work with automated looms, they just didn't want factories to fire all the skilled labor and pay pennies on the dollar to unskilled labor. (While holding cloth prices steady.)
Also, as a separate comment, the day will come where software development is automated in some capacity. All the high skill workers may be competing with workers with much less training at lower wages. The Luddites are a good cautionary tale about when you should protect your working conditions and rights (when the demand for your services is at its peak). So many engineers I talk to these days say things like, "Why…
I think textile manufacturing is distinct from software engineering, though, because unlike textile demand which is fairly limited (people only need so much fabric), the demand for new software will always exceed supply because the space of useful applications of general-purpose computation is effectively infinite. I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg yet.
Beside the point, but IMO, all podcasts should have a transcription option as well. I unfortunately just don't have the attention span to listen to hours of people talking, but put it in text format and I have zero issues.
Beside the point, but IMO, all podcasts should have a transcription option as well. I unfortunately just don't have the attention span to listen to hours of people talking, but put it in text format and I have zero issues.
My take from reading some of each is that the disagreement is more superficial: Benanov has a soft spot for what automation could be but is very much keen on chronicling the economic context it's actually gone down in, while Mueller likes to criticize "actually existing automation" itself.
But, I guess we'll see how it actually goes down tomorrow.
I sense a trend https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-happens-to-tech-work...
My job offered to 'train' me in using salesforce, all paid trip with training etc. I switched jobs. Now I read perl for a living so who knows if I made the right move!
Maybe that could a lucrative specialised role - Perl Reader.
I jest