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The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

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Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#81

Post by marcosdumay »

dsr_ wrote: post #74
javajosh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for , which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM, license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc) follows the same pattern. Note that profit-driven entities can give aw…

"Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce" This is wrong, and every open-source project including OpenBSD and Linux, emacs and vim is counter-evidence. "A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for" -- this is correct.

Economically worthless is a very bad phrasing, but the concept is very real (economists go with non-excludable, but that has an underwhelming impact on laypeople), software authors have a really hard time capturing the value they create.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#82

Post by [deleted] »

Robotbeat wrote: post #65
exporectomy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really any more limiting? They can make programs in Scratch or other web apps on their phone. It's not "real" native software but it wasn't in the 1980's either. Kids then used BASIC interpreters. Compilers for "real" programming languages like C were unaffordable. Even assembly language and machine language were often inaccessible because computers didn't have an assembler or hex editor and you couldn't get ne…

You can’t use Scratch on your iPhone, and the built-in basic programming was far more “native” than any similar smartphone equivalent we have today. My TI-89 calculator remains way more programmable than my smartphone. I’m not sure why it has become so common on Hacker News to defend this trend and/or pretend it’s not a trend.

[deleted]

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#83

Post by JoeAltmaier »

"Decline" as in "Still growing but not as much as some other things". This analysis sounds like sour grapes. "Phones get all the love!" doesn't actually mean that general-purpose computing is declining. Just the opposite. It continues to grow in power as it always has.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#84

Post by javajosh »

marcosdumay wrote: post #81
dsr_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce" This is wrong, and every open-source project including OpenBSD and Linux, emacs and vim is counter-evidence. "A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for" -- this is correct.

Economically worthless is a very bad phrasing, but the concept is very real (economists go with non-excludable, but that has an underwhelming impact on laypeople), software authors have a really hard time capturing the value they create.

I've always thought of it as the turn-style in front of the theme-park. Without that turn-style, the theme-part is economically worthless no matter how good it is.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#85

Post by yowlingcat »

brainless wrote: post #6

This is what I personally feel is just missing these days. I was never part of the leading edge of hobby computing. I was very far off, geographically, growing up a teenager in India. But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a lot more about experiments. I would read up on some software or hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to be on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other…

The challenge with technology these days is that while the capabilities have gone in one direction, the culture has not necessarily gone in the direction many of us who came of age during an earlier era wish it might have. To some extent, I guess this is just a part of what happens when cutting edge things go mainstream -- no frontier lasts forever, sadly.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#86

Post by tartoran »

dsr_ wrote: post #74
javajosh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for , which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM, license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc) follows the same pattern. Note that profit-driven entities can give aw…

"Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce" This is wrong, and every open-source project including OpenBSD and Linux, emacs and vim is counter-evidence. "A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for" -- this is correct.

Yes but that’s not what the parent meant but in a money making way, and that has been something big companies realized a long time ago and capitalized on it. The general trend has been to create attractive gardens, get people used to them then raise up the walls. In the end even open source has stated to make a bit less sense to its creators and maintainers who are people and need to eat too

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#87

Post by willismichael »

dsr_ wrote: post #74
javajosh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for , which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM, license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc) follows the same pattern. Note that profit-driven entities can give aw…

"Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce" This is wrong, and every open-source project including OpenBSD and Linux, emacs and vim is counter-evidence. "A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for" -- this is correct.

I think you mean a different definition of economic worth than the GP post. One meaning is the developer's ability to sell the software, the other meaning is the value derived by using the software.

I maintain an open source project that sits in a very small niche. Based on downloads, stars on GitHub, and comments on forums, I estimate that hundreds or thousands of people find it useful. I do get the occasional donation, but if I calculated dollars per hour that I have put into this project, it would probably be in the single digits.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#88

Post by IgorPartola »

brainless wrote: post #6

This is what I personally feel is just missing these days. I was never part of the leading edge of hobby computing. I was very far off, geographically, growing up a teenager in India. But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a lot more about experiments. I would read up on some software or hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to be on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other…

The difference is that those people who are happy with YouTube videos wouldn’t have been tinkering with computers in 2006. You have to remember that tinkering with computers was and still is a nerdy niche. Let’s say there are 1000 people in the world. Of those, 10 are hackers (in the “tinker with computers” sense, not on the malicious sense), 20 are enthusiasts, the rest are neither. In 1990, you’d have 15 people on the net talking about computers and doing stuff with them. Everyone else is watching TV, reading books, whatever. In 2006, you have 100 people: 10 hackers, 20 enthusiasts, 70 people who found cat videos. In 2021 you have 990 people on the net: same hackers abs enthusiasts but also a whole bunch of people who are here for the cat videos. Does that detract from what the 10 hackers are doing? I don’t think so. In fact, it adds opportunity to the hackers and enthusiasts.

We didn’t lose the hacker spirit. Go look at hackaday.com to see what people are working on. We simply gained an audience.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology

#90

Post by tartoran »

technothrasher wrote: post #69
brainless wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about myself here. I am still an absolute curious fellow. I just started learning woodworking, I am 37 years old now. I start learning something new each year. I meant the current trend of digital products which are, in my opinion, more like a TV than "computers".

I have also been disillusioned of late with the computing hobbies that have fueled me most of my life. I'm still heavily involved with computing for my employment, but there's just something that doesn't spark my curiosity as much as it used to. Interesting that you mentioned you've moved to woodworking, as I found a way to rekindle my curiosity be exploring older technology as well. I've dived head first into antiqu…

I took up to painting as Im involved too in computers as my day job. The contrast is wonderful, there is freedom in it, there is a sense of limitless possibilities and no pressure or hard deadlines. I’ve often said to myself if I went to art school I’d probably have been interested in computers now. I have also become disillusioned a while ago with computers and I think there is a limit to any interest without taking a break. But recently about an hour a year ago I started to become interested in programming again and one was using racket/lisp/scheme and second was Linux. I’m a new Linux user I am very stoked about it.
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