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Big tech products are mostly useless

theguardian.com

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Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#91

Post by redial »

amarkov wrote: post #77
redial wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Of course is short sighted, but those are not the only two options. You can think the idea will change the world without drinking the cool-aid that it already has.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#92

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#93

Post by amelius »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #73
amelius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No (or perhaps yes), but they are a big player, and this is a typical winner-takes-all situation. Soon everybody will access business X through Google, and this gives Google power over these businesses, just like Amazon has power over third-party sellers, for instance. For the consumer it means a minor convenience, but for the business-owner it means tougher competition, and loss of identity of their business. It's like selling software for years, then suddenly Apple comes along, "forces" you to use the AppStore, and demands a cut.

In short: the problem is that a company now regulates your market.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#94

Post by randomdata »

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?

Ideally the other end would not rely on the phone, but so long as they do, yes. Anything to remove it from the lives of the rest of us is a good thing.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#95

Post by Eridrus »

ken wrote: post #84
tarunkotia wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I hear that a lot, but I confess I don't understand. With Apollo, the government (NASA and DOD) had specific hard requirements, and went to private contractors to build them. Those private contractors created such things as the integrated circuit, and then later sold them to other markets. Everybody wins. With SpaceX, they're using (AFAICT) mostly standard parts, like computers running Linux. They're not developing a…

SpaceX still has suppliers and employees who will diffuse the knowledge into the rest of the industry eventually.

SpaceX is definitely doing less R&D than the Apollo program, but it's also not eating 1.6% of the federal budget (~$60bn/yr), so I don't think it's fair to expect the same level of R&D.

I think it's also clear that SpaceX is going to drive cost of access to space down for other industries, e.g. telecommunications, surveying, etc, which will against have knock on effects for other industries.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#96

Post by hoosieree »

Eridrus wrote: post #81
dexen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-spac…

I'm joking, but only because people are still writing these articles, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/02/elon-mu...

The pessimistic response to articles like that is that making Mars habitable is a more realistic goal than preventing humans from making earth uninhabitable.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#97

Post by acdha »

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…

> 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

Beyond the “sharing” misnomer, those were proven concepts with existing industries. So far what's been proved is that if you're willing to pour billions of dollars into a company you can produce a better app than the incumbents, and that you can see short-term gains if you're willing to break the law and/or subsidize heavily.

> if you showed google maps to someone from 2000, they would think it is magic.

By 2000 the most likely reaction would have been “oh, it's like MapQuest but faster”. Google Maps reflects a lot of evolutionary improvements but the big change was the rise of the advertising model meaning that you didn't have to pay a third-party for GIS software or a subscription service to get annual map updates.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#98

Post by icc97 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #70
philipodonnell wrote: post #11

The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the 100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see aren't helping by covering it rabidly. He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press…

I don't think the messianic cheering is the real problem. Here's a short and not very complete list of unsolved meta-problems: Even when products and systems are revolutionary, there are unexpected negative consequences (e.g. FB and Cambridge Analytica) All systems can be trolled and abused, and if they can be, they will be (e.g. fake reviews on Amazon etc.) AI doesn't actually work all that well yet. (Neither Siri n…

> AI doesn't actually work all that well yet. (Neither Siri nor Alexa truly pass a conversational Turing test...)

When we pass the Turing test it means we've got actual AI.

But I'm not sure there'll ever be a clear line. So Duplex kind of passes it in a very narrow context. Whether or not the person at the end of the line was actually fooled or not is a slightly different question. They could have just been humouring what they figured was a weird automated system.

But it's not like Google won't improve exponentially with this. They've now got a basic AI conversation system that they hope people will use and feed it data of actual conversations.

So Duplex v2 will have an expanded system where they can handle ten times the number of scenarios and questions.

The more I think about it, the more impressive it seems. Most attempts at a Turing test are text only where the subject is supposed to be a 13yo immigrant boy. Here Google's jumping straight to voice conversations.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#99

Post by wakkaflokka »

ribchinski wrote: post #13

Well... I don't particularly agree with everything this guy is saying, but he is right about the internet of things. In my experience, it is quite useless, and it is a danger to privacy. One of the my friends constantly uses Amazon Alexa and Siri for even the most basic questions like, "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Either I am a person who likes to make things more inconveni…

I can agree on the privacy concerns front, but for what it's worth, I've found my Google Home to be quite helpful. So if we're solely talking about how it can be helpful:

- When I'm cooking and my hands are dirty and I want to set a timer

- When I'm cooking and my hands are dirty and I want to change music/lower volume/raise volume/call someone (or do a measurement conversion)

- Turning off all the lights in my house when I'm already in bed and forgot whether I left some on

- Laying in bed with the gf and asking random questions out of curiosity

- Asking how long it will take to get somewhere if my gf and I are pondering some place to eat but are at the dinner table without our phones

- Get home after having a few beers and dive into the messy chicken wings with both my hands, and then realize I want to turn on the TV, play a show or change the current one on my Shield.. perfect use for the GH

- Since I already look at my phone way too much (potentially straining muscles in my neck), I can leave my phone in another room and still get quick answers to deep life questions without tilting my neck downwards

They're all __super__ minor of course, but honestly, I'm so used to the convenience now it actually feels weird to have to do some of these things 'manually'. I do understand there are serious concerns about privacy that may or may not offset the benefits, definitely plenty of room for discussion on that.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#100

Post by CosmicSteve »

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…

No worries, soon enough we'll be rid of the horror that is "human interaction". I'm sure that this will have 0 widspread social implications.
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