Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

Post by guenthert » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

deeblering4 wrote: post #81

TacticalCoder wrote: post #59

I'm not against technology: I'm against inferior technology. I know what you can build with a computer: with a smartphone not so much. I don't see many professional sound engineers, architects, chip engineers, developers and all the myriad of profession requiring serious tools to do serious work working from their mobile phone or from their Internet-of-Insecure-Shitty-Poinless-Thing-with-a-3-inches-screen (yup, I kno…

Not disagreeing with you, but I do think there is something to be said about the platform provided by mobile tech. Artists can live stream themselves to massive audiences from their bedrooms. And in the professional field iOS has become quite useful for music. As a couple examples, there are numerous iOS instruments (often with external midi control) made by well known companies like moog and korg, and live sound eng…

Post by bumby » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #85

bumby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s the same process, just at a higher velocity. Jobs have always been at risk of obsolescence. Jobs either require continual learning (typically the “professions”, e.g., physician, lawyer,...) or were at risk for being irrelevant. In the past, the pace of irrelevance was often slow enough to span a lifetime or multiple generations so people could still make a (slowly dwindling) living. Now the turnover just…

One thing though, if even programming (a somehow advanced human endeavour) gets deprecated then something is wrong with our culture.

Post by smitty1e » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

jude- wrote: post #68

Pfhreak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the day will come where software development is automated in some capacity. It already is. It's called a compiler.

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #93

agumonkey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing though, if even programming (a somehow advanced human endeavour) gets deprecated then something is wrong with our culture.

I agree, but think that statement does a disservice to programming by treating it as a monolithic domain. It’s telling a mechanical engineer “mechanical things will never deprecate”. That’s true, but doesn’t help the ME whose career may have been built in, say, a fossil fuel power plant.

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

bumby wrote: post #98

agumonkey wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling that anybody in physically based engineering will never lose use of his knowledge. You don't spend time using trendy inventions at the pace of computing. Many programmers fiddle with plumbing onto until they get a new position. Not a lot to remember beside social reflexes and 'best practices'.

The pace is certainly different but I’ve found most engineers lose those skills that aren’t directly relevant to their job at hand. Ask that power plant engineer to do fluid dynamics and they’d likely be lost. The physical engineering disciplines are often hyper-specialized as well