6 ms·

Thiel: Technology Stalled in the 1970's

5 points by david927 11y ago

david927 11y ago
Alan Kay famously asked if there was any new invention in computing since 1980 (and the answer was essentially 'no'): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in... Our whole industry got sucked into making a fortune and now suffers (ironically) from "The Innovator's Dilemma". We have more money than Croesus now, but at the expense of any real progress.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
What drivel, consider Theil's comment, "We could be finding cures to cancer or Alzheimer’s." This is somebody who watches Star Trek and figures that if they can use dilithium crystals to control anti-matter plasma conduits, well gee how hard can it be? We should get right on that. I'll cut him some slack because he wasn't actually alive in the 70's but seriously, cure cancer? Is he not aware of the billions of dollars of investment in that problem? Did he not even realize that the cell biology research that came out of figuring out AIDs wasn't even freakin' POSSIBLE in the 70's? You couldn't do analysis on DNA in the 70's because the machines that did that, would take until the present day to give you an answer. Think about that. Famous quote from Marvin Minsky along the lines of you want to solve a problem that will take a million hours of compute time, you can either spend a ton of cash and buy a super computer, and start it on its way and wait 114 years, or you can invest the money you have in a savings account, wait 20 years and then buy a computer at Fry's that will solve it in an hour. We couldn't even build the tools to build the tools yet in the 70's that we regularly use to put cool features into an iPhone today. So basically I'm offended on behalf of every engineer who lived and worked in the 70's at his comments. And then lets take the flipside, given that we do have all of these amazing tools at our disposal, do you think people are not trying to cure cancer, in all its forms? So Peter has some genius idea that the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's staff of doctors isn't considering? Technology did not "stall" in the 70's. It has been accelerating at an exponential rate for decades. I can't believe he really thinks that.
- T-A 11y ago
  > he wasn't actually alive in the 70's According to Wikipedia, he was born on October 11, 1967.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  I kinda feel like you're getting too bogged down in the detail here. I don't think anybody would agree that Thiel is literally 100% correct in saying "technology stalled in the 1970's, but if look look at the statement as a bit of hyperbole with a kernel of truth to it, he has a point. And whether you agree with him in general, or not, I think his rhetoric serves a valuable role in terms of encouraging people to reach further, and work on big, hard, fundamental problems. Anyway, I don't see what he said as being a statement like "I, Peter Thiel, could trivially cure cancer" or anything like that.. I see it as a call to arms to people who are working on, say, ad serving networks, to work on curing cancer instead (where "curing cancer" is a variable that could be replace with any "big, hard, fundamental problem").
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >I see it as a call to arms to people who are working on, say, ad serving networks, to work on curing cancer instead (where "curing cancer" is a variable that could be replace with any "big, hard, fundamental problem"). No, a call to arms for working on big, hard, fundamental problems would be to say, "Let's restructure the scientific career path away from a pyramidal labor and triple funding to the NSF and NIH."
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Except I think Peter misses the point. He's asserts technology is moving "to slowly" or "to inefficiently" and doesn't seem to have any appreciation for the prerequisites for forward motion. And he dismisses out of hand anything people have done while that foundation is being build. As if having them sit idly by would have been a better use of their time? Imagine you're building a castle, and you've got a quarry full of people cutting the stones to build it, and then you chastise the carpenters who are working on decorative woodwork because there is not enough castle yet to work on. Sure, Google has spent a ton of money building an ad network and figuring out how to get people to click on ads. They have also spent a ton of money on building phone OSes, and build tools, and efficient data centers, and self driving cars. Not everyone can work on curing cancer or creating durable political institutions that survive local corruption. So what do they spend their time on? Building tools, or using those tools to build interesting things which feeds back into better tools. I didn't see any appreciation of the foundational work that has to happen in order for progress to be made in that interview.
dventimi 11y ago
As an alternative to the subjective impressions of Peter Thiel or of people here, perhaps we could adopt a more objective approach, relying on empirical evidence. I propose looking at productivity growth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity
- david927 11y ago
  First, I think he is talking about larger projects, with larger leaps of faith. Small, incremental gains in productivity and chip speed are fine, but we can do more; we have the potential do amazing things and we're not even trying. Second, productivity growth would normally be good if the gains from that growth were distributed. Instead, all of those gains have been placed directly with the wealthiest %1. So instead your graph, sadly, simply reflects how the quality of life has degenerated over the generations. That's not the kind of progress that 99% of the world was hoping for.
  - dventimi 11y ago
    First, what Thiel is trying to do (which neither of us will know for sure) is irrelevant to the question of what other approaches we might adopt for answering variations on the question, "How has the pace of technological development changed, if at all, over time?" Second, how those those gains are distributed is likewise irrelevant to that particular question. Not that they're irrelevant to other questions, or that they're unimportant, or uninteresting, or that this is the only question we can ask. The careful reader will notice that neither Thiel nor I really commented on the otherwise important and interesting question of how gains are distributed. That's just something you threw in. Third, it's not "my graph." I linked to a Wikipedia article written by other people and which contains no fewer than four graphs at the time of this writing, and none of them were created by me.

5 points by david927 11y ago

Alan Kay famously asked if there was any new invention in computing since 1980 (and the answer was essentially 'no'): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in... Our whole industry got sucked into making a fortune and now suffers (ironically) from "The Innovator's Dilemma". We have more money than Croesus now, but at the expense of any real progress.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

What drivel, consider Theil's comment, "We could be finding cures to cancer or Alzheimer’s." This is somebody who watches Star Trek and figures that if they can use dilithium crystals to control anti-matter plasma conduits, well gee how hard can it be? We should get right on that. I'll cut him some slack because he wasn't actually alive in the 70's but seriously, cure cancer? Is he not aware of the billions of dollars of investment in that problem? Did he not even realize that the cell biology research that came out of figuring out AIDs wasn't even freakin' POSSIBLE in the 70's? You couldn't do analysis on DNA in the 70's because the machines that did that, would take until the present day to give you an answer. Think about that. Famous quote from Marvin Minsky along the lines of you want to solve a problem that will take a million hours of compute time, you can either spend a ton of cash and buy a super computer, and start it on its way and wait 114 years, or you can invest the money you have in a savings account, wait 20 years and then buy a computer at Fry's that will solve it in an hour. We couldn't even build the tools to build the tools yet in the 70's that we regularly use to put cool features into an iPhone today. So basically I'm offended on behalf of every engineer who lived and worked in the 70's at his comments. And then lets take the flipside, given that we do have all of these amazing tools at our disposal, do you think people are not trying to cure cancer, in all its forms? So Peter has some genius idea that the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's staff of doctors isn't considering? Technology did not "stall" in the 70's. It has been accelerating at an exponential rate for decades. I can't believe he really thinks that.

T-A 11y ago
> he wasn't actually alive in the 70's According to Wikipedia, he was born on October 11, 1967.
mindcrime 11y ago
I kinda feel like you're getting too bogged down in the detail here. I don't think anybody would agree that Thiel is literally 100% correct in saying "technology stalled in the 1970's, but if look look at the statement as a bit of hyperbole with a kernel of truth to it, he has a point. And whether you agree with him in general, or not, I think his rhetoric serves a valuable role in terms of encouraging people to reach further, and work on big, hard, fundamental problems. Anyway, I don't see what he said as being a statement like "I, Peter Thiel, could trivially cure cancer" or anything like that.. I see it as a call to arms to people who are working on, say, ad serving networks, to work on curing cancer instead (where "curing cancer" is a variable that could be replace with any "big, hard, fundamental problem").
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >I see it as a call to arms to people who are working on, say, ad serving networks, to work on curing cancer instead (where "curing cancer" is a variable that could be replace with any "big, hard, fundamental problem"). No, a call to arms for working on big, hard, fundamental problems would be to say, "Let's restructure the scientific career path away from a pyramidal labor and triple funding to the NSF and NIH."
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Except I think Peter misses the point. He's asserts technology is moving "to slowly" or "to inefficiently" and doesn't seem to have any appreciation for the prerequisites for forward motion. And he dismisses out of hand anything people have done while that foundation is being build. As if having them sit idly by would have been a better use of their time? Imagine you're building a castle, and you've got a quarry full of people cutting the stones to build it, and then you chastise the carpenters who are working on decorative woodwork because there is not enough castle yet to work on. Sure, Google has spent a ton of money building an ad network and figuring out how to get people to click on ads. They have also spent a ton of money on building phone OSes, and build tools, and efficient data centers, and self driving cars. Not everyone can work on curing cancer or creating durable political institutions that survive local corruption. So what do they spend their time on? Building tools, or using those tools to build interesting things which feeds back into better tools. I didn't see any appreciation of the foundational work that has to happen in order for progress to be made in that interview.

dventimi 11y ago

As an alternative to the subjective impressions of Peter Thiel or of people here, perhaps we could adopt a more objective approach, relying on empirical evidence. I propose looking at productivity growth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity

david927 11y ago
First, I think he is talking about larger projects, with larger leaps of faith. Small, incremental gains in productivity and chip speed are fine, but we can do more; we have the potential do amazing things and we're not even trying. Second, productivity growth would normally be good if the gains from that growth were distributed. Instead, all of those gains have been placed directly with the wealthiest %1. So instead your graph, sadly, simply reflects how the quality of life has degenerated over the generations. That's not the kind of progress that 99% of the world was hoping for.
- dventimi 11y ago
  First, what Thiel is trying to do (which neither of us will know for sure) is irrelevant to the question of what other approaches we might adopt for answering variations on the question, "How has the pace of technological development changed, if at all, over time?" Second, how those those gains are distributed is likewise irrelevant to that particular question. Not that they're irrelevant to other questions, or that they're unimportant, or uninteresting, or that this is the only question we can ask. The careful reader will notice that neither Thiel nor I really commented on the otherwise important and interesting question of how gains are distributed. That's just something you threw in. Third, it's not "my graph." I linked to a Wikipedia article written by other people and which contains no fewer than four graphs at the time of this writing, and none of them were created by me.