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Yes, it was so easy to be a self-taught programmer living in Silicon Valley in the 1980s... You see how this doesn't scale as an assumption about people and th

Yes, it was so easy to be a self-taught programmer living in Silicon Valley in the 1980s... You see how this doesn't scale as an assumption about people and their situations, right? Just because it was possible for some people does not mean it was possible for a meaningfully large number of people. We take for granted how easy it is to train oneself as a programmer these days, but then most of us in this space have been doing this since elementary school. Who would I be today if my dad hadn't made enough money to buy me my own PC when I was in the 3rd grade?

malvosenior 9y ago
You can’t expect society to instantly leap into the future immediately for everyone. That’s not how it works. In the 80s computing was starting to be accessible to a few. If you could access it, you could teach yourself. In the 90s-00s (millennial time) it was even more accessible. You also had the internet to learn from and a vastly larger market for all things tech. This trend will continue and that’s a good thing.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  But the trend is not that some people are taking the lead and others are following more slowly up behind them. The trend is one of continually growing wealth inequality. And the truth is that even if we can educate the rest of the labor market to a point where they can meaningfully contribute to the tech industry, it would just serve to devalue tech labor. It's already happening, and as a result hiring practices are getting significantly more selective towards requiring degrees and other expensive credentials.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    The trend is that the 20th century American lifestyle was never sustainable for the entire globe (or even the US for more than ~50 years). It was the byproduct of the US's unique position in and after World War I & II. Technological progress is most definitely bring up the bottom rung of society. It may not be glamorous but if you go to an actual 3rd world country you can compare for yourself and see life isn't so bad here, even for the poorest. Globalization is here to stay. Yes, certain classes of lifestyle have/will run out of gas, but that is inevitable.
- alsetmusic 9y ago
  > In the 90s-00s (millennial time) it was even more accessible. You also had the internet to learn from and a vastly larger market for all things tech. I think you're overstating the degree of access that large parts of the population had for furthering interest in this area. I was a teenager in the mid-90s. This is when I read about Linux for the first time somewhere online. I remember going to bookstores and trying to find books on learning Linux, but none existed where I lived (Midwest). I managed to install MKLinux on my PPC Mac at the time, but had no idea where to go from there. Online resources were locked behind a dial-up connection and there were no computer clubs or technology meet-ups in my area. Web searches were still a joke at the time. It wasn’t until years later that I became familiar with Unix and Unix-like systems. The change finally came as a result of widespread broadband adoption and the rise of Google. Around this time, Mac OS X had also arrived and I could finally begin learning the command line without having to dual-boot my computer. I think you’re overstating the level of access that large parts of the population had for truly going further in the 90s. I’m highly envious of young people today and the access that they now have to resources that essentially didn’t exist when I was that age. That’s probably true for every generation, however.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    All I said is that the tech was more available in the 90s than the 80s. Your story is pretty in-line with what I was thinking honestly. My point is: fighting technological progress because it’s not happening fast enough seems weird. Should we not encourage it to happen even faster?
    - aalleavitch 9y ago
      We should be looking at where it's exacerbating inequality and come up with intelligent, data-driven solutions. Many people act as if the concept of any type of government regulation or non-market-driven solution is incapable of having a positive impact, but I have seen no compelling evidence to prove that. You can hand-pick any number of past bad regulations with negative outcomes, but for every one you show me I can show you a regulation we're deeply reliant on. Regulations are a tool, they can be designed well or poorly, and we can examine them analytically. Even if you truly believed that government intervention of any kind necessarily must introduce inefficiencies, I'd hope you'd agree that economic efficiency is not always the exclusive good that we should be aiming for. Ideally we want a balance of economic efficiency and the overall health, equality, and well-being of the populace. The argument that when the economy improves everyone does better is blatantly false, and we have data to indicate that. Moreover, economic inequality itself can destroy markets. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/pi...

malvosenior 9y ago

You can’t expect society to instantly leap into the future immediately for everyone. That’s not how it works. In the 80s computing was starting to be accessible to a few. If you could access it, you could teach yourself. In the 90s-00s (millennial time) it was even more accessible. You also had the internet to learn from and a vastly larger market for all things tech. This trend will continue and that’s a good thing.

aalleavitch 9y ago
But the trend is not that some people are taking the lead and others are following more slowly up behind them. The trend is one of continually growing wealth inequality. And the truth is that even if we can educate the rest of the labor market to a point where they can meaningfully contribute to the tech industry, it would just serve to devalue tech labor. It's already happening, and as a result hiring practices are getting significantly more selective towards requiring degrees and other expensive credentials.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  The trend is that the 20th century American lifestyle was never sustainable for the entire globe (or even the US for more than ~50 years). It was the byproduct of the US's unique position in and after World War I & II. Technological progress is most definitely bring up the bottom rung of society. It may not be glamorous but if you go to an actual 3rd world country you can compare for yourself and see life isn't so bad here, even for the poorest. Globalization is here to stay. Yes, certain classes of lifestyle have/will run out of gas, but that is inevitable.
alsetmusic 9y ago
> In the 90s-00s (millennial time) it was even more accessible. You also had the internet to learn from and a vastly larger market for all things tech. I think you're overstating the degree of access that large parts of the population had for furthering interest in this area. I was a teenager in the mid-90s. This is when I read about Linux for the first time somewhere online. I remember going to bookstores and trying to find books on learning Linux, but none existed where I lived (Midwest). I managed to install MKLinux on my PPC Mac at the time, but had no idea where to go from there. Online resources were locked behind a dial-up connection and there were no computer clubs or technology meet-ups in my area. Web searches were still a joke at the time. It wasn’t until years later that I became familiar with Unix and Unix-like systems. The change finally came as a result of widespread broadband adoption and the rise of Google. Around this time, Mac OS X had also arrived and I could finally begin learning the command line without having to dual-boot my computer. I think you’re overstating the level of access that large parts of the population had for truly going further in the 90s. I’m highly envious of young people today and the access that they now have to resources that essentially didn’t exist when I was that age. That’s probably true for every generation, however.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  All I said is that the tech was more available in the 90s than the 80s. Your story is pretty in-line with what I was thinking honestly. My point is: fighting technological progress because it’s not happening fast enough seems weird. Should we not encourage it to happen even faster?
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    We should be looking at where it's exacerbating inequality and come up with intelligent, data-driven solutions. Many people act as if the concept of any type of government regulation or non-market-driven solution is incapable of having a positive impact, but I have seen no compelling evidence to prove that. You can hand-pick any number of past bad regulations with negative outcomes, but for every one you show me I can show you a regulation we're deeply reliant on. Regulations are a tool, they can be designed well or poorly, and we can examine them analytically. Even if you truly believed that government intervention of any kind necessarily must introduce inefficiencies, I'd hope you'd agree that economic efficiency is not always the exclusive good that we should be aiming for. Ideally we want a balance of economic efficiency and the overall health, equality, and well-being of the populace. The argument that when the economy improves everyone does better is blatantly false, and we have data to indicate that. Moreover, economic inequality itself can destroy markets. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/pi...