5 ms·

One of my favorite hypothetical questions is "Would you take a deal where you could 10X your salary, but you'd have to live the rest of your days starting in 19

One of my favorite hypothetical questions is "Would you take a deal where you could 10X your salary, but you'd have to live the rest of your days starting in 1979." Imagine all the same tech is available at the same periods in time, but produced by different companies so you can't do the "Back to the Future Sports Almanac" thing. Imagine you're 40 today. Would you rather have 10X as much money, but know you won't get Aol until your 55? No smartphones until you qualify for Social Security? Maybe 10X is worth it, but 5X? 2X? It helps put the value we get from the web in perspective. Just once, I'd love to read a story about tech in a major pub from the perspective of someone 35-55-ish who remembers the pre-internet world — and can't stop raving about how much better everything is now. I get that it might not be a majority position, but it's not insignificant, but it's almost entirely invisible in the NYT's tech coverage. Moreover, I find it crazy how every misstep of American tech companies portends the end of democracy, but they have the gall to write: "In China, a whole new internet is flowering."

Nasrudith 7y ago
Really it isn't crazy but low level dickery of "they are competing with us stop that". If you replace "end democracy" as "end our company's influence on it beyond one vote per person" you'll get a way more accurate picture of what all vested interest are saying. The harsh truth is that they still sucked before the internet if not worse. It is just that a middle or high school student could prove them woefully inaccurate with low level basics with an internet connection. Hell any teenager could ask them how goddamn dumb do they think they are about the moral panics flat out made up by them or credelously accepted like rainbow parties. Even the cool dude would gotten have bullshit claimed about getting seven different girls with color coordinated lipstick to blow him. And this isn't a purposely absurd rhetorical anecdote - these are real claims! Nobody is flawless here - I believe the proper model is freedom of the press and calling out when the press is total fucking bullshit and letting it go out of business on its own.
gerbilly 7y ago
> "Would you take a deal where you could 10X your salary, but you'd have to live the rest of your days starting in 1979." Dude yes, and I'd do it for free. First thing I'd do is go see the clash live.
tjoff 7y ago
Define better... Of course we know more now and knowing enough about the future, even if worthless, would potentially be frustrating to no end. Also the cultural clash. Are we happier now? And would even a 2x salary not offset the worries one might have? The world has matured a lot but if you have good income in a rich country you are in a pretty good place. If your entire career or hobby doesn't exist yet I don't think that will make for a happy ending. Not that you can't pivot of course but that might be a gamble.
ryandvm 7y ago
That's a great hypothetical, but not because it's a no-brainer. I'd have to think long and hard about that choice. Sure, we have vast amounts of knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips, but the reality is that most of us are spending our days staring at Facestagram and binge watching Netflix. Having enough money to be able to retire after a couple years and then spending the rest of my life traveling the world and reading every book I can doesn't sound so unenlightened in comparison.
- replicatorblog 7y ago
  One of the nuances is thinking about all the advances in other parts of life that have been unlocked thanks to tech. + FEA/FEM would make the airplanes you use to travel much safer. + The drugs that might not have been developed as quickly might prolong that retirement dramatically. It's hard to disentangle all the ways tech has improved our life! FWIW, I'd take a 50% pay cut to stay in the modern era...
Pete_D 7y ago
I would take this deal for 1X my salary. Hell, I'd even take a pay cut for the opportunity. - Escaping surveillance capitalism, facial recognition, pointless IoT, telemetry - Assuming I get to work in the same industry, the opportunity to work full-time as a systems programmer on 1979-era tech - Better weather - More affordable housing - Getting to live through the 80s as they happened Even if the deal is altered so that magically the only difference between 1979 and now is the tech landscape - the first two items are compelling enough on their own. Do you know anybody with a time machine that can hook me up?
heedlessly3 7y ago
What would my job be? Coding in COBOL all day? I would have money to go on fancy ski trips, golf every weekend, eat fancy dinners, hike in exotic places. I could drive my dream car, etc.. etc.. I would also be able to retire early. There are definitely many non-computer related hobbies to keep me interested.
rasz 7y ago
Back to the Future used Sports Almanac to cater to the average no skills Joe off the street watching a fun movie. Here on HN most people have something much more valuable in their heads already, technical knowledge. 1979? I code rudimentary VisiCalc, or dBase, or WordStar, or even all in one competitor in couple of weeks and build a $10 million company in a year. There are hundreds of similar essential business ideas to be realized in the past.
jonjacky 7y ago
1979 - !? Your challenge might pose a dilemma if you said 1879 or 1479 - but 1979 was just yesterday. Instead of Hacker News, you would have Usenet. Instead of Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Apple you would have IBM and DEC ... and Microsoft and Apple. Instead of programming in Javascript and Python and Lisp and C you would use BASIC and Pascal ... and Lisp and C. Instead of running on Windows or Linux it would run on VMS or Unix. For HN readers, what makes an era's technology appealing are the opportunities it presents to be creative and make a contribution. By that measure 1979 was not worse than today, in some ways it was more interesting because there was more variety and it wasn't clear which few technologies would shake out. Look at a 1979 issue of BYTE - in addition to Apple and Microsoft there were hundreds of other companies of similar size pursuing promising, eccentric, and/or dead-end ideas. For another view of computing as seen from the 1970s, including many roads not taken, see Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming": http://worrydream.com/dbx/ http://worrydream.com/dbx/
- kazinator 7y ago
  > Instead of running on Windows or Linux it would run on VMS or Unix. And that means it would be in some institution or company, rather than in your home. The big difference in 1979 would be that the consumer computing hardware available then was poorly affordable even for consume hardware, and terribly under-powered. If you wanted to do anything beyond dinking around with some 1Mhz 8-bit processor with a few kilobytes of RAM, and weren't rich, you would only have access to decent hardware through work or school.
  - jonjacky 7y ago
    Sure, but none of that prevented you from creating and inventing and just having fun. It was an exciting time because microprocessors had just appeared and it wasn't yet clear what all might be done with them. People did amazing things with those 8 bit processors - do you think Woz and Gates were just dinking around? If you were interested in computing it wasn't so hard to get yourself to a company or school that would provide access. They didn't stop you from creating and inventing. Nowadays computing is more dominated by a few large companies and institutions than it was then. Do you really own, control, understand, and trust your phone and other gadgets as well as they did then with their 8 bit processors?
kazinator 7y ago
With the 80-s just ahead, and my guitar skills, I could probably go for 0.5x salary. :)

Nasrudith 7y ago

Really it isn't crazy but low level dickery of "they are competing with us stop that". If you replace "end democracy" as "end our company's influence on it beyond one vote per person" you'll get a way more accurate picture of what all vested interest are saying. The harsh truth is that they still sucked before the internet if not worse. It is just that a middle or high school student could prove them woefully inaccurate with low level basics with an internet connection. Hell any teenager could ask them how goddamn dumb do they think they are about the moral panics flat out made up by them or credelously accepted like rainbow parties. Even the cool dude would gotten have bullshit claimed about getting seven different girls with color coordinated lipstick to blow him. And this isn't a purposely absurd rhetorical anecdote - these are real claims! Nobody is flawless here - I believe the proper model is freedom of the press and calling out when the press is total fucking bullshit and letting it go out of business on its own.

gerbilly 7y ago

> "Would you take a deal where you could 10X your salary, but you'd have to live the rest of your days starting in 1979." Dude yes, and I'd do it for free. First thing I'd do is go see the clash live.

tjoff 7y ago

Define better... Of course we know more now and knowing enough about the future, even if worthless, would potentially be frustrating to no end. Also the cultural clash. Are we happier now? And would even a 2x salary not offset the worries one might have? The world has matured a lot but if you have good income in a rich country you are in a pretty good place. If your entire career or hobby doesn't exist yet I don't think that will make for a happy ending. Not that you can't pivot of course but that might be a gamble.

ryandvm 7y ago

That's a great hypothetical, but not because it's a no-brainer. I'd have to think long and hard about that choice. Sure, we have vast amounts of knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips, but the reality is that most of us are spending our days staring at Facestagram and binge watching Netflix. Having enough money to be able to retire after a couple years and then spending the rest of my life traveling the world and reading every book I can doesn't sound so unenlightened in comparison.

replicatorblog 7y ago
One of the nuances is thinking about all the advances in other parts of life that have been unlocked thanks to tech. + FEA/FEM would make the airplanes you use to travel much safer. + The drugs that might not have been developed as quickly might prolong that retirement dramatically. It's hard to disentangle all the ways tech has improved our life! FWIW, I'd take a 50% pay cut to stay in the modern era...

Pete_D 7y ago

I would take this deal for 1X my salary. Hell, I'd even take a pay cut for the opportunity. - Escaping surveillance capitalism, facial recognition, pointless IoT, telemetry - Assuming I get to work in the same industry, the opportunity to work full-time as a systems programmer on 1979-era tech - Better weather - More affordable housing - Getting to live through the 80s as they happened Even if the deal is altered so that magically the only difference between 1979 and now is the tech landscape - the first two items are compelling enough on their own. Do you know anybody with a time machine that can hook me up?

heedlessly3 7y ago

What would my job be? Coding in COBOL all day? I would have money to go on fancy ski trips, golf every weekend, eat fancy dinners, hike in exotic places. I could drive my dream car, etc.. etc.. I would also be able to retire early. There are definitely many non-computer related hobbies to keep me interested.

rasz 7y ago

Back to the Future used Sports Almanac to cater to the average no skills Joe off the street watching a fun movie. Here on HN most people have something much more valuable in their heads already, technical knowledge. 1979? I code rudimentary VisiCalc, or dBase, or WordStar, or even all in one competitor in couple of weeks and build a $10 million company in a year. There are hundreds of similar essential business ideas to be realized in the past.

jonjacky 7y ago

1979 - !? Your challenge might pose a dilemma if you said 1879 or 1479 - but 1979 was just yesterday. Instead of Hacker News, you would have Usenet. Instead of Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Apple you would have IBM and DEC ... and Microsoft and Apple. Instead of programming in Javascript and Python and Lisp and C you would use BASIC and Pascal ... and Lisp and C. Instead of running on Windows or Linux it would run on VMS or Unix. For HN readers, what makes an era's technology appealing are the opportunities it presents to be creative and make a contribution. By that measure 1979 was not worse than today, in some ways it was more interesting because there was more variety and it wasn't clear which few technologies would shake out. Look at a 1979 issue of BYTE - in addition to Apple and Microsoft there were hundreds of other companies of similar size pursuing promising, eccentric, and/or dead-end ideas. For another view of computing as seen from the 1970s, including many roads not taken, see Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming": http://worrydream.com/dbx/ http://worrydream.com/dbx/

kazinator 7y ago
> Instead of running on Windows or Linux it would run on VMS or Unix. And that means it would be in some institution or company, rather than in your home. The big difference in 1979 would be that the consumer computing hardware available then was poorly affordable even for consume hardware, and terribly under-powered. If you wanted to do anything beyond dinking around with some 1Mhz 8-bit processor with a few kilobytes of RAM, and weren't rich, you would only have access to decent hardware through work or school.
- jonjacky 7y ago
  Sure, but none of that prevented you from creating and inventing and just having fun. It was an exciting time because microprocessors had just appeared and it wasn't yet clear what all might be done with them. People did amazing things with those 8 bit processors - do you think Woz and Gates were just dinking around? If you were interested in computing it wasn't so hard to get yourself to a company or school that would provide access. They didn't stop you from creating and inventing. Nowadays computing is more dominated by a few large companies and institutions than it was then. Do you really own, control, understand, and trust your phone and other gadgets as well as they did then with their 8 bit processors?

kazinator 7y ago

With the 80-s just ahead, and my guitar skills, I could probably go for 0.5x salary. :)