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I would say computer revolution still hasn't happened. We are just starting to learn what computers are for. Hopefully, instead of being tools of stealing our

• lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I could not agree more. I keep banging on about what I call a MOOP - Massive open online psychology. These phones we all carry can listen to / video our every interaction, watch our spending habits and our exercise and body functions. Epidemiology ought to be able to easily tease out ideal "life best practises" - actual good advice given to you by your phone - backed by the mistakes of a million others in just your situation. if keeping a daily diary helps people make better life decisions imagine what that would do?
  • malloryerik 6y ago
    Have you read Homo Deus by Yuval Harari? Mentioning him can sound a bit pseudo as he's become so popular and is such a popularizer of others' ideas, but I believe the main tenet of Homo Deus is his own and comes very much from thinking about what you're calling "massive open online psychology." His notion is that trusting our technology more than trusting our own feelings will be the death of humanism, because in his view humanism is at heart about trusting one's own individual feelings. The entire liberal can be seen as one aspect or outgrowth of humanism.
    • devmunchies 6y ago
      I would say Martin Heidegger touched on that (trusting technology over intuition) before Harari in Being and Time (1927). Harari may have brought concepts into the mainstream but these concepts were being discussed in philosophy for over 100 years.
      • AlexCoventry 6y ago
        I would say that Harari is probably a good deal more approachable than Heidegger. :)
  • not_a_moth 6y ago
    Being watched and served recommendations is not the revolutionary paradigm for computers imo.
    • Forge36 6y ago
      Why not?
      • cgriswald 6y ago
        What is the purpose of a human life? If my phone is recommending a course of action that is “best practice” for my life, surely the answer to this philosophical and political question has been answered rather than just assumed by engineers based on the perception of current societal norms of a subset of the global population. Imagine the power you’d have if you had people literally following orders based on a system of life that you’ve designed. And follow it they might if the perception of outcomes is positive.
        • simonh 6y ago
          You just described China with it's Social Credit System, pervasive internet monitoring and central control of public discourse.
          • patmorgan23 6y ago
            Social credit is different. Social credit imposes penalties for deviating from the norm or even associating with those who do. This is more like feeding apple health and google for data into IBM watson and getting personalized recommendations out.
          • franklampard 6y ago
            For the most part, china’s Social Credit System is the same as the credit scores in U.S.
            • simonh 6y ago
  • mycall 6y ago
    You are basically describing augmented reality, where devices give you superhuman knowledge to give you advantage in life (know things before they happen). We will get there, but it will be a rocky road if it doesn't destroy us (e.g. China's social credit system). The implicit bias built into such systems is so hard to remove and is part of the Big Sort issue in society today.
    • mewpmewp2 6y ago
      Another question. If China is left free to implement such a device that can completely optimise their people, will they become more powerful than other countries by having wonderfully optimised people to do their bidding?
      • mycall 6y ago
        It is definitely possible. It is a better worker bee.
  • entropic88 6y ago
    To me, MOOP = self reinforcing echo chamber. The reverberations of the loudest (most magnified) permeate and shape ideology. Hopefully the conductors get the frequency right for long term and long distance communication.
  • sethc2 6y ago
    I’ve seen that episode of Black Mirror (or it at least sounds like one) Every technological advance is usually both good and bad. Some are more good, some are more bad. Sometimes we gain a lot by it, and only lose a little, other times what we gain is not worth what we lost. The problem with this idea is what makes life valuable the machine would not know. “Life’s best practices” is subjective, and therefore the machine could promote what one considers a best practice that another considers a worst practice.
• Aperocky 6y ago
  We're already there though.. I bought a action camera that is the size of a palm, with hardware 3D gimbal stabilization and can track faces and other objects. The video from which I can stream to my phone via bluetooth and it came to my doorstep 2 days after I ordered it online. All of that involves computers of various size, sitting either in a miniature hardware in my hand or somewhere in a huge data center, and worked in tandem to provide an experience that is just mindblowing 20 years ago.
  • lmilcin 6y ago
    That rather depends on your understanding of good life. Was that camera somehow necessary for you to lead a good life or is it yet another distraction from it?
    • icelancer 6y ago
      What is life?
      • kmstout 6y ago
        David Ackley, an artificial life researcher working on "robust-first computing," has this gem buried in one of his videos: "Life is nature's way of preserving meat."
    • GuB-42 6y ago
      Ok, let's take another example. The leading COVID-19 vaccine involves a lot of computers. From the production of the mRNA strands to the setup of the supply chains to communications between scientists. And there are few things that we need more than an effective COVID-19 vaccine in order to lead a good life right now. The computerized chain that got GP his camera is similar the the one that is used in the making of the vaccine. GP's camera is just icing on the cake.
      • morlockabove 6y ago
        Would covid have been made in the wuhan lab without computers?
• irjustin 6y ago
  Agreed on the "starting to learn what computers are for", but I'd say it's happened. It's just not the way we wanted it to ideally manifest as a species. We want to believe that the revolution should be altruistic in nature. Bettering the human race through only "positive" methods - Star Trek style utopia if you will. But reality shows that even with all this available computing power, it's still a finite resource. Any finite resource is capitalistic in nature and will be subject to the aggressive expansionist. It needs its checks and balances like other resources.
• psyc 6y ago
  I’ll consider it a revolution when user friendliness and low-config are the default.
  • PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    I guess we are already there then. My grandma has no problems operating an iPad while a laptop is largely too complicated.
• userbinator 6y ago
  As long as corporate greed continues unhindered, computers will remain a way of controlling and monetising the population.
  • CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Greed motivates corporations to try to provide people with what they demand. It can be channeled for good if consumers inform themselves about what products/services better their lives and actively choose them in the market. The growth of the health food market - or at least some subcategories of it which are genuinely healthy - would be an example of this happening.
    • zepto 6y ago
      n be channeled for good “if consumers inform themselves about what products/services better their lives and actively choose them in the market.“ Very true. However it’s easier for motivated corporations to steer people away from such information.
      • CryptoPunk 6y ago
        That's why we need public resources expended on producing useful and true information and making it available for public consumption. This can be done through both state-backed initiatives and non-governmental ones like Wikipedia, or speculatively, a public interest DAO that crowdfunds R&D. Gitcoin may be the first iterations of the latter.
    • d_tr 6y ago
      This is very true, but the "if" is a big one...
      • CryptoPunk 6y ago
        I think the products/services the market provides mostly enhance our lives. Society works better than than our cynicism would imply, and when you zoom out over a span of a couple centuries, or even 40 years, that becomes apparent. Of course there are many cases where the consumer is underinformed, and harmed by what the market urges them to buy, and these need to be addressed.
• hackerbrother 6y ago
  I guess the way I see it, computers have already changed every aspect of life.
  • vishnugupta 6y ago
    This. The last decade saw a massive adoption of computers of all shapes and sizes in India. In the decade before that (2000 - 2010) computers were limited within labs, and offices. But smart phone changed all that. From booking train tickets to access medical health check reports to paying push-cart vendors through mobile wallet, consumers are now using computers in all sorts of ways. As you rightly said, I just can't think of a domain that's untouched by computers. Even in the fundamental science it's now impossible to do anything without massive data crunching machines. LIGO detection of gravitational waves, the first black hole images, and the plummeting cost reduction of full DNA over last two decades are a great example of how computers have irreversibly changed the way science is done.
• theamk 6y ago
  Some people already did - it is not that hard, really. As a kid, I spent countless hours in the underground trains staring out of the window into the moving darkness. Today, if I am on the train, I read interesting stories I like. As an another example, apparently area about my birth town had all sorts of unique and interesting places to hike. I had no idea that those places even existed before internet - blogs and forums. And the more unusual hobbies (think aluminum casting for example) - did you know how had was it to find good information before internet? Please do not equate internet to facebook and twitter. It is so much more than that - you just have to invest a bit of effort instead of blaming it.
• ankurdhama 6y ago
  > Hopefully, instead of being tools of stealing our focus and invigilation some day we will collectively figure out how to use computers so that we can live better lives. This is just a specific narrow view of computers and how they are used by people in day to day life. The larger picture is that computers have impacted every single industry/domain and that impact have indirectly made lives better in some aspect. In the end, computers are just tools, tools to automate tasks. What task humans want to automate depends on their needs/desires and so does the consequences of them.
• holoduke 6y ago
  A sudden revolution is unlikely anyway. It's more some sort of a gradual process.
• wruza 6y ago
  Is “stealing focus and invigilation” really a problem that computers themselves bring to us? It is like blaming the road for billboards around it. Just find those who install these boards and slap them to their senses.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    I mean yeah, most computer work is voluntary. Facebook is exploitative, but most people choose to go on Facebook and let it happen. They can choose to only occasionally get on there and look up events and happenings, but for a lot of people it's not just that but a time waster, and as it goes from thoughtful / intentful activity, people become less critical of what they're seeing. I mean I'm guilty of that, I frequently browse reddit mindlessly. At least I'm saved the obvious ads - for now anyway, I'm sure they'll crack down on 3rd party clients soon.
• nathias 6y ago
  In the attention industry content is created to package attention and formalize it enough to be a commodity that can be sold to advertisers. The whole very much depends on this model of production, and if we don't find a good substitute this will continue ...
• username90 6y ago
  The most popular food is fast food. That is the end game. The most popular computer programs will be distractions, we are already there, nothing much will change with respect to personal computing. Next step is a decent AI, before then things will continue to look like now. Or more realistically if food is anything to go by, we will just get more and more information fat just like we got physically fatter, so we aren't "there" yet, it is going to get worse.
  • quanto 6y ago
    An interesting analogy with food. There are two assumptions I see in your analogy (1) Development of computer will parallel that of food. This is the raison d'etre of the analogy. (2) The food industry has matured and plateaued. My personal takes: For (1), I don't think it is self-evident. I see that the pleasure from the consumption of junk food and that from the mass media has some parallel, but tech has a far greater degree of freedom -- it's potential to truly transform human lives (for good and bad) For (2), the food industry, although, by its nature, conservative, is going still going through evolution. Maybe fast food doesn't have to be junk food. Maybe nutritional balance can be achieved without compromising taste and cost.
  • azeirah 6y ago
    In America.
• higerordermap 6y ago
  Computer/Smartphone being addictive and time-wasting in personal level doesn't negate the value they created due to automation. That's a revolution too, even if most of value is harvested by the industrial upper class. If people realized the value computing can give, consumer electronics will be useful for them. But they want instagram and snapchat instead.
  • CryptoPunk 6y ago
    >>That's a revolution too, even if most of value is harvested by the industrial upper class. A significant portion of the value created is not captured by economic statistics, as they mostly deal with measuring economic resources that are scarce enough to have market prices. Abundant goods are free like air, and are widely distributed, and automation has made many classes of goods/services fall into this category, like many types of information (compare trying to find your way around a city 20 years ago, to today using Google Maps, or trying to read up on some obscure subject 30 years ago by visiting a library, versus finding the Wikipedia page on it via a 3 second Google search on your phone).
• bcrosby95 6y ago
  > We are just starting to learn what computers are for. This seems a bit like saying that we're just starting to learn what engines are for. What we use computers for will continue to evolve and we will never arrive at an end state.
• cookiengineer 6y ago
  My personal belief is that single computers themselves are worthless. Their connectivity and the possibility to exchange knowledge and experiences is what makes them so much more efficient than humans (at least in those tasks we automated already) - or when used as an interface - so efficient as an information management tool. In order to reach a superintelligence level we need to solve the automation of gathering, evaluation and improvement of knowledge first. And by automation, I don't mean wikis or something you can find via google. Wikis and the web currently are built for humans, not machines. If we are able to automate the semantic knowledge behind it and transfer it to neural networks, we will have limitless capabilities.
• sovande 6y ago
  Of course it has. Your smartphone is the manifestation. It replaces at least 40 functions and makes your life better. If you choose to use mostly the bad parts, that is on you. It’s like complaining about your car making your life worse, but you only drive in reverse and bump into things
  • lmilcin 6y ago
    How does it make a life better. Have you made the determination yourself? At least a significant number of people I know personally say otherwise and stick to dumb phones. They are well paid and it doesn't seem they are doing this to save money. So I don't think what you say is objective truth as you try to portray it. If I leave out the bad parts then the rest is mostly what I need to use because of external demands or because of technology itself (ie. problems that only exist due to technology itself) I don't need to be available on communicator. My team and my family expects me to be or I am marked as unhelpful. That wasn't a problem when there wasn't expectation to be constantly available. I don't need to have Uber installed, but it seems to be the only way to get a cab where I live. I don't need navigation, but roads and intersections got so complicated and I got so reliant that I would not be able to reach my destination without it. Etc.
• tim333 6y ago
  The real revolution will be AGI. Dunno how that'll play out.