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Because new technology is as Thiel often quips limited to the world of bits rather than the world of atoms. Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average h

Because new technology is as Thiel often quips limited to the world of bits rather than the world of atoms. Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth gives a similar example, what if you went into a time capsule between say 1890 and 1950 compared to 1960 and 2010? In one case you're going to see skyscrapers, commercial airplanes, nuclear power plants, electricity everywhere, cars going at amazing speeds. In the latter case what's the difference, people paying with their phones and different fashion mostly. 'Innovation' in the internet age, say the last 30 years has mostly been limited to enable hedonistic digital consumption with very little impact on how we fundamentally move through the world. The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. A 100 years ago to 50 years ago meant going from horse carriages to trains and from weeks on a ship to hours on a plane. Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago. That's why productivity growth is low, the world hasn't changed that much. There's still marginal improvements obviously which do add up over time but the 'unprecedent pace of innovation' you hear about from tech evangelists is nowhere. Another interesting thought experiment is, how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I think it really puts into perspective how much or rather little value those 'innovations' add.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
There's a weird disconnect with computers. The software we use is 1000 times more complex than it was 20 years ago, leading to performance that really have not improved a lot, and a lot of functional stagnation. Many applications are slower to start today than they were 10 years ago, because back then they were binaries and today they are Electron apps. Your average web based word processor with cloud storage performs about the same as Microsoft Word did on Windows 3.1 on a 486 saving onto a floppy. Screens are bigger, resolutions are bigger, but the content is largely the same because the limit is human perception not technology. If you actually keep things simple, you can build absolutely ridiculous things off modern hardware. I'm running an Internet search engine out of my living room. You could not that 20 years ago. What makes it possible is modern SSDs and the absolutely mind-boggling computing power of modern CPU.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  Word Processing is maybe not the best example. Human needs in terms of writing documents have not changed significantly in the last 20-30 years. The mechanics are not the bottleneck. neither is application startup time. I know that it is something you can measure but I don't agree that it is a significant data point. I generally only start a word processor once per day and then it stays running as I move between writing tasks and other tasks. Startup is an insignificant part of that time. Other tasks have become more efficient in that time period. Anything involving graphics has gotten much easier to do on computers than before and can be done by more people. Project Management tools are much faster and easier to use. What I do see in a corporate world is an emphasis efficiency that requires spending a lot more time tasks and running alternate scenarios to be more efficient. This seems more doable now because some of these things are easier but its too easy to ignore the time spent doing more of this kind of thing.
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > The software we use is 1000 times more complex than it was 20 years ago, leading to performance that really have not improved a lot, and a lot of functional stagnation. Many applications are slower to start today than they were 10 years ago, because back then they were binaries and today they are Electron apps. Also known as Wirth's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law Sometimes it worries me. If we had a boring set of usable and safe tools to use for development, that would also be pretty fast, i wouldn't have to update my hardware every 5 years or so. But JetBrains IDE's (just one example) basically demand that I do, if I want their other shiny features. Perhaps something like Java instead of Python. Perhaps something like Go instead of Java. Perhaps something like Rust instead of Go. Just boring (predictable), stable and dependable programming languages, supported on every platform with a set of native libraries. Perhaps a bit like what LCL did in regards to GUI in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Component_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Component_Library
  - dieselgate 4y ago
    Ruby on Rails? Edit: for web apps
IshKebab 4y ago
> could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Well yes, because we have solar panels and heat pumps and battery powered power tools and vacuum cleaners and dishwashers and microwave ovens and smart lights and ... You wouldn't expect walls and carpets to change.
- simplify 4y ago
  Flooring has changed too. Carpets are better looking and more resilient. Click vinyl is stronger, has good texture, easier to install, and is super durable.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- kareemsabri 4y ago
  > vacuum cleaners mainstream since at least the 1950s > dishwashers 1970s > microwave ovens available but fairly expensive in the 80s, ubiquitous in the 90s
  - Retric 4y ago
    The point was vacuums etc have gotten a lot better over time. Electric motors are noticeably lighter, more powerful, and more energy efficient today. Yes vacuums in the 1980’s worked but they where significantly heavier, louder, and far more power hungry not to mention more expensive. It might not seem like much but I remember the exhaust from the family vacuum being noticeably warm. It’s even more noticeable with cordless vacuums which got not just better motors but vastly better batteries as well. Often it’s the parts you don’t notice that make a world of difference. The finger saver shutoff on a modern saw might not seem like much, but those things really make a difference in peoples lives.
    - musicale 4y ago
      > finger saver shutoff Probably a feature I wouldn't want to give up.
humanistbot 4y ago
> if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. Energy efficiency and fuel economy have made massive gains. Materials are stronger and lighter. Batteries last ages compared to 30 years ago.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Also they go wrong a hell of a lot less often. 80s cars were mostly complete shit and no one was sorry to see them go. Also if you crash one, you're vastly less likely to die.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck I always liked this IIHS crash test: 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air vs. 2009 Chevrolet Malibu It really shows the progress. Seatbelts, the "rigid cage" to protect the driver, air bags, etc. etc. The 1959 Bel Air crash-dummy is clearly dead, bouncing around the cabin during the crash. The 2009 Malibu crash-dummy has a sprained neck and the face hurts from hitting the air-bag, but clearly survives.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      I see 50s-80s cars on TV and all I can visualise is that thin metal hoop steering wheel bisecting my face like a melon.
      - BVCommander 4y ago
        Depending on the age of the car your skull could also be cored by the steering column like an apple. In the 50's the industry propaganda, parroted by bought and paid for regulators, was that all people involved in an automobile collision were irresponsible drivers deserving of death and disfigurement. And especially so for the colored ones, they probably drove recklessly after stealing them. You can't trust the lot of 'em.
Quinner 4y ago
30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally move through the world vastly differently thanks to digital maps. Many people (and in a few years, the majority) are doing so in cars that use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. One way to tell whether you're in an 80s house would be to look around for reference books, encyclopedias, rolodexes, filing cabinets. If you wanted to know more about something, you probably had to go to a library, which might not even have a book on the topic (maybe if you were particularly determined to know the answer you'd wait a few weeks for an ILL). Its a bit sad to me that you look at this enormous sea change in how we interact with the world and see Angry Birds.
- deleted 4y ago
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- tunesmith 4y ago
  I think your last sentence is unnecessary. What purpose does it serve?
  - burnished 4y ago
    It relates the audience and the author on an emotional level.
  - majewsky 4y ago
    Once an argument has been laid out in detail, providing a poignant summary in one sentence leaves a more lasting impression on the reader.
    - fieldcny 4y ago
      So your argument is that all technical advancement in the last 50/60 years is just marketing? That’s a pretty bold statement supported by literally nothing, just because you don’t feel like certain tech has added anything doesn’t mean it hasn’t. Productivity is an incredibly hard thing to capture, especially with the move to away from manufacturing and physical production. One could easily argue that the productivity numbers are failing to increase because technology has lowered the barriers to entry all over the world so now there’s more competition for every good and service creating pricing pressure on the “value of goods and services produced”
lotsofpulp 4y ago
> if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Yes. Even the cheapest house built to code will be noticeably better than one from 1980s. The quality of materials, technology of materials, wiring, plumbing, flooring, insulation, etc will all be better. > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet Not true, for similar reasons as above. Name a 2022 Corolla equivalent that could be purchased in the 1980s, safety, fuel efficiency, and reliability wise, at a similar inflation adjusted price. No 1980s car will even come close, and that is just for the most basic car today.
- diordiderot 4y ago
  I read something along the lines of 'a stock 2020 Camero is faster than a 2000 Ferrari' with fewer cylinders
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Most name brand supercars are just dumping fuel into the engine and making it sound impressive. They don't have the engineering prowess to develop a refined power train like a big manufacturer. Nowadays emissions regulations force them to team up with a more competent player which is why the least sucky Huracan is the R8.
- analog31 4y ago
  My house was built in the early 60s, has hardwood flooring throughout, copper plumbing, the wiring is all in hard conduit, the 2x4's are actually a bit thicker than today's, and of a higher grade. The original windows are still functioning, though not as efficient as modern ones. The appliances are modern because they've all been replaced. Today's house in the same region uses lower grade lumber, carpeted floors, Romex, and plastic plumbing. Agreed about the Corolla. I owned a second hand 80s Corolla, and it was the best car I had ever experienced up to that point, but a second hand Corolla would be so much better today.
  - 4y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
Personal computers have become a distraction, like TV sets. People watching TV are generally not very productive.1 Before the internet we referred to TV as "the opiate of the masses".2 Not only do we now have a worse figurative opiate than TV in the form of today's www,3 we have the legalisation of literal opiates for the masses thanks to Purdue Pharma. 1 A plaintiff's lawyer specialising in class action securities fraud litigation might be one exception. He might be watching CNBC and drafting a new complaint at the same time. :) 2 https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809673,00.html https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809673... 3 Circa 1996 https://github.com/mikemurr/nc110/blob/master/scripts/web https://github.com/mikemurr/nc110/blob/master/scripts/web "The web sucks. It is a mighty dismal kludge built out of a thousand tiny dismal kludges all band-aided together, and now these bottom-line clueless pinheads who never heard of "TCP handshake" want to run commerce over the damn thing. Ye godz. Welcome to TV of the next century -- six million channels of worthless shit to choose from, and about as much security as today's cable industry!" I am still using original netcat every day to deal with the dismal kludges band-aided together, now run by pinheads. Although I use scripts I write myself instead of those of the author, netcat's simplicity, portability and reliability over 26 years is one of the few things I still enjoy about the www. In the rare chance he still uses the www and reads HN, thank you Mr Walker for one of the best programs ever written, not to mention the entertaining source code comments.
- oldsecondhand 4y ago
  > Before the internet we referred to TV as "the opiate of the masses" No, that's religion.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    That was only before TV. The expression originally referred to religion, but later referred to television. For example, see the citation provided to the July 15, 1957 issue of Time magazine.
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dilyevsky 4y ago
> Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? It’s clear to me krugman never held a hammer in his life bc that is just laughable statement
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Are there a lot more hammers now than in the 80s?
  - gtowey 4y ago
    I think he's trying to say that while superficially a house may appear much the same as in the 80's, anyone who has hands on building experience would immediately recognize the difference in materials and construction techniques.
    - danans 4y ago
      > anyone who has hands on building experience would immediately recognize the difference in materials and construction techniques The point is that the differences are largely incremental. Same stick built frames, same flimsy building wrap, same poorly installed fiberglass batts. None of that compares to the quantum leap that was indoor plumbing, in home telecommunications, automatic kitchen and laundry machines. But it's also that such massive change happened prior to the 80s that afterwards we have focused more on optimizing than new categories in our houses. And optimizing isn't bad, it's just a different type of advancement.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Because the world runs out of quantum leaps at times. In theory we can 3d print houses now, but those are not more useful than a stick built house. They are very easy to change and repair which a feature most people like. The building wraps these days have rather insane R values and do a good job insulating the house. And most houses have some kind of blow in for insulation.
acjacobson 4y ago
I mostly agree, though I think there are differences you'd notice rather quickly (but nothing as big as moving from 1890 to 1950) If you removed all the screens you'd probably first notice what's missing as opposed to what's different. In many of today's homes you wouldn't see things like tape / record players, stereos, VCRs, telephones, books, maps, yellow pages, rolodexes, calendars - all of these having a digital replacement. And depending on the affluence of the home you'd notice a lot more variety of specialty things - for example kitchen equipment (espresso machines, burr coffee grinders, instant pots, sous vide machines, mini blow torches, automatic ice cream makers). There are thousands of available board games now compared to the 80s - and it is super easy to have specialty hobby items as they're cheap and readily available. If you went to the grocery store you'd see a far greater variety of vegetables, prepared foods, cheeses, meats, "exotic" ingredients etc. I think the big differences are around convenience, variety, and availability - and for whatever reason they don't feel quite as big, even though the work that goes into making that possible is astoundingly large and complex.
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Much of that is consumption, though. I don't want to knock consumption, but it's not productivity.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Consumption is directly related to production. If I was willing to live on the minimum I could have retired after only a couple years. People retire at 65 now like before, but with a lot more stuff their additional productivity gave them. People seem to like it, so the argument that they shouldn't have so much junk is a bit flat.
    - lmm 4y ago
      Is all that extra stuff making them happier? Or are they just acquiring it to keep up with their neighbours? Maybe someone who retired early on the minimum would genuinely be less happy, but only because of seeing how much "better off" everyone else was.
dockd 4y ago
How about money? In 1960, you either had to have cash or find a place that took a check to make purchases. Maybe some places took a credit card. Ever have to wait in line behind someone that is writing a check? "Productive" won't come to mind. To get that cash you had to walk into a bank during banking hours. Then we got ATMs and could get our money any time of day. No more cutting out of work to deposit that royalty check. More places started taking cards as well as cash. I distinctly remember asking businesses if they took cards _before_ making a purchase. We still had holdouts like restaurants that didn't split the check. Now look at 2010. Pay with cash/check/card. Wait a few more years and you can do this with your phone. Get your meal tab split however you like. Owe someone money? No more writing checks, going to the ATM, just hit up Venmo. Now, what's the productivity measure in that? I have no idea.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Honestly the change is pretty small. Up until at least the mid 90s everywhere took checks. Honestly today interacting with the cash register at CVS takes longer than writing a check. Sure, a 30 second check writing reduced to a 10 second tap to pay can be a little bit of an improvement (except when it doesn't work), but really it's not that much better.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    May you be the luckiest person on earth if the people in front of you only took 30 seconds.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      Today's "I have a coupon on my phone but I can't get cell service here" guy is honestly far worse than "slow check-writer" guy.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Now, what's the productivity measure in that? I have no idea. Bordering on nothing, I think, other than that we have the opportunity to make street robbery much less lucrative if we stopped artificially inflating the price of phones, because people don't have to carry cash any more (if they're content with each purchase being recorded and data mined by 20 different companies and their government's intelligence agencies.) Burglary rates have dropped precipitously with cheap big screen tvs and cheap audio players. My dad built his entire young life around putting together his very expensive stereo system, I have a single dirty old bluetooth speaker that sounds nearly as good. Being not worth stealing makes it even better.
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version_five 4y ago
It's funny to see all the replies missing the point. I agree there have been few "step changes" in the way we do things. The biggest real one I can think of is the capabilities of small motors, that enable things like drones and battery power tools. But not a step change, just an incremental improvement. People had high hopes for mRNA, (no doubt people will take this the wrong way) but so far it seems to have been way overhyped. That kind of thing - the ability to arbitrarily protect against viruses - would potentially qualify. Overall I think the world is in decline progress wise, even as we make incremental gains in previously discovered tech, we lose e.g. Concorde or moon landings or even open borders. And soon the availability of internal combustion engines to the masses if elites have their way. Other than the neotlithic and industrial revolution, humanity has mostly languished. We could easily be in for more of that.
systemvoltage 4y ago
I agree, instead of critiqueing and truly reflecting on what went wrong, and what to do to fix it; technologists are obsessed with over-praising of how things have gotten better. It misses the point that "We could have done a lot better" if we weren't so stagnant. America was a powerhouse of innovation in 1950-1970 both in private and public sectors. The progress was impossibly exponential. First step is admission of failure. Even the valid praise that "World of bits has seen tremendous innovation" should be followed by "Why did it not progress even faster and why is there so much malaise in the world of bits (ad tech)?"
- contingencies 4y ago
  Real progress requires largely-uninterrupted time, space and adequate resources, cannot be readily predicted and is inherently risky. By outsourcing higher thought to the private sector, progress without immediate commercial application has been grossly disincentivized and I would argue the prerequisite culture has been lost. A 15-bit computer[0] brought us to the moon, whereas this time awash with 64 bit mobile supercomputers, infinite RAM, search engines and cloud computing has brought us high profile failures in corporate drone programs. In such an environment, cost is not the issue. In the private sector and public at large, perhaps we've forgotten how to work together. The military sector seems to have constant cost overruns and occasional big failures but at least gets the job done. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Yup, most of the talent has left, retired or flat out moved off of the area of research. What I’m hopeful about is some new innovation happening in certain corners. Companies such as SpaceX, often made fun by people that are resentful as “Cowboys”, forget that the entire Apollo program was more “Cowboy” than anything SpaceX is doing today. Read “Failure is not an option” by Gene Kranz if anyone is interested in the old school Cowboy culture of NASA. Warning: It might make you an optimist.
wallfacer 4y ago
Tough choice between Soap and hot takes on HN :P However, near-instant access to the entirety of humanities’ collective information vs a dishwasher? I’m fine washing dishes by hand. Mapping a novel virus genome and formulating an RNA-based vaccine in mere weeks vs “look how many dams and bridges we can build”? You know what happens when you compound incremental progress? Huge advancements. Progress is real, and it’s only getting faster as exponential tech from the past few decades is just now hitting “whole numbers” and converging. Of course, it’s not fundamentally inevitable, but the future is decided by the possible-ists. Please take the time to read the latest works by Diamandis and Kotler, Kevin Kelly, Steven Pinker, and Harari. I cannot imagine your perspective will still be the same after so much history, theory, and real-world examples beyond the point by point counters you’re receiving as replies.
lkrubner 4y ago
Exactly. Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth spells out the details of what real innovation looks like. Peter Drucker used to make about the same point, putting the emphasis on the 60 years leading up to 1914, which he considered the most innovative 60 years in human history: photography, telephones, radio, electricity, the combustion engine and therefore cars and trucks, airplanes, the modern textile dye industry, the oil industry, the first plastics, mass production of cleaning solutions, sulfa drugs, the modern steel industry and therefore cheap steel, and therefore skyscrapers and larger boats, the wholesale reinvention of mathematics starting with group theory discovered or re-discovered from Gauss in the 1870s and then followed by the evolution towards set theory, not to mention the tensor calculus, Boolean logic, and statistics becoming part of science, Max Plank but also Albert Einstein, etc. The list is really too long. At a slightly larger scale, there was what some historians refer to as a "secular boom" from the 1700s to the 1970s, and then since the 1970s we've seen the onset of what some call The Great Stagnation. How this ends and what comes next is anyone's guess.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  Really a teriffic time period; Semmelweiss suggesting handwashing was just before it in 1847. Kamerlingh-Onnes work on Superconductivity in 1911. Rutherford splitting the atom in 1911. Modern 'safety' bicycle, 1876 and practical pneumatic tyres 1888. Lord Kelvin and the analogue computers predicted tides, 1872. Tsiolkovsky proposes space exploration by rocket in 1898 and liquid propellent in 1903. Just missing 1917, Gillies and the first modern skin grafts / plastic surgery[1]. Darwin and "On the Origin of Species", published 1859. and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions#1860s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_invention... - Pasteurisation, dynamite, barbed wire, ballpoint pens, radio waves, x-rays, polyethylene, incandescent lights, Zeppelins, laminated glass, vacuum cleaners... [1] https://www.oddee.com/item_98767.aspx https://www.oddee.com/item_98767.aspx
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Someone from the Roman Empire would have had a good understanding of the world in 1750. Ocean travel better, some advances in building large buildings, otherwise not that different. In 1900? Quite a bit has changed. The general shape of daily life today is not so different than say 1970. Email instead of letters, cell phones instead of searching for dimes for the pay phone. But we fly in jets that average about 450 MPH, cars with a top road speed around 60 or 70 MPH, television but now with an Internet or cable feed, supermarkets are much the same, etc etc.
gitgud 4y ago
> Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago. Innovation is driven by demand, and demand for faster travel times is mainly fueled by people wanting quicker business trips, not people on holidays. Demand for business trips has waned dramatically due to the meteoric rise of video-conferencing. So businesses are spending less less time and money sending humans traveling around the world, which has had undeniable gains of productivity in businesses.
- torginus 4y ago
  This is a tautological argument. Let's say computers didn't advance in the last 15 years - one could make the case they didn't get faster because they don't fundamentally do anything today they didn't do 15 years ago so we don't need them to be faster.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Exactly my thought. Why go over the ocean in hours when I can do it in milliseconds.
andreilys 4y ago
The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet Except we now have cars with self-driving (however limited, it's a massive improvement over a car from 30 years). Another interesting thought experiment is, how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I would absolutely choose a mobile phone over any of those things.
- taffronaut 4y ago
  I guess if you'd choose a mobile phone over soap, then you're exclusively into virtual socialising rather real socialising.
mountainriver 4y ago
I find this statement absolutely insane. We’ve made huge progress on just about every facet of life I can think of and continue to. It’s cool some guy wrote a book on it but it’s a pretty narrow and contrived view of the world.
- cudgy 4y ago
  “huge” progress does not equal innovation. Being able to order a pizza in 60 seconds using an app is huge progress versus calling the store and ordering with your voice, but it is not a significant innovation. Now, printing a pizza using a digital recipe from a restaurant on my food printer would be something else.
  - mountainriver 4y ago
    huh? Progress requires innovation, the two are tightly linked
petra 4y ago
I do wonder really:given a choice between having a car and having internet, what would people prefer? My guess is that many would prefer having internet access.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Heh, I recently sold one of my cars because of my ability to work from home. Many more people, at least in the US are considered walkable communities than in the recent past.
rowanG077 4y ago
You could very easily tell by literally any of the other tech in the house. Roombas, Solar panels, space heaters, electric car. Or even by the the general utensils, encyclopedia, flooring, type of heaters. Besides computers have changed the world just as much in the last 40 years as we have moved from horse carriages to cars, if not more. Just because it didn't require retooling of cities doesn't mean it isn't a giant leap.
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  Also the lack of certain things would be an indicator. No home phone. No phone books. No physical maps. Less likely to have a dictionary or other books. Fewer newspapers and magazines.
maxerickson 4y ago
Does my instant pot have a screen?
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Not quite, but we have AI in rice cookers: > The Pressure Induction Heating Rice Cooker & Warmer uses pressurized cooking and AI (Artificial Intelligence) to cook perfect rice. Platinum infused nonstick inner cooking pan helps rice cook sweeter. Pressure cooking helps turn beta starch into alpha starch for softer and easier to digest rice. Now with convenient Jasmine, Congee and Steel Cut Oatmeal settings. https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/npnwc https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/npnwc
moron4hire 4y ago
> Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago. 50 years ago, the average person did not cross the Atlantic at all. Flights were so expensive they were completely inaccessible to the vast majority of people. Today, most of the middle class can eventually afford a European vacation, if it's something they want to prioritize. I'm not rich and I've been to Europe three times in my life. The way in which we travel is also significantly safer and more efficient. For as much as I hate airports and airlines, I can't deny that the state of things today is still at least an order of magnitude better than "decades ago".
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet I grew up in the late 2000s driving manual cars in France. My electric Hyundai Kona is a wildly better experience by a lot. It accelerates easily, corrects my mistakes with emergency braking / lane centering, and it's stupid easy to park or start on a hill with it.
swat535 4y ago
I don't think your comment does justice to how much we have advanced since 1960.. Today.. * we can have pretty much any food delivered to me with a click of a button * We can have a ride at anytime to any destination with a click of a button * Communicate instantly with millions of people with a click of a button * Huge automation in business operations and logistics * AIs that can literally draw pictures and write sentences * Practically look at any place across the globe, find directions in any country and translate nearly any text to any language * Listen to unlimited amount of music and entertainment with a tiny wireless thing in my ear that can also make calls * Automated vacuum cleaners that run on schedules, mop floors and dispose their trash * Cars that are much more efficient, can detect pedestrians, red lights, road signs, have blind spot monitoring, can warn you when you are drifting off, warn you if you risk collision, .. * MRNA vaccines and breakthroughs in many areas of science (CRISPR for example) * SpaceX, Starlink satellites and adoption of electric cars * We literally have 3 rovers and 1 lander currently in operation on Mars, transmitting images and data I could go on but I think I've made my point. To claim that we have not progressed is ridiculous. Yes, we need screens and internet to accomplish some of these, but we also need fuel and electricity to build a lot of tech in 1960. Some technology simply require other technology and I think that point is irrelevant.
- ge96 4y ago
  the bit vs. atoms thing is interesting though We don't have the ability to regenerate someone's arm in real time or program it to become the limb of another animal in real time. Teleportation, FTL, flying cars (anti gravity), consciousness transfer, 3D printed food from raw atoms, seamless BCID, direct matter to energy conversion, space elevator, real holograms, all those currently sci-fi/impossible things plasma/laser/particle weapons which Nikola Tesla supposedly was working on back then but with miniaturized fusion energy sources maybe it'll be a thing (small cyclotron too). active camouflage (cheap mass produced lcd display/camera overlaid on aircraft) haha name every sci-fi concept you've ever seen I remember the first time I saw a helmholtz coil in action (bending glowing electron beam into a circle via magnetism) that was crazy but of course tv, even those tiny ones size of a walkman
damon_c 4y ago
Probably the main innovation is in how many people have access to those things compared to in the 1950s... Sure, the rich people of the 60s had cars and dishwashers. Now many more millions of people do.
asah 4y ago
bogus! I was there, and let me tell you, I get so much more done each day, it's shocking: - cellphones, the internet and GPS saves insane amounts of time coordinating RL events. I'm never gonna get back the 1000+ hours I spent with paper maps trying to find places, playing "phone tag" coordinating activities, etc. Kids these days, they just have no idea. - remote work & learning = 2+ hours PER DAY. I used to pay $500 (in today-dollars) a month to sit on the Long Island Railroad and read books. Now I work when I'm ready to be productive. I listen-in on zoom calls, whisper questions to people, read docs, all "soaking up" information. Recently, I got tons of work done while on a grand jury - 21 cases in 8 days and no problem interleaving work, thanks to excellent WiFi and work-from-anywhere. - e-commerce and youtube = no more repeated trips to the store for stupid shit. I've got a dozen major home improvement projects going at once, with ecomm orders every which way, from lumber to jigsaws, electrical to plumbing. Easy returns means I can experiment more. YouTube means fewer mistakes and far fewer disasters. - globalization = variety = better tools for the job. No seriously, you have no idea how limited and shitty products used to be. In software, we had no source control let alone CI/CD - reproducibility was not a thing, let alone distributed computing. IRL, I remember trying to buy stuff at Sears and Service Merchandise and the only review system was the store clerk on commission. You can't imagine the BS we put up with, simply for a lack of variety. (I could go on... you can't imagine healthcare back then... in the starkest definition of "productivity," cancer was often a death sentence even caught early, and now people routine survive stage 4 cancers... also everybody knew people who died young in car accidents, it was tragic but normalized, and then DUI laws and education, crumple zones and airbags all made this rare...) Now it's true, we "waste" our newfound freedoms binge-watching Netflix, wasting time here on HN, going to the gym, and so on. Put another way, I dunno about you, but my daily/weekly "productivity limit" is not based on output, but on my brain maxxing out, from too many projects, too many names, too many details. It's also true that many upgrades are "trivial" - vacuums with lights and on/off buttons on the handle; better quality audio and video; 1000s of streaming shows. Back in the day, we had maybe a dozen channels and the quality was often terrible, from mediocre writing and acting, to hilariously simple production values that even pre-dated the demands of 4K. Historical fiction wasn't popular because it sucked. Sci-fi and horror weren't much of a thing because the special effects sucked. And and and. These don't make you productive, and they don't even make you happier unless you remember to appreciate them. Which is why I'm taking the time to write this comment. I just had another amazing day that my older self simply couldn't imagine, let alone someone from mid-century or before computers.
diego_moita 4y ago
> Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth A fantastic book! But give it up. You tried but you can't explain that argument in a few paragraphs in a social network. That's a level of intelligence that is simply not possible here. Just look at the answers you got. You (and Gordon) talk about changes in the fundamental, in the daily routines of everyday life, in the organization of life, cities and markets. However almost all answers here completely miss that point and go: "but product X is so much better now!". They'd need to read Gordon's book to grasp it.
- onecommentman 4y ago
  Not just “so much better now!” but “incredibly super fantastically better than anything ever was or could have ever been compared to the horrible disgusting very bad, no good cretinous crud that came before!!!”. They shout so loud I can’t hear what they are saying. They sound silly. Would be nice if the discussion focused on one particular point in the past, say 25 years in the past, 1997. What has dramatically improved since 1997 as a result of technological advances? It’s a much harder case to make, e.g. the first Prius was released in Japan in 1997, Windows 98 was in beta, Netflix was started… https://www.computerhope.com/history/1997.htm https://www.computerhope.com/history/1997.htm
guyzero 4y ago
try to get your cancer treated in 1960 and let me know how much you like 2010
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Cancer treatments are highly specific. There's been marked progress in some areas (breast, bladder), and remarkbly little in others (pancreatic, brain, lung). A very close friend died of a cancer in the early 1990s for whom treatment has advanced little from the late 1960s, and is largely based on compounds developed in in the 1910s, for chemical warfare during the Great War. Other than genetic sequencing now telling us what specific chromosomal mutation is responsible for the disease, the situation remains largely unchanged to this day. (This is one of the messages I continually send Past Me, who was as is all to typical, bombarded with "information" about "novel treatments" promising to aid in their disease. Those were, and are, utter bildge.) The largest improvements in health outcomes, measured by decreases in mortality and increases in life expectency, occurred during the decades of the 1910s (women) and 1920s (men). The largest increases since have largely come about through improved healthcare access (especially to the poor and minorities, with Black women and men making huge increases in life exepctancy since the 1950s) and through te elimination of risks: air pollution, asbestos, lead, cigarettes, reductions in alcohol consumption, IV drug use, overdoses, unprotected sex, and the like. AIDs and other novel infectious diseases have been a counter-trend. 5-year survival for my friend's cancer was and remains about 1 in 5. 60 years after 1960.
bergenty 4y ago
You’re making it sound very simplistic but those screens are a whole new world that enable us to do an incredible number of things— from all the knowledge in the world at your fingertips, to very cheap and ubiquitous communication, shopping on demand, GPS, entertainment, learning, creativity from music to videos to graphics, simulations of real world situations etc. Our electricity is coming from renewable resources, there’s more social egalitarianism, countries across the world have gone from undeveloped world to much, much higher levels of development, air travel is significantly more accessible to everyone, we’re on the cusp of an general AI, space is more accessible, we can genetically modify our DNA and on and on.
quickthrower2 4y ago
How do I tell I am not in the 80's. I just requested a repeat prescription in 30 seconds, requested a pizza in 60 seconds, purchased some stock in 60 seconds, paid a trades-person in 30 seconds. I can buy stuff at any shop (99.9%) around here without my wallet. I haven't spoken to someone at a bank branch for years. I don't have something ... I can order it online and get it the next day. I can have access to courses that are 10 times better than $2000 week long in-person courses of the 90s, for free or little money. Where does it end...? If we are measuring by using dollars, well that's silly. We could have $100TN or whatever of tokens in circulation and be living like wild animals or colonizing the solar system.
root_axis 4y ago
Why would I "take out all the screens"? Imagine if I walked into the average house and took out all the screws... why? That thought experiment speciously suggests that "the screens" are merely inert panes of glass rather than a core component of modern innovation. "Screens" function as an interface for many types of devices, they're not simply interchangeable because they have one.
ciconia 4y ago
David Graeber made a similar observation in one of his talks [1]. I find it very interesting and pertinent to the current difficulties humanity is currently facing, especially with regards to climate change. One the one hand, humanity is totally capable of destroying our planet. On the other, we've already reached, so it seems, the limits of whats is physically possible. Both problems made us abandon reality and instead embrace virtual reality, and virtual "space time". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q84ar89Oxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q84ar89Oxo
torginus 4y ago
And to bring the analogy into the realm of computing, I feel like progress isn't lightning fast here either. I just watched this video of Office 3.0 from 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsTydF09hbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsTydF09hbg This looks and feels like the Office I use everyday. Likewise, I feel like the changes in the realm of software development, a purportedly fast moving, tech and investment heavy industry, have been a mix of sidegrades, new paradigms enabled by faster hardware, and just stuff as it ever was before. If a 2005 programmer, who knew C++,JavaScript,Java,HTML,C#,Python,Bash etc. would have been frozen and thawed yesterday, would be able to be brought up to speed on modern iterations of technology and tooling. Growing up in the 2000s, I hung out on internet forums instead of Reddit, chatted with people on IRC instead of Discord, and used MSN messenger instead of Whatsapp, but these programs almost served the same social purpose. Considering video games, a canary in the coal mine for the bleeding edge in software and hardware (at least it used to be that way), one could be forgiven for mistaking Crysis, a 2007 game for one that came out yesterday. Halo Infinite released just last year, with almost identical gameplay to the original 2001 Halo. I feel like the pace of improvement has slowed considerably starting with the 2000s, and I'd be hard pressed to point out anything life-changing that came out in the last decade.
- phasersout 4y ago
  In case of operating systems I often wonder what our GUI and workflow would look like if Windows, MacOS and Linux had equal market shares for the last twenty years.
  - herbst 4y ago
    Kinda like gnome shell :) the thing Windows 8 wanted to be and the heavy Facelifting apple is so afraid of.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Dall-E, AlphaGo/Chess is serious progress. Hyperfuturistic even.
harryf 4y ago
> Another interesting thought experiment is, how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I think it really puts into perspective how much or rather little value those 'innovations' add. Exactly! In fact I‘d go further and say - in some cases - “innovation” has made things worse not better. As a kid our family TV had one remote control. You switched the TV on and it “just worked”. Today to watch your “Smart TV” you need at least 3 remote controls apparently and the time between switching it on an actually watching anything seems to get longer and longer. Sure there’s all this choice now available of what to watch - although mostly it’s a choice between many variations of low quality content - but the basic usability of a TV is way worse than what I had when I was 10. Another example is “smart lights” … it used to be you just switch a light on and it worked. But now there’s at least an additional 200 ms to wait for a light to turn on, and a little glimmer of anxiety when you’re unsure what “mode” the light will boot up in, especially when your Wifi was down… I do a comedy podcast and we were ranting about this stuff a little while ago about how “innovation” is making things worse https://youtu.be/HvtCfUMJEk0 https://youtu.be/HvtCfUMJEk0
- widdershins 4y ago
  But isn't that true of all innovations? That the earlier ones solve more basic/critical needs than the later ones? Would you trade a hot shower for glass in your windows? Or a plough that enables you face starvation less frequently?
throwaway981572 4y ago
> The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can do online many of the things you needed a car before. The speed difference is between minutes or hours to milliseconds - much more than the difference between cars and horses. The whole aspect of looking at cars is funny. It’s like judging progress 60 years from now by checking by how much their resolution improved.
- cudgy 4y ago
  Telephones, video conferencing, and internet were available 30 years ago. It is just more available today due to the hardware improvements based on processors using instruction sets that have been around for decades.
RandomLensman 4y ago
Because a lot of technology is used for every more fine grained "control-freakery" that isn't really increasing productivity but creates more administrative burden. The amount of reporting large corporates need to do today internally and externally would not be possible with 1950s technology, for example.
cm2187 4y ago
I agree with your points, but software will enable revolutionary devices. I think my dream robot butler that will clean my house, iron my clothes, prepare food based on grand chef recipes, take deliveries and repaint the walls while I am not around is just around the corner. This is mostly a software problem. In the military space software is what is making the difference in ukraine: drones, self guided missiles, intelligence. Then you have self driving cars. As an office worker, I’d stay what is capping productivity right now is actually not good enough software. Too many manual processes done by hand, copy-pasting in excel. It is still too slow and expensive to develop software to do automation and those things are still too damn complex for business users to automate it themselves. But in that space the gains of productivity have been massive. MS Outlook has eliminated the job of a secretary. Remember the armies of accountants computing financial reports. By cleaning up an old room on a trading floor I found a stack of blank paper trade tickets (printed in 1999…), you’d have a guy running between sales and traders and ops to get it signed off. Then ops people typing it. I read a book of a guy in the French secret service saying that his career consisted in compiling information about what paper people wrote, who knows who, and to know your way around that file so you could search it efficiently. This guy has been replaced by google and linkedin. The hours saved finding information immediately, saving you a trip to the library are countless. I think software has enabled huge productivity gains and there are more to come.
aj7 4y ago
Try 1960 surgery sometime. Or 1960 chemo, or cardio imaging, if you’re really unlucky. Or 1960 airfares or jet engines. Or 1960 machine shop equipment. The last 30 years? I can exhaustively research a technical subject at home, without getting dressed, thanks to that Russian lady. My Google Drive has a departmental library, suitable for the old Bell Labs, of books on lasers and optics. A CAD (design) and CAM (send machine instructions to a tool) program that was utterly unavailable, with attempts at this in Fortune 50 companies and the DOD, is FREE, with rotatable shaded solid models, FEA tools, and support for hundreds of machines. GPS in a strange area? Cheap expresso makers at home? Adjust your air conditioner from 3000 miles away with your phone? Take studio quality pictures with it? Servomotors and ballscrews on tools now cheaper the gear trains and lead screws they replace? Measure a whole room with a cheap handheld thingy? OK I’ll shut up.
- patrickjd 4y ago
  RNA Vaccines too! The above comments seem to assume that progress is limited to consumer goods. As for progress in terms of atoms (rather than bits) behold the elaborate global supply chain.
FunnyBadger 4y ago
So true. Hardware/Physical innovation also takes 20 years delay "lab to fab" - you can't cheat it or speed it up. It simply takes time. And more importantly: if you don't continuously (not continually) fund that 20 years of work (financially, human effort, etc.), the delay goes to infinity. In general, that "pipeline" has emptied out in the US as manufacturing was outsourced overseas. And so anything you start today merely starts the 20 year clock but if and only if you have the infrastructure in place to support it.
nobodyandproud 4y ago
> Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? My robot vacs say yes, you can. By the way, Neato’s robot vac regressed from its peak, completely autonomous models like Signature Pro from 10 years ago, to the cloud only lineups of today. Sometime during the last 10 years was when data harvesting became more important than real consumer tech. Peter Thiel and industry counterparts are directly to blame for consumer regression and the “world not changing much”. Sorry. They don’t get a free pass.
sunstone 4y ago
I would trade my dishwasher for Google.
bitcurious 4y ago
>The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. You're about half as likely to die in a car crash as you were 30 years ago. It's incremental, but not hedonistic. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
xnx 4y ago
> how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I think it really puts into perspective how much or rather little value those 'innovations' add. This is a good question, but I think you'd be surprised by some of the answers. I'd give up indoor toilets before I gave up my smartphone.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

There's a weird disconnect with computers. The software we use is 1000 times more complex than it was 20 years ago, leading to performance that really have not improved a lot, and a lot of functional stagnation. Many applications are slower to start today than they were 10 years ago, because back then they were binaries and today they are Electron apps. Your average web based word processor with cloud storage performs about the same as Microsoft Word did on Windows 3.1 on a 486 saving onto a floppy. Screens are bigger, resolutions are bigger, but the content is largely the same because the limit is human perception not technology. If you actually keep things simple, you can build absolutely ridiculous things off modern hardware. I'm running an Internet search engine out of my living room. You could not that 20 years ago. What makes it possible is modern SSDs and the absolutely mind-boggling computing power of modern CPU.

Tagbert 4y ago
Word Processing is maybe not the best example. Human needs in terms of writing documents have not changed significantly in the last 20-30 years. The mechanics are not the bottleneck. neither is application startup time. I know that it is something you can measure but I don't agree that it is a significant data point. I generally only start a word processor once per day and then it stays running as I move between writing tasks and other tasks. Startup is an insignificant part of that time. Other tasks have become more efficient in that time period. Anything involving graphics has gotten much easier to do on computers than before and can be done by more people. Project Management tools are much faster and easier to use. What I do see in a corporate world is an emphasis efficiency that requires spending a lot more time tasks and running alternate scenarios to be more efficient. This seems more doable now because some of these things are easier but its too easy to ignore the time spent doing more of this kind of thing.
KronisLV 4y ago
> The software we use is 1000 times more complex than it was 20 years ago, leading to performance that really have not improved a lot, and a lot of functional stagnation. Many applications are slower to start today than they were 10 years ago, because back then they were binaries and today they are Electron apps. Also known as Wirth's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law Sometimes it worries me. If we had a boring set of usable and safe tools to use for development, that would also be pretty fast, i wouldn't have to update my hardware every 5 years or so. But JetBrains IDE's (just one example) basically demand that I do, if I want their other shiny features. Perhaps something like Java instead of Python. Perhaps something like Go instead of Java. Perhaps something like Rust instead of Go. Just boring (predictable), stable and dependable programming languages, supported on every platform with a set of native libraries. Perhaps a bit like what LCL did in regards to GUI in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Component_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Component_Library
- dieselgate 4y ago
  Ruby on Rails? Edit: for web apps

IshKebab 4y ago

> could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Well yes, because we have solar panels and heat pumps and battery powered power tools and vacuum cleaners and dishwashers and microwave ovens and smart lights and ... You wouldn't expect walls and carpets to change.

simplify 4y ago
Flooring has changed too. Carpets are better looking and more resilient. Click vinyl is stronger, has good texture, easier to install, and is super durable.
- deleted 4y ago
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kareemsabri 4y ago
> vacuum cleaners mainstream since at least the 1950s > dishwashers 1970s > microwave ovens available but fairly expensive in the 80s, ubiquitous in the 90s
- Retric 4y ago
  The point was vacuums etc have gotten a lot better over time. Electric motors are noticeably lighter, more powerful, and more energy efficient today. Yes vacuums in the 1980’s worked but they where significantly heavier, louder, and far more power hungry not to mention more expensive. It might not seem like much but I remember the exhaust from the family vacuum being noticeably warm. It’s even more noticeable with cordless vacuums which got not just better motors but vastly better batteries as well. Often it’s the parts you don’t notice that make a world of difference. The finger saver shutoff on a modern saw might not seem like much, but those things really make a difference in peoples lives.
  - musicale 4y ago
    > finger saver shutoff Probably a feature I wouldn't want to give up.

humanistbot 4y ago

> if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. Energy efficiency and fuel economy have made massive gains. Materials are stronger and lighter. Batteries last ages compared to 30 years ago.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Also they go wrong a hell of a lot less often. 80s cars were mostly complete shit and no one was sorry to see them go. Also if you crash one, you're vastly less likely to die.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck I always liked this IIHS crash test: 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air vs. 2009 Chevrolet Malibu It really shows the progress. Seatbelts, the "rigid cage" to protect the driver, air bags, etc. etc. The 1959 Bel Air crash-dummy is clearly dead, bouncing around the cabin during the crash. The 2009 Malibu crash-dummy has a sprained neck and the face hurts from hitting the air-bag, but clearly survives.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    I see 50s-80s cars on TV and all I can visualise is that thin metal hoop steering wheel bisecting my face like a melon.
    - BVCommander 4y ago
      Depending on the age of the car your skull could also be cored by the steering column like an apple. In the 50's the industry propaganda, parroted by bought and paid for regulators, was that all people involved in an automobile collision were irresponsible drivers deserving of death and disfigurement. And especially so for the colored ones, they probably drove recklessly after stealing them. You can't trust the lot of 'em.

Quinner 4y ago

30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally move through the world vastly differently thanks to digital maps. Many people (and in a few years, the majority) are doing so in cars that use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. One way to tell whether you're in an 80s house would be to look around for reference books, encyclopedias, rolodexes, filing cabinets. If you wanted to know more about something, you probably had to go to a library, which might not even have a book on the topic (maybe if you were particularly determined to know the answer you'd wait a few weeks for an ILL). Its a bit sad to me that you look at this enormous sea change in how we interact with the world and see Angry Birds.

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tunesmith 4y ago
I think your last sentence is unnecessary. What purpose does it serve?
- burnished 4y ago
  It relates the audience and the author on an emotional level.
- majewsky 4y ago
  Once an argument has been laid out in detail, providing a poignant summary in one sentence leaves a more lasting impression on the reader.
  - fieldcny 4y ago
    So your argument is that all technical advancement in the last 50/60 years is just marketing? That’s a pretty bold statement supported by literally nothing, just because you don’t feel like certain tech has added anything doesn’t mean it hasn’t. Productivity is an incredibly hard thing to capture, especially with the move to away from manufacturing and physical production. One could easily argue that the productivity numbers are failing to increase because technology has lowered the barriers to entry all over the world so now there’s more competition for every good and service creating pricing pressure on the “value of goods and services produced”

lotsofpulp 4y ago

> if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? Yes. Even the cheapest house built to code will be noticeably better than one from 1980s. The quality of materials, technology of materials, wiring, plumbing, flooring, insulation, etc will all be better. > The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet Not true, for similar reasons as above. Name a 2022 Corolla equivalent that could be purchased in the 1980s, safety, fuel efficiency, and reliability wise, at a similar inflation adjusted price. No 1980s car will even come close, and that is just for the most basic car today.

diordiderot 4y ago
I read something along the lines of 'a stock 2020 Camero is faster than a 2000 Ferrari' with fewer cylinders
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Most name brand supercars are just dumping fuel into the engine and making it sound impressive. They don't have the engineering prowess to develop a refined power train like a big manufacturer. Nowadays emissions regulations force them to team up with a more competent player which is why the least sucky Huracan is the R8.
analog31 4y ago
My house was built in the early 60s, has hardwood flooring throughout, copper plumbing, the wiring is all in hard conduit, the 2x4's are actually a bit thicker than today's, and of a higher grade. The original windows are still functioning, though not as efficient as modern ones. The appliances are modern because they've all been replaced. Today's house in the same region uses lower grade lumber, carpeted floors, Romex, and plastic plumbing. Agreed about the Corolla. I owned a second hand 80s Corolla, and it was the best car I had ever experienced up to that point, but a second hand Corolla would be so much better today.
- 4y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

Personal computers have become a distraction, like TV sets. People watching TV are generally not very productive.1 Before the internet we referred to TV as "the opiate of the masses".2 Not only do we now have a worse figurative opiate than TV in the form of today's www,3 we have the legalisation of literal opiates for the masses thanks to Purdue Pharma. 1 A plaintiff's lawyer specialising in class action securities fraud litigation might be one exception. He might be watching CNBC and drafting a new complaint at the same time. :) 2 https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809673,00.html https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809673... 3 Circa 1996 https://github.com/mikemurr/nc110/blob/master/scripts/web https://github.com/mikemurr/nc110/blob/master/scripts/web "The web sucks. It is a mighty dismal kludge built out of a thousand tiny dismal kludges all band-aided together, and now these bottom-line clueless pinheads who never heard of "TCP handshake" want to run commerce over the damn thing. Ye godz. Welcome to TV of the next century -- six million channels of worthless shit to choose from, and about as much security as today's cable industry!" I am still using original netcat every day to deal with the dismal kludges band-aided together, now run by pinheads. Although I use scripts I write myself instead of those of the author, netcat's simplicity, portability and reliability over 26 years is one of the few things I still enjoy about the www. In the rare chance he still uses the www and reads HN, thank you Mr Walker for one of the best programs ever written, not to mention the entertaining source code comments.

oldsecondhand 4y ago
> Before the internet we referred to TV as "the opiate of the masses" No, that's religion.
- deleted 4y ago
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- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  That was only before TV. The expression originally referred to religion, but later referred to television. For example, see the citation provided to the July 15, 1957 issue of Time magazine.

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dilyevsky 4y ago

> Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? It’s clear to me krugman never held a hammer in his life bc that is just laughable statement

pessimizer 4y ago
Are there a lot more hammers now than in the 80s?
- gtowey 4y ago
  I think he's trying to say that while superficially a house may appear much the same as in the 80's, anyone who has hands on building experience would immediately recognize the difference in materials and construction techniques.
  - danans 4y ago
    > anyone who has hands on building experience would immediately recognize the difference in materials and construction techniques The point is that the differences are largely incremental. Same stick built frames, same flimsy building wrap, same poorly installed fiberglass batts. None of that compares to the quantum leap that was indoor plumbing, in home telecommunications, automatic kitchen and laundry machines. But it's also that such massive change happened prior to the 80s that afterwards we have focused more on optimizing than new categories in our houses. And optimizing isn't bad, it's just a different type of advancement.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Because the world runs out of quantum leaps at times. In theory we can 3d print houses now, but those are not more useful than a stick built house. They are very easy to change and repair which a feature most people like. The building wraps these days have rather insane R values and do a good job insulating the house. And most houses have some kind of blow in for insulation.

acjacobson 4y ago

I mostly agree, though I think there are differences you'd notice rather quickly (but nothing as big as moving from 1890 to 1950) If you removed all the screens you'd probably first notice what's missing as opposed to what's different. In many of today's homes you wouldn't see things like tape / record players, stereos, VCRs, telephones, books, maps, yellow pages, rolodexes, calendars - all of these having a digital replacement. And depending on the affluence of the home you'd notice a lot more variety of specialty things - for example kitchen equipment (espresso machines, burr coffee grinders, instant pots, sous vide machines, mini blow torches, automatic ice cream makers). There are thousands of available board games now compared to the 80s - and it is super easy to have specialty hobby items as they're cheap and readily available. If you went to the grocery store you'd see a far greater variety of vegetables, prepared foods, cheeses, meats, "exotic" ingredients etc. I think the big differences are around convenience, variety, and availability - and for whatever reason they don't feel quite as big, even though the work that goes into making that possible is astoundingly large and complex.

lr4444lr 4y ago
Much of that is consumption, though. I don't want to knock consumption, but it's not productivity.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Consumption is directly related to production. If I was willing to live on the minimum I could have retired after only a couple years. People retire at 65 now like before, but with a lot more stuff their additional productivity gave them. People seem to like it, so the argument that they shouldn't have so much junk is a bit flat.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Is all that extra stuff making them happier? Or are they just acquiring it to keep up with their neighbours? Maybe someone who retired early on the minimum would genuinely be less happy, but only because of seeing how much "better off" everyone else was.

dockd 4y ago

How about money? In 1960, you either had to have cash or find a place that took a check to make purchases. Maybe some places took a credit card. Ever have to wait in line behind someone that is writing a check? "Productive" won't come to mind. To get that cash you had to walk into a bank during banking hours. Then we got ATMs and could get our money any time of day. No more cutting out of work to deposit that royalty check. More places started taking cards as well as cash. I distinctly remember asking businesses if they took cards _before_ making a purchase. We still had holdouts like restaurants that didn't split the check. Now look at 2010. Pay with cash/check/card. Wait a few more years and you can do this with your phone. Get your meal tab split however you like. Owe someone money? No more writing checks, going to the ATM, just hit up Venmo. Now, what's the productivity measure in that? I have no idea.

colechristensen 4y ago
Honestly the change is pretty small. Up until at least the mid 90s everywhere took checks. Honestly today interacting with the cash register at CVS takes longer than writing a check. Sure, a 30 second check writing reduced to a 10 second tap to pay can be a little bit of an improvement (except when it doesn't work), but really it's not that much better.
- pixl97 4y ago
  May you be the luckiest person on earth if the people in front of you only took 30 seconds.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    Today's "I have a coupon on my phone but I can't get cell service here" guy is honestly far worse than "slow check-writer" guy.
pessimizer 4y ago
> Now, what's the productivity measure in that? I have no idea. Bordering on nothing, I think, other than that we have the opportunity to make street robbery much less lucrative if we stopped artificially inflating the price of phones, because people don't have to carry cash any more (if they're content with each purchase being recorded and data mined by 20 different companies and their government's intelligence agencies.) Burglary rates have dropped precipitously with cheap big screen tvs and cheap audio players. My dad built his entire young life around putting together his very expensive stereo system, I have a single dirty old bluetooth speaker that sounds nearly as good. Being not worth stealing makes it even better.

deleted 4y ago

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version_five 4y ago

It's funny to see all the replies missing the point. I agree there have been few "step changes" in the way we do things. The biggest real one I can think of is the capabilities of small motors, that enable things like drones and battery power tools. But not a step change, just an incremental improvement. People had high hopes for mRNA, (no doubt people will take this the wrong way) but so far it seems to have been way overhyped. That kind of thing - the ability to arbitrarily protect against viruses - would potentially qualify. Overall I think the world is in decline progress wise, even as we make incremental gains in previously discovered tech, we lose e.g. Concorde or moon landings or even open borders. And soon the availability of internal combustion engines to the masses if elites have their way. Other than the neotlithic and industrial revolution, humanity has mostly languished. We could easily be in for more of that.

systemvoltage 4y ago

I agree, instead of critiqueing and truly reflecting on what went wrong, and what to do to fix it; technologists are obsessed with over-praising of how things have gotten better. It misses the point that "We could have done a lot better" if we weren't so stagnant. America was a powerhouse of innovation in 1950-1970 both in private and public sectors. The progress was impossibly exponential. First step is admission of failure. Even the valid praise that "World of bits has seen tremendous innovation" should be followed by "Why did it not progress even faster and why is there so much malaise in the world of bits (ad tech)?"

contingencies 4y ago
Real progress requires largely-uninterrupted time, space and adequate resources, cannot be readily predicted and is inherently risky. By outsourcing higher thought to the private sector, progress without immediate commercial application has been grossly disincentivized and I would argue the prerequisite culture has been lost. A 15-bit computer[0] brought us to the moon, whereas this time awash with 64 bit mobile supercomputers, infinite RAM, search engines and cloud computing has brought us high profile failures in corporate drone programs. In such an environment, cost is not the issue. In the private sector and public at large, perhaps we've forgotten how to work together. The military sector seems to have constant cost overruns and occasional big failures but at least gets the job done. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Yup, most of the talent has left, retired or flat out moved off of the area of research. What I’m hopeful about is some new innovation happening in certain corners. Companies such as SpaceX, often made fun by people that are resentful as “Cowboys”, forget that the entire Apollo program was more “Cowboy” than anything SpaceX is doing today. Read “Failure is not an option” by Gene Kranz if anyone is interested in the old school Cowboy culture of NASA. Warning: It might make you an optimist.

wallfacer 4y ago

Tough choice between Soap and hot takes on HN :P However, near-instant access to the entirety of humanities’ collective information vs a dishwasher? I’m fine washing dishes by hand. Mapping a novel virus genome and formulating an RNA-based vaccine in mere weeks vs “look how many dams and bridges we can build”? You know what happens when you compound incremental progress? Huge advancements. Progress is real, and it’s only getting faster as exponential tech from the past few decades is just now hitting “whole numbers” and converging. Of course, it’s not fundamentally inevitable, but the future is decided by the possible-ists. Please take the time to read the latest works by Diamandis and Kotler, Kevin Kelly, Steven Pinker, and Harari. I cannot imagine your perspective will still be the same after so much history, theory, and real-world examples beyond the point by point counters you’re receiving as replies.

lkrubner 4y ago

Exactly. Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth spells out the details of what real innovation looks like. Peter Drucker used to make about the same point, putting the emphasis on the 60 years leading up to 1914, which he considered the most innovative 60 years in human history: photography, telephones, radio, electricity, the combustion engine and therefore cars and trucks, airplanes, the modern textile dye industry, the oil industry, the first plastics, mass production of cleaning solutions, sulfa drugs, the modern steel industry and therefore cheap steel, and therefore skyscrapers and larger boats, the wholesale reinvention of mathematics starting with group theory discovered or re-discovered from Gauss in the 1870s and then followed by the evolution towards set theory, not to mention the tensor calculus, Boolean logic, and statistics becoming part of science, Max Plank but also Albert Einstein, etc. The list is really too long. At a slightly larger scale, there was what some historians refer to as a "secular boom" from the 1700s to the 1970s, and then since the 1970s we've seen the onset of what some call The Great Stagnation. How this ends and what comes next is anyone's guess.

jodrellblank 4y ago
Really a teriffic time period; Semmelweiss suggesting handwashing was just before it in 1847. Kamerlingh-Onnes work on Superconductivity in 1911. Rutherford splitting the atom in 1911. Modern 'safety' bicycle, 1876 and practical pneumatic tyres 1888. Lord Kelvin and the analogue computers predicted tides, 1872. Tsiolkovsky proposes space exploration by rocket in 1898 and liquid propellent in 1903. Just missing 1917, Gillies and the first modern skin grafts / plastic surgery[1]. Darwin and "On the Origin of Species", published 1859. and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions#1860s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_invention... - Pasteurisation, dynamite, barbed wire, ballpoint pens, radio waves, x-rays, polyethylene, incandescent lights, Zeppelins, laminated glass, vacuum cleaners... [1] https://www.oddee.com/item_98767.aspx https://www.oddee.com/item_98767.aspx
JJMcJ 4y ago
Someone from the Roman Empire would have had a good understanding of the world in 1750. Ocean travel better, some advances in building large buildings, otherwise not that different. In 1900? Quite a bit has changed. The general shape of daily life today is not so different than say 1970. Email instead of letters, cell phones instead of searching for dimes for the pay phone. But we fly in jets that average about 450 MPH, cars with a top road speed around 60 or 70 MPH, television but now with an Internet or cable feed, supermarkets are much the same, etc etc.

gitgud 4y ago

> Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago. Innovation is driven by demand, and demand for faster travel times is mainly fueled by people wanting quicker business trips, not people on holidays. Demand for business trips has waned dramatically due to the meteoric rise of video-conferencing. So businesses are spending less less time and money sending humans traveling around the world, which has had undeniable gains of productivity in businesses.

torginus 4y ago
This is a tautological argument. Let's say computers didn't advance in the last 15 years - one could make the case they didn't get faster because they don't fundamentally do anything today they didn't do 15 years ago so we don't need them to be faster.
pixl97 4y ago
Exactly my thought. Why go over the ocean in hours when I can do it in milliseconds.

andreilys 4y ago

The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet Except we now have cars with self-driving (however limited, it's a massive improvement over a car from 30 years). Another interesting thought experiment is, how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I would absolutely choose a mobile phone over any of those things.

taffronaut 4y ago
I guess if you'd choose a mobile phone over soap, then you're exclusively into virtual socialising rather real socialising.

mountainriver 4y ago

I find this statement absolutely insane. We’ve made huge progress on just about every facet of life I can think of and continue to. It’s cool some guy wrote a book on it but it’s a pretty narrow and contrived view of the world.

cudgy 4y ago
“huge” progress does not equal innovation. Being able to order a pizza in 60 seconds using an app is huge progress versus calling the store and ordering with your voice, but it is not a significant innovation. Now, printing a pizza using a digital recipe from a restaurant on my food printer would be something else.
- mountainriver 4y ago
  huh? Progress requires innovation, the two are tightly linked

petra 4y ago

I do wonder really:given a choice between having a car and having internet, what would people prefer? My guess is that many would prefer having internet access.

pixl97 4y ago
Heh, I recently sold one of my cars because of my ability to work from home. Many more people, at least in the US are considered walkable communities than in the recent past.

rowanG077 4y ago

You could very easily tell by literally any of the other tech in the house. Roombas, Solar panels, space heaters, electric car. Or even by the the general utensils, encyclopedia, flooring, type of heaters. Besides computers have changed the world just as much in the last 40 years as we have moved from horse carriages to cars, if not more. Just because it didn't require retooling of cities doesn't mean it isn't a giant leap.

MiddleEndian 4y ago
Also the lack of certain things would be an indicator. No home phone. No phone books. No physical maps. Less likely to have a dictionary or other books. Fewer newspapers and magazines.

maxerickson 4y ago

Does my instant pot have a screen?

systemvoltage 4y ago
Not quite, but we have AI in rice cookers: > The Pressure Induction Heating Rice Cooker & Warmer uses pressurized cooking and AI (Artificial Intelligence) to cook perfect rice. Platinum infused nonstick inner cooking pan helps rice cook sweeter. Pressure cooking helps turn beta starch into alpha starch for softer and easier to digest rice. Now with convenient Jasmine, Congee and Steel Cut Oatmeal settings. https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/npnwc https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/npnwc

moron4hire 4y ago

> Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago. 50 years ago, the average person did not cross the Atlantic at all. Flights were so expensive they were completely inaccessible to the vast majority of people. Today, most of the middle class can eventually afford a European vacation, if it's something they want to prioritize. I'm not rich and I've been to Europe three times in my life. The way in which we travel is also significantly safer and more efficient. For as much as I hate airports and airlines, I can't deny that the state of things today is still at least an order of magnitude better than "decades ago".

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

> The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet I grew up in the late 2000s driving manual cars in France. My electric Hyundai Kona is a wildly better experience by a lot. It accelerates easily, corrects my mistakes with emergency braking / lane centering, and it's stupid easy to park or start on a hill with it.

swat535 4y ago

I don't think your comment does justice to how much we have advanced since 1960.. Today.. * we can have pretty much any food delivered to me with a click of a button * We can have a ride at anytime to any destination with a click of a button * Communicate instantly with millions of people with a click of a button * Huge automation in business operations and logistics * AIs that can literally draw pictures and write sentences * Practically look at any place across the globe, find directions in any country and translate nearly any text to any language * Listen to unlimited amount of music and entertainment with a tiny wireless thing in my ear that can also make calls * Automated vacuum cleaners that run on schedules, mop floors and dispose their trash * Cars that are much more efficient, can detect pedestrians, red lights, road signs, have blind spot monitoring, can warn you when you are drifting off, warn you if you risk collision, .. * MRNA vaccines and breakthroughs in many areas of science (CRISPR for example) * SpaceX, Starlink satellites and adoption of electric cars * We literally have 3 rovers and 1 lander currently in operation on Mars, transmitting images and data I could go on but I think I've made my point. To claim that we have not progressed is ridiculous. Yes, we need screens and internet to accomplish some of these, but we also need fuel and electricity to build a lot of tech in 1960. Some technology simply require other technology and I think that point is irrelevant.

ge96 4y ago
the bit vs. atoms thing is interesting though We don't have the ability to regenerate someone's arm in real time or program it to become the limb of another animal in real time. Teleportation, FTL, flying cars (anti gravity), consciousness transfer, 3D printed food from raw atoms, seamless BCID, direct matter to energy conversion, space elevator, real holograms, all those currently sci-fi/impossible things plasma/laser/particle weapons which Nikola Tesla supposedly was working on back then but with miniaturized fusion energy sources maybe it'll be a thing (small cyclotron too). active camouflage (cheap mass produced lcd display/camera overlaid on aircraft) haha name every sci-fi concept you've ever seen I remember the first time I saw a helmholtz coil in action (bending glowing electron beam into a circle via magnetism) that was crazy but of course tv, even those tiny ones size of a walkman

damon_c 4y ago

Probably the main innovation is in how many people have access to those things compared to in the 1950s... Sure, the rich people of the 60s had cars and dishwashers. Now many more millions of people do.

asah 4y ago

bogus! I was there, and let me tell you, I get so much more done each day, it's shocking: - cellphones, the internet and GPS saves insane amounts of time coordinating RL events. I'm never gonna get back the 1000+ hours I spent with paper maps trying to find places, playing "phone tag" coordinating activities, etc. Kids these days, they just have no idea. - remote work & learning = 2+ hours PER DAY. I used to pay $500 (in today-dollars) a month to sit on the Long Island Railroad and read books. Now I work when I'm ready to be productive. I listen-in on zoom calls, whisper questions to people, read docs, all "soaking up" information. Recently, I got tons of work done while on a grand jury - 21 cases in 8 days and no problem interleaving work, thanks to excellent WiFi and work-from-anywhere. - e-commerce and youtube = no more repeated trips to the store for stupid shit. I've got a dozen major home improvement projects going at once, with ecomm orders every which way, from lumber to jigsaws, electrical to plumbing. Easy returns means I can experiment more. YouTube means fewer mistakes and far fewer disasters. - globalization = variety = better tools for the job. No seriously, you have no idea how limited and shitty products used to be. In software, we had no source control let alone CI/CD - reproducibility was not a thing, let alone distributed computing. IRL, I remember trying to buy stuff at Sears and Service Merchandise and the only review system was the store clerk on commission. You can't imagine the BS we put up with, simply for a lack of variety. (I could go on... you can't imagine healthcare back then... in the starkest definition of "productivity," cancer was often a death sentence even caught early, and now people routine survive stage 4 cancers... also everybody knew people who died young in car accidents, it was tragic but normalized, and then DUI laws and education, crumple zones and airbags all made this rare...) Now it's true, we "waste" our newfound freedoms binge-watching Netflix, wasting time here on HN, going to the gym, and so on. Put another way, I dunno about you, but my daily/weekly "productivity limit" is not based on output, but on my brain maxxing out, from too many projects, too many names, too many details. It's also true that many upgrades are "trivial" - vacuums with lights and on/off buttons on the handle; better quality audio and video; 1000s of streaming shows. Back in the day, we had maybe a dozen channels and the quality was often terrible, from mediocre writing and acting, to hilariously simple production values that even pre-dated the demands of 4K. Historical fiction wasn't popular because it sucked. Sci-fi and horror weren't much of a thing because the special effects sucked. And and and. These don't make you productive, and they don't even make you happier unless you remember to appreciate them. Which is why I'm taking the time to write this comment. I just had another amazing day that my older self simply couldn't imagine, let alone someone from mid-century or before computers.

diego_moita 4y ago

> Gordon in the Rise and Fall of American Growth A fantastic book! But give it up. You tried but you can't explain that argument in a few paragraphs in a social network. That's a level of intelligence that is simply not possible here. Just look at the answers you got. You (and Gordon) talk about changes in the fundamental, in the daily routines of everyday life, in the organization of life, cities and markets. However almost all answers here completely miss that point and go: "but product X is so much better now!". They'd need to read Gordon's book to grasp it.

onecommentman 4y ago
Not just “so much better now!” but “incredibly super fantastically better than anything ever was or could have ever been compared to the horrible disgusting very bad, no good cretinous crud that came before!!!”. They shout so loud I can’t hear what they are saying. They sound silly. Would be nice if the discussion focused on one particular point in the past, say 25 years in the past, 1997. What has dramatically improved since 1997 as a result of technological advances? It’s a much harder case to make, e.g. the first Prius was released in Japan in 1997, Windows 98 was in beta, Netflix was started… https://www.computerhope.com/history/1997.htm https://www.computerhope.com/history/1997.htm

guyzero 4y ago

try to get your cancer treated in 1960 and let me know how much you like 2010

dredmorbius 4y ago
Cancer treatments are highly specific. There's been marked progress in some areas (breast, bladder), and remarkbly little in others (pancreatic, brain, lung). A very close friend died of a cancer in the early 1990s for whom treatment has advanced little from the late 1960s, and is largely based on compounds developed in in the 1910s, for chemical warfare during the Great War. Other than genetic sequencing now telling us what specific chromosomal mutation is responsible for the disease, the situation remains largely unchanged to this day. (This is one of the messages I continually send Past Me, who was as is all to typical, bombarded with "information" about "novel treatments" promising to aid in their disease. Those were, and are, utter bildge.) The largest improvements in health outcomes, measured by decreases in mortality and increases in life expectency, occurred during the decades of the 1910s (women) and 1920s (men). The largest increases since have largely come about through improved healthcare access (especially to the poor and minorities, with Black women and men making huge increases in life exepctancy since the 1950s) and through te elimination of risks: air pollution, asbestos, lead, cigarettes, reductions in alcohol consumption, IV drug use, overdoses, unprotected sex, and the like. AIDs and other novel infectious diseases have been a counter-trend. 5-year survival for my friend's cancer was and remains about 1 in 5. 60 years after 1960.

bergenty 4y ago

You’re making it sound very simplistic but those screens are a whole new world that enable us to do an incredible number of things— from all the knowledge in the world at your fingertips, to very cheap and ubiquitous communication, shopping on demand, GPS, entertainment, learning, creativity from music to videos to graphics, simulations of real world situations etc. Our electricity is coming from renewable resources, there’s more social egalitarianism, countries across the world have gone from undeveloped world to much, much higher levels of development, air travel is significantly more accessible to everyone, we’re on the cusp of an general AI, space is more accessible, we can genetically modify our DNA and on and on.

quickthrower2 4y ago

How do I tell I am not in the 80's. I just requested a repeat prescription in 30 seconds, requested a pizza in 60 seconds, purchased some stock in 60 seconds, paid a trades-person in 30 seconds. I can buy stuff at any shop (99.9%) around here without my wallet. I haven't spoken to someone at a bank branch for years. I don't have something ... I can order it online and get it the next day. I can have access to courses that are 10 times better than $2000 week long in-person courses of the 90s, for free or little money. Where does it end...? If we are measuring by using dollars, well that's silly. We could have $100TN or whatever of tokens in circulation and be living like wild animals or colonizing the solar system.

root_axis 4y ago

Why would I "take out all the screens"? Imagine if I walked into the average house and took out all the screws... why? That thought experiment speciously suggests that "the screens" are merely inert panes of glass rather than a core component of modern innovation. "Screens" function as an interface for many types of devices, they're not simply interchangeable because they have one.

ciconia 4y ago

David Graeber made a similar observation in one of his talks [1]. I find it very interesting and pertinent to the current difficulties humanity is currently facing, especially with regards to climate change. One the one hand, humanity is totally capable of destroying our planet. On the other, we've already reached, so it seems, the limits of whats is physically possible. Both problems made us abandon reality and instead embrace virtual reality, and virtual "space time". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q84ar89Oxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q84ar89Oxo

torginus 4y ago

And to bring the analogy into the realm of computing, I feel like progress isn't lightning fast here either. I just watched this video of Office 3.0 from 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsTydF09hbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsTydF09hbg This looks and feels like the Office I use everyday. Likewise, I feel like the changes in the realm of software development, a purportedly fast moving, tech and investment heavy industry, have been a mix of sidegrades, new paradigms enabled by faster hardware, and just stuff as it ever was before. If a 2005 programmer, who knew C++,JavaScript,Java,HTML,C#,Python,Bash etc. would have been frozen and thawed yesterday, would be able to be brought up to speed on modern iterations of technology and tooling. Growing up in the 2000s, I hung out on internet forums instead of Reddit, chatted with people on IRC instead of Discord, and used MSN messenger instead of Whatsapp, but these programs almost served the same social purpose. Considering video games, a canary in the coal mine for the bleeding edge in software and hardware (at least it used to be that way), one could be forgiven for mistaking Crysis, a 2007 game for one that came out yesterday. Halo Infinite released just last year, with almost identical gameplay to the original 2001 Halo. I feel like the pace of improvement has slowed considerably starting with the 2000s, and I'd be hard pressed to point out anything life-changing that came out in the last decade.

phasersout 4y ago
In case of operating systems I often wonder what our GUI and workflow would look like if Windows, MacOS and Linux had equal market shares for the last twenty years.
- herbst 4y ago
  Kinda like gnome shell :) the thing Windows 8 wanted to be and the heavy Facelifting apple is so afraid of.
systemvoltage 4y ago
Dall-E, AlphaGo/Chess is serious progress. Hyperfuturistic even.

harryf 4y ago

> Another interesting thought experiment is, how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I think it really puts into perspective how much or rather little value those 'innovations' add. Exactly! In fact I‘d go further and say - in some cases - “innovation” has made things worse not better. As a kid our family TV had one remote control. You switched the TV on and it “just worked”. Today to watch your “Smart TV” you need at least 3 remote controls apparently and the time between switching it on an actually watching anything seems to get longer and longer. Sure there’s all this choice now available of what to watch - although mostly it’s a choice between many variations of low quality content - but the basic usability of a TV is way worse than what I had when I was 10. Another example is “smart lights” … it used to be you just switch a light on and it worked. But now there’s at least an additional 200 ms to wait for a light to turn on, and a little glimmer of anxiety when you’re unsure what “mode” the light will boot up in, especially when your Wifi was down… I do a comedy podcast and we were ranting about this stuff a little while ago about how “innovation” is making things worse https://youtu.be/HvtCfUMJEk0 https://youtu.be/HvtCfUMJEk0

widdershins 4y ago
But isn't that true of all innovations? That the earlier ones solve more basic/critical needs than the later ones? Would you trade a hot shower for glass in your windows? Or a plough that enables you face starvation less frequently?

throwaway981572 4y ago

> The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can do online many of the things you needed a car before. The speed difference is between minutes or hours to milliseconds - much more than the difference between cars and horses. The whole aspect of looking at cars is funny. It’s like judging progress 60 years from now by checking by how much their resolution improved.

cudgy 4y ago
Telephones, video conferencing, and internet were available 30 years ago. It is just more available today due to the hardware improvements based on processors using instruction sets that have been around for decades.

RandomLensman 4y ago

Because a lot of technology is used for every more fine grained "control-freakery" that isn't really increasing productivity but creates more administrative burden. The amount of reporting large corporates need to do today internally and externally would not be possible with 1950s technology, for example.

cm2187 4y ago

I agree with your points, but software will enable revolutionary devices. I think my dream robot butler that will clean my house, iron my clothes, prepare food based on grand chef recipes, take deliveries and repaint the walls while I am not around is just around the corner. This is mostly a software problem. In the military space software is what is making the difference in ukraine: drones, self guided missiles, intelligence. Then you have self driving cars. As an office worker, I’d stay what is capping productivity right now is actually not good enough software. Too many manual processes done by hand, copy-pasting in excel. It is still too slow and expensive to develop software to do automation and those things are still too damn complex for business users to automate it themselves. But in that space the gains of productivity have been massive. MS Outlook has eliminated the job of a secretary. Remember the armies of accountants computing financial reports. By cleaning up an old room on a trading floor I found a stack of blank paper trade tickets (printed in 1999…), you’d have a guy running between sales and traders and ops to get it signed off. Then ops people typing it. I read a book of a guy in the French secret service saying that his career consisted in compiling information about what paper people wrote, who knows who, and to know your way around that file so you could search it efficiently. This guy has been replaced by google and linkedin. The hours saved finding information immediately, saving you a trip to the library are countless. I think software has enabled huge productivity gains and there are more to come.

aj7 4y ago

Try 1960 surgery sometime. Or 1960 chemo, or cardio imaging, if you’re really unlucky. Or 1960 airfares or jet engines. Or 1960 machine shop equipment. The last 30 years? I can exhaustively research a technical subject at home, without getting dressed, thanks to that Russian lady. My Google Drive has a departmental library, suitable for the old Bell Labs, of books on lasers and optics. A CAD (design) and CAM (send machine instructions to a tool) program that was utterly unavailable, with attempts at this in Fortune 50 companies and the DOD, is FREE, with rotatable shaded solid models, FEA tools, and support for hundreds of machines. GPS in a strange area? Cheap expresso makers at home? Adjust your air conditioner from 3000 miles away with your phone? Take studio quality pictures with it? Servomotors and ballscrews on tools now cheaper the gear trains and lead screws they replace? Measure a whole room with a cheap handheld thingy? OK I’ll shut up.

patrickjd 4y ago
RNA Vaccines too! The above comments seem to assume that progress is limited to consumer goods. As for progress in terms of atoms (rather than bits) behold the elaborate global supply chain.

FunnyBadger 4y ago

So true. Hardware/Physical innovation also takes 20 years delay "lab to fab" - you can't cheat it or speed it up. It simply takes time. And more importantly: if you don't continuously (not continually) fund that 20 years of work (financially, human effort, etc.), the delay goes to infinity. In general, that "pipeline" has emptied out in the US as manufacturing was outsourced overseas. And so anything you start today merely starts the 20 year clock but if and only if you have the infrastructure in place to support it.

nobodyandproud 4y ago

> Paul Krugman once asked, if you go into an average house right now and you take out all the screens, could you tell that you're not in the 80s? My robot vacs say yes, you can. By the way, Neato’s robot vac regressed from its peak, completely autonomous models like Signature Pro from 10 years ago, to the cloud only lineups of today. Sometime during the last 10 years was when data harvesting became more important than real consumer tech. Peter Thiel and industry counterparts are directly to blame for consumer regression and the “world not changing much”. Sorry. They don’t get a free pass.

sunstone 4y ago

I would trade my dishwasher for Google.

bitcurious 4y ago

>The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. You're about half as likely to die in a car crash as you were 30 years ago. It's incremental, but not hedonistic. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

xnx 4y ago

> how many digital services, modern tech and so on would you be willing to trade for something mundane, say your dishwasher, a hot shower, the toilet, a car, soap, if you could only have one or the other? I think it really puts into perspective how much or rather little value those 'innovations' add. This is a good question, but I think you'd be surprised by some of the answers. I'd give up indoor toilets before I gave up my smartphone.