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Sad that when I open a thread the first comment I see is cheap cynicism that comes close to trolling, and the replies are even worse. Look at all the stuff thi

Sad that when I open a thread the first comment I see is cheap cynicism that comes close to trolling, and the replies are even worse. Look at all the stuff this generation of workers have built in big tech — the amazing devices in all areas of the market, the progress in electric cars, the massive scale in compute infrastructure that enables most smaller companies to easily spin up entire regions rather than run their own hardware… We now carry devices in our pockets that put more information at our fingertips than entire civilizations could access throughout all of human history. Mobile payments have enabled entrepreneurial capitalism in impoverished parts of the world. Anywhere we are, we can get a map of our location and directions to anywhere we want to go. The scale and technology that makes remote work even possible for much of the population didn’t even exist a decade ago. Some pieces existed but they never would have scaled the way we needed them to. If you didn’t lose your job during the pandemic, you ought to be grateful to the major cloud providers for the fact that your video conferencing software was able to function while you and almost everyone else were piling onto it. You should also be grateful there were multiple delivery companies able to bring you groceries and restaurant food when you weren’t allowed to leave the house. I know restaurants are grateful for the delivery services — so many more would have gone out of business if in-person transactions were the only way to sell their product! Anyone who owned a total market index fund in the past decade has benefitted massively from the success of big tech, including most pension funds, university endowments, and many individuals. The creation of wealth has been enormous in scale and enormously socially beneficial. The big tech companies have delivered results to our economy like the space program did — most of the technology that smaller companies and startups depend on was developed by big tech and either turned into a line of business open to others (like AWS) or was open sourced (like Kubernetes, most of the major app frameworks, multiple programming languages, distributed consensus, distributed tracing, modern CI/CD…) The industry as a whole would be a lot worse off if that hadn’t happened. So what if some of it was used to sell ads?

throw_pm23 4y ago
Nah, I think the good and bad aspects should be judged separately, we shouldn't be giving these companies a free pass for the infrastructure contributions they made -- you know which bad regime was also good at building motorways -- I'm grateful for google search and for maps, Facebook and some of the other stuff not so much.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  The Holocaust absurdly outweighs the Autobahn, the Nazis were the worst people in history. The net result of big tech has been relatively good (for the average person’s material conditions, the jury’s still out on psychological effects but regardless of anything, it’s not even comparable to the Nazis).
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    now equate tech executives to specific Nazis - circle complete!
    - twblalock 4y ago
      No, just stop responding to or encouraging this kind of behavior. It probably seems funny to you in the context of a thread but it pollutes the discourse and gradually wears down the standards on this site. The signal to noise ratio needs to be good, or there will be no point to reading the comments.
      - lumb63 4y ago
        Wow, you just made me realize why HN is so much better than Reddit. There’s no useless comments full of in-jokes and sarcastic one liners; comments are actually thoughtful and generate discourse rather than being one-line low-wit witticisms.
  - throwaway71271 4y ago
    the net result of big tech is literally depression, anxiety and the fall of democracy.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Interesting. Romans built roads, killed a whole bunch of people in the name of the empire and had no problem with slavery. And yet, sufficient amount of time have passed to allow for a detached look to what they did and how it was accomplished. Were Romans so much better than Nazis or just so far back in the past that their relative badness does not register?
BenFranklin100 4y ago
[flagged]
- twblalock 4y ago
  What you actually did was post a cynical dismissal of the efforts of an entire generation of tech workers by focusing on one contentious aspect of the industry’s output. You said they wasted their talents. It’s pretty clear that they didn’t, and they actually produced a huge amount of good things, and I listed only a subset of the major achievements we’ve seen recently.
  - BenFranklin100 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - twblalock 4y ago
      Google also builds the world’s most popular web browser and the world’s most popular mobile phone OS and the world’s most popular email service and the world’s most popular streaming video platform. Most people prefer to see the ads and get those things free of charge. Oh, and they make thermostats, and funny-looking self driving cars. Facebook runs the world’s largest social network and during the pandemic it was one of the few ways (along with things like Zoom) that people could see the faces of their friends and family during lockdown. Facebook are also VR pioneers via Oculus. The metaverse is pretty dumb though. Reducing these gigantic companies that do many things to just “advertising” and implying that the many people who work there are wasting their talents is cynical and cheap. You know what would really suck? Having to pay a few cents every time you do a search, or paying a subscription to watch Youtube or use Gmail or see your friends Facebook posts. Ads are a totally reasonable alternative and all they do is sit there — you can ignore them and get all of these products for free.
      - suetoniusp91 4y ago
        Facebook, Google, Twitter and other ad/attention companies are just the modern day Philip Morris. Sure they do nice things on the side, but they finance those things by selling addiction. Make your own ethical and moral judgments on those facts, but they are the facts
braza 4y ago
This comment made my day here in HN and I recalled why this is one of the best forums with thoughtful and nuanced debates online.
rocket_surgeron 4y ago
>Look at all the stuff this generation of workers have built in big tech — the amazing devices in all areas of the market, the progress in electric cars, the massive scale in compute infrastructure that enables most smaller companies to easily spin up entire regions rather than run their own hardware… The number of people working on these is insignificantly irrelevant compared to the number of people working on the bad stuff. It's good that the people you highlight exist because they maintain my faith in humanity, but for every engineer that worked on Webb, there are a thousand working on privacy-destroying addiction engines. My employer can't find people to work on space-based synthetic aperture radar that will be used to monitor and potentially combat global climate change through detecting sea level rise, coastal erosion, and foliage cover (and health) because you can make more money working on an app. We can't pay more because we're funded through grants and apps are funded either through VCs or intrusive ad revenue and intrusive ads generate more revenue than university partnerships and piecemeal contracts from various international departments of the environment. It's ridiculous because I make so much that I am the cause of gentrification, i.e. "Enough". But it's not as much as an engineer at Facebook. Even your comment focuses on the financial incentives....
- twblalock 4y ago
  > Even your comment focuses on the financial incentives.... I also mentioned the Renaissance of access to knowledge in our pockets, the way mobile payments help people, the access to maps, the ability of remote work to scale to a large portion of the population...
  - rocket_surgeron 4y ago
    Focuses on, not focuses exclusively on…

throw_pm23 4y ago

Nah, I think the good and bad aspects should be judged separately, we shouldn't be giving these companies a free pass for the infrastructure contributions they made -- you know which bad regime was also good at building motorways -- I'm grateful for google search and for maps, Facebook and some of the other stuff not so much.

FormerBandmate 4y ago
The Holocaust absurdly outweighs the Autobahn, the Nazis were the worst people in history. The net result of big tech has been relatively good (for the average person’s material conditions, the jury’s still out on psychological effects but regardless of anything, it’s not even comparable to the Nazis).
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  now equate tech executives to specific Nazis - circle complete!
  - twblalock 4y ago
    No, just stop responding to or encouraging this kind of behavior. It probably seems funny to you in the context of a thread but it pollutes the discourse and gradually wears down the standards on this site. The signal to noise ratio needs to be good, or there will be no point to reading the comments.
    - lumb63 4y ago
      Wow, you just made me realize why HN is so much better than Reddit. There’s no useless comments full of in-jokes and sarcastic one liners; comments are actually thoughtful and generate discourse rather than being one-line low-wit witticisms.
- throwaway71271 4y ago
  the net result of big tech is literally depression, anxiety and the fall of democracy.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Interesting. Romans built roads, killed a whole bunch of people in the name of the empire and had no problem with slavery. And yet, sufficient amount of time have passed to allow for a detached look to what they did and how it was accomplished. Were Romans so much better than Nazis or just so far back in the past that their relative badness does not register?

BenFranklin100 4y ago

[flagged]

twblalock 4y ago
What you actually did was post a cynical dismissal of the efforts of an entire generation of tech workers by focusing on one contentious aspect of the industry’s output. You said they wasted their talents. It’s pretty clear that they didn’t, and they actually produced a huge amount of good things, and I listed only a subset of the major achievements we’ve seen recently.
- BenFranklin100 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Google also builds the world’s most popular web browser and the world’s most popular mobile phone OS and the world’s most popular email service and the world’s most popular streaming video platform. Most people prefer to see the ads and get those things free of charge. Oh, and they make thermostats, and funny-looking self driving cars. Facebook runs the world’s largest social network and during the pandemic it was one of the few ways (along with things like Zoom) that people could see the faces of their friends and family during lockdown. Facebook are also VR pioneers via Oculus. The metaverse is pretty dumb though. Reducing these gigantic companies that do many things to just “advertising” and implying that the many people who work there are wasting their talents is cynical and cheap. You know what would really suck? Having to pay a few cents every time you do a search, or paying a subscription to watch Youtube or use Gmail or see your friends Facebook posts. Ads are a totally reasonable alternative and all they do is sit there — you can ignore them and get all of these products for free.
    - suetoniusp91 4y ago
      Facebook, Google, Twitter and other ad/attention companies are just the modern day Philip Morris. Sure they do nice things on the side, but they finance those things by selling addiction. Make your own ethical and moral judgments on those facts, but they are the facts

braza 4y ago

This comment made my day here in HN and I recalled why this is one of the best forums with thoughtful and nuanced debates online.

rocket_surgeron 4y ago

>Look at all the stuff this generation of workers have built in big tech — the amazing devices in all areas of the market, the progress in electric cars, the massive scale in compute infrastructure that enables most smaller companies to easily spin up entire regions rather than run their own hardware… The number of people working on these is insignificantly irrelevant compared to the number of people working on the bad stuff. It's good that the people you highlight exist because they maintain my faith in humanity, but for every engineer that worked on Webb, there are a thousand working on privacy-destroying addiction engines. My employer can't find people to work on space-based synthetic aperture radar that will be used to monitor and potentially combat global climate change through detecting sea level rise, coastal erosion, and foliage cover (and health) because you can make more money working on an app. We can't pay more because we're funded through grants and apps are funded either through VCs or intrusive ad revenue and intrusive ads generate more revenue than university partnerships and piecemeal contracts from various international departments of the environment. It's ridiculous because I make so much that I am the cause of gentrification, i.e. "Enough". But it's not as much as an engineer at Facebook. Even your comment focuses on the financial incentives....

twblalock 4y ago
> Even your comment focuses on the financial incentives.... I also mentioned the Renaissance of access to knowledge in our pockets, the way mobile payments help people, the access to maps, the ability of remote work to scale to a large portion of the population...
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  Focuses on, not focuses exclusively on…