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I get in conversations about this and I flail for examples of good things tech has built. Dear lazyweb: what good things has big tech built in the last 20 years

I get in conversations about this and I flail for examples of good things tech has built. Dear lazyweb: what good things has big tech built in the last 20 years? Let's stipulate that the smartphone was good and that I already know about it.

bequanna 3y ago
Good for who exactly? If you’re referring to investors, tech has done great things!
jacooper 3y ago
I'm just going to say it, the ai revolution is amazing, and Bing AI is crazy good when it comes to doing technical searches. Also for natural language questions "does this sound weird in X language?" Encryption and that we have zero knowledge day to day, wouldn't be ever possible without tech and precisely Whatsapp who made E2EE mainstream. (There are huge caveats though, like unencrypted backups and so forth) But i agree, the way the venture capitalists work in the U.S. is just ridiculous. If reddit didn't exist, forums would still out there, but by giving infinite money to one company, it can centralize everything, then kill the entire community trying to seek profit at any cost. Going back to the old times isn't easy, especially when users are used to these endless free centralized platforms, which no body can actually compete with, because they have Infinite money.
rm445 3y ago
This is crazy. The electronics and telecommunications industries have just kept trucking on and improving hardware and connectivity by orders of magnitude. Meanwhile web technologies have provided the software complement to smartphones that let people manage their whole digital lives online, at the same time as hundreds of millions of people come online for the first time. Are you defining 'tech' as purely social media companies? Or demanding entirely new classes of product? There has been an incredible amount of iterative improvement.
- dvwobuq 3y ago
  2023, when a rocket landing backwards and being reused is blasé. :)
  - depereo 3y ago
    I build infrastructure (raised beds, drainage, chicken runs, composting areas) for our garden and even with that minor engineering get a good look at the level of manufacturing sophistication required to do basic things well, down to the accuracy of our mitre saw (which doesn't reset to 90 degrees very well) or staples that flatten instead of penetrating wood, or the timber I buy that isn't extremely straight. The lumber yard I go to often discards 40% of the timber in a pallet when going through it with me because it's warped or knotted or cracked and can't be used for my needs. The manufacturing sophistication required to build a reusable space rocket is astonishing and frankly incomprehensible. It'd never be achieved in my country. We have 'barely good enough' materials for the simple stuff, and sophistication of manufacturing stands on the shoulders of layers and layers and layers of other advanced tools and processes and measurements and minute tolerances. Even building a shed, based on the instructional videos I see on YouTube, in the US is so simple and requires so few corrections for i.e inaccuratly squared plywood. But people shrug off amazing improvements like watches that detect heart palpitations.
- Bjorkbat 3y ago
  I think op is referring to what I call “capital T tech”, or alternatively, “big internet tech”. There’s plenty of technological improvements within the past 20 years, we just tend to ignore them the further they fall outside of internet-adjacent technology. As incredible as it is that solar panels keep getting cheaper and more efficient, the real miracle is that no one gives a shit about them. What captures people’s interests is internet-adjacent stuff, and that’s especially true if said thing can be compared to as “a new internet”. Hence why when people say they want to “work in STEM” they implicitly are referring only to programming most of the time, and also implicitly referring to being a web dev or phone dev, and not some guy that writes software for power plants or whatever. That’s “capital T tech”. I also refer to it as “zeitgeist tech” because I think we’re currently in a phase where said tech has captured the public imagination, but I think we’re also seeing it’s end, the decline of all major social networking players being the most visible side-effect (I don’t consider TikTok to be a social network). Or, you know, a “tech reckoning”. Kind of hope we return to 2008 with Occupy Wall St and more environmental consciousness personally. Maybe it was because I was 18 at the time, but man, there was so much more optimism.
jstarfish 3y ago
iTunes was progressive. AppleTV is garbage. Apple makes toys for adults; nothing we can't live without. Solar is accessible to the masses. Cloudflare seems useful, until you need them. Never trust a company headed by a lawyer. Netflix makes good stuff, but the bad softcore lesbian porn in every show is getting tiring. (Protip: an obligatory lesbian romance does not make boring female characters interesting!). Wokeness and all, TV is better than the cheesy 90s-00s. TVs themselves are cheaper, but that's not the result of FAANG. Most computer parts are cheaper than in the 90s too. Software is sortof better. The nightmare of fucking with IRQ settings to get SoundBlaster to work were behind us, but have since been replaced now replaced with virtual environments, cloud bullshit and virtual environments within cloud bullshit. We had a decent run of software that "just worked" until recently. Google Search is garbage now. Used to be revolutionary. AI is cool if you like motel art and corporate literature. And ignore the misery of out-of-work creatives. Your washing machine is the same as it was in the 70s, only now the basin of water is turned sideways and a bunch of expensive computer chips are stacked around it. Laundry reinvented, now with more mildew and electrical problems! Microwaves are exactly the same. Food doesn't cook itself, but you can buy a fridge for $10k that shows you what's inside-- from the outside. Glass, reinvented. You can access it from Bulgaria though! Flying cars? Still working on the self-driving part. We don't live longer, and life is no easier. The promises of Big Tech are underwhelming.
- zbrozek 3y ago
  I'm a hardware engineer, so my point of view is biased a bit towards atoms and what they can do for me: Cell data networks and Starlink are pretty awesome. Mostly-good connectivity just about anywhere is a huge advance. wifi is great. The ubiquity of brushless motors, controllers, and (for some applications) batteries means that my fridge, HVAC, and power tools are loads better than they used to be. More software-y: Remote meeting software means I rarely go on business trips any more, which is nice because flying is way worse than it used to be. Google Maps / Apple Maps / OSM have made it dramatically easier to get around, especially unfamiliar places. After two or three decades of nonsense, I finally have a decent no-frills printer driver that works.
- riffraff 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure washing machines are far more energy efficient now than in the 70s.
dvwobuq 3y ago
What’s tech? I recently had surgery and the surgeon used a robot. I was an out patient the same day and had basically no pain without medication. Compared to a similar surgery I had roughly twenty years ago this experience was like science fiction. Does that count?
- lokimedes 3y ago
  This. The appropriation of “tech” to mean web-first business has gone to our collective heads. Real tech is hard, expensive and mostly progressed by the interplay of science and blue-sky inventions. Not really something easily adaptable to the venture-startup model. We’ve seen a couple of attempts at funding fusion/fission energy along the same lines as SaaS, but honestly, it seems more like a tech-bro indulgence than real technological progress. Meanwhile the conventional tech industries such as medical equipment, have seen decent progress at the incremental pace of the respective industries. Adding a voice interface to your car, or allowing remote surgery over the net is hardly something we should credit the “tech” companies for. After 20-some years in the “tech” industry, hoping to get-rich-fast, and THEN do the real tech stuff with that capital, I’m feeling like an extremely well-prepared failure. By now I would do nearly anything for access to a physics lab and funding from a ROI tolerant source. Only problem is that academic funding agencies have been mimicking the “successful” VC model for decades as well… Reckoning indeed.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
I know this is poor educate on HN, but surely you can’t be serious? Sure, there’s a lot of paper value, but there are a ton of good things. I’ll throw out a softball - learning and self education. The tech field loves to be open and talk about details of what they build. There’s an insane amount of information that’s readily available to nearly anyone. Let’s throw out a more controversial one - smart thermostats. They’re far over hyped, but I save so much energy with a smart thermostat. Being able to set an away function remotely is massive for me (I tend to forget until we hit the road). Tech is insanely important to the efficiency and safety of your vehicle. Modern automotive engineering uses insane amounts of simulation and digital analysis. Not too long ago, a lot of this work had to be done on real, physical objects. Dozens/hundreds of cars scrapped. You do still need to do really world physical testing, but involves less waste. That doesn’t even get into the digital controls that allow tiny engines to output insane amounts of power all while getting much better fuel economy. Telecommunications. 20 years ago, my dad would have to physically leave the office and drive 30+ miles to meetings. The amount of fuel that uses is insane. Now you punch a button on your laptop and use a dozen or so watts of energy.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  Smart thermostats are also important for the grid, not only do they encourage setting a schedule (and adapting to it), they run fans to circulate in case the ac isn't needed, and finally they can use eco settings for load balancing and saving power.
ivraatiems 3y ago
I mean, what's your definition of "good"? Is it "valuable as a business"? "Helpful to consumers?" "Good for the environment?" Tech has produced lots of useful things, but many of them are simply not good businesses, and many of the ones that are good businesses are run in a way that is so odious that it makes it hard for anyone to benefit. Reddit is a great platform for lots of things, but making profit's not one of them. Amazon has revolutionized how people shop and consume all sorts of products but at massive economic and environmental cost. Discord and Slack and Zoom have made communication with friends/family/colleagues much much easier but struggle to make money. Craigslist and Wikipedia are both pretty great, though. Don't see much downside to either of them.
chubot 3y ago
YouTube (2005) and Google Maps (2005) still going strong You can criticize both of them, but overall they changed the world in huge ways, mostly for the better On the other hand, Google Search seems like it created incentives that rotted the web
tzhenghao 3y ago
Aside from the many software application examples on this thread, have you also considered how they also pushed innovation in the semiconductor industry that in turn contributed to non-obvious advancements in non-Big Tech sectors, from particle physics to drug discoveries?
notacoward 3y ago
Big tech has built a lot of good things, even if they have subsequently ruined them. Google search was initially a good thing, before it became a platform primarily for ads and thus SEO. Amazon was good for a while, before they became infested with counterfeits, fake reviews, etc. Netflix and its imitators have provided many hours of enjoyment for millions of people, and I would say still do despite their recent missteps. Things that are still good? I'd say Maps and its competitors would be near the top of my own list. Despite the well known issues with both the platforms and even more so the apps, both iOS and Android also qualify because they provide the basis for connection to other non-big-tech gems. Wikipedia is that for many, though Etymology Online might be my personal favorite. It's not all bad. Just mostly. Also, as several others have already pointed out, there's plenty of good outside of internet-oriented FAANG stuff.
dmazzoni 3y ago
Life has improved infinitely for millions of people with disabilities. Just 20 years ago there were a lot of everyday tasks that someone who's totally blind or totally deaf couldn't do without assistance. Today technology has enabled them to do those things totally independently. 20 years ago, you could have access to the world's information...as long as you were in front of a computer. Today, you can have access to the world's information anywhere you want, because mobile networks, wifi, and cheap, fast satellite are now ubiquitous and cover the whole world. That access to the Internet from everywhere is what makes things like Uber and Lyft possible. And no, those aren't just fancy taxis - in most major cities, Uber and Lyft are doing 5x as many rides as taxis ever did. They're enabling people to not own a car. They're providing new mobility for people who are blind or have epilepsy and can't drive. They're saving lives, as fewer people drive drunk when there's a convenient, safe alternative. Just the tip of the iceberg...

bequanna 3y ago

Good for who exactly? If you’re referring to investors, tech has done great things!

jacooper 3y ago

I'm just going to say it, the ai revolution is amazing, and Bing AI is crazy good when it comes to doing technical searches. Also for natural language questions "does this sound weird in X language?" Encryption and that we have zero knowledge day to day, wouldn't be ever possible without tech and precisely Whatsapp who made E2EE mainstream. (There are huge caveats though, like unencrypted backups and so forth) But i agree, the way the venture capitalists work in the U.S. is just ridiculous. If reddit didn't exist, forums would still out there, but by giving infinite money to one company, it can centralize everything, then kill the entire community trying to seek profit at any cost. Going back to the old times isn't easy, especially when users are used to these endless free centralized platforms, which no body can actually compete with, because they have Infinite money.

rm445 3y ago

This is crazy. The electronics and telecommunications industries have just kept trucking on and improving hardware and connectivity by orders of magnitude. Meanwhile web technologies have provided the software complement to smartphones that let people manage their whole digital lives online, at the same time as hundreds of millions of people come online for the first time. Are you defining 'tech' as purely social media companies? Or demanding entirely new classes of product? There has been an incredible amount of iterative improvement.

dvwobuq 3y ago
2023, when a rocket landing backwards and being reused is blasé. :)
- depereo 3y ago
  I build infrastructure (raised beds, drainage, chicken runs, composting areas) for our garden and even with that minor engineering get a good look at the level of manufacturing sophistication required to do basic things well, down to the accuracy of our mitre saw (which doesn't reset to 90 degrees very well) or staples that flatten instead of penetrating wood, or the timber I buy that isn't extremely straight. The lumber yard I go to often discards 40% of the timber in a pallet when going through it with me because it's warped or knotted or cracked and can't be used for my needs. The manufacturing sophistication required to build a reusable space rocket is astonishing and frankly incomprehensible. It'd never be achieved in my country. We have 'barely good enough' materials for the simple stuff, and sophistication of manufacturing stands on the shoulders of layers and layers and layers of other advanced tools and processes and measurements and minute tolerances. Even building a shed, based on the instructional videos I see on YouTube, in the US is so simple and requires so few corrections for i.e inaccuratly squared plywood. But people shrug off amazing improvements like watches that detect heart palpitations.
Bjorkbat 3y ago
I think op is referring to what I call “capital T tech”, or alternatively, “big internet tech”. There’s plenty of technological improvements within the past 20 years, we just tend to ignore them the further they fall outside of internet-adjacent technology. As incredible as it is that solar panels keep getting cheaper and more efficient, the real miracle is that no one gives a shit about them. What captures people’s interests is internet-adjacent stuff, and that’s especially true if said thing can be compared to as “a new internet”. Hence why when people say they want to “work in STEM” they implicitly are referring only to programming most of the time, and also implicitly referring to being a web dev or phone dev, and not some guy that writes software for power plants or whatever. That’s “capital T tech”. I also refer to it as “zeitgeist tech” because I think we’re currently in a phase where said tech has captured the public imagination, but I think we’re also seeing it’s end, the decline of all major social networking players being the most visible side-effect (I don’t consider TikTok to be a social network). Or, you know, a “tech reckoning”. Kind of hope we return to 2008 with Occupy Wall St and more environmental consciousness personally. Maybe it was because I was 18 at the time, but man, there was so much more optimism.

jstarfish 3y ago

iTunes was progressive. AppleTV is garbage. Apple makes toys for adults; nothing we can't live without. Solar is accessible to the masses. Cloudflare seems useful, until you need them. Never trust a company headed by a lawyer. Netflix makes good stuff, but the bad softcore lesbian porn in every show is getting tiring. (Protip: an obligatory lesbian romance does not make boring female characters interesting!). Wokeness and all, TV is better than the cheesy 90s-00s. TVs themselves are cheaper, but that's not the result of FAANG. Most computer parts are cheaper than in the 90s too. Software is sortof better. The nightmare of fucking with IRQ settings to get SoundBlaster to work were behind us, but have since been replaced now replaced with virtual environments, cloud bullshit and virtual environments within cloud bullshit. We had a decent run of software that "just worked" until recently. Google Search is garbage now. Used to be revolutionary. AI is cool if you like motel art and corporate literature. And ignore the misery of out-of-work creatives. Your washing machine is the same as it was in the 70s, only now the basin of water is turned sideways and a bunch of expensive computer chips are stacked around it. Laundry reinvented, now with more mildew and electrical problems! Microwaves are exactly the same. Food doesn't cook itself, but you can buy a fridge for $10k that shows you what's inside-- from the outside. Glass, reinvented. You can access it from Bulgaria though! Flying cars? Still working on the self-driving part. We don't live longer, and life is no easier. The promises of Big Tech are underwhelming.

zbrozek 3y ago
I'm a hardware engineer, so my point of view is biased a bit towards atoms and what they can do for me: Cell data networks and Starlink are pretty awesome. Mostly-good connectivity just about anywhere is a huge advance. wifi is great. The ubiquity of brushless motors, controllers, and (for some applications) batteries means that my fridge, HVAC, and power tools are loads better than they used to be. More software-y: Remote meeting software means I rarely go on business trips any more, which is nice because flying is way worse than it used to be. Google Maps / Apple Maps / OSM have made it dramatically easier to get around, especially unfamiliar places. After two or three decades of nonsense, I finally have a decent no-frills printer driver that works.
riffraff 3y ago
I'm pretty sure washing machines are far more energy efficient now than in the 70s.

dvwobuq 3y ago

What’s tech? I recently had surgery and the surgeon used a robot. I was an out patient the same day and had basically no pain without medication. Compared to a similar surgery I had roughly twenty years ago this experience was like science fiction. Does that count?

lokimedes 3y ago
This. The appropriation of “tech” to mean web-first business has gone to our collective heads. Real tech is hard, expensive and mostly progressed by the interplay of science and blue-sky inventions. Not really something easily adaptable to the venture-startup model. We’ve seen a couple of attempts at funding fusion/fission energy along the same lines as SaaS, but honestly, it seems more like a tech-bro indulgence than real technological progress. Meanwhile the conventional tech industries such as medical equipment, have seen decent progress at the incremental pace of the respective industries. Adding a voice interface to your car, or allowing remote surgery over the net is hardly something we should credit the “tech” companies for. After 20-some years in the “tech” industry, hoping to get-rich-fast, and THEN do the real tech stuff with that capital, I’m feeling like an extremely well-prepared failure. By now I would do nearly anything for access to a physics lab and funding from a ROI tolerant source. Only problem is that academic funding agencies have been mimicking the “successful” VC model for decades as well… Reckoning indeed.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

I know this is poor educate on HN, but surely you can’t be serious? Sure, there’s a lot of paper value, but there are a ton of good things. I’ll throw out a softball - learning and self education. The tech field loves to be open and talk about details of what they build. There’s an insane amount of information that’s readily available to nearly anyone. Let’s throw out a more controversial one - smart thermostats. They’re far over hyped, but I save so much energy with a smart thermostat. Being able to set an away function remotely is massive for me (I tend to forget until we hit the road). Tech is insanely important to the efficiency and safety of your vehicle. Modern automotive engineering uses insane amounts of simulation and digital analysis. Not too long ago, a lot of this work had to be done on real, physical objects. Dozens/hundreds of cars scrapped. You do still need to do really world physical testing, but involves less waste. That doesn’t even get into the digital controls that allow tiny engines to output insane amounts of power all while getting much better fuel economy. Telecommunications. 20 years ago, my dad would have to physically leave the office and drive 30+ miles to meetings. The amount of fuel that uses is insane. Now you punch a button on your laptop and use a dozen or so watts of energy.

smileysteve 3y ago
Smart thermostats are also important for the grid, not only do they encourage setting a schedule (and adapting to it), they run fans to circulate in case the ac isn't needed, and finally they can use eco settings for load balancing and saving power.

ivraatiems 3y ago

I mean, what's your definition of "good"? Is it "valuable as a business"? "Helpful to consumers?" "Good for the environment?" Tech has produced lots of useful things, but many of them are simply not good businesses, and many of the ones that are good businesses are run in a way that is so odious that it makes it hard for anyone to benefit. Reddit is a great platform for lots of things, but making profit's not one of them. Amazon has revolutionized how people shop and consume all sorts of products but at massive economic and environmental cost. Discord and Slack and Zoom have made communication with friends/family/colleagues much much easier but struggle to make money. Craigslist and Wikipedia are both pretty great, though. Don't see much downside to either of them.

chubot 3y ago

YouTube (2005) and Google Maps (2005) still going strong You can criticize both of them, but overall they changed the world in huge ways, mostly for the better On the other hand, Google Search seems like it created incentives that rotted the web

tzhenghao 3y ago

Aside from the many software application examples on this thread, have you also considered how they also pushed innovation in the semiconductor industry that in turn contributed to non-obvious advancements in non-Big Tech sectors, from particle physics to drug discoveries?

notacoward 3y ago

Big tech has built a lot of good things, even if they have subsequently ruined them. Google search was initially a good thing, before it became a platform primarily for ads and thus SEO. Amazon was good for a while, before they became infested with counterfeits, fake reviews, etc. Netflix and its imitators have provided many hours of enjoyment for millions of people, and I would say still do despite their recent missteps. Things that are still good? I'd say Maps and its competitors would be near the top of my own list. Despite the well known issues with both the platforms and even more so the apps, both iOS and Android also qualify because they provide the basis for connection to other non-big-tech gems. Wikipedia is that for many, though Etymology Online might be my personal favorite. It's not all bad. Just mostly. Also, as several others have already pointed out, there's plenty of good outside of internet-oriented FAANG stuff.

dmazzoni 3y ago

Life has improved infinitely for millions of people with disabilities. Just 20 years ago there were a lot of everyday tasks that someone who's totally blind or totally deaf couldn't do without assistance. Today technology has enabled them to do those things totally independently. 20 years ago, you could have access to the world's information...as long as you were in front of a computer. Today, you can have access to the world's information anywhere you want, because mobile networks, wifi, and cheap, fast satellite are now ubiquitous and cover the whole world. That access to the Internet from everywhere is what makes things like Uber and Lyft possible. And no, those aren't just fancy taxis - in most major cities, Uber and Lyft are doing 5x as many rides as taxis ever did. They're enabling people to not own a car. They're providing new mobility for people who are blind or have epilepsy and can't drive. They're saving lives, as fewer people drive drunk when there's a convenient, safe alternative. Just the tip of the iceberg...