3 ms·
I imagine what these guys miss is the freedom of obscurity. Tech has gone from being ignored to being ridiculed and regulated. Like a company getting more burea
by chaseadam17 1y ago
I imagine what these guys miss is the freedom of obscurity. Tech has gone from being ignored to being ridiculed and regulated. Like a company getting more bureaucratic as it scales, it makes sense to professionalize a sector as its influence grows. The problem is that professionalization is often the enemy of innovation. If you care about having the freedom to innovate, this leaves you with three options: be the angry old man yelling at the clouds, constructively try to improve the process of professionalization from within or quietly go innovate elsewhere. The problem with the last option is that there aren’t too many places left to go and it’s hard to start over, which is why I think Elon and others take to some combination of the first two.
- agentultra 1y agoInnovation in trad engineering disciplines didn't stop when the industry gained professional guilds and legal status. We have far better buildings, extremely reliable jet planes, high speed rail, the internet...
- chaseadam17 1y agoI disagree. I believe we’ve had far less progress in real world engineering in the past 50 years than the 50+ prior.
- spencerflem 1y agoI don't think mechanical engineering is more professional now than it was 50 years ago. If anything its less so, with execs calling on Engineers to wing it, and getting sign off on shoddy designs.
- meatmanek 1y agoAirline accidents and deaths have steadily declined for 50 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatal-airliner-accidents-per-million-flights https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatal-airliner-accidents-... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents#/media/File:ACRO_fatalities.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_inciden... Car crash death rates in the US have been declining for 50 years in both total number and per-capita rates (except for an uptick that started in 2020, presumably some knock-on effects from covid): https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... -- 40,990 deaths in 2023 vs. 54,052 deaths in 1973; 12.06 vs 25.51 per 100k population Car fuel efficiency has ~doubled since 1975: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1237-may-9-2022-fuel-economy-all-vehicle-classes-has-improved https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1237-may-... Airline fuel efficiency has quadrupled since 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/media/File:Aviation_Efficiency_(RPK_per_kg_CO2).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/medi... Corn yields per acre have doubled since 1975: https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTrends.html https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTren... Lithium-ion batteries didn't practically exist in 1975. Modern blue LEDs (and thus white LEDs) didn't exist until 1990. The entire personal computing industry. The Internet. Search engines. LLMs. Cellular networks. Neodymium magnets. Reusable orbital launch vehicles. Genetically modified crops. mRNA vaccines. CRISPR.
- agentultra 1y agoIt's quite the feat that capital holders have pulled off with software, being able to run amok in the public sphere wrecking anything they want with little over-sight or regulation. ... or cough "innovation"
- treis 1y agoI don't think they miss anything. These guys are at the apex of their power and are shaping the world at just about the highest level. This all seems like copium to explain why they're doing stuff the author doesn't like.