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On September 09 2017 09:46 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 09:40 warding wrote:On September 09 2017 09:26 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:17 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:08 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:07 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 09:05 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:01 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 08:59 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 08:55 sc-darkness wrote:
[quote]
What do you work? Are you a doctor, a physicist, a mathematician, an austronaut, etc? How do you contribute? As much as I'm pro-immigration, I think measuring anyone on 'how much they contribute' whether native or immigrant is also reprehensible. P6 is not criticising you personally, there's no need to act like it. Not only th8at, I think he's right - few industries seem to be further up their own arses than the tech industry. Note I work in the tech industry so I could be biased. However, I think the IT industry has truly brought innovation - computers are everywhere to help people. What can't this be acknowledged? If you don't believe that IT has brought high level of innovation, then PLEASE specify another field where innovation is at a high level. I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with "blah blah IT tech industry is overrated". Of course the tech industry has produced a lot of innovation. I still think, as a whole, it is placed on too high a pedestal by some people and there's a culture of worship by some around it that I think is excessive. Especially when I look at the 'leaders' in tech eg Musk, the Google guys etc, I can't help but feel people idolise them far too much. Well, maybe. I don't follow them as much so I don't know. I suppose it's refreshing and exciting for some people to get new technology. I find astronomy impressive though. That has also brought some nice innovation and research.  I'm a bigggg space nerd so I definitely understand what you mean. I think Plansix is more talking about Silicon Valley types that really aren't providing THAT much to society while calling themselves 'Leaders in Innovation' or whatever. If you trust the market they're providing an awful lot to society. I think the value of the information age is difficult to really properly quantify. Take my field. The vast, vast majority of all accounting work that was done a few decades ago is now done by software, and on a far greater scale than could possibly have been imagined back then. Technology has created an army of hundreds of millions of virtual skilled accountants that have been mobilized productively. The amount of economic activity attributable directly to tech is breathtaking. I'd very easily believe that economic productivity attributable solely to tech from the last 20 years is greater than the entire economic productivity that preexisted it, that we've successfully leveraged our labour at a greater than 2:1 ratio. Oh undoubtedly it's an amazing asset economically (even if none of the companies seem to pay taxes or ensure workers at their supply shops are paid properly). I more just wonder if Silicon Valley gives people a lot of things that they clearly want (the value of some companies attest to this), even if they aren't that beneficial to society. Uber and Deliveroo are some examples that come to mind. I've seen a study showing Uber to be vastly more efficient than taxis (much higher % of time and of miles driven with a passenger). That's clearly beneficial to society over the previous status quo. It's easy to see how Airbnb is also incredibly beneficial - opening up an industry from concentrated hotel chains into hundreds of thousands (millions?) of home owners, all the while driving down prices. There are thousands upon thousands of similar examples with varying degrres of magnitude of impact. sc-darkness thereare promising technologies coming up in those fields but they really haven't changed the industries all that much. Do note that four medical I'm only referring to digital technologies. Uber has also brought about a fairly shitty age of gig economy jobs. Arguably these always existed through cash in hand jobs, Craigslist and whatever, but I still have the gut feeling that Uber had legitimised the gig economy like nothing before it. Maybe the gig economy is more a symptom of problems in society, but nevertheless I think if you look at companies like Uber from a different angle the value they provide to society is less clear.
The gig economy is actually tiny in the grand scheme of things and not that nefarious. When autonomous driving comes there won't be any more salient examples of it left and it won't be an issue anymore.
Edit: I generally agree with Kwark, we live in an exciting age technology wise. I also agree with Plansix, until technology gets us rid of lawyers it really hasn't fully delivered on its promise.
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On September 09 2017 09:59 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 09:46 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:40 warding wrote:On September 09 2017 09:26 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:17 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:08 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:07 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 09:05 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:01 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 08:59 kollin wrote:
[quote]
As much as I'm pro-immigration, I think measuring anyone on 'how much they contribute' whether native or immigrant is also reprehensible. P6 is not criticising you personally, there's no need to act like it. Not only that, I think he's right - few industries seem to be further up their own arses than the tech industry. Note I work in the tech industry so I could be biased. However, I think the IT industry has truly brought innovation - computers are everywhere to help people. What can't this be acknowledged? If you don't believe that IT has brought high level of innovation, then PLEASE specify another field where innovation is at a high level. I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with "blah blah IT tech industry is overrated". Of course the tech industry has produced a lot of innovation. I still think, as a whole, it is placed on too high a pedestal by some people and there's a culture of worship by some around it that I think is excessive. Especially when I look at the 'leaders' in tech eg Musk, the Google guys etc, I can't help but feel people idolise them far too much. Well, maybe. I don't follow them as much so I don't know. I suppose it's refreshing and exciting for some people to get new technology. I find astronomy impressive though. That has also brought some nice innovation and research. I'm a bigggg space nerd so I definitely understand what you mean. I think Plansix is more talking about Silicon Valley types that really aren't providing THAT much to society while calling themselves 'Leaders in Innovation' or whatever. If you trust the market they're providing an awful lot to society. I think the value of the information age is difficult to really properly quantify. Take my field. The vast, vast majority of all accounting work that was done a few decades ago is now done by software, and on a far greater scale than could possibly have been imagined back then. Technology has created an army of hundreds of millions of virtual skilled accountants that have been mobilized productively. The amount of economic activity attributable directly to tech is breathtaking. I'd very easily believe that economic productivity attributable solely to tech from the last 20 years is greater than the entire economic productivity that preexisted it, that we've successfully leveraged our labour at a greater than 2:1 ratio. Oh undoubtedly it's an amazing asset economically (even if none of the companies seem to pay taxes or ensure workers at their supply shops are paid properly). I more just wonder if Silicon Valley gives people a lot of things that they clearly want (the value of some companies attest to this), even if they aren't that beneficial to society. Uber and Deliveroo are some examples that come to mind. I've seen a study showing Uber to be vastly more efficient than taxis (much higher % of time and of miles driven with a passenger). That's clearly beneficial to society over the previous status quo. It's easy to see how Airbnb is also incredibly beneficial - opening up an industry from concentrated hotel chains into hundreds of thousands (millions?) of home owners, all the while driving down prices. There are thousands upon thousands of similar examples with varying degrres of magnitude of impact. sc-darkness thereare promising technologies coming up in those fields but they really haven't changed the industries all that much. Do note that four medical I'm only referring to digital technologies. Uber has also brought about a fairly shitty age of gig economy jobs. Arguably these always existed through cash in hand jobs, Craigslist and whatever, but I still have the gut feeling that Uber had legitimised the gig economy like nothing before it. Maybe the gig economy is more a symptom of problems in society, but nevertheless I think if you look at companies like Uber from a different angle the value they provide to society is less clear. The gig economy is actually tiny in the grand scheme of things and not that nefarious. When autonomous driving comes there won't be any more salient examples of it left and it won't be an issue anymore.
I was more trying to illustrate that the tech industries impact on the world in non-economic terms is really bloody hard to determine. The example of video games, or social media, illustrates this better. That being said I think that's probably quite obvious and I've not said anything really illuminating. I still don't like people like Musk though.
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You think autonomous driving disappearing hundreds of thousands of jobs renders the issues implicated by its gig economy forebearer moot? That's an odd take.
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Autonomous driving seems like a thing that will require a ton of government buy in. Far more that what the Google and Uber's of the world are trying to do. They are going to need to build lanes and roads for those automatic cars.
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People are upset that Uber has made employment for taxi drivers much less stable. Given that we may be 10 years away from automation, the job stability of taxi drivers really becomes irrelevant doesn't it? There won't be any of those jobs left, and that's overall a good thing.
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It's not as much about taxi drivers becoming less job stable as it is the fact that shifting low wage gig economy jobs prop up a US wage system that fails to match cost of living in most of the major population centers. The failure of these patchwork attempts at stitching together enough income to get by are basically the tremors before the quake and Uber only makes things worse.
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United States42295 Posts
On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines.
I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you.
Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved.
People still do the job, but the output is incomparable.
Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money.
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Uber is a shitty company that wants to make money from city infrastructure while investing nothing in the city, dodging regulations and abusing their employees. Also using software to track other driving services, likely illegally(this one is new)?
I am not convinced automated cars are rolling out in 10 years. And they are not replacing taxis at least 20-30 years if they do arrive on the scene in ten.
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On September 09 2017 10:10 farvacola wrote:
It's not as much about taxi drivers becoming less job stable as it is the fact that shifting low wage gig economy jobs prop up a US wage system that fails to match cost of living in most of the major population centers. The failure of these patchwork attempts at stitching together enough income to get by are basically the tremors before the quake and Uber only makes things worse.
You're identifying a larger trend that I'm perhaps not. I'm not sure the gig economy outside of Uber/Lyft really warrants much of a conversation, does it?
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United States42295 Posts
On September 09 2017 09:59 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 09:46 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:40 warding wrote:On September 09 2017 09:26 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:17 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:08 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:07 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 09:05 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:01 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 08:59 kollin wrote:
[quote]
As much as I'm pro-immigration, I think measuring anyone on 'how much they contribute' whether native or immigrant is also reprehensible. P6 is not criticising you personally, there's no need to act like it. Not only th8at, I think he's right - few industries seem to be further up their own arses than the tech industry. Note I work in the tech industry so I could be biased. However, I think the IT industry has truly brought innovation - computers are everywhere to help people. What can't this be acknowledged? If you don't believe that IT has brought high level of innovation, then PLEASE specify another field where innovation is at a high level. I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with "blah blah IT tech industry is overrated". Of course the tech industry has produced a lot of innovation. I still think, as a whole, it is placed on too high a pedestal by some people and there's a culture of worship by some around it that I think is excessive. Especially when I look at the 'leaders' in tech eg Musk, the Google guys etc, I can't help but feel people idolise them far too much. Well, maybe. I don't follow them as much so I don't know. I suppose it's refreshing and exciting for some people to get new technology. I find astronomy impressive though. That has also brought some nice innovation and research. I'm a bigggg space nerd so I definitely understand what you mean. I think Plansix is more talking about Silicon Valley types that really aren't providing THAT much to society while calling themselves 'Leaders in Innovation' or whatever. If you trust the market they're providing an awful lot to society. I think the value of the information age is difficult to really properly quantify. Take my field. The vast, vast majority of all accounting work that was done a few decades ago is now done by software, and on a far greater scale than could possibly have been imagined back then. Technology has created an army of hundreds of millions of virtual skilled accountants that have been mobilized productively. The amount of economic activity attributable directly to tech is breathtaking. I'd very easily believe that economic productivity attributable solely to tech from the last 20 years is greater than the entire economic productivity that preexisted it, that we've successfully leveraged our labour at a greater than 2:1 ratio. Oh undoubtedly it's an amazing asset economically (even if none of the companies seem to pay taxes or ensure workers at their supply shops are paid properly). I more just wonder if Silicon Valley gives people a lot of things that they clearly want (the value of some companies attest to this), even if they aren't that beneficial to society. Uber and Deliveroo are some examples that come to mind. I've seen a study showing Uber to be vastly more efficient than taxis (much higher % of time and of miles driven with a passenger). That's clearly beneficial to society over the previous status quo. It's easy to see how Airbnb is also incredibly beneficial - opening up an industry from concentrated hotel chains into hundreds of thousands (millions?) of home owners, all the while driving down prices. There are thousands upon thousands of similar examples with varying degrres of magnitude of impact. sc-darkness thereare promising technologies coming up in those fields but they really haven't changed the industries all that much. Do note that four medical I'm only referring to digital technologies. Uber has also brought about a fairly shitty age of gig economy jobs. Arguably these always existed through cash in hand jobs, Craigslist and whatever, but I still have the gut feeling that Uber had legitimised the gig economy like nothing before it. Maybe the gig economy is more a symptom of problems in society, but nevertheless I think if you look at companies like Uber from a different angle the value they provide to society is less clear. The gig economy is actually tiny in the grand scheme of things and not that nefarious. When autonomous driving comes there won't be any more salient examples of it left and it won't be an issue anymore. Edit: I generally agree with Kwark, we live in an exciting age technology wise. I also agree with Plansix, until technology gets us rid of lawyers it really hasn't fully delivered on its promise.
That's the thing though, it doesn't get rid of jobs because we don't say "we can now do the same work for 10% of the hours, 90% of humans can go home now". Instead we say "awesome, now we can all do 10x as much, back to work folks". We had lawyers thirty years ago and lawyers today. But thirty years ago you wouldn't expect the law firm you hired to have highly educated individuals read and understand a hundred thousand internal letters sent within a company. Now you would absolutely expect their software to read the emails and sort them for the kind of content you were after in, for example, a sexual harassment case.
We still have lawyers, but they're doing more lawyering than ever before.
edit: Uber/Snap/Twitter etc are not the face of the tech revolution, it's stuff like enterprise management software where the real magic happens imo.
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On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money.
Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors.
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On September 09 2017 09:49 farvacola wrote:
The Great Amazon Strike will likely be a thing that happens in the next decade or so.
Which will be in clear violations of the Terms and Conditions we all signed before choosing to work at the Amazon Comcast Google mines (rather than starve in prison).
And there will be many virulent heroes for the rule of law ready to argue it's legality and a band of merry mercenaries to enforce said law.
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Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album.
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On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album.
Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though.
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On September 09 2017 10:14 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 09:59 warding wrote:On September 09 2017 09:46 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:40 warding wrote:On September 09 2017 09:26 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:17 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:08 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:07 sc-darkness wrote:On September 09 2017 09:05 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 09:01 sc-darkness wrote:
[quote]
Note I work in the tech industry so I could be biased. However, I think the IT industry has truly brought innovation - computers are everywhere to help people. What can't this be acknowledged? If you don't believe that IT has brought high level of innovation, then PLEASE specify another field where innovation is at a high level. I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with "blah blah IT tech industry is overrated". Of course the tech industry has produced a lot of innovation. I still think, as a whole, it is placed on too high a pedestal by some people and there's a culture of worship by some around it that I think is excessive. Especially when I look at the 'leaders' in tech eg Musk, the Google guys etc, I can't help but feel people idolise them far too much. Well, maybe. I don't follow them as much so I don't know. I suppose it's refreshing and exciting for some people to get new technology. I find astronomy impressive though. That has also brought some nice innovation and research. I'm a bigggg space nerd so I definitely understand what you mean. I think Plansix is more talking about Silicon Valley types that really aren't providing THAT much to society while calling themselves 'Leaders in Innovation' or whatever. If you trust the market they're providing an awful lot to society. I think the value of the information age is difficult to really properly quantify. Take my field. The vast, vast majority of all accounting work that was done a few decades ago is now done by software, and on a far greater scale than could possibly have been imagined back then. Technology has created an army of hundreds of millions of virtual skilled accountants that have been mobilized productively. The amount of economic activity attributable directly to tech is breathtaking. I'd very easily believe that economic productivity attributable solely to tech from the last 20 years is greater than the entire economic productivity that preexisted it, that we've successfully leveraged our labour at a greater than 2:1 ratio. Oh undoubtedly it's an amazing asset economically (even if none of the companies seem to pay taxes or ensure workers at their supply shops are paid properly). I more just wonder if Silicon Valley gives people a lot of things that they clearly want (the value of some companies attest to this), even if they aren't that beneficial to society. Uber and Deliveroo are some examples that come to mind. I've seen a study showing Uber to be vastly more efficient than taxis (much higher % of time and of miles driven with a passenger). That's clearly beneficial to society over the previous status quo. It's easy to see how Airbnb is also incredibly beneficial - opening up an industry from concentrated hotel chains into hundreds of thousands (millions?) of home owners, all the while driving down prices. There are thousands upon thousands of similar examples with varying degrres of magnitude of impact. sc-darkness thereare promising technologies coming up in those fields but they really haven't changed the industries all that much. Do note that four medical I'm only referring to digital technologies. Uber has also brought about a fairly shitty age of gig economy jobs. Arguably these always existed through cash in hand jobs, Craigslist and whatever, but I still have the gut feeling that Uber had legitimised the gig economy like nothing before it. Maybe the gig economy is more a symptom of problems in society, but nevertheless I think if you look at companies like Uber from a different angle the value they provide to society is less clear. The gig economy is actually tiny in the grand scheme of things and not that nefarious. When autonomous driving comes there won't be any more salient examples of it left and it won't be an issue anymore. Edit: I generally agree with Kwark, we live in an exciting age technology wise. I also agree with Plansix, until technology gets us rid of lawyers it really hasn't fully delivered on its promise. That's the thing though, it doesn't get rid of jobs because we don't say "we can now do the same work for 10% of the hours, 90% of humans can go home now". Instead we say "awesome, now we can all do 10x as much, back to work folks". We had lawyers thirty years ago and lawyers today. But thirty years ago you wouldn't expect the law firm you hired to have highly educated individuals read and understand a hundred thousand internal letters sent within a company. Now you would absolutely expect their software to read the emails and sort them for the kind of content you were after in, for example, a sexual harassment case. We still have lawyers, but they're doing more lawyering than ever before. edit: Uber/Snap/Twitter etc are not the face of the tech revolution, it's stuff like enterprise management software where the real magic happens imo.
This is the most accountant-ass post I've seen from you in a while.
Also, email is a blight on the legal field. Never has technology been more of a burden that that bullshit medium. Why does it have to make a new fucking file every time one is sent? Why do we still use that garbage medium?
On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though.
It is feast or famine. Making it as a mid-tier band a soul crushing grind if you want to make any money.
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Nobody has come up with a better medium than email. It's efficacy really comes down to the client you use and how you set it up. Within teams you can use slack.
Kwark, this is the main problem with the tech boom in productivity idea:
+ Show Spoiler +
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United States42295 Posts
On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors.
You're being foolish. Sure, increased output means increased errors. The increased errors doesn't outweigh the output. The previous system required a skilled professional to manually review and approve each and every application, and even then he'd make mistakes because the system wasn't doing internal data accuracy checks. The overhead involved in paying the guy to do that was built into the transaction cost, it was friction that hurt the consumers. We could bring that back if we wanted, we could have a guy who we pay to stand around jerking off for a few hours after every sale, the reason we don't is because we've determined that that's a waste of our money and his time.
You're taking all the good for granted and focusing on the bad. It's like complaining that your new sports car got dented and how you never used to have any of those problems back when you were broke. You didn't have to deal with so many errors on real estate transactions because people couldn't afford so many real estate transactions. Your job of correcting errors is paid out of the vast savings generated by the system.
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On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though.
On September 09 2017 10:28 warding wrote:Nobody has come up with a better medium than email. It's efficacy really comes down to the client you use and how you set it up. Within teams you can use slack. Kwark, this is the main problem with the tech boom in productivity idea: + Show Spoiler +
Feels like this is going to be a brick wall discussion if people can say the music industry has collapsed or that this graph isn't showing computer tech isn't a massive productivity boom.
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On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though.
Their bitter refusal to modernize their businesses ahead of technology did more than the mere advancing of technology to contribute to their collapse.
If record execs didn't expect so much for doing so little the industry would be a lot better too.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jvMRK_o9WcM/U-5U496o4oI/AAAAAAAAIOs/WTUnoCRNQ3g/s1600/totaltfp.jpg)
