Does technology actually add value to the world?

nayminlwin , 5 months ago

Another aspect to consider is the term " invention is the mother of necessity" coined by Jared Diamon, in contrast to " neccessity is the mother of invension". A lot of technology either get discarded or used for something that the technology wasn’t originally intended. Hence the idea that inventions come first and the necessity for them follows later. Targetes technological innovation tenda to be very expensive and involves a lot of trial/error.

I believe this phenomenum doesn’t just apply to big innovations and inventions. It also applies to day to day problem solving and in your case, choosing the right technology for your work. Without prior experience and established norm, a technology that might completely makes sense to you for a certain kind of work, might not pan out in actual use.

MonkderZweite , 5 months ago

Tech companies only want new if it generates/saves short term money. Long term money only with a understanding, far-sighted upper level, which is rare. Reallistic risk mitigation (i.e. not the magic black box á la Fortinet) only with a boss who’s in tech himself.

akrot , 5 months ago

There are plenty of redundant jobs, and I believe it is important to feel fullfilment in your tasks, otherwise no motivation. One thing to note, that when companies do not upgrade, they risk being redundant and falling back behind disruptive newcomers with cutting edge tech.

NeoNachtwaechter , 5 months ago

If its cheaper to use technology to grow an acre of corn than to use people, is that subsequent output of corn more valuable or less valuable because of the technology.

At first it is the same price, because the buyers would pay what they are used to pay. That makes the user of that technology rich. Later the price would probably decrease.

I am talking about ‘price’, not ‘value’. Value isn’t universally defined, but individually.

Warren buffet said, the price is what we pay, the value is what we get.

Very different views are possible about the term ‘value’. I went with a strictly monetary view here, and therefore I’m not sure if this aspect of your question…

if the work we do for soceity […] is actually adding to soceity or not.

… gets actually answered. Also, I didn’t read all of it.

bastion , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This is going to be fun.

Prudence generates value. Technology speeds a task, but without prudence and principle, you will simply fill the space freed by technology with other things that are meaningless.

Regarding programming, specifically, if you’re looking at creating real value for society, you need to create frameworks that give leverage to effective and ethical thinking.

Right now, the world is fucked because social networking has simply brought to light how incapable people are at managing their own lives and perspectives, particularly while being seen. Social networking has given people power, but all that does is let people make bigger mistakes. Plus, with the monetary incentives on the back-end squeezing every bit of emotion for cash, people are getting burnt out.

Structured power is better. Connections need to have consequences, and those consequences need to have real effect. To be effective, individual power (not over others, but over one’s own life) must be central to the collective structure - and the collective should be granted that same right, over it’s own existence.

The ideal social network would ensnare fools, catch the greedy, and reward the prudent, the wise, and the loving, through empowering them to be whoever it is they truly are.

You probably don’t remember, but once, long ago, in the age of legends, Google emerged as a force within humanity. They wielded the power of “don’t be evil,” and they meant it. They empowered people to find what they wanted, and to communicate. The ads were tasteful, clearly marked, and unobtrusive - useful, even.

But all things that are born must die, and death does not come because things are going well for the dying thing. The Google was no exception. Did the leadership fail, or did time simply run it’s course? We may never know for certain, but when The Originators left, all that remained was a vile and empty core. Where once there was abundance, there came indolence. And as the remaing scraps of mind fought over the space where they thought the power was, they thought the power of “don’t be evil” was outdated. Bothersome. In the way. But in truth, it was simply arcane - their minds, profane as they were, could not comprehend the true nature that brought them power. So they ejected the power of their own foundation, and struck the rule from their books.

And so to this day, they ride the shockwave the true power made as it left. They think the shockwave is the power, but it is just a side effect. They see their hands closing to grasp it, but they do not see how weak they make themselves. They have ridden the shockwave up, and they will ride it down, and just as they are not prepared for the heights of it, they are not prepared for the depths they enter, either.

And that, my boy, is the story of how The Google came to be, and how it began to fall. It is the end of some things, to be sure, but also the beginning of another. Sovereign individual collectives are juust around the corner, waiting for their builders to come.

taps cane on the floor regularly to keep the rocking chair going, tamps pipe

Someday, I’ll tell the tale of how a little bird was born, became known by all, and died, partly of it’s own foolishness, and partly because of one who wanted to keep it for himself. …Or how Unity tried to seize those who contributed to it, but lost everything in the process. It’s all the same tale, though. Everything that lives, must die. But forgetting to stand on a principle can hurry any entity along that path.

blows smoke ring

z3rOR0ne , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This is a great thread, as I am currently learning to program and I often ask myself, “what are we(programmers) all doing? And where are we(humanity) all going?”

I remember getting a variety of answers, but one engineer I met laughed when I posed this question and gave me one of the darker answers I heard, but it indeed resonated:

“We’re boiling the oceans while partying at the end of the world, what did you think we were all doing?”

Or something along those lines. I’d love to think new technologies, properly implemented (guided by pragmatic altruism), can get us out of the problem that technology, improperly implemented (guided by greed and misanthropy), got us into. But I just don’t see it.

Isn’t oil required to make any and all pieces of tech, even green tech? How much oil/pollution went into producing my phone? The plastic pieces on everything I consume, wear, etc.? The Electric Vehicle that will help curb climate change as long as I can afford to buy one and discard my old gas consuming vehicle that was running just fine and might for another decade if I take care of it?

There are solutions, and I’m probably not thinking deeply enough on this, but right now, in this moment, I’m highly skeptical that those in power, even if they wanted to, could ever find a way to make money while also actually fighting climate change in a way that actually prevents its worse effects.

A simple example is cars. The solution to car emissions isn’t electric vehicles, it’s better infrastructure based around trains, metros and better city planning that encourages cycling and pedestrians. But our thinking is that we can sell electric vehicles, and build planned obsolescence into those vehicles to keep capitalism rolling. You can’t do that as lucratively with rail, if at all.

We all nod our heads and then get back to work though, cuz due to a multitude of lifetimes lived reinforcing the “get yours, and fuck everyone else” attitude that is a requirement to survive in a capitalist society, we can’t do anything more than mumble and groan about it, but still go back into work on Monday.

Those of us who object too loudly are socially ostracized at best, and killed at worst, and those on the top count on the rest of us being just afraid enough to not speak too far out of line.

Excrubulent , 5 months ago

You’re getting a lot of answers that are explaining to you that the value doesn’t go to society, it goes to the owner class, and I agree. It seems to me you’re experiencing the personal wounds that come from being alienated from your work. This is because a capitalist, hierarchical workplace is inherently low-information. Your manager is in a position of power over you, which means they don’t have to listen to you, and most workers figure out sooner or later that their efforts are wasted and they’ll get by easier if they just keep their heads down and don’t make waves, so they stop trying to get managers to listen.

Your manager doesn’t necessarily care about innovation, or making society better, or your personal fulfillment. That doesn’t mean you need to find a manager that does, because the problem is that positions of power over others breed indifference to those others. Management in particular tends to go to people who are good at taking credit and ingratiating themselves to their superiors. It doesn’t select for competence at the actual job. If you luck out and get a good manager, they’ll be replaced eventually. You have no power over that decision.

I would recommend you read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (that is a talk he gave on the topic for a brief overview). It explains the mechanisms by which companies fill themselves with bloat and create jobs where very little is achieved and the people in them are miserable.

I would also recommend you look into worker owned cooperatives (google renamed that subtitle from “a cure for capitalism” to “curing capitalism”, presumably because the former title leaves room to think we are curing ourselves from capitalism, but the latter implies we are making capitalism better; I suspect his intent was far more revolutionary than they would like). They give the workers that actually produce everything control over the company. Managers are elected and recallable, so if your manager doesn’t listen they can be replaced by the people they manage. Their job is actually management, not a generalised rulership where they can turn your entire department upside down at a whim or just ignore you in favour of their own comfort.

Kolanaki , 5 months ago

Uh… The internet? Telecommunications tech in general, really.

The problem is not that these things are not valuable; it’s that the value they create is being hoarded by a small few at the top.

HarkMahlberg , 5 months ago

When I started working I went in with a plan to upgrade and modernize everything I touch. I still believe that to be the case, or like… my “purpose”(as an employee not a person).

I mean this with as much respect to you OP as I can possibly put into words, and if your therapist has already touched on this, absolutely ignore everything I say and listen to them.

I have been both been this person and dealt with this person. Believe me when I say that this behavior engenders little love from management and coworkers alike. You can quickly gain a bad reputation by trying to modernize everything you see. That reputation can be (meanly) described many different ways, from try-hard to kiss-ass.

• Developers like all human beings are subject to emotions and projection. They see you running around trying to replace the things they built, and they may conflate that with trying to replace them. They feel insecure, then they project that insecurity onto you - it makes you look insecure trying to prove yourself to the company. (Maybe you have fine relationships with your coworkers, maybe they admire this trait, take me with a grain of salt.)
• Managers begin to think that if they let you replace all their developers' tools, they will have to rely on you and you alone to support all those tools. They may worry you try to gatekeep your tools, or become a bottleneck for new development. So you slowly lose their trust.

Don't let your career suffer for this. There are few reasons to risk your reputation, your chance at promotion, the goodwill of your peers, and more: "using the latest and greatest" is not one of those reasons. Sometimes, following the crowd is fine.

Springboot apps, create-react-apps, codebases in c and c++, no kubernetes, little to no cloud.

Now, speaking as a developer instead of an armchair psychoanalyst, I don't see why these traits or lack thereof make for bad software. Nor does it make you a lesser developer for working with them. It entirely depends on your industry, the applications, the users, security interests, available recruitable talent, and many more factors.

APassenger , 5 months ago

I like to leave a campsite better than I found it, but that can’t become rearranging the camping village.

I’ll say this though, give me a UBI and I’ll still work to add value. I’d probably still work my current job - just more confidently if there was a safety net. I think most well-adjusted people want a purpose.

If I didn’t work my job, then I’d be doing things with more obvious and direct social value. But if UBIs were a thing, some of that may not be necessary.

NigelFrobisher , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

I don’t feel like most of the work I’ve done in my career has generated value. A lot of the businesses I worked for were about inserting themselves between an actual business (e.g. hotels selling time in their rooms) and their users, and thereby generating economic rent.

Similarly, the obsession we have as developers and technologists with upgrading our stacks for, as you point out, marginal theoretical efficiency improvements - it’s just busywork. I swear a lot of what dev departments do is becoming more and more over-complicated wheel spinning purely to justify the size of the development team.

Not that I mind having a job that can be really rewarding and fits my skillset like little else.

RainfallSonata , 5 months ago

Does that mean that if we use technology more we’d have enough value in the economy to pay everyone a UBI?

There’s already enough value in the economy to pay everyone a UBI.

But we don’t have a UBI, so why? If the value exists than where is it? I don’t believe its being funnelled into the pockets of some shadowy deep-state private 4th branch of government.

It’s being funneled into monopolies and doled out as stock dividends into the pockets of investors and billionaires such as Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg.

maniclucky , 5 months ago

Yeah. It’s not a secret where the money is going. We put them on the covers of magazines and pretend that they are the peak of humanity and not rich sociopaths that stepped on every neck they could see to get more money.

schwim , 5 months ago

I think the answer to that question would completely depend on what you value.

CaptainSpaceman , 5 months ago

The only correct answer here

solrize , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

I’ll give this another read later but one thing I notice is what I’d call over-enthusiasm for software technology and rewrites. For your purely technical concerns you might have a chat with a senior programmer on your project. After dealing with real world software for long enough one gets disillusioned with the latest shiny. Keeping the existing stuff running is important and it’s easy to underestimate that.

As for the product itself and its value to the world, well that depends at least in part on what you consider valuable. And that’s a philosophy question rather than a technical one. If you were involved in making, say, movies instead of software, the same questions would apply.

I would say a few software jobs do real good in the world, a few do serious evil, and most are relatively neutral. If yours is neutral then I think you can feel ok about it at least for the near term. You have to take care of yourself after all. If your company is actively evil then that’s of course different. And if it’s doing good then you should be happy.

LWD , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

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danhab99 OP , 5 months ago

If that employee is producing double because of technology than that’s all the employer deserves to ask for. If the employer wants the employee to double their efforts the employee will 4x their output which is an unreasonable thing to ask for, and those bosses loose people because of that. I don’t give much attention to people who fail upwards.

MaryTzu , 5 months ago

My observations:

Existing companies do tend to (but not always) stick with their legacy stack. It makes sense, it’s the safe option.

Start ups OTOH, have the freedom to choose a new and innovative stack and often do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The ones that survive and thrive will likely be dated in another decade and be seen as the old guard with legacy stacks.

It’s the circle of life.