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Does technology actually add value to the world?

I had a long and intresting conversation with my therapist just now. I’m not comfortable sharing exactly what we were talking about but I can rephrase it: basically I was complaining that tech companies don’t want to innovate.

I’ve been trying to bring new technologies to my boss because I thought it would give him a better opportunity to realize value from the products I’m creating/maintaining for him. That’s what I understand is my purpose in the workforce. I’m a programmer not a salesman I can’t go out to the market and get him the money so he can pay me with something, I can only make things put things in his hands for him (or hire someone to) to go out and collect the money we deserve (deserve within the limits of market demands and the nature of the product, not the labor invested). But he doesn’t want them… well he does when he needs them but I miss way more times than I hit which is making my professional feelings feel less valuable. And if I’m not valuable enough then I can’t work doing what I love.

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). But every company I’ve worked for so far has been running old ass shit. Springboot apps, create-react-apps, codebases in c and c++, no kubernetes, little to no cloud. And it feels like everything that tech companies want me to do is maintain and expand old existing codebases. And I understand why, I know that its expensive to rewrite entire code bases just for a 20% efficiency boost and to make it easier to add upgrades every once in awhile. But noone is taking advantage of innovative technology anymore and that’s what’s concerning me.

In my therapist’s opinion he thinks we as a soceity are not taking 100% advantage of technology we have. I can’t go into too many details bc our conversations are private but at the end I agreed with him. I’m seeing it now in my working day but he convinced me that it’s everywhere. Are people actually benefitting from technology enough such that nobody actually needs to work to maintain a long and healthy life?

Lets say that no, technology is underutilized in our soceity. Does that mean that if we use technology more we’d have enough value in the economy to pay everyone a UBI? Could we phase out the human workforce to some extent? Or do we actually need more workers to do work to make the value, in which case we can’t realistically do UBI because people need to get paid competitivily to do the work.

Lets say that yes, we are taking all advantages of technology. If so than there should be enough value to pay 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. If it was than there’d be something to take, is there? Are we sure that its enough?

Basically I don’t know if technology generates value.

Think about it like this

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. And if you believe that scaling up corn production to make the corn just as valuable as if we didn’t have technology then you agree that the corn is now less valuable. If self-checkout machines are replacing cashiers, does that mean that the cashiering work being done by the machine is more valuable to soceity or less?

This is basically end stage capitalism. We need to recognize if the work we do for soceity (whether you derive personal fulfillment or not) is actually adding to soceity or not. I’d rather not give up my job as a programmer just so I can do something more valuable, but I might have to if that’s the case. And I feel like most people in the world are thinking like that too. Is soceity trying to hang on to the past, or do we just not understand the future?

Sorry for the wall of text. I feel like this might be to philosophical for this community but I couldn’t find a better place to post this. If you know of a better community for this discussion to take place then I’ll consider moving this post based on the comments already posted. Thank you for reading this and I’d love to answer any question you’d have about my opinions/feelings.

LWD , (edited )

deleted_by_author

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    danhab99 OP ,
    @danhab99@programming.dev avatar

    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.

    habanhero , (edited )

    There is a lot to unpack from your post. First of all, there is no doubt that technology in general adds value for the human race - like the another commenter said, foundational things like fire, tools all the way to the zipper and buttons you have on clothings, umbrellas you bring into the rain, the video chats you have with loved ones during COVID - those are all the fruits of technology.

    But if you get down to the particulars, value can be very subjective. Some people value fancy new tech sneakers, primate NFTs whereas others value new computer vision technology or a new programming language. So are certain technologies adding value? Depends on who you ask.

    As for who is capturing value in a capitalistic society, I think you already have the answer. Simply put, if your company operates at a 50% efficiency and you bump it up to 70% with tech and automation, rest assured that you are going to see job cuts to “become lean” and to “do less with more”, followed by increased targets to produce more. You are not going to get more leisure time but instead be asked to push ahead until you hit the physical limit and break.

    danhab99 OP ,
    @danhab99@programming.dev avatar

    Simply put, if your company operates at a 50% efficiency and you bump it up to 70% with tech and automation, be assurance you are going to see job cuts and increased targets to produce more

    And there’s the point. I do not disagree that technology puts people out of a job. What I want to understand is whether or not that technology is creating more value. And if so than more technology means more value which means we can eventually get to a place of so much societal surplus that we can reorchestrate soceity to enjoy the benefits of it. That’s the end stage of capitalism, it will become outdated eventually. Capitalism is a growth phase, and growth hurts, I’m the last person in the world to deny that.

    The reason it ends is because there are people who are poor and sick and starving and I AM NOT OK WITH THAT! If I was than capitalism can persist, but I don’t want it to because I don’t want my fellow Americans, my fellow people, to suffer. There’s no way to acknowledge my priviledge enough when I say that yeah, people have to suffer for all of us to grow, and it hurts that some of those people won’t be there with us in the end, and it’s terrifying to think that I could be one of those who don’t see the end.

    So that’s where my question is. If a company experiences a +30% efficiency boost due to technology, does soceity benefit from it?

    habanhero ,

    What I want to understand is whether or not that technology is creating more value.

    I think the question to ask is value created for whom. Based on my personal and probably biased opinion, value is not created for the greater good but for the capital owners and shareholders.

    And if so than more technology means more value which means we can eventually get to a place of so much societal surplus that we can reorchestrate soceity to enjoy the benefits of it.

    Again, my opinion, but it’s not in the DNA of a capitalistic society to have surpluses so someone will capture it and try to squeeze out more. So in the event of a seismic technology advancement, my dystopian view is that the poor will not reap much benefits, and instead of billionaires, we will have trillionaires.

    So that’s where my question is. If a company experiences a +30% efficiency boost due to technology, does soceity benefit from it?

    I think if there is a counterbalance to capitalism and corporate greed then yes, some of that value will come back to society. Perhaps an improved medication at cost, better transit, emergency response technology… But if we leave it in the hands of capitalists they will enrich themselves very quickly.

    solrize , (edited )

    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.

    SnotFlickerman , (edited )
    @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Most “technology” these days are hardly more than gimmicky baubles that don’t actually bring much value to, well, anything really.

    Look at all the Alexa devices. Amazon literally cannot figure out how to make a profit on it and they’re quickly trying to make it a footnote.

    All that hardware dedicated to Alexa will be soon a pile of garbage.

    But here’s the rub…

    Simple technology is still technology. A hammer is technology of an early human era. We’ve only been in the era of modern medicine, for example, for hardly 100 years. When you talk about “technology” you’re talking about way the fuck more than just computers and technobaubles.

    When it comes to medical tech alone if you consider how many diseases we’ve wiped out, and the new advances we continue to make in medical science (RNA vaccines, recently an entirely new class of antibiotics), the idea that these don’t contribute to our quality of life is a joke.

    Medical advances and advances in food technology and food cleanliness have 100% improved the lives of people all over the world. We went from terrible infant mortality rates 200 years ago where half your fucking kids will die before adulthood to people basically choosing how many kids they want because by and large, most of them will make it to adulthood and onward. It genuinely wasn’t that long ago that our average life expectancy was a lot shorter.

    Now, the bigger question is a societal one: How to we ensure the new technology that really brings value to human life is distributed equitably? Because currently, it really fucking isn’t.

    As for you and your job: Technology and programming itself isn’t useless at all. It’s what it’s being used for that is at issue. There are plenty of things a programmer can do that benefit the world, they just won’t be the kind of job that pays well. Amazon, for example, isn’t going to pay you money to change the world in positive ways, they’ll pay you to make Amazon money. All companies are like this. We all have to have a day job, so my suggestion would be to find out how you can use your skills to help the world equitably (maybe contribution to Free Open Source Software, for example) in your spare time, and then save money with a goal to use your skills more equitably as a life-goal.

    FoldIt and Folding@Home were both great examples of programming, games, and genuine forward-movement scientific research. Maybe you could contribute to new groups like this, with the aim of benefiting everyone with their research.

    Some folks help the world through what some consider illegal means with their programming. Anna’s Archive, Library Genesis, and Sci-Hub all exist with the purpose of giving people access to information. They use programming and networking skills to get around network blocks and so on.

    Programming skills can be used for all kinds of good. You just have to choose to follow those paths.

    danhab99 OP ,
    @danhab99@programming.dev avatar

    I think you’re right.

    TBH I can’t even see the real value in companies I see listing jobs on the job sites. I’ve been trying to talk any path, anything just so I can work. But what good is my work if it’s not actually working for the rest of the world. How can I secure my next hit (writing code presses my happy button, idk why I just accept it) if I’m working for someone who noone actually needs? I want to make a change for the world because I need to make a change for myself. I need to work because working feels good, it wakes me up in the morning, it gives me focus, it gives me a sense of success and I actually cherish it. Every little line of code I write is mine, that’s why I cryptosign my commits, so they’ll always be mine.

    Maybe its actually not me, it’s the people I can work for.

    SnotFlickerman ,
    @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    TBH I can’t even see the real value in companies I see listing jobs on the job sites.

    I agree, it can be discouraging, but the reality is we all gotta pay bills and eat. We gotta have a paycheck to put food in our stomachs and to give ourselves the opportunity to make our own goals outside of this framework we’re given.

    It’s okay to take a job that isn’t benefiting the world if it means it’s a path towards you benefiting the world, you just can’t let yourself get caught up in the grind and remember its your personal goals of self-fulfillment and fulfillment of others that matter more.

    It doesn’t mean you can’t work a job or not excel at your job. You can absolutely do both but also be willing to keep that thought at the back of your mind “Everything I do here is in pursuit of doing more and better, on my own.” Hell, if you are successful enough, that’s often option to use your largess to create your own non-profit aimed at helping others, or creating a new business for a market you know is under-served.

    We can’t escape the reality of needing to eat and pay bills. We can accept that a lot of the jobs we work won’t give us some of the human values we all generally need to feel fulfilled (autonomy, mastery, purpose), but that doesn’t mean we can’t find those avenues for fulfillment elsewhere, outside of the business and working world.

    MaryTzu ,

    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.

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