
What We Get Wrong About Technology - MikeTaylor
http://timharford.com/2017/08/what-we-get-wrong-about-technology/
======
donw
I suspect that it is easy to fixate on fantasies of massive technological
leaps forward, because the truly revolutionary changes that underpin our lives
are like air: so common that we overlook them all the time.

If you were to sit down with a person from, say, 1750, and wanted to explain
the modern world, you would probably tell them about things like antibiotics,
cars and planes, snapchat, that sort of thing.

All the big stuff that we think defines the modern era.

What would probably really impress the hell out of them would be a
supermarket, though.

To a person from that time, the idea of being able to eat fresh peaches in the
dead of winter would be just as magical as being able to instantly translate
Russian into English, and yet it probably wouldn't occur to us to bring it up
because fruit at the supermarket is just... obvious.

So as we look forward, the question is, what will be obvious to people ten or
twenty years from now?

~~~
dalbasal
I think we over-emphasize elements that seem more “technological,”
overestimate their importance. The printing press example is great. We credit
the press because it’s mechanical and complex, but not the paper (or ink or
literacy or religion).

For peaches in winter, most people think of botany, refrigeration, airplanes…
science. Fewer people would think of joint stock companies or shipping
containers as important enablers.

For productivity, it seems impossible that a computer on every desk with
modern digital communication, software of every kind and all our gadgets
_didn’t_ move the productivity needle. It’s all so technological. In practice,
non-technologies like kanban or just-in-time _did_ move the productivity
needle. It’s counterintuitive.

There are a lot of examples of counterintuitive bland results. Genetic
engineering has not improved crop yields nearly as much as green revolution
technology, not even close. Nuclear energy changed very little besides war.

That’s not to say these aren’t impactful technologies. Computers have changed
our lives and our work. Modern Agg-tech has changed farming. It just didn’t
change total output all that much.

I suppose that in the theme of this article, big technologies work in
complexes, and that makes them hard to bang into a narrative and hard to
predict.

~~~
KGIII
From the Industrial Revolution, we got interchangeable parts and
standardization. I think those really had some of the largest impacts on
society.

~~~
kazen44
probably the most important invention of the industrial revolution is the
screw-cutting lathe by Henry Maudslay[1]

Without the screw cutting lathe, precision parts where impossible to make.
Without machine tools, creating basically any other machine that we use today
would be impossible.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay)

------
lordnacho
I wonder if the great leap he mentions (1870-1970) is mostly from the
discovery of electromagnetism.

It would seem to be magical. Here's this thing that allows you to move huge
amounts of power over vast distances, but deposit it in whatever tiny portions
you like, in whatever room you want, and it's so easy you run the wires along
your existing walls.

The same force allows you to send both signal and power through thin air. And
if you don't want it there, you can shield from it.

Or you can make a motor quite elegantly by winding some wires.

And you can manipulate it so finely that you can do calculations with teeny
tiny amounts of it. And store the results.

But one thing I was wondering was how much it depends on basic science. Now
that we've discovered EM, have we exhausted the basic knowledge about the
world? Is every tech going forward just refinements on particular aspects of
nature, or is it unlimited how we combine things?

~~~
sametmax
> But one thing I was wondering was how much it depends on basic science. Now
> that we've discovered EM, have we exhausted the basic knowledge about the
> world? Is every tech going forward just refinements on particular aspects of
> nature, or is it unlimited how we combine things?

People centuries ago probably asked themself the same question. Let's just
assume we are missing massive chunks of informations.

~~~
KGIII
I think it hubris to consider our current understanding to be the apex. So,
yes, I agree. We made use of electricity long before we understood the
electron. There are many more unanswered questions and our understanding is
far from complete.

------
randomdrake
> _Jennifer and the many other programmes like her are examples of a “voice-
> directed application” — just software and a simple, inexpensive earpiece.
> Such systems have become part of life for warehouse workers: a voice in
> their ear or instructions on a screen tell them where to go and what to do,
> down to the fine details. If 13 items must be collected from a shelf,
> Jennifer will tell the human worker to pick five, then five, then three.
> “Pick 13” would lead to mistakes. That makes sense. Computers are good at
> counting and scheduling. Humans are good at picking things off shelves. Why
> not unbundle the task and give the conscious thinking to the computer, and
> the mindless grabbing to the human?_

I remember reading in Scientific American a few years back, about a study that
was very striking and against common intuition. In manufacturing, robots had
overtaken humans at a particular task by a long shot. They were able to
perform the completion of assemblies much quicker and with higher accuracy;
humans coming in afterwards and applying finishes that required small hands,
light touches, or hard to explain measurements.

Robots > Humans. Humans finished what robots couldn't.

What wasn't foreseen, however, was that there was an additional step to shave
off even more time. Given some artificial intelligence, the robots could
actually tell the humans when, and how, to do assembly _during_ and _as part
of_ the assembly process. The robot figuring out the most efficient assembly,
and instructing the human to do what it couldn't, was a third step of assembly
efficiency not foreseen.

It turned out:

Robots + Humans > Robots > Humans.

~~~
waivek
_Furthermore, if you look at the kind of automation that was developed, you
see precisely what workers in the early labor movement were complaining about:
being turned into mindless tools of production. I mean, automation could have
been designed in such a way as to use the skills of skilled machinists and to
eliminate management—there’s nothing inherent in automation that says it can’t
be used that way. But it wasn’t, believe me; it was used in exactly the
opposite way. Automation was designed through the state system to demean and
degrade people—to de-skill workers and increase managerial control. And again,
that had nothing to do with the market, and it had nothing to do with the
nature of the technology: it had to do with straight power interests. So the
kind of automation that was developed in places like the M.I.T. Engineering
Department was very carefully designed so that it would create interchangeable
workers and enhance managerial control—and that was not for economic reasons.
I mean, study after study, including by management firms like Arthur D. Little
and so on, show that managers have selected automation even when it cuts back
on profits—just because it gives them more control over their workforce._

 _See, the Luddites are always accused of having wanted to destroy machinery,
but it’s been known in scholarship for a long time that that’s not true—what
they really wanted to do was to prevent themselves from being de-skilled, and
Noble talks about this in his book. The Luddites had nothing against machinery
itself, they just didn’t want it to destroy them, they wanted it to be
developed in such a way that it would enhance their skills and their power,
and not degrade and destroy them—which of course makes perfect sense. And that
sentiment runs right throughout the working-class movements of the nineteenth
century, actually—and you can even see it today._

\- from _Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky_

~~~
jernfrost
If you read about the Toyota production system and compare it to the ford
system you will see a lot of this difference. The Japanes system emphasized
human skill while the ford system made humans into monkeys reapeating the same
dumb operation over and over.

As a Norwegian I've seen this difference between Scandinavian and American
work culture. In the US there tends to be deep levels of management where the
people at the bottom have almost no autonomy or power. Yet this is again far
worse in many developing countries. There is an excellent piece by an American
military officer about why arab armies are so bad. People at the bottom have
no decision power.

~~~
jlgray
Interesting that you bring up autonomy and the military. I wonder if this has
anything to do with the US naval piloting incidents of late. Previous HN
commentary suggested that the Navy has become a highly bureaucratic
organization where all decision making and responsibility are deferred up the
command chain as far as possible.

------
Animats
The article mentions "Jennifer", which is the real-world implementation of
Marshall Brain's "Manna 1.0". Here's a video of it in action.[1]

This is another example of "machines should think, people should work.". The
computer is the boss. That may be the future.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-
ReBX0icU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-ReBX0icU)

~~~
ape4
I can see people absolutely hating Jennifer.

~~~
grondilu
I don't know. Consider Personal navigation assistants[1]. I totally feel like
I've put my brain in storage when I use those things, yet I kind of like it.
It's relaxing.

We'll be to machines what horses are to their riders. I'm not sure horses hate
their riders.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_navigation_assistant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_navigation_assistant)

------
titzer
FTA: "Why not unbundle the task and give the conscious thinking to the
computer, and the mindless grabbing to the human?"

The article was pretty good overall, but this one's a pet peeve of mine. We're
offloading our thinking to computers and this magical "AI" in hopes that all
that hard work (and possibility for error!) is going to be avoided. But we're
going to find out--or perhaps not, as we slip below the dumbness horizon, no
longer able to formulate self-reflective thoughts ourselves--that thinking is
joyful, fun, glorious, not laborious or error prone.

And as "soft" AI advances, we just can't admit to ourselves that this, too,
will fail to deliver. To wit: if something absolutely must be translated
between language A and language B, in 2017 a bilingual person will still
_absolutely mop the floor_ with machine translation.

Google translate: "Zum Witz: Wenn irgend etwas absolut zwischen Sprache A und
Sprache B übersetzt werden soll, wird im Jahr 2017 eine zweisprachige Person
den Boden mit der maschinellen Übersetzung noch niemals stoßen."

Bahaha.

~~~
dEnigma
Deep L translation:

"Das heißt: wenn zwischen Sprache A und Sprache B unbedingt etwas übersetzt
werden muss, wird 2017 ein Zweisprachiger den Boden _absolut mit maschineller
Übersetzung wischen."

Not quite there yet, but pretty good in my opinion. (German native speaker)

[https://www.deepl.com/](https://www.deepl.com/)

~~~
dEnigma
Also, the other way around works even better in my opinion. That is,
translation from German into English. I tried it with a few excerpts from a
philosophy text book and the results were impressive.

Your point that the AI doesn't "understand" the text still stands though.

~~~
naasking
> Your point that the AI doesn't "understand" the text still stands though

It should be noted that we don't know what "understanding" entails, so we
don't even know if it's a coherent concept, or even a property humans have.

~~~
dEnigma
Right, that was one of the reasons why I put the word in quotes. But I'm sure
that if one were to define "understanding" with regard to humans, then what
the AI does would be far from it. I might be terribly wrong here though, and
AI could be just one corner away from real understanding.

~~~
naasking
> But I'm sure that if one were to define "understanding" with regard to
> humans, then what the AI does would be far from it.

We have a bad habit of over-estimating our abilities, so I wouldn't bet too
much money on that proposition.

~~~
dEnigma
Sure, but I'm not saying that human "understanding" is "better", only
different from current AI. But who knows, I could be wrong and at a certain
layer of abstraction they might be quite similar.

------
charlieflowers
When you're writing fiction, you have to choose which elements to emphasize to
get your point across. Blade Runner wanted to be about questions along the
boundary of "What is it to be human?"

It didn't want to be about everyday technology (though it had to pay some lip
service to that). So it didn't want to invest the reader's mental energy in
the replacement for phone booths.

(I think the author's point still stands, but that example doesn't support
it).

------
CalChris
_Blade Runner_ is 40s noir. The characters are noir. The wardrobe is noir.
Rachael's haircut is noir. The cinematography is noir. Deckard is an ex-cop.

The phone booth makes perfect sense.

------
legulere
> plausible that LA would look much the same

This is actually something I liked in contrast to earlier futurism. If I look
around me here in Europe I see that buildings rarely get removed once they
stand. The last time the face of cities here changed was after the Second
World War. If I look at pictures from the 60s rarely anything changed, except
maybe the introduction of some pedestrian zones.

~~~
duncanawoods
That seems overly broad - a surviving old city tourist area might be well
preserved but elsewhere, post-war city rebuilding programs were cheap, rushed
and ugly. Even later development is unloved because "high-design" of the time
was infected by Brutalism. These already troubled urban centres were then
hollowed-out by economic troubles in the 70s leading to areas of dereliction.

Over the past few decades, urban regeneration programs have been widespread to
remove the bleak post-war prefab concrete monstrosities. Unfortunately what is
replacing them is cheap and uninspired compared to pre-1900 architecture so I
can't see us valuing it that much in 100 years.

~~~
jameshart
We don't keep those buildings because we value their architecture, we keep
them because we are using them.

~~~
duncanawoods
That isn't true. We protect valuable architecture with preservation orders.
Usage isn't really a factor - tenants of actively used buildings will be given
notice and the site redeveloped if doing so is legal and profitable.

------
leonardoe
Intro to The Napoleon of Notting Hill, by G.K. Chesterton:

"THE human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at
children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end,
which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to
which it is most attached is called, "Keep tomorrow dark," and which is also
named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The
players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have
to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait
until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do
something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great
fun."

------
avyfain
If you enjoyed this article, Tim Harford (the author) also has a podcast
series called 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy[0] which expands on
pretty much every one of the inventions mentioned in the post. The episodes
are roughly 10 minutes long, well produced, and always cite the source
material. Worth listening to.

[0]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/downloads](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/downloads)

------
noblethrasher
The Jennifer unit is straight out of the short story, "Manna"[1].

[1] [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
chi17
Payphones could make a comeback, and the "payphone" was really a public
videophone.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YBYzo4XUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YBYzo4XUY)

    
    
        Deckard calls Rachael on a public videophone.

from script:
[http://www.trussel.com/bladerun.htm](http://www.trussel.com/bladerun.htm)

~~~
Retra
Public videophones could be made right now, if we wanted. Problem is that
nobody wants them because they are less convenient than the simpler
alternatives.

~~~
chi17
The simpler alternatives involve having to pay a monthly fee or having to pre-
pay for minutes. In the future, perhaps we won't have the luxury of paying for
a lot of service we haven't yet used and might not need to use.

~~~
dmitriid
Welcome to the present, called "the rest of the world that's not the US" ;)

(yeah, yeah, I know that many countries still have outrageous prices for
networks, be it fiber or mobile).

------
11thEarlOfMar
When I am thinking about technological advance in my lifetime, the first thing
that comes to mind is Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon parking on a bridge and
pulling his mobile phone out of the trunk. It was so cool...

The reality, 35 years later, is the cheap, ubiquitous, high-speed, mobile
access to the world's knowledge and in fact, access to most of humanity. When
I press 'add comment', nearly 4 billion human beings can immediately upvote
it.

[http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm](http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)

------
taeric
I'm torn. I like the essay, but it is just as excusable to know that using
people to act the part of androids necessitates them being extra life like.

Similarly, the point was a metaphor for the blurring between real and fake.
So, easily distinguished fake would ruin that.

------
autarch
Obligatory plug for everyone to read The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. It
was published in 1975 and nails the technology of the 90s so accurately that
it's quite freaky to read.

~~~
adjkant
In the same category a bit, Neuromancer. Note the publish date, 1984.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/888628.Neuromancer](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/888628.Neuromancer)

~~~
icebraining
What did Neuromancer predict?

~~~
adjkant
There's an argument it inspired the internet or caused us to create it.

~~~
icebraining
Well, if it managed to inspire the creation of the Internet a decade after
Cerf et all actually created it, that is truly remarkable!

~~~
adjkant
Sorry, not well said. Via Wikipedia:

"In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack
Womack goes as far as to suggest that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have
inspired the way in which the Internet developed (particularly the World Wide
Web), after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks "[w]hat if the act
of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?" (269)."

~~~
icebraining
Ah, fair enough. I guess I don't see much similarities. Then again, having
been born after the book was published, I suppose that I was shaped by the
very world imagined in the novel, and so I might be unable to analyze it
objectively the way readers born decades before can.

------
whipoodle
Part of the problem is that we actually don't know what tomorrow will be like,
so it's hard to pick the right soothsayer, if you will. Maybe another movie
got the smartphone thing right but you never watched it.

Rather than Blade Runner, I think Children of Men will turn out to be a much
more prescient vision of what's to come. (Not the main plot line but
everything surrounding it.) But like I said... we don't know.

------
johngalt
Technology almost never advances directly. Predicting the future would be easy
if things simply improved by 1% per year across the board.

Tech advances are always a series of lateral moves. Where the last innovation
allows for the next new thing. Or more commonly a massive expansion of an
existing concept.

------
EGreg
_Why not unbundle the task and give the conscious thinking to the computer,
and the mindless grabbing to the human?_

I could think of a few scary ones.

------
l5870uoo9y
What I think we often miss about technology is the underlying point here; no
technological progress without social progress. We need a political movement
to define a new social contract that ensures broad support for implementation
of disruptive technologies. This is the essential challenge for our
generation.

------
stevebmark
For things like these you can just read the first sentence of each paragraph.

