[HN Gopher] The world of tomorrow
___________________________________________________________________
The world of tomorrow
Author : diodorus
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-12-08 05:14 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (worksinprogress.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (worksinprogress.co)
| Animats wrote:
| That's the view from a country on the trailing edge. In Shenzhen,
| or Seoul, or Tskuba, or Tapei you'll find enthusiasm for
| technology.
|
| The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical
| distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets.
| Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business.
| Minivans only now.)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah this writer seems confused, by definition any above
| average group is more likely to regress to the global mean...
| Than to keep going upwards.
|
| That's the default, so any speculations/arguments/etc... should
| be written to show why the other direction is more likely than
| not.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It feels like we are instead bifurcating instead of
| regressing to a mean. The rich are getting richer and moving
| to one side together as a group, while the middle class and
| poor are merging the other way into their own "barely hanging
| on class", distributed around a point far on the other side.
|
| The average going up doesn't mean it's a tide that raises all
| boats.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Even a 30th percentile US household would be above average
| globally...?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| If only they also had access to goods and services at
| globally average prices...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How does that relate to the phenomena of regression to
| the mean?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In that it's tricky to identify the right mean to measure
| the regression against.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It doesn't matter which one you pick, there are no known
| exceptions to the general phenomena.
|
| That's why I said by definition.
| Danmctree wrote:
| By what definition? It's certainly possible that some
| kind of societal bell curve or other distribution can
| just keep getting wider without meaningful movement of
| the relative positions of individuals. I don't understand
| why you assume the most likely behavior is regression to
| the mean. Especially on short terms that seems weird to
| assume
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Who is assuming a short term?
| DennisP wrote:
| For cars the US does have Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian. The first
| two are vertically integrated, making as many of their own
| components as possible.
|
| We also have Intel, and a pretty great rocket company.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _For cars the US does have Tesla (...) We also have (...) a
| pretty great rocket company_
|
| And yet you all wish you didn't. Well, maybe not everyone,
| but it's the dominant view.
|
| This brings back a memory of a HN comment from a little over
| a decade ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128
|
| I'll just quote it in full:
|
| <quote cite='natural219'>
|
| If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of
| Silicon Valley -- the belief that some people, at least, can
| rise above petty human squabbling and competition and are
| legitimately working to better humanity -- look no further
| than this thread. Every top comment is a skeptical one. "This
| is clearly a great PR move, but has no teeth." "How do you
| enforce this guarantee?" Etc.
|
| These are reasonable questions, but as Shaw said, all
| progress comes from unreasonable men. I cannot help but be
| fundamentally depressed as I read these comments. In my view,
| Elon Musk has, moreso than any other human except maybe Bill
| Gates, given every absolute inch of human effort and genius
| to fight to solve the world's biggest problems. And all we
| have for him, after benefiting freely from the fruit of his
| labor, is skepticism. We want more. It's not enough. It's
| never enough.
|
| Yes, Tesla Motors is a company operating in a media-hyped
| 2014 America. I know some of you are butthurt that he engages
| in the same "dishonest" PR tactics that other companies do.
| _GET THE FUCK OVER IT_. The end product he 's producing will
| _save humanity_. That all of America has not rallied behind
| Musk and Tesla as the most important movement and achievement
| in the last 100 years of human history absolutely blows my
| mind.
|
| Not only do we not recognize his goals or his achievements,
| we actively try and bring him down and shit on his
| accomplishments. "Well, they invented a pretty cool electric
| motor, sure, but they were kind of dishonest in that one
| press release that one time."
|
| Go fuck yourself.
|
| I want to say "I'm done with Hacker News", but we know that's
| not true. I'm supremely disappointed in all of you. Godspeed,
| Musk. I thought this was a great announcement, and I'm behind
| you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our
| shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to
| faith.
|
| </quote>
|
| Elon Musk may have changed for the worse since then, but
| _nowhere near as much and as fast_ as our "shitty, myopic,
| destructive society", and in particular the Internet
| commentariat.
| DennisP wrote:
| Definitely not me. I was a huge Musk fan back in 2014.
| These days I'm less thrilled with his new focus on
| politics, but Tesla and SpaceX are more than just Musk and
| we're far better off having them. If not for these
| companies, we'd probably still be convinced by legacy auto
| that EVs weren't practical and nobody wanted them, and by
| legacy aerospace that reusable rockets were a bad idea and
| only large government-run projects could get to orbit.
|
| And that's just the beginning. Between Starship and FSD,
| the impact of these two companies could end up far greater
| than what we've seen so far. It'd be a shame to miss out on
| the sci-fi wonder of it all just due to the CEO's
| personality and politics.
| Animats wrote:
| > Elon Musk may have changed for the worse since then
|
| The drug use became known in 2017, and it seems to be
| getting worse.[1]
|
| The timeline of Tesla shows the successful innovation
| happening before then.[2] Then bad stuff started happening.
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-
| drugs-e826a9e...
|
| [2] https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-
| tesla-150889...
| naming_the_user wrote:
| Well said.
|
| In as much as I enjoy the discussions on this website
| (hence still visiting often...), I find there to be a few
| weirdly almost anti-factual positions.
|
| Elon hatred being one. The launch of the Model S as a mass
| market vehicle was _magical_. Like holy shit levels of wow,
| you can drive this thing across the US and then Europe with
| a charging network and it _works_ and it scales. Every EV
| on the market today owes its' existence to that success
| against the odds.
|
| A second one that comes to mind is the continuous bias
| against cryptocurrency with the refrain usually being that
| "it's not useful" or something. Exactly backwards - all of
| the scams and craziness and shitcoins etc are occuring
| precisely because it is useful, it's an absolute game
| changer to have a digital asset and despite even the
| maximalists worrying about things like 50% attacks or bugs
| we're 16 years on from bitcoin.pdf and it's STILL HERE.
|
| There are plenty of others, it's sometimes very difficult
| for me to fathom why the site seems to take irrational
| stances seemingly randomly.
| makeitshine wrote:
| There is plenty of disillusionment with the modern world in
| China and Taiwan and Korea.
| Saigonautica wrote:
| I immigrated to Asia around a decade ago and the relative
| optimism for technology and the future in general is one of the
| things that struck me as well.
|
| I mean, if you look for pessimism you'll find examples of that
| too -- but in broad strokes I would also describe the average
| perception as 'enthusiastic'. It's something I've have a hard
| time explaining to my North American colleagues.
|
| Maybe it just has to be experienced?
| Animats wrote:
| That's a result of massive recent change. The US hasn't had
| that, since the basic infrastructure was built long ago.
| Xunxi wrote:
| There are no consumer drone companies in the U.S. worth talking
| about right now.
| ben_w wrote:
| > The US can't even make a smartphone any more
|
| Has the US ever made one in the first place? IIRC Apple had to
| go to China for the first iPhone, were there any brands that
| could do it all in the US?
| kevindamm wrote:
| When Motorola was acquired, a plant was purchased (a formerly
| Nokia one in Fort Worth, Texas) and the Moto X line was made
| in the US [0].
|
| It was a short-lived experiment. Motorola was sold to Lenovo,
| and the plant shut down, within a few years.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/11/4717796/made-in-
| america-a...
| ben_w wrote:
| Nice find, short-lived explains why I'd not heard of it.
| Animats wrote:
| Early cell phone manufacturing was more automated than it
| is now. The "brick" type phones (Nokia, etc.) were a stack
| of boards with cutouts for the thick components. The whole
| stack was squeezed together and sometimes riveted. So the
| internals were well-supported and very tough.
|
| That kind of assembly could be totally automated. Pick and
| place to make the boards, stack and rivet to put it
| together.
|
| Modern phones have little pieces and wires all over the
| place.[1] You'd think these things would be designed for
| automated assembly, but they're not.
|
| [1] https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2020/11/15/part-2-ifixit-
| iphon...
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Palm pilot was manufactured in the US.
| ben_w wrote:
| And wasn't a smart _phone_.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| The treo was. Before that the vii was a smart pager. That
| is it piggybacked on the pager systems for wireless
| communication.
| Supermancho wrote:
| The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate
| class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives,
| in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly
| owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more
| evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty,
| pollution and apathy against these powers.
|
| To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet of
| these giants, driven by government action and populist
| initiatives. This has been at the cost of concentration and
| increases in pollution and poverty in the poorest nations. The
| future looks bleak today, as the divide grows and progressive
| progress has all but halted.
| ryandrake wrote:
| We're all so pessimistic about the future not because we think
| it's going to be captured by the plutocrats and oligarchs, but
| because we know the future _has already been preemptively_
| captured by them. They 're all doing the work now to cement
| their positions in the future, and there's nothing the rest of
| us can do about it.
|
| I don't know what great inventions and technological leaps we
| are going to see in 2030, 2040, or 2050, but what I do know is
| that the benefits and wealth from them will be captured by the
| same class that is capturing everything today.
| deadbabe wrote:
| That's what they want us to believe. But at the end of the
| day, we can always fight. There's little they can do to stop
| a massive violent uprising.
| TOGoS wrote:
| Or a massive not-violent one. Just stop working.
|
| The ruling class will bring the violence soon enough.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > Or a massive not-violent one. Just stop working.
|
| Can't happen. As soon as significantly many people stop
| working, the remaining will be offered larger salaries to
| keep working. That is why revolution against the modern
| power structure is so hard: because there are economic
| incentives against revolution for the working class.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| There's plenty they can do. For one, control all your media
| (for example banning of tiktok, since chinese oligarchs are
| not aligned with our oligarchs), with control over media
| they can prevent your message from getting out (e.g. Luigi
| Mangione's manifesto being disappeared), or if the message
| does get out they can spread propaganda to turn the
| population against you (see, BLM and many other movements).
| Also they can remove all your privacy so that any
| subversive action has a high social cost such as losing
| your job. Also they can overspend on a stifling police
| state even as surveillance and control tools get better and
| cheaper.
|
| Really, they're getting better and better at this, they
| have tons of practice and their population control tools
| are getting better.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > That's what they want us to believe. But at the end of
| the day, we can always fight. There's little they can do to
| stop a massive violent uprising.
|
| The problem with revolution in today's society is that it
| will be a revolution against a system that provides little
| trivial comforts, rather than a revolution against a system
| causing starvation. Thus, it will take much more work to
| revolt, as it is a revolution against technology itself.
| dsign wrote:
| > I don't know what great inventions and technological leaps
| we are going to see in 2030, 2040, or 2050, but what I do
| know is that the benefits and wealth from them will be
| captured by the same class that is capturing everything
| today.
|
| I have good news and bad news. The world doesn't stand still.
| There are some iterations that destroy the structure of
| society, after which a new structure must be built. The
| oligarchies of today will meet their end at some point. And,
| no amount of preemptive effort can prevent that. That's as
| the good news go, in as much as they are good news.
|
| These are not my ideas exclusively. If you want to hear them
| from people that has dedicated a fair amount of time at
| exploring this subject and gathering data, I recommend these
| books:
|
| - Capital in the Twenty-First Century, for an overview of
| historical change. You will find that the author agrees with
| you in many accounts.
|
| - The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Josph A. Tainter.
|
| - Principles for dealing with the changing world order.
|
| The bad news is that the most likely iteration coming around
| the corner is human's lost of control of our societies in
| favor of machine intelligence. It's not going to be as
| "peaceful" as the rise of the post WWII world order, but I
| hope that we survive.
| shadowerm wrote:
| As if all us peasants are using rotary phones while the
| plutocrats and oligarchs have these expensive iphones.
|
| What is actually interesting is while the plutocrats and
| oligarchs have more leg room and better food on their private
| jet, the airplane itself doesn't move that much faster than
| me in coach.
|
| You simply underestimate the financial mass of the mass
| market. These plutocrats and oligarchs only exist as part of
| a system with an even bigger mass market.
|
| This time is not different.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > As if all us peasants are using rotary phones while the
| plutocrats and oligarchs have these expensive iphones.
|
| What is interesting is that expensive iPhones are really
| not that great for society in the first place. It is not
| that they have iPhones and we don't. Rather, it is that we
| have iPhones and that is how we are controlled and the
| return isn't worht it.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| They are working on automation to replace the bigger
| system, they rely on.
|
| China just rolled out a police drone, even though china has
| more than enough people to train for that job.
|
| This is where my dystopian nightmare begins. Autonomous
| weapon systems, so targeted and unlimited in reach and
| capability, that no number of civilians thrown into the
| frey will make a difference. A single machine gun could
| have stopped the french revolution, and yes, i think humans
| are very much capable of pressing that button.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > I don't know what great inventions and technological leaps
| we are going to see in 2030, 2040, or 2050, but what I do
| know is that the benefits and wealth from them will be
| captured by the same class that is capturing everything
| today.
|
| Due to the laws of diminishing returns, the inventions aren't
| going to be that great and in fact actively destructive as we
| are basically running the world on innovation, rather than
| creating innovation for the world.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "Soylent Green" seems more and more prescient. I'm not talking
| about turning people into food -- not even the over-population
| fracas depicted in the film (that seems to have been a
| distinctly 70's-era fear).
|
| Seeing the film again I notice the way it portrays the
| untouchable wealthy classes (briefly) and then the rest of us.
| (I should read the book [1] because I was intrigued by little
| scenes like the one with the old people in the library -- if
| you even remember that bit.)
|
| [1] "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison
| android521 wrote:
| without the so called "corporate class" or capitalists and
| their relentless effort to pursue wealth, everyone would be
| worse off today. Billons died from communist wet stream in the
| 20 century but the lessons are still not learned. Yes,
| government regulation is important but capitalism is the reason
| why millions of people are not starving today unlike any other
| periods in time.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Billons died from communist wet stream in the 20 century
| but the lessons are still not learned
|
| Billions didn't.
|
| USSR census population in 1989 was only 286 million total,
| while the Holodomor and the Cambodian genocide combined were
| between 4.4-8 million.
|
| And the Holodomor (and broader famine in the rest of the
| USSR) looks suspiciously similar to the failure mode of the
| British government with the Irish potato famine and the
| Indian famines under British rule, each of which played a
| part in those people wanting independence, as does the
| Chinese great leap forward's 15-55 million.
|
| Even with those, and the Chinese famine happened so soon into
| a transition away from agrarian society that to me it seems
| more like a tragedy than a consequence, _it 's still not
| billions_.
|
| No, what saved billions from starvation is fertiliser, and
| policies of subsidising over-production so that the bad
| harvest years food is merely expensive rather than
| insufficient.
|
| If it was "capitalism", then the Lassiez faire British empire
| wouldn't have had the Irish potato famine nor would the East
| India Company have been in charge for so many famines in
| India.
| kiba wrote:
| It's so easy to blame it all on the feet of oligarchs, but it
| is ultimately our collective responsibility. The democrats lost
| the popular vote. Think about that.
|
| Progress, or even the status quo as it is today is rejected by
| half of the population.
| mandmandam wrote:
| As if Democrats aren't owned by oligarchs.
|
| Look at who funds them. Look what they do, instead of what
| they say.
| kiba wrote:
| I don't see how that matter. There was a meaningful choice.
| mandmandam wrote:
| There _were_ some 'meaningful' differences (mostly in
| their rhetoric, but still) on some important issues.
|
| However, when both 'choices' are openly supporting a
| live-streamed genocide, then any 'meaning' in the choice
| is only for people willing to endorse Nazi-level crimes.
|
| ... Not Godwinning here, that's just a simple fact;
| backed up by basically every human rights organization,
| and the UN, and billions in unguided bombs, etc.
|
| _That 's_ why turnout for the Dems was so much lower, as
| polls and protests had unambiguously promised would be
| the case. That and the economy, which Democrats insisted
| is great even as people struggle to survive. Dumb
| strategy, but the strategists still got paid so...
|
| Democrats used to say, "Not everyone who votes for Trump
| is a racist - but they all decided it wasn't a
| dealbreaker"... Well, genocide is quite a bit worse than
| racism - even if you try to relabel it as 'sparkling
| ethnic cleansing lite', or 'deserved', or whatever.
|
| And here we are wondering why the future feels fucked
| up... Smh
| kiba wrote:
| I am not really going to argue on the issue of Palestine
| since that is apparently what you refer to, only to say
| that I still think there's a meaningful difference.
|
| _That 's why turnout for the Dems was so much lower, as
| polls and protests had unambiguously promised would be
| the case. That and the economy, which Democrats insisted
| is great even as people struggle to survive. Dumb
| strategy, but the strategists still got paid so..._
|
| Regardless of the Democrat's strategic mistakes, you
| can't avoid the responsibility of voters, who are
| supposed to be well informed, well educated, and
| difficult to fool. Democratic shooting ourselves in the
| foot is a collective sin.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > I am not really going to argue on the issue of
| Palestine since that is apparently what you refer to,
| only to say that I still think there's a meaningful
| difference.
|
| Yes, I'm referring to the genocide of Palestinians. It's
| not something I, or other American voters, could
| overlook.
|
| > you can't avoid the responsibility of voters
|
| No, and I don't, but when corporate media acts in
| lockstep with the duopoly's oligarch owners (hey, guess
| who owns corporate media) then voters can't take the full
| blame.
|
| Look at corporate media folding themselves into
| conniptions trying not to acknowledge that Americans
| response to the assassination of a mass murdering CEO was
| _glee_ , right across the political spectrum. Look at how
| they've twisted the 'conflict' (aka genocide) in Gaza.
|
| I'll say it one last time: If Democrats had wanted to win
| this election, they could have. _Easily_. _All_ the
| numbers, _all_ the polls, all the _world_ was telling
| Biden and Harris for the last year: Stop arming Israel.
| Stop vetoing ceasefires. Just do the absolute bare
| minimum so we can hold our noses and vote for you, as is
| tradition...
|
| Dems refused point blank. Trump's presidency isn't on
| voters, it's on the Dems themselves; and any analysis
| which misses this fact isn't worth a pig's fart.
| kiba wrote:
| _Yes, I 'm referring to the genocide of Palestinians.
| It's not something I, or other American voters, could
| overlook._
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think the issue of Palestinians
| are important driving issues to American voters. I wish I
| have a source to point to but this is based on what I
| read.
|
| _Dems refused point blank. Trump 's presidency isn't on
| voters, it's on the Dems themselves; and any analysis
| which misses this fact isn't worth a pig's fart._
|
| I have said it before, _collective responsibility and
| sin_. There 's no get out of jail free card for everyone.
| People made their decisions and now they have to lie with
| it. You can blame it on the oligarch or the media or
| whatever you want but it doesn't absolve voters of
| anything.
|
| The only people who can truly sleep at night with a good
| conscious are people who voted Democrats and campaign
| workers who's working hard to execute strategies.
|
| I wish I had engaged with my family more on political
| issues as they all voted for Trump in a battleground
| state. I won't be making that mistake again.
| mindslight wrote:
| There was certainly a meaningful choice, but it was
| between status quo conservatism where the plebs get
| thrown a few bones but no overall reform to ever-
| ratcheting corporate control, and spiteful populist
| destructive rage taking for granted everything we still
| do enjoy. Spite won. It's hard to tell if another Trump
| term will be merely another standard of living haircut
| via rampant inflation and corporate giveaways, or the
| actual end of US hegemony and western society, because
| the guy is a verbal diarrhea chameleon. But we as a
| society have bought the ticket, so I guess we're taking
| the ride regardless.
|
| It is unfortunate that we didn't have a Luigi Mangione a
| few years ago, and maybe a few copy cats. Not because
| escalating to that type of accountability dynamic is
| something to be celebrated, but rather because the wide
| outpouring of understanding is the type of unifying
| pressure relief valve our society desperately needs,
| instead of being divided and conquered by different
| flavors of authoritarianism.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > It's so easy to blame it all on the feet of oligarchs, but
| it is ultimately our collective responsibility. The democrats
| lost the popular vote. Think about that.
|
| Democrat or republican; both support the oligarchy in
| separate ways because both support the advancement of
| technology. And increasingly powerful technology supports
| oligarchy and that power structure cannot be stopped by
| democracy because democracy functions within technology.
| lkbm wrote:
| > This has been at the cost of concentration and increases in
| pollution and poverty in the poorest nations.
|
| Poverty is _way_ down globally. Poor nations are far from where
| they need to be, but we 've lifted a billion or so people out
| of abject poverty in my lifetime.
|
| Don't let a determination to believe everything is bad force
| you to ignore when things get better.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Just an illustration of this
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1341003/poverty-rate-
| wor...
|
| "nearly 38 percent of the world's population lived on less
| than 2.15 U.S. dollars in terms of 2017 Purchasing Power
| Parity (PPP) in 1990, this had fallen to 8.7 percent in 2022"
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > Don't let a determination to believe everything is bad
| force you to ignore when things get better.
|
| A decrease in poverty in this case though is traded by an
| increased addiction to what the oligarch provides. Is an
| entire society in a dystopia that provides the basic physical
| comforts but strips us of meaning in life a good end? I think
| not.
| slibhb wrote:
| This attitude is so common. It's obviously wrong. Humanity is
| richer and freer than ever. Here's a theory of why people spend
| so much time railing against modernity, capitalism, and "the
| corporate class":
|
| Humans used to have to labor all to avoid starvation. There
| were few choices and most of us we died in the town where we
| were born. Compare to today -- now, we have incredible freedom,
| cheap and delicious food, cheap ubiquitous entertainment, are
| more or less immune to the elements, and have tons of free
| time. But all of this freedom and plenty has forced us to make
| choices, and it turns out people aren't good at making choices.
| We struggle to not gorge ourselves on food or waste years of
| our lives on insipid entertainment. We would like to exercise,
| eat right, read books, learn things, contribute meaningfully to
| our areas of interest -- but most of us don't. Worse, we have
| no excuse for our choices because we are almost completely
| free.
|
| This dynamic leads to a situation where people hate modernity.
| Partly because making choices is hard and partly because our
| freedom makes it clear that our bad choices are our own fault.
| And so people long for a return to un-freedom. Many of us would
| rather be poor and starving than to have to make choices and
| face our own inadequacies.
| Teever wrote:
| No, people hate modern society because they understand that
| although things are better than they were they aren't nearly
| as good as they could be if it wasn't for rampant and
| unchecked corruption.
|
| What's worse is that people know that whole ecosystems and
| stable climate patterns are slipping away and will likely
| never come back.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > people hate modern society because they understand that
| although things are better than they were they aren't
| nearly as good as they could be
|
| How do you know how good things "could be"? Just because
| you can imagine something doesn't mean it's possible
| Teever wrote:
| That's just another way of saying that the way things are
| is optimal, and that we as a society have reached
| perfection, that we're doing our best.
|
| That is blatantly wrong. Better is always possible and
| the people who steal and cheat the system are the ones
| who deny that better world for us all.
|
| The Hitlers, the Putins, the Kochs and Epsteins and
| Madoffs of the world have made the world far worse than
| it needs to be for the absolutely worst personal reasons.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > How do you know how good things "could be"? Just
| because you can imagine something doesn't mean it's
| possible
|
| It's not necessary to know how good things could be. Part
| of the meaning of life is to work towards a good you
| think could be, and the modern oligarchy strips us of
| that right.
| JambalayaJimbo wrote:
| Do you think cost of living today is lower than it was 10,
| 20, 30 years ago? Do you think the average person today works
| more or less than before?
|
| Because I'm really curious what you mean when you say we're
| more free than ever. Free time especially is what eludes most
| people of my peer group; endless tv shows to stream is
| meaningless without free time for example.
| ben_w wrote:
| Globally? Sure, assuming cost of living is measured against
| a fixed quality standard.
|
| Specific countries may be failing to improve, but if you're
| from the USA remember that your country is 4.25% of the
| world, and very few of you were ever in abject poverty in
| the beginning of that timeframe.
|
| Global abject poverty as a standard is roughly "sleeping
| rough" in western terms (more precisely, it's 2.15 US
| dollars of purchasing power per day), and the number of
| people worldwide at that level has gone from 1930 million
| in 1994 to 1510 million in 2004 to 806 million in 2014 to
| 693 million today.
| yorwba wrote:
| It is easier for the average person today to achieve the
| standard of living of the average person 10, 20, 30 years
| ago, and it would've been impossible for the average person
| 10, 20, 30 years ago to achieve the standard of living of
| the average person today due to things that are cheap now
| not even having been invented then.
|
| But expenses expand to fill the available budget, so the
| actual cost of living is higher, as people earn more to
| spend more to get more.
|
| (If you wish you had more free time but don't negotiate a
| pay cut in return for shorter work hours, it just means you
| value the money more than your time.)
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Cost of living/spending power is not the same as quality of
| life. Mobile phones alone are an insane improvement in QoL.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| We've also destroyed a lot of social norms that used to help
| people make good decisions.
|
| Continuously making good choices is really difficult,
| especially when we have so many incredibly alluring
| distractions. Having some guard rails is a good thing for
| almost everyone.
| gessha wrote:
| "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the
| divine right of kings." Ursula Le Guin
|
| https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ursulakleguinnatio...
| negativez wrote:
| > When the future arrived, it felt... ordinary. What happened to
| the glamour of tomorrow?
|
| That's the... subtitle? Thesis statement? It's the first line
| after the title at any rate. I stopped reading as soon as the
| first paragraphs felt the need to define glamour. Anyone with a
| modicum of life experience should already intuit one obvious
| answer: glamour can only exist in brief moments in reality. "The
| Future" necessarily only exists in fiction, and fictional works
| can string together glamourous moments end-to-end indefinitely.
|
| But in real life, you can't keep the glamour turned on. People
| need to defecate, that toilet eventually needs be cleaned, and
| the sewage treatment plant needs to keep working. People have to
| start as infants that scream and adults that have to hold them
| and hear it, then toddlers that make messes everywhere, etc.
| Maybe dinners could all be glamourous, if you want it bad enough,
| but are you going to get up, do your makeup and put on your most
| stylish breakfast clothes everyday? Can you get away with the
| same outfit at lunch and still be glamorous?
|
| "Life" cannot be glamorous unless you are fabulously wealthy AND
| make very specific life choices.
| underlipton wrote:
| Growing up in the oughts, the future was Ghost in the Shell: SAC
| and Xenosaga and .hack//Sign and Gundam 00. I didn't see the
| dystopia; I imagined a glass metropolis beside a glittering bay,
| bleached and blue; VR diving into pools of ephemeral neon
| filament; trips to a space colony. The ISS had launched when I
| was in elementary school. 2012 came, and I graduated from
| college, and the Rift had its Kickstarter. I had a supercomputer
| in my pocket and a black president. Things seemed on track.
|
| Of course, Oculus dragged its feet until it was bought by
| Facebook, who dragged things even more. Obama droned weddings.
| The ISS prepares for reentry burn in a few years. Et cetera. All
| of it - the corporate politicking; the political atrocities; the
| logarithmic progression of scientific advances, where
| technological progress is overtaken by the social calamity it
| unleashes - predicted by the media that had set my mental image
| of the future in the first place. Whose fault is it that the
| future failed to materialize again? I'd say corporate greed and
| the captured institutions that are supposed to police them for
| the greater good, but the fact that we're seeing the dream die
| again means that laying blame might be futile (particularly if
| we're not going to actually do anything about the bad actors).
|
| Essentially, the Millennial era has been one where the glamour
| ghost came a-knockin' again, but the smart people who were paying
| attention already knew how the story goes. As for the rest of us?
| Mana du vortes.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| a view from a generation earlier:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39084117
|
| Re: Ghost in the Shell, I find it amusing that Gibson's 1984
| opening line: " _The sky above the port was the color of
| television, tuned to a dead channel._ " used to mean grey, but
| now could mean bright blue (or even black?) due to the march of
| progress...
| jprete wrote:
| The poetic meaning of the line still works. The sky, the
| symbol of boundless optimism, the place of open infinite
| wonder and possibility...reduced to meaninglessness, closed
| possibilities, and failed promise.
| underlipton wrote:
| I tend to think that the 90s actually did see its analogue to
| psychedelics in the internet. No need to be a psychonaut and
| fry your brain anymore; just surf the web. It's the same sort
| of ideal of connecting with universal knowledge.
|
| There's even a heuristic to track these kinds of awakenings,
| roughly, and I'm absolutely certain you're not going to guess
| it. Got it in your head? Okay, wrong, it was "landmark black
| cinema." The Wiz came out in 1978 after 4 years of the
| musical. In 1995, we had The Lion King, followed by the
| Broadway play in 1997. If you look for something repeating
| the pattern, you find Black Panther in 2018 (alongside a
| glamour around a specific component of the web, social media
| and the mature smartphone).
|
| I don't mean to make any sort of causative connection, but
| perhaps there is something about a widespread desire to "move
| forward" and "embrace openness" that also benefits the
| funding of these sorts of productions (and then the
| subsequent public enthusiasm for them upon release). And
| there's always a collapse back to conservatism shortly
| thereafter (Disco Demolition Day and Reagan; Bush and 9/11;
| COVID and its backlash, and the subsequent failure of Bernie
| Sanders to beat Joe Biden, and then Joe Biden/Kamala Harris
| to beat Donald Trump).
| cadamsau wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to look at artefacts of a past era and
| compare them to today.
|
| The only things preserved are the ones deemed worthy of
| preservation. That leads to a skewed perspective.
| AIorNot wrote:
| Well to state it somewhat pessimistically:
|
| 1. Thoughts about the future always reflect the anxieties and the
| ambitions of the present.
|
| 2. Today's world has become immersed in the dreary and often
| dystopian reality of that technology. Today we have Black Mirror
| instead of the Twilight Zone. People are more mature about the
| impacts of both world changing technologies and cultural
| paradigms forcing that technology into our lives weather we like
| it or not.
|
| 3. GenZ,Y and younger see Big Tech as evil or invasive but are
| addicted to it (Social Media, smart phones) in the way Boomers
| were addicted to cigarettes and TV
|
| 4. Our Oligarchical economy pushes us to eat meagerly from the
| wealth pot, while our day to day lives, from health care, to
| family cohesion, to social silos due to socializing online
| instead of in-person, jobs that lay us off at the drop of a hat,
| online apps that are convenient but remove human interaction and
| treat us like numbers to be managed.
|
| Also all that Impersonal Software that has no soul sucks the soul
| out of human users. -instead of chatting with the mailman, we get
| email marketing welcoming our birthdays, now personalized with
| GenAI. The same issues that we complained about during
| industrialization of cities gets amplified more with the web and
| mobile revolution - e.g. we are less socialized..
|
| basically we are more jaded after a century of unbelievable
| technological innovation.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _now personalized with GenAI_
|
| Has Philip K Dick called the 21st century better than Asimov or
| Clarke? https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-
| refused-to...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Curious. The article mentions Star Trek _three times_ , in all
| cases referring to The Original Series, while stating that
| "Outside of niche books and magazines, the golden age of
| optimistic science fiction did not exist.", which is surprising
| it how it missed the golden era of Star Trek, beginning with _The
| Next Generation_ (1987-1994), aka. _the_ reference work for
| optimistic future in popular sci-fi, subsequently followed by
| several more series and movies set in the same continuity,
| culminating with _Enterprise_ (2001 - 2005). That 's 18 years of
| stories about humanity enjoying Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space
| Communism aka. a post-scarcity society! Seven seasons of a show
| set on a starship that looks like a luxury hotel inside - because
| why wouldn't it be?
|
| People still joke about the carpets on starships (including in-
| universe in the recent shows), but honestly, you can pretty much
| measure how we've lost the optimistic future by tracking how Star
| Trek shows (including the post-2005 ones) got darker (literally,
| I'm talking about how the scenes were lit), the architecture less
| Hilton-like, and eventually, when carpets started to disappear.
|
| Apropos visual media, there's another example of an optimistic
| vision of the future, which the article _also_ indirectly
| mentions: Disney 's _Tomorrowland_ - not the fair, _the 2015
| movie_. Severely underrated, that one. I broke down in tears when
| I watched it (okay, I was in a vulnerable period), because it was
| an unexpected breath of pure optimism about progress. I mean, the
| movie is literally about the very thing the article talks about -
| it recalls the optimism of yore, presents a protagonist who 's
| asking herself and us, where did it all go wrong, and then
| tackles the question directly. The answer it gives may or may not
| be any good[0], but at least an attempt was made to talk about
| it. Sadly, this is the last attempt made so far in popular media,
| at least as far as I know.
|
| I'm puzzled as to why these two stories were not mentioned.
| They're not exactly outliers no one has heard of.
|
| --
|
| [0] - We're effectively fucking our own future up by only ever
| talking about disasters - past ones, current ones, and every
| plausible prediction of future ones - in a feedback loop with
| news and entertainment; we're simmering in despair, securing a
| doomed future by not being able to envision anything good as a
| society.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > measure how we've lost the optimistic future by tracking how
| Star Trek shows (including the post-2005 ones) got darker
| (literally, I'm talking about how the scenes were lit), the
| architecture less Hilton-like, and eventually, when carpets
| started to disappear.
|
| Yes, you could do that.
|
| Or you could just cite "Alien" (and arguably "Dark Star" before
| it) as the key break with "the future is bright and shiny and
| comfortable", long before 2005.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Dystopian and horror-oriented science fiction have existed as
| long as the genre. Optimism is hard to do in a way that is
| both believable and interesting, which at the time TNG ran
| was fairly successfully achieved for a large audience.
|
| I would argue that cynicism and fear-milking are easier paths
| (with certain exceptions for works which evoke multiple
| layered allegories and inspire contemplation), and I think
| this has become even more true in recent years for a host of
| reasons.
| avmich wrote:
| > Like Peter Thiel's famous complaint that 'we wanted flying
| cars, instead we got 140 characters'
|
| Wonder how it feels to be famous for a whining.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| This series might give you some insights.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfXbyQ9KFdg
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeDA8hwQ3Fo
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX-EgbauuOo
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8fBqRa2NLQ
| Sharlin wrote:
| Earlier submission with some comments:
| https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-world-of-tomorrow/
|
| Also, obligatory meta complaint: the site seems to break trackpad
| forward/back gestures at least on Firefox :/
| GoatOfAplomb wrote:
| That URL goes to the essay itself. Here's an earlier submission
| with comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355160
| Sharlin wrote:
| Uf, thanks, a copypaste brain fart.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _When the future arrived, it felt... ordinary. What happened to
| the glamour of tomorrow?_
|
| While I share your lament, witnessing feats like a Starship
| getting caught by giant chopsticks feels pretty darned
| extraordinary!
| animal531 wrote:
| As a kid I loved watching Beyond 2000 which basically featured
| all kinds of new inventions, prototypes and ideas.
|
| In a lot of ways it was the same as reading physorg or other
| sites that are filled with new groundbreaking research, most of
| which we will never hear from again.
| openrisk wrote:
| A great essay, worthy of detailed reading as it contains so many
| interesting connections and associations from the past to explain
| the present and maybe forecast the future.
|
| Just one example among the many:
|
| > Making family-sized dwellings abundant and thus affordable for
| most people would be the single most effective step toward
| restoring faith in progress.
|
| We are drowning in stochastic parrots and cryptographically
| minted "wealth" while very fundamental aspects of wellbeing are
| delegated to the dysfunctional, stagnating "technologies" of
| yesteryear.
|
| My only criticism would be the subtitle: no, the future when it
| arrived did not feel _ordinary_. It felt disconnected from the
| human predicament and ominous about our prospects.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| Fascinating read. This explains so much of the "crafts" movement
| I see in myself and friends.
|
| Bad food and shoddy material goods are practically free for a
| middle class person. It's easy to visit a big box store and get
| cheap, mass produced garbage. Food filled with preservatives,
| added sugar, and salt. Sawdust furniture that will barely stand
| up after assembly.
|
| Now so many people are getting into gardening, woodworking, and
| fitness. There's so much value in working with our hands after a
| day filled with zoom meetings.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I read this blog post the other day about the hedonic treadmill
| that influenced my thinking a lot:
|
| https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-aim-of-maximising-...
|
| Consider this 1940s ad for a "house that runs like magic",
| powered by gas:
|
| https://wip.gatspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AGAAd-1...
|
| I'm already living this dream life from the 1940s. I have a
| range, a refrigerator, "permanent hot springs", heating, and air
| conditioning.
|
| I've had that stuff all my life. It's normal for me. I don't
| appreciate it.
|
| Perhaps in addition to Progress Studies, we need some sort of
| neo-mindfulness gratitude journaling movement, focused on
| appreciating all of the awesome technology that's _already_
| widespread.
|
| People demonstrate sophistication by explaining why things suck.
| It's not cool or fashionable to dwell on life's simple pleasures.
| Perhaps it's time to take a bold stand for naivete.
| https://xkcd.com/606/
| Gravityloss wrote:
| One can go hiking or kayaking for a few nights or even just try
| to pitch a tent when it's sleeting. Ordinary stuff can feel
| much more appreciable after that. For a short while only
| though!
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the incredible
| conveniences we have at our disposal. Yet there are _still_
| many places around the world today which do not have clean
| water, let alone hot clean water, immediately, whenever.
| Refrigeration, painkillers, free time for hobbies, arts, and
| sports.
|
| Once you start thinking about all the things you already have,
| asking for more seems selfish. All I wish for is these 'basic'
| conveniences for everybody in the world, not just me and my
| peers.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The internet. (Almost) all the world's information, when I
| want it, for free. I don't even have to go to a library.
|
| Clean air.
|
| Enough food. Enough food that the problem is obesity, not
| starvation.
|
| Freedom to speak my mind.
|
| When you add it all up... wow. It's _immense_.
|
| We should have had this thread a couple weeks ago, at
| Thanksgiving.
| travisporter wrote:
| Everyday as I see 98 degree water go into the drain I feel
| really lucky and a bit privileged to live in a first world
| nation
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