Social media controls the world

[jeffd]

@Timex

For the vast majority of human history, humans lived pretty much exactly like their ancestors did.

Yes this is true.

@Timex

We are at the point where the technology curve starts going vertical.

This is false.

@Timex

We are able to research and create new things faster now.

Almost by definition technological improvements should manifest at the productivity frontier, which is the developed world. This has not been the case. The rate of new inventions has actually slowed, I believe. The rate of productivity growth at the world frontier has dramatically slowed.

@Timex

The reality is, modern computing and telecommunications has itself dramatically accelerated the ability of humans to share information and conduct research.

I have no doubt that this is true. It’s the value of that research that is in question. It may be at some point that this ability to do research yields something as profound as the ability to do useful work with electricity. That has not happened yet.

@Timex

I think maybe you are just somewhat numb to the rate of technological change that has existed in your lifetime. But the stuff you have seen change in your lifetime dwarfs what our grandparents saw.

And I think your’e present-biased and displaying a pretty striking degree of ignorance about what the world was like before our grandparents were born. Go borrow Gordon’s book from the library and give the introduction a read.

[Enidigm]

@jeffd

I don’t at all dispute that this is and has happened; I simply dispute its significance thus far compared to the most profoundly life-altering developments in the history of human society.

Almost certainly computerization is a side effect of mass electrification - basically all entertainment and communication today, and a huge portion of business efficiency gains, is. So if you want to say electrification is the real game changer that imo, perfectly valid.

The reason that the curve isn’t going vertical is basically energy. On a reealllyy, from orbit view of human development, it’s basically a history of energy. Agriculture was enormously influential because, in essence it was a massive gain in “energy” use. So was slave labor. So was the sail, the wheel, the cart, ect. But big “I” industrialization was such a big deal because it was an entirely new source of energy being harnessed that had never been used before (really); oil and gas even more so.

[jeffd]

@Enidigm

Almost certainly computerization is a side effect of mass electrification - basically all entertainment and communication today, and a huge portion of business efficiency gains, is. So if you want to say electrification is the real game changer that imo, perfindooectly valid.

Even if you carve out computers and the internet as a separate space from electrification–which I think is fair–I do not think that having Fortnite and Netflix is quite as profoundly life-changing as (say) electric lighting and indoor plumbing. I mean don’t get me wrong, I like having access to lots of movies, but if you gave me a choice between giving up Netflix and giving up flushing toilets I know which one I’m choosing.

And for what its worth: the data are uniformly with me here! It really is the case that it’s hard to find a big economic impact for the internet and computers. People have tried; it’s a bit of an enduring mystery. There are various competing hypotheses; here are some that I think are more compelling:

• Most of the productivity benefits of computers and etc were booked in the 90s when workplaces first went digital. This coincides with a bit of a productivity spurt, so it seems that this is at least part of the story.
• A lot of the benefits for the internet and etc are not for productivity but rather leisure. People argue that leisure time is much higher quality than it was forty or seventy years ago. In 1940 if I wanted to read I was restricted to whatever magazines, books, and newspapers I happened to have in the house. In 2024 I can basically read almost anything ever written by a human being. Similarly I have access to pretty much every film ever made, and video games are pretty damn amazing as well.
• The internet has created a lot of unproductive bullshit work that offsets its productivity benefits. Think the kinds of things someone like Cal Newport writes about: endless email (or Slack or whateve) threads and etc that amount to a huge amount of human energy accomplishing approximately nothing.

[jeffd]

@Enidigm

The reason that the curve isn’t going vertical is basically energy. On a reealllyy, from orbit view of human development, it’s basically a history of energy. Agriculture was enormously influential because, in essence it was a massive gain in “energy” use. So was slave labor. So was the sail, the wheel, the cart, ect. But big “I” industrialization was such a big deal because it was an entirely new source of energy being harnessed that had never been used before (really); oil and gas even more so.

Also this is (more or less) part of the story that Gordon is telling; he identifies the internal combustion engine & electrification as two of the five or six “big” technologies on which modern economic growth was based (the others were I think refrigeration, antibiotics, and probably one or two I’m forgetting).

I also agree that when I think about what might actually lead to major gains in living standards “energy is abundant and virtually costless” probably gets you a revolution comparable to the 1870-1970 period.

[Timex]

@jeffd

Also this is (more or less) part of the story that Gordon is telling; he identifies the internal combustion engine & electrification as two of the five or six “big” technologies on which modern economic growth was based (the others were I think refrigeration, antibiotics, and probably one or two I’m forgetting).

Wait… I just realized that you are talking about Robert Gordon from Northwestern.

Gordon says that the third major technological revolution was computers and the Web.

[jeffd]

You didn’t finish the sentence. Or maybe the reading? :)

He identifies the third major technological revolution as computers and the Web, and goes on to point out that this revolution was not associated with the dramatic changes to standards of living as the previous ones were.

Which of course just brings us back to…

@jeffd

This is actually one of the great mysteries of the internet: we can see the internet everywhere, except in the growth numbers.

[Timex]

Well Gordon was mainly looking at how they created bursts of economic growth. He wasn’t even really looking at them from a technology impact.

I think there’s probably something to be said for the fact that when the third industrial revolution happened, we were already living at pretty much the peak of human quality of life.

But also, that’s different from what you first said, which was this:

@jeffd

if you took someone living in 1870 and dropped them into 1940, they’d find themselves in a world that was almost utterly alien. Take someone from 1940 and drop them into 2010 and while certainly there are advances, pretty much everything around them with the exception of computers is just an improvement over what was already there.

This is not what Robert Gordon is talking about. Economic growth and technological change are not directly linked.

The reality is, the difference in the world between when my grandfather was born and when he died, is less than the difference in the world when I was born, and the world today, and I’m only halfway through my life.

[jeffd]

@Timex

The reality is, the difference in the world between when my grandfather was born and when he died, is less than the difference in the world when I was born, and the world today, and I’m only halfway through my life.

So what you’re saying is given the choice between Fortnite and the indoor flushable toilet, you choose Fortnite?

[Timex]

@jeffd

So what you’re saying is given the choice between Fortnite and the indoor flushable toilet, you choose Fortnite?

If you think that the ultimate manifestation of modern computing technology and telecommunications is Fortnite, I think we’ve found the issue.

[TheWombat]

@jeffd

This is to me just not true. I’m going to paraphrase Bob Gordon, who wrote the book about this subject: if you took someone living in 1870 and dropped them into 1940, they’d find themselves in a world that was almost utterly alien. Take someone from 1940 and drop them into 2010 and while certainly there are advances, pretty much everything around them with the exception of computers is just an improvement over what was already there. And while the computers are nice, they are simply not life-altering in the way things like electrification and antibacterials are.

Put differently: if the internet was as revolutionary as you claim we’d have seen a sea change in economic productivity, and we simply don’t. This is actually one of the great mysteries of the internet: we can see the internet everywhere, except in the growth numbers.

I’m glad the discussion this sparked is happening, as it’s probably more important than what you or I think. I still disagree with you–I think the fundamental changes in how we think, how we process and view information and knowledge, and how our culture operates will, in the long run, be far more significant than most other things. I don’t think economic productivity is the best measure of change–it’s a great one in some ways, but far from sufficient to act as the be-all and end-all barometer.

To put it differently: the Internet has and will continue to fundamentally change what it means to be human in a social and cultural environment, and will do so more thoroughly and more dramatically than anything in our prior history. That, of course, is simply my take on it, and there are many other ways to parse all of this.

Maybe I’m biased, too, because as a teacher, I see the incredible and unmistakable differences between students in, say, the 1970s, and students today. Not just the tools they use, but the way they think, learn, conceptualize, interact, predict, plan, and operate in all areas have changed–and in nearly every case IMO, the prime reason is modern communications and data technology, aka the Internet.

[jeffd]

I’m being flippant, of course, but it’s in service of demonstrating my point: the telecommunications changes of the previous thirty or so years really are not all that profound in terms of their impact on human living standards. That’s not to say they’re not great, nor is it to say that they might not become profound. And contrary to your claims, they simply don’t hold a candle to the kinds of technological change we saw in the 1870-1970 period: things like electrification, refrigeration, vaccination, antibiotics, automobiles, and aircraft.

I brought up Fortnite because leisure really is one area that has been enhanced by digital tech. You sort of alluded to this yourself:

@Timex

You show a smartphone to someone from 1940, and they’re going to think it’s fucking magic. A tiny box you put on your pocket, that tells you the answers to literally any question you could ask, can play music, has every book ever written. Can speak every language.

This really is amazing and magical and… most of what you wrote is just cool stuff to do for fun.

[Timex]

@jeffd

This really is amazing and magical and… most of what you wrote is just cool stuff to do for fun.

Ah, I think this is the disconnect here. Computers and the Internet are more than just fun.

Let’s take as another example from history, the printing press. What was the direct impact on rate of economic growth that stemmed from the printing press? In truth, probably not that much compared to lots of other technologies. Certainly nothing like what we saw with the steam engine. Yet, I would argue, and I think some would agree, that it had a fairly profound impact on Western, and thus human, civilization. It had large sociopolitical impacts.

I would argue that while the printing press may have had less direct impact on economic growth, and thus human standard of living, than many other technological innovations, it had a significant impact on how humans thought. It changed the way they perceived the world.

Computers and the Internet have had a similar impact (while ALSO driving massive economic activity).

The ideas that you are exposed to, are dramatically more varied than what prior generations were exposed to. Let’s just look at the trivial example of Robert Gordon’s book. 50 years ago, even if that book got published (which is certainly not a given), what are the chances that you would have ever encountered it? If it happened to be in the limited stock of a bookstore that you happened to wander into. Or maybe you might encounter in the limited stock at your local library? If you were pointed to it by Krugman, then maybe you wouldn’t have even seen that article, unless you bought the NYT.

Or consider us having all these discussions we do here on this forum. People from all over the world, from all walks of life, talking about all kinds of random stuff. You know how it used be? Like… In the 90’s? You talked to people in your immediate vicinity. The Internet gives you the ability to be exposed to tons of new stuff that you would never otherwise have encountered.

I have this cartoon on my wall in my office.

Look at the impact of cell phones and computers on major international events, like the Arab spring. Or more recently, consider how greater access to information shapes your views regarding things like the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without modern telecommunications, the reality is that most of us probably wouldn’t even know anything was going on. It would just be some random people on the other side of the planet killing each other, just like Europe was to Americans just prior to our entry into WWII.

I think that even if we were to stipulate that the Internet and computers had no direct benefit to human existence (which I do not agree with, but for the sake of argument), I think that you can make an argument that by democratizing the production and distribution of information, you fundamentally change human society, by changing the information people are exposed to, and thus changing the way they think about the world.

[Timex]

Speaking of changing how humans think, this just showed up in my feed.

When you have an obscure question and can't find the answer

[Mark_Asher]

Going from horses to cars was a big change. Going from an outhouse to indoor toilets was just a convenience. I doubt planes made a huge difference in most people’s lives even by 1940. How many people could afford a ticket? And trains still went everywhere in the US.

Spaceflight just expanded our knowledge. How did ordinary lives change because we landed on the moon? Tang? Ha.

Computers and the internet have certainly expanded our access to information, and that’s a big deal. I think they have also enabled us to isolate more and be less social, so that’s maybe a minus.

If I was going to pick one post 1940 thing that has had a really dramatic impact, I’d pick the advances in medicine. We can fight disease better and we can extend lives and help alleviate the debilitating effects of poor health.

And let’s not forget the Civil Rights movement post 1940s. That’s huge. That changed the lives of millions of disadvantaged people, even if there’s still a lot of work to do. Same with the movement for equality for women. Think of the jobs pre-1940 that women could be hired for and think of how many more opportunities they have today, even if there’s more work to be done.

[Thrag]

Thank you for sharing.

[Calelari]

@Mark_Asher

Going from an outhouse to indoor toilets was just a convenience

As someone who actually did that, I can assure it was a lot more than that

[Mark_Asher]

@Calelari

As someone who actually did that, I can assure it was a lot more than that

Just curious, but how? My father grew up with an outhouse and all he said was it was cold in the winter. I certainly understand that indoor plumbing is a lot more pleasant, but an outhouse isn’t exactly like squatting in the woods, is it?

I’m sure my dad was used to stuff like going outdoors. They had a Franklin stove for heat. He said in the winter they piled on the blankets but they could still see their breath at night in bed. So the cold was something they got used to.

[abrandt]

@Calelari

As someone who actually did that, I can assure it was a lot more than that

What was the measurable economic impact of your toilet upgrade?

[Matt_W]

@jeffd

Go borrow Gordon’s book from the library and give the introduction a read.

Damn son, that’s a deep Will Hunting cut.

FWIW, you convinced me about the relative significance of various techo revolutions. But it still is hard to be a parent now!

[sillhouette]

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