Tech must teach society and customers how to unlock value

[Arthur Hanson]

Society in general has not figured out how to unlock the value of massive cheap memory and processing power. This requires an entirely different mindset, not just of a few people, but of an entire society literally extending from childhood to old age. Just making better, faster, more efficient products to move forward is in the past. Creating just the foundation of new, highly productive ecosystem is not enough. Tech must literally change our culture on a broad scale on how to utilize the vast power that most individuals, organizations and companies haven't figured out. The tech world has created more options at an ever-accelerating rate, but not integrated an ecosystem to extract their maximum value or even close. Just putting tech out there is no longer enough. Creating an ecosystem that can compound at an ever-accelerating rate as technology adds ever more power to an array of advancing and new technologies to empower people to advance themselves. A compounding ecosystem is among the most powerful ever as compounding is the most powerful force in the world. Any thoughts, comments or observations appreciated. It is way past time to extend the tech ecosystem to fully utilize its potential.

 

[ballsystemlord]

Based on my own observations, the outlook of companies and government is that people should get less access to the raw data and more access to carefully curated data. You needn't look far to see this. From gov funded research requiring people to pay to access the publications, to the big four (and now apple too), in the CPU/GPU space never talking about the internal workings of their products and using lawyers, not tech people, to write their patents, the desire to control the flow of information continues on at an ever increasing pace.

Subsequently, people have no reason to invest in a "highly productive ecosystem" because it's not possible, or it's highly difficult, to create such an ecosystem in the first place.

AI, which continues to advance to the point where it is now quasi useful, circumvents some of these problems by presenting us with a more distilled outlook on the data. But even AI will surely fall once companies and governments get hold of their own AIs and alter the information they put out to confuse, or even worse, intentionally mislead such automated helpers of humanity thus sending us into an even darker age of false education and false understanding.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

People investing in leveraging themselves and doing it by subscribing to platforms that filter information for them saving valuable time and using platforms and ecosystems to increase and broaden their capabilities at fraction of the time and cost of doing it themselves. Intuitive platforms are the future, and the builders of these ecosystems will be constantly updating these ecosystems to keep up with the latest information and updates. These ecosystems will not be free, but deliver tremendous value in time, money and resources. Those that don't will go out of business.

 

[Zaim]

As I understand, Mr. Hanson says that the technology provides means and capabilities but in order to cultivate those potential we, through multiple networks and ecosystem to the highest extent possible. These mean we as a society innovate at the same time continuously and fast to consume the potential that technology provides, such as cultivating the benefits of the technology to introduce new business models such as blockchain, Uber, and Airbnb. so this way the benefits that can be cultivated are multiplied. This in turn would affect the technology and the improvements that follow increase the diensions available through the network and multiply exponentially.

 

[ballsystemlord]

The problem with the optimistic approach, which Mr @Hanson employs, is that for something to get better, you have to have people that are willing to devote themselves to it.
As you point out, Mr @Zaim , there is a monetary incentive in some of these things. But for much of human history, even through to today, there was no such incentive for quality work. Take for example radio waves, no one knew how to make money off of them much less make them something of a necessity for daily life back when they were first discovered.
From personal experience also, people do the minimum required of them to get what they want in terms of goods such as money. This gets to the point where the work that needed done is never actually accomplished, until someone, such as myself, sets forth to do it. I've met some of those poor people who were in need and willing to pay only to get a shoddy job that serves no one.
This is the reason why, at least back in the day, that many college students would do work without charging anyone a penny. Mind, I'm not speaking of internships, I'm speaking of "The teacher needs help researching X," or, "Someone in field Y needs X job done. You get to do it for free." I say this as a second hand source. I know the original source and know these 2 tales to be true.

Now if I am wrong, if people will flock to jobs that need doing, and assist others to reach greater and greater heights, of intellect, prosperity, character, and any other goal you could find worthy of dreaming of, I would be most happy. I rather dislike being the pessimist, but it tends to be more accurate in my experience than any other viewpoint.
Just in Software, and this is my field though I strive for more, it is well known that binaries quickly stop functioning, whereas you can get a much longer lifespan, and increase it still more with a bit of effort, by using source code. And there are quite a few developers who say that they prefer not developing SW for a business because they can spend as much time and effort on it as they would like to so as to see their creation rise to it's summit of "doing one thing, and doing it well."
(My final point being that you have to love the work you're doing, or the people that you're doing it for.)

 

[M. Y. Zuo]

The problem with the optimistic approach, which Mr @Hanson employs, is that for something to get better, you have to have people that are willing to devote themselves to it.
As you point out, Mr @Zaim , there is a monetary incentive in some of these things. But for much of human history, even through to today, there was no such incentive for quality work. Take for example radio waves, no one knew how to make money off of them much less make them something of a necessity for daily life back when they were first discovered.
From personal experience also, people do the minimum required of them to get what they want in terms of goods such as money. This gets to the point where the work that needed done is never actually accomplished, until someone, such as myself, sets forth to do it. I've met some of those poor people who were in need and willing to pay only to get a shoddy job that serves no one.
This is the reason why, at least back in the day, that many college students would do work without charging anyone a penny. Mind, I'm not speaking of internships, I'm speaking of "The teacher needs help researching X," or, "Someone in field Y needs X job done. You get to do it for free." I say this as a second hand source. I know the original source and know these 2 tales to be true.

Now if I am wrong, if people will flock to jobs that need doing, and assist others to reach greater and greater heights, of intellect, prosperity, character, and any other goal you could find worthy of dreaming of, I would be most happy. I rather dislike being the pessimist, but it tends to be more accurate in my experience than any other viewpoint.
Just in Software, and this is my field though I strive for more, it is well known that binaries quickly stop functioning, whereas you can get a much longer lifespan, and increase it still more with a bit of effort, by using source code. And there are quite a few developers who say that they prefer not developing SW for a business because they can spend as much time and effort on it as they would like to so as to see their creation rise to it's summit of "doing one thing, and doing it well."
(My final point being that you have to love the work you're doing, or the people that you're doing it for.)

I wouldn’t even consider your viewpoint as “pessimistic”, it’s a reflection of reality.

There are many aspects of the human condition and the organization of societies that would hinder a positive feedback loop from forming.

Furthermore, there’s the danger of a negative and destructive feedback loop forming out of the same technological advancements, which is rarely ever speculated upon to the same depth.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

All this boils down to that those that know how to leverage time and resources at an ever increasing rate that is designed from the beginning to evolve will win the race and have ultimately the lower cost. Leveraging time, talent and resources is a separate skill set in itself and has to built into the foundation of an organization to be truly useful. This is actually a branch of industrial and systems engineering, which is a whole separate field separate from other engineering disciplines. In California it was recognized as a whole separate field of engineering to itself. My father was one of the founders of this area and sat on the first state board of registration in this area in California.

 

[ballsystemlord]

All this boils down to that those that know how to leverage time and resources at an ever increasing rate that is designed from the beginning to evolve will win the race and have ultimately the lower cost. Leveraging time, talent and resources is a separate skill set in itself and has to built into the foundation of an organization to be truly useful. This is actually a branch of industrial and systems engineering, which is a whole separate field separate from other engineering disciplines. In California it was recognized as a whole separate field of engineering to itself. My father was one of the founders of this area and sat on the first state board of registration in this area in California.

I'm going to make 3 points here.

First, you need people in order to even begin to optimize time and resources. This means that you need families who have children. Currently, the trend in the US job is to make it mandatory to employ both sexes in the workforce. When I was young, it was optional, but possible. Divorce reached its peak some time ago, and now people seem to fear becoming married (and fear commitment in general). I'm literally watching as romantic love is redefined from a romantic notion into either a form of insanity or a system of control. This notion is viewed as something to be shunned, feared, and struggled against as a form of "oppression".
And at the same time, tech companies are clamoring for more people to fill the high IQ job gap. If you don't "optimize time and resources" for the family, how do you propose to fill the high IQ job gap? If people grow up in a vacuum, instead of participating in a society of charity, due to the above and the need to "work work work", how will they develop a desire to improve the lives of others such that they can access this amazing "ecosystem of cheap memory and processing power"? How will they develop the desire to have children to inherit this ecosystem? What good is an amazing invention, ecosystem, or any other achievement if there's no one left to use it, or those that are cannot appreciate it?
Regular expressions have been around for many years and are quite amazing, though not perfect. How many platforms utilize them? Google, nope. Amazon, nope. Ebay, nope. Facebook, twitter, aliexpress, spotify, discord, instagram, linkedin, etc, etc, etc, nope, nope, nope AFAIK. Likewise with free (web portal) email services. What good is it to the average person to learn regular expressions if no resource they'd typically utilize supports regexes?

Second, these children then have to have a suitable upbringing such that they are able to achieve either equal, or greater feats than their parents before them. Hence, mirroring the behaviors of your parents (and relatives), and being taught by them such that education is individually optimized by those who know you best. This system, typically known as the home-school system (and includes interaction with grandparents and other relatives), has largely been replaced in recent years by the day-care and public school systems in the US. Who has more motivation to see each child succeed, the teacher who gets paid on Friday regardless of who fails and how many don't achieve their best[2], or the parents who have an evolutionary incentive (and an emotional one), to see that their children have the fullest of lives? And this can be seen in our lives right now. I have noticed, the lessons of the past that were learned by SW devs are absent in the "new blood" entering the market. Likewise, I can see this happening in other fields too.
Currently, the response from companies to the lack of suitably educated individuals is obvious: get higher IQ, lower income people into education systems which will produce "pigeon-holed" people who will fill exactly the spot you want to fill and no more. Does this address the underlying problems? Will you get "experts" by putting blinders on people's intellects? How about optimizing for understanding instead of pushing buttons and getting the "right" pixels to light up for a change?

Third, optimizing your time and resources has been around for a long time. For example, the US film "Cheaper by the Dozen" (the original), is a story told by a woman about her father who was employed as an efficiency expert. I don't see why, or how, after all these years we would be able to suddenly be, "better [at] leverage time and resources at an ever increasing rate." Even if we could do this, and evolution does push us to this, it would require that we overcome the forces that hold us back. Evolution only dictates that you have children and that they survive. It says nothing about choosing the optimal solution. And because the optimal solution is not always chosen, species like the dodo are no more. For an example in human history, and this happened in our modern age, lead was used in gasoline for many, many years before people decided to use ethanol instead of lead to stop engine knocking.
Having read up on the subject, innovation in the atomic sector has largely been ignored. The US has more nuclear plants that have been shut down than plants that have been opened since the year 2000[1]. This is occurring despite the fact that nuclear is cleaner than solar panels (I have the resources about this on my PC somewhere..).



[1]: https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-plant-license-information https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommissioning.html
[2]: Addendum: It occurs to me that someone will think, "Teachers who have students with poor grades will be fired. Therefore this is not a concern." Currently, the school district where I live has grade level literacy at just 20%. Before COVID, the grade level literacy was about 35% IIRC.