Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Techies Improving The World?
Slashdot reader marmot7 isn't impressed by "the latest app that solves some made up problem. I'm impressed by apps that solve real problems..."
I don't feel that developers, sys admins, finance people, even policy wonks focus on the problems that we need to solve to have a healthy functioning society. It seems like it's mostly about short-term gain and not much about making the world better. That may be just the way the market works.
Is it that there's no profit to be made in solving the most important problems? I'm puzzled by that as I would think that a good solution to an important problem could find some funding from somewhere but maybe government, for example, won't take investment risks in that way?
Is there a systematic bias that channels technology workers into more profitable careers? (Or stunning counter-examples that show technology workers are making the world a better place?) Leave your answers in the comments. Why aren't geeks doing more to improve the world?
Is it that there's no profit to be made in solving the most important problems? I'm puzzled by that as I would think that a good solution to an important problem could find some funding from somewhere but maybe government, for example, won't take investment risks in that way?
Is there a systematic bias that channels technology workers into more profitable careers? (Or stunning counter-examples that show technology workers are making the world a better place?) Leave your answers in the comments. Why aren't geeks doing more to improve the world?
What are the important problems we are supposed to be solving that we aren't?
If Slashdot is any indication, techies are too busy whining about Microsoft or decrying every new technology as somehow invading their privacy or otherwise harming them. Instead of actually doing something to solve the security problems and move those technologies along, the supposed techies are too busy wearing tinfoil hats. The techies really are a bunch of luddites who are standing in the way of innovation and solving problems. Anytime there's a new technology discussed on here, unless it involves Linux, everyone rushes to condemn it as harmful. Take off your damn tinfoil hats and do something productive to improve the world, for a change.
What could be solved by tech? And would people use that tech?
If you don't have an answer, throwing money at it won't make it happen. If you do, you'll likely have an answer why it isn't being done.
This problem sounds like a made-up problem. Nobody's cell phone app is going to cure cancer yet... but they ARE very useful for using cameras to deposit checks and file expense reports without any paperwork... I don't see what you're getting at... there is useless crap all over the place, everyone tries their hand if they are willing to do it, and if it's something that people want, they pay for it. If it's not, then they don't. The OP is clearly focused on one or two, or twelve apps or tech that are 'useless' but I wonder if they would stop a second and think just how fast the ENTIRE WORLD is changing right now... All the time.
Speak for yourself.
"SF tech culture is focused on solving one problem: What is my mother no longer doing for me?"
Not much world changing going on in that paradigm.
Big companies do put lots of money at trying to change the world (usually in a way that also benefits them) but rarely succeed.
Most of us who entered science and academia did so to make the world a better place, and many of us are techies. You'd be amazed at home much coding and tech is required for pretty much every area of science today.
We're writing open source software to solve real problems in science and engineering. We're spending the last of our startups on open access for our papers because it's the right thing to do. We're contributing to open data repositories because sharing data makes all our work better. We're writing free content on blogs, code tutorials, and MOOCs for public outreach, because we view our roles as educators seriously.
Most people in academic endure years of low pay and job uncertainty as postdocs and entry-level faculty--and defer or postpone indefinitely having children and buying that starter home--rather than faster and better-paying paths in industry, IP law, and mathematical finance because we do want to make the world a better place, and we're actively working on it.
So, while I agree with your general feeling, take a look around, and you'll see more techies trying make a difference that you might have realized.
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
There seems to be a definite correlation between technical ability and lack of empathy. It's not totally determinative; there are plenty of technical people who are deeply compassionate. But on average? Probably noticeably less than the population as a whole.
Is not the genius required to keep existing infrastructure stable and feed the pace of technological advancement enough?
Have we become so jaded to the incredibly fast rate of advancement that the everyday heroes who make this happen are not enough?
Are we so self-centered in the wealthy developed parts of the world that we can't see the benefits that the rapid decrease in the cost of anything less than the absolute cutting edge have brought to poorer parts of the world?
The problem is cultural. We do not champion the production of things that enrich society in general, especially if they have no, or little, profit attached.
Speaking for myself, my whole resume as a Systems Engineer contains nothing organizations who either were directly involved in education, or served that market.. Those have been my sole employers. I've always been paid below market as an employee.
And I've always been looked at as an anomaly. Sometimes even derided. One time there was an offer that was $60,000 above what I was making. It was for a Fortune 10 company- which I turned down. Boy did I earn a high level of scorn from my friends and family who valued the paycheck over the work.
Am I the only one? I highly doubt it.
If you tally up the number of children that were educated by systems I designed- the number is conservatively above 7 million.
Was it worth it? You're goddamned right it was.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Developers and other "geeks," as the OP calls them, aren't ever going to solve cultural problems. And that's where most of the world's problems come from.
... what, apps that teach people not to have so many babies? Apps that convince people that chopping down the rainforest so they can make ends meet on their poor rural farm this month? Apps that try to tell fishermen not to over-fish in sensitive areas because, really, do their customers really need that fish dinner after all?
Far too many people having too many babies in parts of the world that can't support those populations and thus the resulting strife and misery? Cultural problem.
Far too many parents being completely disengaged with their kids' education, or too dumb themselves to contribute to it? Cultural problem.
Sense of entitlement causing resentment instead of inspiring the creativity and productivity that comes without being raised in a state of feeling owed things? Cultural problem.
All sorts of ecological messes and resource shortages? Cultural - see first example. Persistent friction between modernity and retrograde medieval thinking, including blowing up pressure cooker bombs in NY (as we had again, tonight)? Cultural problem. There's plenty more in the way of examples. App developers suddenly deciding to stop trying to become financially stable and instead put their waking ours into
What does the OP actually envision, here? Since that wasn't even alluded to, he sounds just like the over-serious girl from (was it Animal House?): "I don't know how anyone can have a party [or was it a dance?] when there are hungry people in the world!"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I have no obligation to sacrifice my unpaid free time simply because I have a set of skills.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
So what sorts of problems does the submitter think we should focus on? World hunger? Poverty? Disease? War?
These are very hard problems to solve. All of these have been around since the dawn of humanity, and nobody has come up with an all-encompassing solution yet.
The problems with the big problems are more than technological -- they're political. No amount of technology is going to be able to solve poverty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (for example), when the government is corrupt and the rule of law and human rights aren't being observed. Even in a Western country like the United States, you can't fix poverty when many people blame the poor for their own situation and there is no political will to provide a minimal level of social assistance.
That said, where there is a political will, technology is already helping solve big problems. Solar cells are bringing inexpensive electricity to villages in poor countries. Software hoping with resource allocation helps aid agencies ensure they have food stocks of adequate quantities where they are needed most. Vaccines and modern medical technology are having a major impact on disease -- we've rid the world of smallpox, and we're really close to eradicating polio.
Hard problems are hard. I know we in technology like to think of ourselves as solving hard problems, but pervasive political problems are way bigger than what technology alone can resolve.
Yaz
Your question implies the following:
I'm not sure that any of these is strictly true, and I'm nearly positive that we'll only know most of those answers in hindsight.
How about race relations? There's no app for that. War? You can't solder-up a PCB that convinces governments to stop murdering each other's citizens over differences of opinion.
Speaking of governments, what would a "techie" solution to government oppression look like? We have Tor, cryptocurrencies, steganographic filesystems, and mobile devices that would destroy the data on them before giving it up to an intrusive search, and look at how governments react.
That said, how about some of the areas where technology absolutely has worked on big problems?
Do you think climate change is a big problem? Do you think that the amount of power consumed by information technology globally is a terrifying figure in the face of anthropogenic climate change? This is a problem we know how to fix in "tech," and we're working on it.
Deaths due to traffic accidents? Computer vision and distributed coordination algorithms are at the core of self-driving automobiles.
How about 3D-printed prosthetics, or the medical industry in general? Data processing revolutionized drug research and genome work. Sure, there are more people doing silly apps than designing new systems for doing drug interaction simulation because one requires connections to established research labs, years of work, very expensive studies of efficacy, a decade of postsecondary education to have the domain-specific knowledge, and a hardware budget that runs into the millions; the other requires a crappy $300 laptop and some free software.
If there's a big problem out there that you want solved, either put up, pay up, or shut up.
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
So, marmot7...why aren't you working to make the world a much better place, if it's so easy? What makes all the other techies responsible for improving your world in the manner you think is most correct?
Hard problems have no simple answers. Being a techie is not like being Gandalf the fucking Magician...the reason that there's so much discussion around hard problems is that, despite the efforts of many, a solution has not yet been found, and being a techie doesn't grant some mystical ability to solve any problem on command.
This is not a moral failing of others, it's just the fact that these are hard problems. And the fact that you don't live in a perfect utopia is not because everyone else is greedy, lazy, selfish or short-sighted. Get over yourself, kid.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Saying that folks aren't making apps that benefit a healthy, functioning, society is a useless statement without specifying what apps would achieve or work toward that goal. Additionally, smart phone apps can't really solve the world's real problems. Violence due to religious extremism isn't going to be negated by a phone app. An app that shows food shortages and food surpluses isn't going to fight world hunger unless someone will pay for the cheap surplus food and transportation.
In common cases where an app would help, apps are available. Some things are too big for a cell phone app, and generally software is available for those problems. If there is a problem where software is a solution, I wish I knew what it was, as do others who would solve the problem quicker than I, and likely profit from making the world a better place.
I could be wrong, feel free to disagree.
Digital Agriculture! * Ohio State U, Columbus * Iowa State U, Ames * U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (MidwestBigDataHub.org) * John Deere, Climate Corporation, GeoSys, others Badly need tech people that can come up with data analysis algorithms to effectively process field/air-sensor-gathered data into prescriptive recommendations fed back into farms manually/automatically for profitable, sustainable results (hopefully without further empowering Bayer-Monsanto).
It sounds like the majority of people don't share your priorities or preferences, as their actions demonstrate. Resolving the problems that you care about are not on top of their ranking.
Maybe you should persuade people to see your way. Instead of some spending that you think is not essential, they should spend their money on some more worthwhile project.
For example, I like Literacy Bridge, which is a device to spread important knowledge in remote and under-developed regions of the world.
"Literacy Bridge saves lives and improves the livelihoods of impoverished families through comprehensive programs that provide on-demand access to locally relevant knowledge. At the heart of the programs is the Talking Book, an innovative low-cost audio computer."
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Most people don't give a crap about their fellow human.
People think mostly of the benefit to themselves, then their families, their race, their country, their pets, and rarely do they care anything about a random human especially in Africa or some other place. It's human nature, at best some humans care about their family or country more than themselves but mainly this is the order. They actively try to eliminate and discredit anyone who dares care about random humans. That's just the way it is. Humans.
Then profitable careers provide the funding for more meaningful activity outside of work, and that allows them to do good in the whole world (local and global). Even for those stuck in day jobs making back-scratcher apps for the leisure class of the ultra-wealthy.
As a coatings chemist, then Technical Director, I developed the first low VOC waterborne coating for computers that lowered the bake from 30 minsutes at 350F to 30 minutes at 150F. I knew the otherwise thermoplastic resin self-condensed (crosslinked) at 140F, so no hazardous melamine or urea were needed to develop the office chimerical resistance (cleaners, foods) that was specified, either. This was around 1978. It was developed originally for Digital. Customers took forever to approve it even though it met their specs. How could a low polluting. energy saving waterborne acrylic be as good as a high temperature bake polyester coating with 6 pounds of hydrocarbons per gallons? Give the younger techies an opportunity to try new ideas. Let them make a little dent. All the little improvements add up to less energy use and cleaner air.
What could possibly bias people toward careers that offer a comfortable life instead of poverty!?!?
While he ignores safety engineering in every project, and outsources testing to the ill-informed consumers resulting in their deaths during normal use of products. So at best his character is a wash, and at worst he's really a psychopath.
That has no value on the human level because the starving kid could have potentially innovated infinitely more and produced gains for the world if he had lived.
Yeah, if only there techies who spent a bunch of time writing free software. If only there were people who dedicated their lives to making free software. They could start a foundation.
But no, everyone knows open source is about the money.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You mean why don't techies work on things like giving everybody on the globe to access all the books ever written, listen to lectures from the best minds on the planet, communicate with anybody anywhere, access financial services across the globe, learn how to grow food better, get highly accurate and detailed maps and satellite photos for free (e.g., for improving agriculture), buy and sell pretty much anything from anywhere, create software that allows anybody anywhere to analyze scientific data and write software?
Indeed there is. In a free society with free citizens, we let individuals decide, and vote for, what they find useful. That kind of "voting" is carried out using money: if you produce something that I find useful, I give you money for it; if you produce crap that I don't want, I don't give you money for it. That way, people who produce useful stuff get rewarded and get the resources to produce more useful stuff, while the people who produce crap get fewer resources allocated to them. Does that answer your question? How else would you like things to work?
Keeping in touch and up to date with old friends? Social networks solved a lot of that.
Having visual conversations with distant relatives? Video chat solved that.
Getting lost? GPS navigation solved that.
Finding answers to factual questions? Search engines (kinda) solved that.
Giving public platforms to ordinary people? Blogs solved that.
Just try going back and living in the early 90's and see how you like it. Techies have addressed tons of real world problems, and come up with at least partial solutions to a lot of them. Naturally many remain and some new ones have arisen, we don't live in a utopia, but it's not like they've been doing nothing.
I stole this Sig
Valuable marketing insights are the most important thing. BIG DATA!
I'd like to see the great achievements done by someone who is being critical.
So what has marmot7 done to be able to ask something that (my guess) is incapable of achieving?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
That's how a billionaire is choosing to spend his retirement and wealth. That's awesome. What the hell ever happened to Bill Gates? I sort of miss the good old days when he was the perfect villian, a good sport, even willing to wear the Borg get-up to make himself even more sinister around here. :-)
If society woke up one day and decided that something other than money would be used to determine relative value, this argument wouldn't exist. Until then, people are going to be driven by money -- for survival at a basic level, but then for lifestyle and status improvement as the levels rise. They're going to do what they think can make them the most money so they're not out on the street or eating macaroni and cheese for most dinners.
It's all the same problem:
- During the last late 90s dotcom bubble, people complained that scientists weren't going into research and scientific jobs because the startups stole all the talent away by offering inflated VC-fueled salaries.
- During the housing bubble of the early 2000s, all the math and CS guys were being stolen away by the banks to be "quants" - because the banks were paying top dollar to have a tiny edge in high-frequency trading or construction of new derivatives.
- And during the current dotcom bubble (a repeat of the 90s except replacing the Internet and websites with social media, phones and data mining) all the talented people (and lots of non-talented ones) are back in the SV startup crowd again.
In the end, people will do what makes them the most money for the level of risk they're comfortable with. As a personal example, I work on the systems engineering side of IT. I have chosen the "stable" path of full-time large corporate work over the crazy freelance consulting world. Yes, corporate work has pitfalls, but the paychecks show up every month and you're not constantly hustling for more work, worried about who's going to pay you next. I know freelance guys who are extremely talented, so much so that they make multiples of an average salary. I've often been asked by those types why I don't go this route; I'm actually pretty decent at my job. The answer is safety - If I'm willing to put up with stupid rules and play some politics, I get paid regularly. My family is happy with me, and my home life is stable. The only freelancer I know who is still married has what's basically a mail order bride - everyone else is divorced mainly because they're never home.
Want to make people more altruistic? Give them a real safety net that ensures one wrong move doesn't ruin their lives. You're not going to kill consumerism overnight, so work around it by coming up with something better than US unemployment insurance.
The fact that so many other posters here don't even see the egregious issues right in front of us is indicative of the need for the question, and perhaps also to some extent of why problems are not being solved but rather exacerbated as time goes on.
Fine, but a similarly dark, hand-wringing mini-essay could have been written in any literate society at any time within the past 3000 years. The specific problems would be different, of course, but most of these could mention the crushing masses of the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised.
In your opinion, what software does not exist, but would benefit society/the world if it did?
Not really, when you cherry-pick the kind of miles driven, the age of vehicles in the sample, and all other factors required to actually compare Tesla models to other cars that are their actual contemporaries in terms of manufacturing and usage they don't. RAND produced a great paper on this fact: http://www.rand.org/pubs/resea...
"Why aren't techies improving the world?
Fuck you. Pay me.
...Or could have been the next Hitler, or this or that or none of the above
I think the expectation that the application of tech will fix something that's wrong with the world very quickly is a big part of the problem.
How long have humans been dumping garbage into the environment? Why would you expect that recycling, composting, reclamation and other technologies will not only stop the poisoning of the environment and clean up the current mess in the order of years?
Same thing for CO2 in the atmosphere. We've been burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels for 130 years or so, why would you expect that a new technology would stop this within years but also return CO2 levels to their original state?
Same comments on other issues like the growth of the Sahara desert, deforestation, etc.
I expect new technologies to help stop the increasing damage and reducing the current level of damage to come about over time, but the expectation that it can be fixed almost immediately with the application of a new technology simply isn't reasonable.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Because it's not being incentivized. Governments that want to get public problems solved should use tools like social impact bonds. They work like this: there's a problem costing the public money, whether that's in cash or years of life lost due to illness or whatever. Fix it, prove you did (that's the hard part), and collect a percentage of the money you saved.
That was a direct contrary case to the failed attempt of the GGP to claim the past successes of firms justified the callous treatment of humans now. Try again.
You could try to understand statistical inference and experimental design for causality, or you could just be stupid. Your choice.
Grow up kid!
Achille Talon
Hop!
I work in tech and most of my projects have been rather mundane, miniscule improvements for existing services. The ones that really tried to make a difference never made it past prototype phase because the expected profits didn't exceed the cost and risk to go full production with the product.
If we want big ideas solving big problems we need to lower the risk of failure, and the cost of entry for bold, innovative and possibly disruptive products and services.
People refer to Tesla and Uber as disruptive companies but was mass producing an electric car or building a Taxi app that innovative or disruptive? Compared to what we're used to, it is, but compared to all the shelved prototypes and pitched ideas, they really aren't.
When it comes down to it, the people with the money aren't willing to risk losing it on a great idea when they have a guaranteed return on investment on a small improvement to a proven service or product.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Check out the Hackaday prize, over at Hackaday.io.
For three years running, Hackaday has hosted the contest with a $100,000 first prize and a handful of $10,000 prizes.
Several of the prize categories would be appropriate for solving world problems, such as "citizen scientist", "automation", and "assistive technologies". (The other two categories are catch-alls which could also contain world-bearing solutions.
Many of the projects are high-concept. There are about 1000 entries this year, so you will get a wide range of possible project including some risible ones.
But there are definitely some strong entries this year.
I follow the Automatic Digital Microscope project, which hopes to automate (and speed up) the detection of tuberculosis in 3rd world countries.
The Electrospinning machine looks really interesting, could possibly become the next "3d printer" appliance for hackers.
The very high accuracy tilt sensor is possibly a new technology (I hadn't seen or heard of it before).
If you want to find techies improving the world, you might include Hackaday.io (specifically: the prize entries) in your search.
If you want to improve the world yourself, you might consider coming up with a project and entering the prize next year.
If you want to *help* improve the world, you might consider joining a Hackaday.io team that's entered for the prize.
Re Why aren't geeks doing more to improve the world?
Could that lack of ability start before ever entering the private sector?
Study hard, pay up or a full scholarship still based on academic results. Get guided to a getting a security clearance just to have access to very advanced crypto, maths? Trips to conferences, talks, corporate funding, gov projects. Any good job later will need clearance, get it early, see the world while still in academia? That security clearance that opened academic doors is now a generational NDA.
All the big brands offering full access to their networks to the NSA and a few other nations.
The tech leadership, brands, admins, contractors, academics, lawyers, outside security experts never really understood what was been done on their own networks? Commented on strange data flows or encryption?
Wifi and OVERHEAD?
Real problems are not fixed for decades and a brand works so hard to get their perfect photo on social media.
It would not seem to be an investment risk issue but experts not risking the security clearance club membership.
Re technology workers are making the world a better place?
Other nations will just build around such junk exports and weak standards.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In this respect, techies are like anybody else. Some are out to help save the world, or at least make it a better place, and some aren't. It's not the tech that makes the savior, it's the person.
The same can be said about:
- finance folks (microcredit vs subprime mortgages)
- engineers (postwar reconstruction vs weapons)
- architects (affordable housing designs vs Trump towers)
- builders (habitat for humanity vs suburban subdivisions)
to name a few examples.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
There are no heroes. It steam engines when it comes steam-engine time. You feed the kid because it's the right thing to do.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
because the useless short term gain finance people control the whole mess for now !
The headline asks a question that is based on a false premise. Techies are doing more than anyone to improve the world. We have gone 70 years without a major war. Why? Two reasons, better communications and nuclear weapons. Both of these are because the techies that built the Internet, launched the comsats, and split the atom. Today, the Internet is bringing literacy and prosperity to the third world. Better solar cells and windmills are bringing us clean energy. Wikipedia is compiling the world's knowledge, and Google is giving us a way to search it instantly.
All of this is being done by us nerds. Who else is doing as much to create a better world? Lawyers? Journalists? Politicians? I don't think so.
Hey look, it's Slashdot concern trolling their readers again!
I reject the premise.
"Why are software developers working on this trivial Internet thing rather than solving world hunger?"
It's the Von Mises knowledge problem, aka the economic calculation problem. You don't know what the most important problems to solve are because you (and by "you" I especially mean "any government body") can't see the future. One person can only be an expert on their own life, not everyone else's lives. You don't necessarily known what the real biggest problems today are, because when you read or watch the news you're watching edited abstracts of selections of other people's limited knowledge, with biases conscious and unconscious at every step of the process.
You have no way of known that specific technology you're working on won't have far greater benefit to society than whatever our cultural elites have decided to focuses on for clickbait concern trolling this week, especially ones with easy emotional appeals ("Show me rain forests! Show me police killing black people!") rather than more difficult or abstract ones ("Show me how deficit financing eventually destroys economies!").
It turns out that creating the Internet probably did more to help solve world hunger than, say, studying how to make krill into food patties.
Work on the problems that interest you and that you have the capacity to solve, not what other people think are "more important," because there's a good chance they're wrong.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This is the most vacuous rhetoric I've ever seen here.
With no definition of what would satisfy making the world better and how tech isn't doing it, these words are basically meaningless. I could just as easily ask why aren't the medical, financial, media, or any other field not making the world a better place. Seriously, consider:
"I don't feel that doctors, nurses, administrators, even policy wonks focus on the problems that we need to solve to have a healthy functioning society. It seems like it's mostly about short-term gain and not much about making the world better. That may be just the way the market works.
Is it that there's no profit to be made in solving the most important problems? I'm puzzled by that as I would think that a good solution to an important problem could find some funding from somewhere but maybe government, for example, won't take investment risks in that way?"
Now, medical professionals everywhere, defend yourselves from . . . completely hollow rhetoric.
Consider how cheap cellphones are helping pretty much everyone (even the poorest) across the world, with communication, texting services and payment. ... The list goes on.
Or real-time translation, educational resources, or even sign language.
Not to mention drug design, logistics, financial services, weather forecasts,
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Good question, but I can't write the book this morning unless some techie gives me a time warp machine. If I only had the focus and sustained motivation, then it would probably take me several months.
Short answer is that most of them are nice people and would like to, but they respond to the economic pressures to do otherwise. The economic rules of the business game (especially in America) focus on the single metric of money, so maximizing that single dimension results in cancerous growth that doesn't consider such trivialities as making the world better or even the long-term survival of humanity. The only thing that matters is a bigger profit number next quarter unless the thinking is shortened down to today's stock price. Both stupid numbers.
Time to flog my dead horse again:
I think we should have a kind of charity share brokerage for people who are willing to try to make the world better 10 bucks at a time. It could even be used here on Slashdot. After an article that describes a problem, there would be several links to proposed solution projects. If enough readers decide to support it, then it would get the money and of course Slashdot would be able to report on how well it worked.
Detailed suggestions available upon polite request.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Well lets see...Electric cars, encrypting communication to keep governments from spying on people, Working to find cures for cancer, and AIDs, mapping the human genome, exploring space and other planets, improving crop yields, working to reduce carbon emissions, identifying genetic disorders, building a vast world network to improve communication, are a few things that techies are working on that I can rattle off without really thinking deeply about it. Coders and network engineers aren't usually working on solving problems directly, but the infrastructure that supports solving problems much more efficiently. Most interesting problems require teams of people with differing backgrounds to get things solved, and not some single savant coder working on the perfect algorithm for 36 hours straight. Its kind of like asking Albert Einstein's auto mechanic what has he did to improve the state of physics. A lot and very little,depending on your POV.
If you are just asking a stupid question like what sort of cool Iphone apps are single handedly saving humanity from oblivion, I really don't know what to say to you.
Articles like this speak volumes about where Slashdot's editorial quality is going....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Capitalism is a great tool, leveraging people's own self interest. The problem is, it's a lousy master, because it leverages people's own self interest. As such, tech (tools that make doing repetitive work easier) tends to be used to gain greater wealth for a few people, funneling the greater wealth into a few people's pockets, whilst the average working joe/jane sees little or none of the benefits. There are however some, and I'm sure in many cases, big trickle down benefits for society as a whole... still, instead of focusing the efficiency gains tech enables into the famously quoted (Keynes) 15 hour work week, instead you can just work longer and achieve more in the same time.
There have been a steady stream of articles asking questions along these lines trying to get people to reveal what they are working on. Don't do it. It will only be used against you.
If you have something with potential of being even mildly disruptive and your end goal isn't cashing out then for god sakes keep your mouth shut until your shit is ready.
'Techies' are just people who do a job that happens to be technical in some way. Jobs in general don't have anything to do with improving the world, they just help your employer (which may be you) earns money, and in turn give you money for that.
'Improving the world' just isn't what construction workers do.
Besides, OP, if you have any inkling of a thought how tech can make 'a healthy functioning society', feel free to offer them. If you can say what that even means in your opinion, please do. Ask a democrat or republican, you'd get different answers.
Technology has already solved most of the world's worse problems - sanitation, water purification, food production, vaccines, health care, birth control, basic education, etc are all "solved" problems, but the implementation is not a technological problem, it's a social and political one. It's not even a case where it just takes more money since more money largely ends up being misdirected.
Why aren't billionaires playing Batman?
We are not taken seriously for what we do because we don't have organizations acting on our behalf to look after our interests at a political level.
If we had that then when representations were needed on important decisions like infrastructure, education, employment conditions, research and development - a relevant organization would be there to respond. It's our failure to recognise that as individuals, we don't look after each other as a group. The consequence of that our common interests are treated like those of a group of individuals instead of an individual group.
Technologists already know certain infrastructure decisions are important if innovation is to occurr. As economies around the world are finding out, the only way to sustain growth in an economy is innovation. If you stifle the ideas by undermining the lives of the people who are suposed to create that future, how can you move forward?
The world is again changing, this time from the impact of the net. Government and business are still absorbing the fact that they have to adapt and, that to adapt, they have to relinquish enough control so that people have the freedom to innovate. Police states don't innovate. That is their dilema.
I suspect it will take a few more years for the realizations to finally sink into governments about how important these things are as we move from the industrial to the knowledge age. Prosperity is tied to the freedom to innovate. Governments that stifle that freedom, stifle that prosperity.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I would argue a tastier ketchup is worth more. People value it and are willing to pay for it which in return employees people to boot as well. A VC that attracts customers is worthy to the employees and the customers. All which re-invest the everyone else to help eliminate hunger as the trajectory and speed of the money supply being moved in the economy are signs of economic growth and everyone benefiting from it
You didn't starve tonight did you? Someone gave you food or the ingredients to make you food just like helping a poor person. You received that for your contribution to society determined by your worth your employer sets for their needs.
Any business that creates a job is the best humanitarian there is!
http://saveie6.com/
The villain of the movie "Antitrust" has a foundation too, so Bill Gates can stay a bad guy.
Bill Gates is just not a bad guy anymore. What the hell, I feel like I live in an alternative reality. Bill Gates pretty is earnestly trying to make the world a better place and putting his money and i think his time behind that effort.
Where did you go wrong, Bill? He's practically a hippie now but with billions of dollars to drive some pragmatic idealism. Holy shit, I sound like I could be an advocate. It just doesn't work anymore. He's playing a different role now so clearly he's not a guy who could just play one role and stuck.
He is a counter example of what I'm saying but his program resulted from his decision so I'm not sure it counts as the application of tech toward solving problems. It's more like this guy who made billions decided to use his wealth to help solve some important problems.
BGF, or binary graph format. My invention. A revolutionary new way to represent graphs (i.e., the mathematical structure known as graphs). File layout = memory layout: a bgf file can be loaded as-is into memory. Even in Java, if you load bgf into off-heap memory, graph traversal time can be as low as 20 nanoseconds/edge, when using bgf. If anybody knows a problem that can be stated as a graph problem, and where extremely fast graph processing makes the world a better place, ping me.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Like every tool it is up to the individual on how to use it. A technology designed for great good can also be used for great evil. The internet allows us to communicate with people around the world and openly share ideas and make people realize that in other areas they are human being too. Or you can use internet to spread you regional biases and hate across a broader area and recruit others to join your hatred group.
Also every technology comes with a trade-off. That smaller communication device means you will need to lose other features, such as a full size keyboard. There are always people not willing to lose what they have. So that technology that could save the world may have a trade-off that most people find acceptable, is unacceptable for others.
In short people are a problem, technology is a tool for the person to solve a problem they are trying to fix, but technology cannot solve society's problems.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You'll be able to thank Techies, GG'ers and the Alt-Right for systemically rending the lies of HRC and keeping her from getting elected to POTUS. Yeah, yeah. Whine about Donald, but look at the mottos- "Make America Great Again" (about you and me and other Americans) versus "I'm With Her" which is not only all about Hillary, but suggests that you condone, nee, support her lies, obfuscated truths and definition of what "confidential" is. Techies have dredged emails, freelanced journalism and asked a slew of tech questions which have not only helped reveal the lies of a presidential candidate, but will also make sure President Donald Trump stays on the straight and narrow and doesn't fsck over the American people like the last 3 or 4 have.
Patent numbers, or it didn't happen.
Not that guy, but one company which springs to mind immediately is HGSI. They cured AIDS, were bought out by Glaxo-Kline-Smith and all their research was shelved because GKS has a treatment-for-life product which a cure would have made obsolete.
The villain of the movie "Antitrust" has a foundation too, so Bill Gates can stay a bad guy.
Bill Gates is just not a bad guy anymore.
Funny, last I checked he was taking the largest sum of wealth ever accrued by an individual, sticking it into a tax-evading non-profit he has control over, and pissing it away in the third world while the megacorporation he founded marches along to the same mantra of "fuck everyone who helped me get where I am, it's time for some cultural marxism and social 'justice.'" There is nothing good about Bill Gates, the fact you think otherwise is just another negative to add to the list (the liberal elites have brainwashed nearly an entire generation into believing in self-defeating ideologies.)
all your requirement specifications specifically asked for "MOOAR KILLINGPOWERRRR!!!!"
Techies Improving the World? You mean like the Farmbot (an open source agriculture robot) or the X Prize's Tricorder (a non-invasive health diagnostics package)? For more ideas - make products that address Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Except for the Intimate Relationships thing - Japan is already way ahead on sexbot technology.
I think the expectation that the application of tech will fix something that's wrong with the world very quickly is a big part of the problem.
How long have humans been dumping garbage into the environment? Why would you expect that recycling, composting, reclamation and other technologies will not only stop the poisoning of the environment and clean up the current mess in the order of years?
Same thing for CO2 in the atmosphere. We've been burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels for 130 years or so, why would you expect that a new technology would stop this within years but also return CO2 levels to their original state?
Same comments on other issues like the growth of the Sahara desert, deforestation, etc.
I expect new technologies to help stop the increasing damage and reducing the current level of damage to come about over time, but the expectation that it can be fixed almost immediately with the application of a new technology simply isn't reasonable.
You make some good points here. Could that rate of progress increase if more money were put on more important problems and less on bullshit?
They are not in charge.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Solving big problems is a great way to get yourself summarily dismissed as a nutcase. There was a doctor back in the 60's who said the evidence presuming a cause/effect relationship between cholesterol and heart disease was flat-out wrong.
He was practically disbarred.
Just today I heard that the manufacturers of Tylenol will have to put a warning on the bottle about drinking and taking it. Check out the death toll from people who didn't know any better.
There are many other examples, mainly in medicine and pharmaceuticals, but also elsewhere.
Very rich corporations are raking in billions of dollars every year by not solving problems. They don't appreciate it when somebody comes along and actually solves one. It puts the brakes on the gravy train.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Most 'techies' are wage slaves, and do what their employers pay them to do -- and if that's the 457th version of Candy Crush, then that's what they work on. The exception, I suppose, is the self-employed, and the Kickstarter types, but they are a tiny minority. Also last time I checked many things that are innovative and/or revolutionary or that will 'change the world' either get sued out of existence, or gobbled up by some mega-corp, and then either twisted into something else, or buried. We live in a nascent dystopia, after all. Ther'e's still some hope, but it's dwindling.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Not that guy, but one company which springs to mind immediately is HGSI. They cured AIDS, were bought out by Glaxo-Kline-Smith and all their research was shelved because GKS has a treatment-for-life product which a cure would have made obsolete.
Yeah, except that's not true at all. HGSI had a ccr5 monoclonal antibody in clinical trials, but it hadn't shown itself to be as effective as other existing medications let alone constituting having "cured AIDS". And Glaxo has been working on ccr5 agonists of their own (e.g aplavoric), with similarly mixed results.
There's a ton of money and prestige in an AIDS cure, there's no way a pharmaceutical company would submarine it.
And Glaxo and HGSI were beaten to the punch on CCR5 agonists by Pfizer, who got FDA approval for maraviroc (brand: Selzentry) and are making millions off of it.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Yes, those are all appropriate observations, but how would a smart phone app change that, or even any technology? These are cultural and social problems, and they need cultural and social answers.
Asking for a smart phone app to solve drug problems in the Mid West is like asking a Star Wars toy to deliver peace in the Middle East. The framing of the question is wrong.
Peace and prosperity instead of war and austerity?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
First nobody agrees on what is a "healthy functioning society".
How could I write an App that make irrational people to think rational. Do I have the right to do that ?
I think it will quickly be called propaganda by people with different opinions.
How about a healthier lifestyle? No charge either.
I heard a boy once say: "Pay the [organic] farmer or pay the doctor, your choice."
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
By the way, ever heard of Dr Frederick Klenner?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
We don't have too many people. We can feed 12 biliion people and that is where the world population is going to stabilise at.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
marmot7 displays a charming naivery and desire to help everyone who needs help. Excellent qualities! However, this is expressed rather the wrong way round: "Is it that there's no profit to be made in solving the most important problems?"
On the contrary, it is that there is so much profit to be made precisely by NOT solving the most important problems. Poverty, inequality, discrimination, war, pollution... all those evils are directly caused by the extraction of profit from the world and its people by certain elites who are already very rich and powerful indeed. It comes as a shock when one first understands that the rich, as a rule, grow steadily richer by taking money from the poor. After all, the poor are the most easily exploited. They are the ones who have to buy necessities in small batches rather than saving money by buying wholesale. (They can't afford fridges or freezers, and have very little storage space). They are the ones who have to use expensive coin-fed meters for power, rather than saving money by paying regularly by electronic means. They are the ones who are so desperately busy, trying to survive from each day to the next, that they have no leisure or disposable income left with which to find out ways of living more economically. They are the ones, overwhelmingly, who play lotteries - that "tax on stupidity" (or rather "tax on ignorance and desperation").
Just as a fridge makes its interior colder by pumping heat out into the external world, the rich contrive to become steadily richer by exporting poverty to those who are already poor. To solve the most important problems, as marmot7 suggests, is not a technical challenge: it would be a political challenge, and would require a revolution.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You sound like you would write terrible requirement documents. What do you want this app to do? Why is it not there already? Is an app really the answer?
No, but at this point in time when humans are supposedly so intelligent, trumpeting their amazing technological achievements, why is the world so totally fucked up?
Don't you think - if we are all so smart and there are all these technologically advanced things - that thing would be getting better, not worse?
Of course I don't expect a smartphone app to be able to solve major problems. But why, at a time when we have smartphone apps and all this other highly advanced stuff, is it that things are careening on a crash course, in the wrong direction?
There are so many replete examples of things going wrong to pick from.
And personally I think there is a connection between people being motivated for more noble purposes, such as the creators of many of the foundational technologies which underlie so many things we use, and the world improving, vs. people with low motivation - ivy-leage Enron types who want to cash in - and things getting worse.
Shelving an AIDS cure makes no sense.
Aside of being the company that cured AIDS, which alone would make the share value go through the roof, this is the license to print money. Instantly EVERYTHING your competitor has in that field is worthless. Why treat if you have the cure? Second, it's more likely to be paid for by European state insurances. For this to understand, you have to know how they work. Basically (VERY roughly simplified) they pay for cures more easily than for continuous treatments. Basically it's a rather inhuman calculation around the question "are you worth the expense", and if it is a cure, the answer is invariably yes, independent of the cost. This isn't a given for palliative means, which treatment for AIDS is, from the perspective of the insurance: There is no chance for cure, it can only prolong the life of the patient and/or improve the quality of life.
There are a few more things, but I hope this already shows why the conspiracy of pharma corporations holding back cures because treating is more profitable is bullshit. You can make TONS more money with a cure. Especially with a cure for a disease that people can (and, given there is a cure, most likely will) get again throughout their life.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My impression is that techies for the most part dismiss most immediate help as not being sustainable or productive in resolving the underlying issue, unless it's a temporary crisis caused by exceptional circumstances like a natural disaster. This is often mixed with a determinism that people will keep doing stupid things and that attitude campaigns is Sisyphus forever trying to roll a boulder up the hill. We build safer and safer cars with seat belts and airbags and ABS and emergency brake systems, people keep finding innovative ways to maim themselves. We make the cell phones so you can dial 911. We make the systems to dispatch and manage the ambulances. We make the medical equipment so the EMTs and doctors can save your life.
Obviously the bulk of the credit should go the EMT who patched you up when you were bleeding out, but s/he is at the top of a very long pyramid supporting it. I work with collection of healthcare data for secondary use, that is to say not treatment but administration, research, public statistics and so on. My contribution is more on the order of showing that this hospital needs another ambulance or we need to educate more cardiologists or researchers used our data to discover something that led to a new treatment or better practice that maybe ten steps down the road gave you a 1% quicker recovery or higher rate of survival. It will go totally unnoticed, but if I can on average help 5 million people live one minute longer I'll have saved 10 lifetimes.
To being it down to a whole other level, we even see this in IT projects where often the firefighter is the visible one, the one solving the crisis and becoming the hero. All the people who wrote robust, defensive code that didn't catch fire not so much. It's never glamorous to be the one making sure things don't happen, that disease you didn't get because of vaccinations? The food poisoning you didn't get or cancer-causing additive you didn't eat because the FDA shut them down? For the most part you don't even know that it happened, and if you did you wouldn't give it a second thought and if you did it'd just be that they were doing their job. That's how it is when you move the bar one inch at a time.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Techies Improving The World?
Slashdot reader marmot7 isn't impressed by "the latest app that solves some made up problem. I'm impressed by apps that solve real problems..."
Jesus Christ. If the first thing you think of when talking about solving the world's most problems is apps, I don't want you on the funding committee.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Like Moxie Marlinspike, the author of Signal and the Signal protocol who brought strong encryption to the billions. Now all WhatsApp messages are strongly encrypted, and this makes dragnet surveillance imposssible. It also solves the problem that encrypted messages used to stand out and attract attention: if everyone encrypts it's no special attention grabber.
Second, it's more likely to be paid for by European state insurances. For this to understand, you have to know how they work. Basically (VERY roughly simplified) they pay for cures more easily than for continuous treatments. Basically it's a rather inhuman calculation around the question "are you worth the expense", and if it is a cure, the answer is invariably yes, independent of the cost. This isn't a given for palliative means, which treatment for AIDS is, from the perspective of the insurance: There is no chance for cure, it can only prolong the life of the patient and/or improve the quality of life.
That's not how it works at least here in Norway, everything is worked out to a cost per quality-adjusted year. Fully healthy is 1, dead is 0 and various degrees of impairment somewhere in between. So if it's about saving your life, it's about how many years you'd statistically have left and a 20yo would get a much, much more expensive surgery than an 80yo. A treatment that'll improve your quality of life from 0.8 to 1 for five years is equal to one that'll (fully) prolong your life for a year (1-0.8)*5 = (1-0)*1. And I'd call it "given finite resources, are we taking treatments away from people who need them more?" because the system really isn't trying to be evil. It just can't afford to give everyone all the treatments they could marginally benefit from.
At least here in Norway the threshold is around $50-100k/year somewhere, which is to say there are only rather extreme measures that'd either take massive hospital support, absurdly priced medication or that would only give a few months or have very slim chance of success that is refused. At some point you also have to consider the grander picture, how much would the taxes to pay for a massive last-ditch effort negatively impact everyone else's lives, if you live less healthy because you can't afford to or die in a traffic accident because we don't maintain the public roads that too will ultimately end up in lives cut short. We can't just pull money out of the hat, not even for a good cause.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sorry, I mean the whole 'article' is -1 Flamebait. But I guess it worked, there are more comments on this article than most others I've seen lately.
Let's see. . .
I'm dry. I'm warm. I'm cool. Year-round.
I'm clean. I'm safe. I'm secure. From every danger, always.
I've got a giant tvision, with infinite entertainment. I've got access to all the world's knowledge and communication with anyone on the planet within seconds from my pocket.
I've got food, year-round, in a clean kitchen, at the touch of a few buttons -- be it the stove, the oven, or the microwave, I can cook food in minutes.
Instead of spending my like canning to preserve food, I have winter-in-one-box-and-the-arctic-in-another.
I've got laundry machines that can wash every piece of cloth in the entire house in one day. The only reason I don't use it every day is because I'd need to fold it all.
I've got porn, fast-food, and a couch actually called a lazy-boy.
I've got infinite music for pennies. Infinite movies for a few dollars. Infinite tvision for a few dollars more.
I've got an inexpensive sports car.
I've got farm-fresh food minutes away.
I've got friends and family and neighbours readily available for fun times, or to help me when I need help.
I've got as few or as many pets and children as I'd like. Which reminds me, I've got free healthcare and free education too.
You've got problems? Really, the laundry folding isn't that bad.
I would have assumed that techies would include technical people of all stripes, and if so, then I think you can see that people working on clean energy technologies and biological technologies are generally making the world a better place, at least for humans. The people making it cheaper to get into space, like SpaceX could also be defined this way. If you are defining techies as programmers, then people here have posted examples of programs that are not trivial, and of course that's a minority. It seems like an unfair standard though, why aren't you complaining that most authors write books you don't consider important, or most movies are trivial rewrites and extensions of nonsense franchises? Not everything has to be altruistic and highbrow. There is enough to choose from.
I didn't know your needs for resources only amounted to what you can eat. But if that's the case, maybe we should ban all food but Soylent and try to get another 50 billion people join the fun.
We are improving the world. It's just that the ignorant idiots keep f*cking things up.
Examples: ... reasons ... ...
We build free open architecture computers and advocate them. They buy iPhones.
We build and promote free software. They use Windows and pay bizar abmounts of subscription fees for office programms. (Hardly believable but, seriously, no joke.)
We tell them man-made climate change is a real thing and we need to react and they say it's all made up because of
We build and promote electric cars and high-tech bicycles. They buy the next big Porsche Cheyenne.
We explain to them that a public transport system built with half the money spent on private cars would be something like a Star Trek utopia of transport. They clog up the cities with stacks and rows of parked private cars.
We tell then not to use Facebook and WhatsCrap, but rather Diaspora and Jabber. They don't give a flying f*ck. (Well, my daughter does. Smart girl. Daddy loves you.)
We tell them nuclear fission doesn't add up, but they just do what energy powermongers want.
We tell then voting machines are a very very bad idea. What do they do? Build and deploy voting machines.
It's like I've always said:
Powerful tools in dumb hands is always the biggest problem of technological advancement.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The question "why aren't techies improving the world" begs the question, "aren't we"? And we are. We're helping people exchange information freely, for example. We're making new products and services possible.
If you want an answer, though, it's this: we'd be doing a lot more if it weren't for the influence of shitlords like Apple or Microsoft. These assholes are holding back computing. Obviously, Microsoft more than Apple, but them too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Techies want money, fame/notoriety, and to be adored/envied. Silicon Valley startups (successes && failures) typically have a dynamic CEO that would do as well starting a church.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
...we can't insure everyone has decent healthcare, but we can deliver burritos by drone.
Don't blame it on Techies...blame it on the lazy millennials. They cannot handle cereal, let alone attack the important issues!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/trendin...
The real question he's asking is "With all of the technology at our disposal, why haven't we solved society's problems?". The answer is simple; society is run by human beings and human beings are inherently flawed beings. No amount of technology, communication, luxury or education can save us. There's going to be people that are going to try to control, dominate or otherwise harm other people, and this is never going to change. Technology and done MUCH to improve the world; look at what organ transplants and other medical breakthroughs have done. But we'll never have a utopia despite our best efforts. We need to try for such a goal but need to accept that it will never happen. It's the pursuit and effort that counts. Incidentally, the world HAS gotten better, hasn't it? More people can choose their own destinies than previously before; racial prejudice is on the run even though it's sadly still with us. Societies are generally becoming more free; many items that were luxuries are becoming items shared by more people around the world. We obviously have problems like war, greed, limited health care, unequal education, and other problems, but can you say we haven't made great strides in the past 100 years?
At any given time, techies are involved in projects ranging from the trivial to the really useful, but the applications that get funded and come to market are those which pass the Great Filter imposed by anti-technology activists. Investors know that they have no problem rolling out the next smartphone feature, while developing Golden Rice to feed the poor is going to have to pass a gantlet of terrorist activism. We're talking about people who will rip up your test fields and assault your workers.
To get the big world-changing projects done, someone is going to have to be willing to go full Duterte.
The carrying capacity has continuously gone up. We might never hit it because the reproduction rate is going down in prosperous countries, often below the replacement rate, at the same time that the number of prosperous countries is increasing.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
... transferring money from the masses to the few and in the harvesting of personal data.
Don't forget that all the efforts to push everyone to go in tech is only happening because it's perceived as a "get rich quick" scheme.
So of course a significant portion of people going there will only do so for the $$$. It was the entire value proposition sold to them!
Management! Tim S.
Capitalism is at it's best when it is taking more jobs than it replaces. Take AWS, for instance. It takes less people and capital to run a web app in AWS than it does to build a traditional data center. More DC techs lose their jobs than gain one any time a large web app is moved into AWS.
And, this is a great thing. It makes it easier and cheaper to build web apps in AWS. Moreover, freeing people from a role may seem harsh to those people, ie it removes from them an income and gives them security issues, but in the larger scope of society, it means those people are free labor to work on something new, something different. Capitalism has historically also created new markets and 'created' jobs when there is a combination of cheaper labor and cheaper platforms (like AWS). All this leads to innovation in products and services which benefit us all.
I'm not saying capitalism is without ill, but it's hardly a zero sum game. The top five largest cap companies have all brought us innovations that make everyday life easier in the last 10 years. Apple has provided solid consumer electronics, Google has indexed information better than anyone else, Microsoft has provided office productivity and an OS with a remarkably stable API/platform (yes, yes, it sux0rs compared to linux's beautiful, ever evolving arch, but it does have this one good property), Amazon has brought down the price, increased the selection, and increased the availability of consumer goods and also provided the world with a cheap virtual data center for small businesses.
Each of these top 5 companies have some seriously questionable business practices, sure. Still, they all have delivered products or services that their respective consumers consider significant advancements in their lives or places of work. They all created new markets and cannibalized old ones, simultaneously. It isn't zero-sum. While we may debate this point, and on slashdot many would, I would submit that most people consider our lives better for the existence of these five companies.
I definitely agree that food security should properly be going up and that it is disturbing when it goes down. Hunger in America stats suggests food insecurity increased in 2008 but has been going down steadily since then. I'm in agreement that bull markets and exotic derivatives were a significant ill our capitalist system. We've done some things to reverse or prevent those trends, and I'm willing to agree we haven't gone as far as we should, maybe even that we've significantly missed the mark. In the context of history, these trend lines exist in a very short window and the history of the United States and post-perpetual-war Europe shows a miraculous increase in quality of life and food security. What atrocities capitalism commits seem over-matched by the miracles it induces.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Why Aren't Techies Improving The World? We can ask this question to the human population in general.
"the latest app that solves some made up problem. I'm impressed by apps that solve real problems
Well, technology is not just apps. And techies aren't strictly in the world of app development. There are all types of development in this world going on making a difference. If you can't be bothered doing a single fucking google on it, then there is not one goddamned reason to spend time giving you some real-world examples.
Furthermore, techies aren't solely in software. Oncologists and chemists, physicists, scientists and engineers of all disciplines are techies in their domain. It takes a very stupid, uneducated and shallow mind to think techie == software, let alone techie == app development.
Incorrect.
The world has a history pattern of how wars work. Follow along for a minute before saying I am off the wall. Its all in pattern analysis. I am paraphrasing from the book "The Fourth Turning" by Strauss and Howe.
The world works on a 80 year cycle (I'm skipping the generational stuff and going right to the wars.). The wars reflect what part of the cycle you are in.
First turning wars occur after the last big war and settle any left over issues from the last big war. Example: Queen Anne's War, War of 1812, Korean War. No major changes to the world dynamic. People are happy to settle things down for a while. These are often proxy wars between the winners of the last major conflict.
Second turning wars go no where fast, drag out for a while and are a quagmire. Example: English Civil war, King George's war, Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Afghanistan (Russian intervention). These wars tend to be guerilla wars, don't get a lot done and no one is quite sure why they are being fought. These are potrayed as police actions or proxy wars (or both).
Third Turning Wars are preparatory wars for the fourth turning. These wars are based on new conflicts that did not exist when the last big war occurred. Examples: French and Indian Wars, Mexican War, World War I, Operation Desert Storm. These wars are fought but don't fundamentally change the underpinnings of the world structure. They do point to how the next major war will unfold. These are often interventions or peace keeping expeditions.
Fourth Turning Wars are decisive and to the end. Example: War of the Roses, Armada of Triumph, King Philips War, Bacon's Rebellion, King Williams War, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, American Civil War, World War II. During the fourth turning wars are brutal and to the end. Have any new powerful weapons you were afraid to use before? Now is the time to use them.
It is all in pattern analysis. There have been major conflicts, wars and political realignments going on throughout the last 15 years (starting in 2001). The number of governments that have fallen or realigned during that time is breath taking. Europe, the Middle East and Africa are all coming apart at the seams. China and Russia are working very hard to keep their countries battened down hard. The US has its own troubles, notably a big push towards fascism (government take over of corporations and oppression of minorities fits the bill).
Everything is pointing toward large countries being willing to see how far they can push the envelope on any problem they encounter, which leads to larger wars. I expect there to be an expansion of the middle eastern conflict into Europe, Africa and Asia before it calms down again. Case in point: If Russia runs out its currency reserves next year (and it is on track to), it won't have the money to do anything and the Russian state will have to lash out or pull back and lick its wounds. Right now the posture that Russia has is not toward licking its wounds. If Russia lashes out and starts something major things will get serious quickly in Asia and Europe. And Russia will drive it until it runs out of money or collapses either way is not good for Asia, Europe and the World.
Will it unwind this way? I don't know. But I do see something on the horizon that ain't pretty.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
In Carl Sagan's Cosmos, he lamented that for decades 50% of the world's scientists were devoted to the nuclear arms race. Today the best mathematical minds are financially enticed to become quants. There isn't as much leftover to solve the world's problems.
There is already 3D priniting of cheap disease detection kits. This will be a big game changer in developing countries.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Q: Why aren't techies improving the World?
A: Patents, copyrights, lawyers, money.
Not necessarily in that order.
But will they all be able to have two cars in their driveway? Will they all be able to have shelter?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
All we know is how many accidents Autopilot gets into in its perfect driving conditions; situations that humans probably have a low accident rate in anyway. Add to that the fact that ever Tesla driver is driving a brand new $60K vehicle, which most people would be more careful with. Also all of them have probably taken a big step back in how far they are willing to push the envelope since the Florida accident. When Autopilot can leave a person's driveway in a blizzard, deal with snow and ice, driving around snow clearing equipment and piles of snow in the road on the way without touchng the steering wheel once, then we will have an accurate comparison of safety.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What about GNU, Linux, and the FSF? Does providing millions of people with free (in beer and speech) software not count for anything?
Or how about the EFF defending people's rights online. Helping educate people about the importance of encryption and stopping big business from tracking your every move.
Has wikipedia not become a central source of free information the world over? Has wikileaks not provided a safehaven for whistleblowers the world over?
Techies have done a lot for the world in the last 10 years.
It would had made more sense if there was evidence for the organic food being more nutritional dense or the poisons and chemicals applied being dangerous for you in the levels which is around once you eat them.
But will they all be able to have two cars in their driveway?
That is a North American thing. Prosperous countries don't all fall into the habit of wasteful over-consumption. Singapore has a per capita GDP higher than America, yet most families there don't even own one car, much less two.
Then they have much better publicly funded transportation than we do here.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yes. It's called Socialism. It distorts market prices and thus causes misallocation of resources. Don't look to Keynes or Krugman for your economics.
Figure the main problem in the world today is its monetary system, so have built this:
https://civil.money/about
The trick will be convincing anybody to use it.
Features:
- A generous universal basic income. Basically the equivalent of USD $60k/yr.
- Seeding based on regional productivity (inverse taxation.) Tax is actually a money "creation" process and happens implicitly.
- A democratic voting process for any fundamental changes to the system.
- A low barrier to entry. Should work just as well for a village in Kenya sharing a single smartphone as anybody standing at a Point-of-Sale terminal.
- Transparent transactions and accountability.
- Implicit dispute resolution.
- A consensus-based scalable distributed P2P architecture.
- An efficient and easy to work with messaging format.
- End-to-end TLS between all peers and user clients.
Draft technical bits here: https://civil.money/api
Should be releasing it for general "server download" availability and source code on GitHub until around December. Currently held back waiting on critical bug fixes in .NET Core 1.1 to be released.
Living Goods is a pretty cool charity that I just started supporting recently. They focus on educating and equipping community health workers that sell basic health and sanitation products in impoverished regions. It's pretty awesome, actually - the health workers fund themselves by selling these products, it grows the local economy by creating jobs, it spreads information and supplies to stop the spread of avoidable disease.
The tech comes in because they've developed an app that assists in diagnosis of common, treatable ailments, and provides info and scheduling about checkups on prenatal care, all of which can have a big impact on health. Also, they've actually run some randomized trials that have shown something like a 30% reduction in infant mortality in communities that are served by this charity, which also qualifies as a "nerdy" IMO because many charities are driven by ideology and dogma and aren't interested in gathering quantifiable evidence that their services actually make a difference.
If you want to check them out: https://livinggoods.org/what-w...
I'm not affiliated with them except that I recently became a donor. I thought their approach was truly unique in the world of charitable giving.
Because world problems are not technical, they are political (including religion) and economical.
Who says we're not? Lots of things have been improved. However, many have allowed their efforts to be directed towards profit-making ventures that improve nothing more than some "entrepreneur"'s wallet size. This is where a strong union with a lot of participation could help. Not one like UAW that's focused on money and wages, but one that focuses on preventing techies from being abused (and eliminating H-1B).
I look for ways to volunteer my coding talents, even if it just means teaching poor kids. But I don't really find anything to do.
Whenever I fill out a form to volunteer tutoring, no one ever replies. And I've kind of looked for "good" open source projects. I haven't found much. This might be a terrible answer, but it seems the projects that would take on volunteers are in PHP, and I just really don't want to learn PHP when it's completely goofy and is probably not going to be around that much longer.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
that projection is based on dangerous assumptions.
1) the amount of arable land remains constant. (It isnt. It is in decline.)
2) Use of fertilizers can continue unabated (It cant. Fertilizer use degrades farmland quality in just a few decades.)
3) The amount of fresh water for agricultural use wont suffer shortages (Again, not th case.)
So, forgive me if I call bullshit on that.
You mean attempting to materialize a secure, distributed, open source social network isn't enough? https://github.com/codr4life/a... Damn, I thought I had my bases covered with that one :) Joking aside, this world is not very forgiving against people who try to do the right thing; we tend to nail them to crosses and spit at them to feel better about being spineless cowards ourselves.
Non-technical people don't understand how technology works, the effort that goes into making it, what's needed to make a program just 'Do what you want it to'
The problem is you all think it's fucking magical and just should work the way you want it when you want it and you don't think it should cost a lot of money.
You think the time and effort of people who develop, contribute software hardware that you use every day is practically dirt. you snear at them for being 'smart' and treat them as arrogant because they understand things you don't.
TL;DR
1. You won't pay enough for what you want.
2. You don't appreciate what is done.
3. You don't understand what / the work that is needed to make it work.
4. You replace high quality techies with people who are financially desperate and do shoddier work due to pressure (Foreign workers).
5. You consider IT / Technies disposable cheap peons do make the super simple thing you just want done that isn't simple, fuck you.
Then they have much better publicly funded transportation than we do here.
Yes, they do. The American model of two SUVs in every garage, a Big Gulp on every desk, and massive amounts of corn-subsidy-driven obesity is not inevitable and many other prosperous countries are already going down a different path. Rising prosperity does not automatically mean a bigger environmental footprint.
RepRap project here: http://reprap.org/wiki/Metalic... is working to bring (almost) Star Trek style replicators into your home, which will free millions from having to work crummy manufacturing jobs, and will crash the price of Titanium and metal manufacturing. It is 100% open source and is being designed by engineers and programmers working together. It is also capable of printing solar panels which will help alleviate the world's energy and carbon problems.
The reason why techies cannot improve the world is that attempting difficult problems with a small team is causing more damage than it can fix. You need large teams of 200 people or more to tackle anything that would prove to be useful to society. Thus all techies cannot do anything but create games or other entertainment which isn't going to be useful... but at least the activity isn't causing significant amount of damage..
If you want to improve the world, you should figure out a plan of how to build teams of 200 people or more. But unfortunately, it costs significant amount of money to do that, and your only option would be to apply for EU or government support for handouts, if you want to organize such teams. Or get lucky with starting a business and get a success product out to generate enough money that you can finance a research team that can change the world. Unfortunately, people's life is over by the time they get their business up and running and enough money collected for setting up companies necessary.. So only option is to find existing company and try to work for their large team... But everyone does not have that option, so their only chance of making a dent in world's problems is by creating entertainment or other stuff that doesn't cause damage, which allows other people to focus on things other than entertainment.
AMZN, GOOG, TSLA
Who has time to fix the world when you're busy geeking out?
"Why Aren't Techies Improving The World?"
It's because "improving the world" is relative and political. Techies 'resolve' technical problems, not political problems.
Techies are like scientist. They resolve technical problems like how to make the iphone's touch keyboard, just like scientist uncovering lithium battery's potential. People like you decide politically whether it 'improves' the world or it makes more people walk into walls while using iphone.
We don't need FBI vs Apple again to prove why 'Improving the World' or really 'Improving Your World' is relative and political. #FirstWorldProblems
Why? Lawyers.
People are always the same (more or less), but they respond differently to different environments. If entrepeneurs are focused on growing fast and getting rich quick its because the hole system is designed to prefer the short vs the long term.
My story has 420 points... I mean in general where do those points come from.
Haha, you want 'evidence'?
Just look around you.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Wow, I really liked that one. :)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I didn't know your needs for resources only amounted to what you can eat.
I didn't say that, I merely replied to a post suggesting we don't have enough resources to feed 'all those people'.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
A system the pays the specials
Let me read that as "A system that pays the specialists...", ok?
In the winter months
Winter months? Why winter months? :)
Ah, let me guess... In winter the sun shines less, let alone on our bare skin, so our bodies produce much less vit D3 than in summer.
Hmmm, vit D3 deficiency during winter months maybe? Impairing the immune system, making people (much) more vulnerable to all kinds of virii?
Then the solution would be to supplement with Vit D3, no? Or take regular sun baths under appropriate UV lights.
I for example supplement with 5,000 IU vit D3 per day and I'm feeling quite well, thank you.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
First many thanks for that sublime link.
But, I didn't mean to suggest that the number of casualties from 'minor' wars was actually higher than that of what are considered major wars.
Every casualty counts. So saying that a minor war is no problem is a sociopathological statement in my eyes.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
The villain of the movie "Antitrust" has a foundation too, so Bill Gates can stay a bad guy.
Bill Gates is just not a bad guy anymore.
Funny, last I checked he was taking the largest sum of wealth ever accrued by an individual, sticking it into a tax-evading non-profit he has control over, and pissing it away in the third world while the megacorporation he founded marches along to the same mantra of "fuck everyone who helped me get where I am, it's time for some cultural marxism and social 'justice.'" There is nothing good about Bill Gates, the fact you think otherwise is just another negative to add to the list (the liberal elites have brainwashed nearly an entire generation into believing in self-defeating ideologies.)
You mean? No way. He's still the villain. This is too good to be true. Do you have citations to back up what you're saying? Hey, I'm hoping he comes out of retirement because really who's his replacement? Name me one villain who even holds a candle to Bill Gates in his prime asshole days?
Sure, technical skills may improve some parts of the world, where the VCs do not corrupt everything. But we should start by making the world around us, our home, our family, our beloved people, our workplace, our towns, better places.
If you want to change the world, try to change your neighborhood for a start. Be nice to people. Even if your are not able to change the world, you can make some places on it nicer and some people happier.
Choose the solution, it may be technical, or not. Tech people know how to create stuff, investigate issues and solve problems. These are fine assets to change what sucks around you.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
Perhaps you should be asking: why aren't the THOUSANDS of techies trying to help the world getting as much press or glorification as those trying to make it to a big buyout with a fickle/obnoxious app?
Every techie who made it big is into their own little pet agenda. Even Bill Gate's foundation is mainly focused on just Education, and he's retired. So he no longer counts as a Techie, no?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Singapore has a population density of 8000 people/km^2 you halfwit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
For any third graders out there.
Maslow was a navel gazer who stated that navel gazing was the highest form of human achievement. Other navel gazers agree with him. That is all there is it: Philosophical fapping.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You just don't know about it. For example, you might read Stephen Kotler's, "Abundance."
If you start to innovate by first trying to identify a problem, then with enough investigation, you'll find out that the problem hasn't been solved yet for darned good reasons. There's often a topic that gets discussed along the lines of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: What could you "invent" to change the world if you suddenly found yourself trapped a few centuries in the past?
Lots of knowitall people will show up and claim things like they'd be able to build a working steam-engine in the early iron-age. But no, even among talented engineers, most of them couldn't. And it's not just because they don't remember how to build one; it's because the state of metal fabrication was such that you wouldn't be able to afford the sheet metal needed to make the boiler; and even if you could; there's a good chance you'd have a boiler explosion. Also, you'd need to build a decently high precision metal lathe; which again, would require massive resources.
To solve something, you need a problem, you need a solution that will actually work (which is an uncertainty until you've implemented the solution), and you need the resources, either acquired by yourself, or someone who you've convinced to invest in your idea to both pay for the resources needed to make the solution, and that includes enough money to cover your basic survival needs while implementation takes place.
So, finding a solvable problem is hard, knowing the solution to the problem is hard, the implementation is usually hard, because it tends to involve unknowns, and finding backing is hard. Compare that to a company willing to pay you enough money to buy a house and raise a family for doing something useless like re-implementing Candy-crush so that it works on your smart-fridge. So some people choose comfort, some choose to fight the good fight. Among those people, some of them have selected a problem that will be solved better by someone else, or a problem that isn't nearly as big of a problem in the world as they though. Some people will have a solution that turns out to fail. Some will have a working solution that depends on an innovation that won't exist for decades to come. Some people will have a great problem and a working solution, but they can never communicate their ideas to someone to the extent that they are willing to back the endeavor.
So yeah, we aren't solving important stuff because pretty much by its very nature, important stuff is Hard to fix, or it would've already been fixed.
With internet and IT tech we are improving many aspects of the world by:
1. Improving communication world wide.
2. Improving entertainment world wide.
3. Improving education world wide.
4. Make banks and credit card readers available online to everyone (so even poor person from a 3rd world small town can run a business)
etc.
With DNA/Gene manipluation we are trying to end world hunger:
1. Creating GMO food that can grow where no plant has grown before.
2. Determining causes of diseases and how to stop them
3. Finding ways to kill weeds without pesticide
etc.
I could go on . . .
If you think that tech is not solving problems, then maybe you have the wrong set of friends?
Maybe you should solve your own problems, instead of waiting for "superman" to show up... ;-)
Hey, that sounds like a goood idea! Wait a moment, while I post it so the -entire world- can see the new idea! 8-)
Your classification of wars is dubious at best.
The most obvious issue is how you characterize WWI. That war decisively altered the fundamental structure of Europe. It destroyed Austria-Hungary, created several smaller and more diverse states in its place, and toppled a lot of major monarchies, including Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. It effectively destroyed the idea of strong kings or emperors as foundations of governments. All available weapons were used, bringing in chemical warfare, large-scale sinking of merchant ships by submarines, and aerial bombardment. Really, it's what you classify as a Fourth Turning War.
IIRC, the Glorious Revolution was not particularly brutal. The American Revolution was not all that brutal, as wars of the period went, and wasn't pursued to the end, but only to the point where the Brits thought it not worth continuing. It was much closer to the Vietnam War.
Your Second Turning Wars don't make much sense either. The Spanish-American War and English Civil War were decisive and to the finish in the affected areas, had fairly clear war aims, and changed things a lot. They weren't guerilla wars (the Philippine war after the Spanish-American was).
You appear to be projecting periods on a timeline and classifying wars by periods, ignoring what the wars actually were and how they were fought.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You seem to be claiming that what happens to poor people doesn't matter, since they don't have the money to pay for things and hence have no effective demand. Not everyone benefits from economic growth.
I'm not starving partly because I make much more money than the median US worker, so that's not a good argument.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
As I noted, I consolidated a 400 page book into four paragraphs and left out a great deal of other subject matter supporting the discussion. May I recommend you pick up "The Fourth Turning" by Straus and Howe.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Loved how you laid out the statements made and how real they actually are.
These days its more likely to be Conspiracy FACT, than a Conspiracy Theory....especially when it comes to the 1%.
Don't know if they control 50% of the Wealth in the entire world, it would not surprise me. Do know that 9% of Americans control 90% of the wealth in our country. And the fact that they get such a large percentage of Americans to think that they have a shot at getting were they are just proves the fact that marketing works.
I took that Smallest Little Political Quiz a while back, it highlighted a couple of facts:
Before someone chimes in that the Smallest Little Political Quiz has problems, I say to you, it is much more RIGHT than it is WRONG.
The 1% are extremely effective at maintaining control. Should you become successful enough to become a threat, they will either co-opt you or block you from success through new state laws or the courts. They will not let you join the party, you (and I) are useless to them and just consume resources they greedily want for themselves.
The Tea Party was co-opted by the time they had their first convention by the Koch brothers. (Remember there candidate for President was the Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, Republican whose biggest contributor before the Koch brothers was the largest polluter in the state of Wisconsin, amazingly he held onto his seat)
The Republicans are almost 100% co-opted due to their need to raise money to run for election, the 1% have more than enough money to buy you and they do.
The Democrats are not as largely co-opted as the Republicans, not because they are any better, but only because the 1% control the Republicans and Tea Party, they don't need to control more than half the Democrats.
Thanks to their pushing Citizen's United vs FEC, should that BS progress, they will not need either the Republicans or the Tea Party...and thanks to so many 1 issue votes (true evil to any Democracy) they are pretty close to getting their majority on the Supremes. Than it is game over.
The 1% are no different than any other hate group, they love themselves and hate everyone else.
For my kids, I am working hard to set up businesses that will provide them and their descendants lifetime incomes, basically what the 1% have done since the beginning...I can't join them, don't want to join them, but do want my own descendants to have a shot at a decent life where 'Right to Work' for less states, 1H1B Visas and other Anti-America-Job activities will effectively kill any possible career they can try for before they can obtain a salary high enough above poverty levels so that they have a shot at continuing to build what I have started for them....in the long run it is about cash flow (what ever cash the current economy uses) and food independence (so that they do not spend everything they have just to survive.)
Sadly with Agencies that police clean air and clean water getting regulatory captured and their budgets devastated to the point they can not possibly enforce laws that protect are air and water....the chances of our descendants staying healthy enough not to be raped by health care is getting harder and harder.
And speaking of rape, should my daughter get raped, heaven forbid, I would counsel her to abort the baby, why reward the rapist, however should my daughter decide to keep the baby inspite of the horrendus crime done to her, I would support her decision, though IT MUST BE HER DECISION! You A-holes that want to make a raped woman a criminal SUCK! YOU ARE EVIL AND EVERYTHING YOU DO IS EVIL, no matter how you spin it...get off my yard and stay out of my bedroom.
Thing is, you were claiming things that I can't believe in the summary. Any evidence supporting the idea that the Glorious Revolution is pretty much the same sort of thing as WWII is suspect at best. Add to this my basic distrust of cyclical history, and it doesn't look worth following up to me.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The reason that techies are not changing the world for the better, is because the problems in the world are not simple problems of technology. We are engineers. If we do not know what the problem is, how can we possibly craft a solution?