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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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Alternatively we could invent a smart content filter that allows us to simply not hear idiot conspiracy nutters that are SO batshit crazy that there's an exact zero chance that any of their "predictions" can ever come true that we can put more focus on the real problems.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.