Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by mymythisisthis on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @09:19PM (#31499552)

The fastest way of learning something is to have a professional teach you. Not even the Internet can beat that. Because of cut backs to education, we have fewer good mentors. Because of loss in manufacturing in N. America there are fewer skilled professionals to pass on their knowledge.

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Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by denimnerd42 on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @09:56PM (#31499779)

Plenty of professionals are out there teaching on youtube. I can fix my car, my plumbing, my electrical, I can frame an addition to my house, I can setup an irrigation system. Rebuild a chainsaw, build my own furniture, refinish my floor, fix my drywall, concrete flatwork. These are all things I've done in the past year. The proliferation of digital video, high quality cameras, microphones and editing software has made it easier than ever to learn from professionals. Books just aren't the same thing.

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Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by supernovae on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @12:11AM (#31500525)

This entire thread feels borderline ridiculous.

We have all the internet but damn even books are better and broader today. I can order that rare special indy book and print it on demand and have it show up in 3 days

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Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by iratewizard on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @12:33AM (#31500639)

There are a lot of how to guides. Anything requiring a longer attention span or curated lesson is not promoted by the algorithm or facilitated well online. I mentor developers on a regular basis. Unless they need a book to get foundational knowledge or a recipe on how to make something very specific, I teach it myself because there's no adequate YouTube tutorial.

There's also no YouTube tutorial to tell you something like "don't mix types of metals for you gas plumbing or you'll kill your family" because there's no professional watching you make stupid mistakes.

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Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by WillPostForFood on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @01:39AM (#31500970)

Because of cut backs to education, we have fewer good mentors.

What cut backs? We spend more on education than ever. We might be getting less out of it, but not for lack of spending.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.70.a...

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Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by anthk on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @10:33PM (#31499985)

I have books on math from encyclopedias from parents from the 80's weighting more than 4 KG each.

Now I can just fire up a browser and understand a hard math concept in minutes in a much easier way. With free as in freedom CAS tools and such, and with a netbook bought at a ridiculous price 20x cheaper than the book volume set itself, which back in the day costed A LOT.

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Re:Why isn’t new technology making us more productive? by nerdponx on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @08:44AM (#31503728)

You are making several big logical jumps here that I don't think are connected. This sounds more like a dinner table conversation among some conservatives validating each other's worldviews than a constructive discussion point.

There are arguably more opportunities now for learning things from a professional than in the past.

Public schooling has very rarely been about mentorship anyway. Arguably higher education always was to some extent, but it very often still is; you end up in debt nowadays, but it's still widely accessible.

And I don't see what loss of manufacturing has to do with anything. Some of those manufacturing jobs were in skilled trades, sure, but there are still plenty of opportunities still to learn skilled trades. And even then, I don't think that has much of anything to do with learning things from a book at the library vs. a course on the Web.

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