Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to become actually useful and desired by the general public. Because of that, there will continue to be a push to extend and enhance those capabilities.

The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner. The next step is to extend the ability of the systems to actually understand wider and wider ranges of questions. We are still a ways away from having free-flowing conversations with our computers, but there are many steps along the way that are useful of themselves. Advancing this technology is a competitive advantage, and becomes key to drawing in and keeping people in one of the various tech ecosystems (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple).

In the wider business world, people are finding new and better ways to apply this technology.

I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. I really dislike it.

Sadly giving a search engine too many words can stop it from even searching, probably because that would cause a scan or result in a very time and computer/resource intensive search. So it doesn't even bother searching and tells you it couldn't find anything.

Imagine this use case. User searches for a video that costs Youtube royalty fees and is not monetized. Do you prioritize that in your return results or some other video that makes your business money instead of costing it?

Same thing with the Spotify Company playlists and recommendations versus user generated ones. Spotify's seems to include lesser quality, lower royalty songs now even though that is not what I want and it knows it. But unlike Google, I only go to Spotify BECAUSE of the quality of the songs it recommends me. Now that it's priority is first lower royalty songs over songs it things I would like the most I have no incentive to stay.

Underrated insight

I work for a fairly large, fairly successful company and I'm having to explain to my team how to quantify the business value of a product, like showing that the value provided to customer in terms of dollars is greater than the cost of the service we provide. It's an uphill battle, because we've lived in a bubble so long people don't even remember this basic fundamental of business.

The tech industry exploded because of cheap money, but by and large has completely failed to extract actual value from the technology.

Even when I list out the "tech" products I do use frequently (Uber, Door Dash and the like) I realize that the products they offer are basically investor charity since they cannot be sustained indefinitely at the price point they're offered (and they don't make sense if they charge more).

Of the actual technology I use, the vast majority has barely changed in a decade. The most impressive thing I've purchased in years is finally getting an RTX 3070 and that is just "neat!". Anyone who remembers the release of the original iPhone will instantly recognize that despite the trillions spend in the tech industry, nothing quite as game changing as that has come out since. Google search was also better back then.

Pleasing but not useful. I really miss Google search from 10 years ago. I think things started going downhill when they introduced the instant search feature. Nowadays it's difficult to find anything. The results are mostly irrelevant and littered with spam and AI written nonsense. I remember I could go through hundreds of result pages and find useful things on the tail end, now quite often I get one page only and nothing is relevant to my search term. I have to often use quotation marks etc, but even that stops being helpful - basically more often than not I get no results at all.

Like 'taking better pictures when you a person of non white color's but that's the wrong attitude. They solve great issues like this and I'm probably more underwhelmed that we even had to fix something like this because it wasn't really solved before.

Let's see if/when we get a more stable timeframe back. With COVID and the Russians it's shitty and climate change might already be a regular constant.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

But to argue that technology as a whole has stopped is... well, not irrefutable, but almost certainly wrong. And if it's right, wow, is that bleak.

Constructed more naturally, your statement here:

> we need to make better, more humane and effective technology, not just more and more and more of it.

Is certainly true, but frankly is just a tautology. "Technology" as commonly understood means new stuff that makes people's lives better.

I see two errors here.

Defining technology to be "that thing which makes people's lives better" feels weak, even disingenuous, because trivially nuclear missiles and weaponised smallpox are technologies that fail your test.

Therefore, there exist technologies that can make peoples' lives worse.

The second issue is with your subjective "(people's lives getting better) doesn't appear to be slowing down to me". It's a view you're entitled to hold of course. Maybe you are not aware of other perspectives. It may have escaped your notice that in the last decade digital technologies have substantially changed in their nature. They've been at the centre of scandals over the erosion of democratic values, decline in education, attention disorders, social fragmentation, childhood depression, pollution and e-waste, conflict minerals, energy consumption, loss of privacy, dignity and rights... Must I go on?

To hold the idea that "all technologies naturally improve human life" by definition alone seems like a desperate escape from the facts.

Please don't. OK, I get it now. Your point above wasn't about "peak tech" at all[1], it was about this part, which you didn't mention. I think you're wrong, FWIW, but am not going to engage.

[1] In either the sense of "peak tech startup investment activity" or "technological progress as commonly undeerstood".

"Peak tech" is two words I just pulled out of my arse an hour ago.

Let's define it together.

For me it's a palpable sentiment not a definition. But some people here seem to "get it".

The "tech industry" is not just an activity, it's a culture. Many of us, including (particularly?) developers are increasingly fed-up and disappointed by the direction digital technology is going. Not because we dislike technology, but because of what a minority are doing with it to gain power and wealth to the detriment of everyone else.

I don't think things will change for those investors who are smart enough to see the writing on the wall and switch (as they are doing) to physical technologies. FWIW I love the startup mind-set.

But this cynical flogging of surveillance capitalism, screwing over users, social control and smartphone bandwagon has been sticking in people's throats way beyond this community for some time.

The pain and anxiety equals or outweighs the perceived benefits - not just to a few geeks - but to people like my parents, siblings and neighbours.

That's "peak tech" for me.

It's how we end up with shit like grocery self-checkout machines and robots answering customer support calls. Nobody likes being yelled at by a robot who doesn't understand the situation, except the decision-makers buying the machines.

This isn't peak tech, not by a longshot. This is just Intel's competitors eating it's lunch.

Robots answering support calls are annoying, but self-service websites are pretty good for 99% of things.

some wholesale clubs apparently counter this by randomly auditing every cart as you leave, but that seems to leave the whole thing only marginally more efficient than traditional checkout

I have lost count of how many items I forgot to pay for at Home Depot.

They scream at me when they think I'm stealing (Any human being doing that would instantly be reprimanded by a manager), they have tiny platforms where I can't even fit my groceries and heaven forbid if I do something the machine doesn't like, an attendant needs to come unfuck it for me.

The best thing about them is that I can do some work for the store for free as part of my shopping. I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions.

I was a cashier for a couple summers. There were a couple members of staff that were really experienced experts who could really fly through the checkout, but there were plenty of us that were just kids working over the summer...

Supermarkets have always looked to save cost, it is a price sensitive business after all. At some point you'd give a list to the clerk and they'd put your order together. I'm sure people were annoyed when they had to start doing that clerk's job.

Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union I had to spend about three weeks each year in the collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends are very fond of socialism these days - these types of “improvement” look definitely a possibility.

Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up, given that workers in government and defense-critical industries weren't exactly rounded up a la carte to work the fields. Not when there was a dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing, and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.

But now that you mention it, I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries, or filling grocery bags, or piloting a shitbarge up the Hudson river along with the rest of us. I do keep hearing from that half of the political spectrum that hard, poorly paid work, and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps builds character...

I kinda think I should write an essay about the life of a software engineer in the Soviet Union. It is always interesting to get reactions of un-believe to simple truths, known to everybody with the same "living experience". What stops me - my English is bad and Russians know all this already. Still, let me do what I can.

So, software engineers and the food supply. I worked as a software engineer in a biological research center. I've participated in the practice described below from 1979 to 1991, 1991 being the last year of the planned economy. Each employee has a quota to be fulfilled in the collective farm fields, like 20 days a year. Each morning, weekends including, a big number of buses was coming to the city center. Our research institution was assigned one bus. We packed in it and were driven into the fields. There was a quota to be done by each until afternoon: planting, tending or harvesting depending on the season. In the afternoon like "before lunch" buses arrived to take us back to the city. You were free from work this day, but paid in full. You were also paid for the work done in the fields. Twice paid for a half of a day's work.

No one was exempt from the farm work quota, nor government workers, nor defense contractors from a county seat 20 miles away.

So the whole system was not especially cruel, but extremely ineffective, like the life in the late Soviet Union in general - do not forget these buses with their fuel, some of them bringing people from 20 miles away - for half a day's work.

( In 1990 yours truly organized and participated in an economic experiment, reducing some of the costs. Instead of giving a quota to each co-worker, we've organized a team of volunteers, spent whole days in the field and were done with the quota for the whole institution in a week or so. This was a back-breaking affair, but earned a good money. I've sent a letter to the county newspaper with a proud name Kommunist, describing the "experiment". They published it, but they also published "letters from workers" naming me "the enemy of the people". )

Some misconceptions to correct, if I may.

>in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest

Incarceration rates in Stalin times were less than incarceration rates in present Texas or Luisiana. So not much could have been done using inmates labor only.

>dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing,

Kolhozniks in my time were paid 2-3 times more than a software engineer. Not that was much, but still.

>and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.

This practice ended in 1965. Free movement of people was restricted in general though, meaning you have to jump through some stupid obstacles to move, but absolutely possible.

>I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries

This is a strange wish. If Thiel is a good person, he will work along with you, yes. But if he is the bad guy like I guess you've implied - he will be a supervisor over you packing strawberries. Some things never change with a change of a political system.

For anyone who doubts it I highly recommend Adam Curtis's new 6 hour docu-montage "Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone"[1]

[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/ideas-in...

[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/a...

And not to be overly pedantic (although we are on hn here, and when in Rome...), but leading American socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism, much like many European countries where I'm pretty sure forced agrarian labor isn't a thing.

Is there possible anything democratic without free speech?

( Speaking of which. In the Soviet Union all western media - newspapers and magazines - was put under the lock. Foreign propaganda. Sound familiar? Only trusted persons could get the key. Funny thing is all former Party media - newspapers and magazines from former years - were put under the same lock. Protocols of former Party congresses too. Dangerous, same as foreign propaganda. And now I see this:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/youtube-demonetizes-tk-content

YouTube demonetized a video showing years of audio and video clips, tweets, and headlines produced by the Party politicians at about and after 2016 - nothing else.

So we may be not there yet but we are sure sailing in the same direction ).

It has never been easier to build a business(software). Labor is abundant, and the tech boom has created a million Medicis willing to throw money at wild things. Look at FTX fund for example.

Or I guess we can just be pendantic. There are no such thing as alternating periods, all periods of time are exactly the same!

Better tech is how humans (all of them - rather than the few) get more space to reflect and live outside.

A young adult "in an already developed country with relatively new infrastructure that had already been built for them and they chose not to continue to invest in and improve" in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside.

Meanwhile, because of those young adults lack of productivity in the 70s, people even in the US are drinking water with lead, have their homes destroyed by climate change, had the forests die and passively watched as desertification took hold.

That said, I don't blame those young adults individually, they were a product of poor societal leadership. While not in aggregate (as evident in today's "crumbling" US and European infrastructure and diminished infrastructural head-start), I'm also sure many of these individuals found a healthy balance between being outdoors relaxing and improving the human condition for the long run.

All I'm calling out is that in aggregate they were no bastions you should hold in any high regard, and definitely not something to try and replicate.

What we need is better technology to lift up the human condition, allow each of us to continue to help improve the human condition with roughly 40 hours per year of effort, and spend the rest outdoors/gaming/enjoying/relaxing in general.

Better is subtle. Nothing is a straight line.

- Less human effort and overall cost to construct net-new housing (and frankly "achieve safety").

- Less human effort and overall cost to grow and transport food.

- Less human effort and overall cost to clean and transport potable water.

- Less human effort and overall cost to keep everyone's bodies healthy.

- Less human effort and overall cost to keep everyone's minds healthy.

- Less human effort and overall cost to keep our planet healthy i.e. appropriately and continually terraformed for our needs.

- Less human effort and overall cost to travel/explore any and every inch of this planet (including the sea floor, the highest mountains, the sky, and even orbit). Fuck it, why think small, even less human effort and overall cost to travel/explore every inch of this universe.

These are the technologies we need to get more people outdoors!

People have been saying this about technology for as long as technology has existed.

Have they? It kinda sounds "truthy" but if ever there was an unfalsifiable claim that's gotta be a contender.

I'm no general historian but think for the most-part people have enthused over and coveted technologies for thousands of years.

With the exception of occasional religious objections to "magic" it was the Luddites during the industrial revolution whose first stirrings of discontent emerged.

Even the early critical science-fiction of H.G Wells and Mary Shelley was tepid and poetic.

Much later, in the late 1960s, comes the first modern tech-critique, and much of that is driven by affairs relating to environmental and war problems, Vietnam, oil crisis, DDT... way before the Internet.

The idea that we have a surfeit of technological capability, or perhaps just too much of the wrong type, seems very contemporary to me.

The Ancient Greek philosophers used to say this about writing and reading

For example cell phones still sound worse than land lines did in the 90s. We just don't care, and don't have a choice anyway (even most landlines are ultimately going to interface with a digital connection).

Refrigerators have more gizmos than before, but one of the key features, reliability, is in decline.

Personal computers are increasing moving back to a client server model which is absolutely a step back from where we were a decade or more ago. When the services behind all the billion SaaS apps we consume disappear so will the tools themselves.

Market conditions have virtually eliminated software you own.

I suspect this trend will increase dramatically over the next decade where most of the devices and tools we use are objectively worse than what we're using today.

I have experienced a handful of magic products, Apple products which are the best example, that are built from incredibly capable software that takes cheap hardware components and makes them sing. All objects could be like this, deep software capabilities running on a few dollars of hardware. I have the idea that the demand for people that can create software is bottomless, that there will always be more thing to turn into perfect iThings.

I think there is plenty of industry tech left to be developer