Why do things seem to get worse with advancements in technology?

J

JustTheGent

Well-known member
You'd expect things to improve, but many people struggle with basics such as eating and heating. You've also got lots of things shutting down and a general feeling of regression - not progress.

Anyway, better not mention that EV down the road that decided to lock its owner out for a week.

Just imagine what things will be like in 50 years.
 
JustTheGent said:
You'd expect things to improve, but many people struggle with basics such as eating and heating. You've also got lots of things shutting down and a general feeling of regression - not progress.

Anyway, better not mention that EV down the road that decided to lock its owner out for a week.

Just imagine what things will be like in 50 years.
Click to expand...
The same has happened throughout human history - advances have probably overall improved living standards - but also the benefits have been concentrated on a smaller aspect of society with power/land/money.

Technology reduces the requirement for workers - the answer should be shortening hours for same pay (4 day week).

This would then also create a greater demand for service industry and service jobs. What has mostly happened over the past 100 years is that the advances have been used to increase profits for a small number.

In history when there has been similar growing inequality it has resulted in revolutions - but now the technology of the state is such that any sort of insurrection is nigh on impossible. Also globalisation means that instead of revolution there is migration and exploitation of the international workforce.

So overall life expectancy, availability of luxuries and starvation have mostly improved. But the growth from the technology boom has not been felt equally.

The alternative argument is that the technological growth has happened because we reward entrepreneurs and risk takers. If there was more equality everyone would be worse off... I do not agree with this and think we have just not yet found the best way of spreading wealth without repression and corruption.
 
Just an observation
GDP is almost stagnant while inflation is high unless GDP grows faster than inflation we as a country will need to borrow more or cut services/ benefits or even worse both to highlight how bad this is most goods /services are more expensive year on year so if the retail /service sector had the same demand year on year the GDP would be increasing by the same amount as inflation but it’s not which basically means the economy is shrinking or doing less while running the country is getting increasingly more expensive, never mind 50 years it could be 5 years before we literally can’t run the country as we know it it’s very 😔
 
JustTheGent said:
You'd expect things to improve, but many people struggle with basics such as eating and heating. You've also got lots of things shutting down and a general feeling of regression - not progress.

Anyway, better not mention that EV down the road that decided to lock its owner out for a week.

Just imagine what things will be like in 50 years.
Click to expand...
Luckily no one from this board will be around to see it.
 
Ravshoutsatbeck said:
The same has happened throughout human history - advances have probably overall improved living standards - but also the benefits have been concentrated on a smaller aspect of society with power/land/money.

Technology reduces the requirement for workers - the answer should be shortening hours for same pay (4 day week).

This would then also create a greater demand for service industry and service jobs. What has mostly happened over the past 100 years is that the advances have been used to increase profits for a small number.

In history when there has been similar growing inequality it has resulted in revolutions - but now the technology of the state is such that any sort of insurrection is nigh on impossible. Also globalisation means that instead of revolution there is migration and exploitation of the international workforce.

So overall life expectancy, availability of luxuries and starvation have mostly improved. But the growth from the technology boom has not been felt equally.

The alternative argument is that the technological growth has happened because we reward entrepreneurs and risk takers. If there was more equality everyone would be worse off... I do not agree with this and think we have just not yet found the best way of spreading wealth without repression and corruption.
Click to expand...
I don’t think we do reward entrepreneurs and risk takers, I think we reward those who play the system.
 
It continues to be a rigged game.

The answer probably lies within AI but I suspect that once again it will be utilised for the benefit of the few, not the many.

Anyone ever read Future track 5 by Robert Westall? A great dystopian sci-fi book, written in the 80s so pretty dated but scary nonetheless
 
Ravshoutsatbeck said:
The same has happened throughout human history - advances have probably overall improved living standards - but also the benefits have been concentrated on a smaller aspect of society with power/land/money.

Technology reduces the requirement for workers - the answer should be shortening hours for same pay (4 day week).

This would then also create a greater demand for service industry and service jobs. What has mostly happened over the past 100 years is that the advances have been used to increase profits for a small number.

In history when there has been similar growing inequality it has resulted in revolutions - but now the technology of the state is such that any sort of insurrection is nigh on impossible. Also globalisation means that instead of revolution there is migration and exploitation of the international workforce.

So overall life expectancy, availability of luxuries and starvation have mostly improved. But the growth from the technology boom has not been felt equally.

The alternative argument is that the technological growth has happened because we reward entrepreneurs and risk takers. If there was more equality everyone would be worse off... I do not agree with this and think we have just not yet found the best way of spreading wealth without repression and corruption.
Click to expand...
Superb answer. What he said.
 
I do think there’s something in, because of the need to sell new versions of products and services, there’s a hell of a lot of examples of “upgrades” or updates which no-one asked for and actually make products and services worse.

Apple of course mastered this by removing headphone jacks (useful and universal), inventing their own type of pointless charger port which meant you had to buy an add-on official Apple adapter for everything, oh yeah and welding the RAM / batteries into iPhones and laptops from 2012 onwards so you have to use an Apple service to upgrade them. Absolutely none of this is an upgrade of any kind, it’s just examples of a good, popular product getting worse by reduction.

Most tech companies do this though. No one asked for Windows 10 and I bet the most used feature is still switching it back to classic view. Facebook really went off a cliff once they “upgraded” to the Feed being the centrepiece of the app so they could get more ads in your face. Twitter is of course dogshit now. A random example is that Expedia used to be a good cheap hotel aggregator, and now its pretty much unusable because it tries to offer every service under the sun, it’s like clicking through the 14 pages of random add ons you get when booking a Ryanair flight. I don’t see many apps that work better than their 2017 versions or website redesigns that considerably improve the product. Multi-factor authentication, social media integration and a login-secured “personalised user experience” is totally unnecessary when you just want to, say, order a pizza online, and it’s just an excuse to gather your Salesforce data (which 98% of companies don’t even use in an intelligent way, they just do it because everyone is doing it).

Subscription-only services (Adobe, PlayStation & Xbox live, Netflix and every other streaming app) means you don’t actually own any product, you just rent it. It doesn’t give more freedom to the user, because the second you stop paying you lose access to the product you bought. You of course pay way more for it over time (Spotify vs CDs being one area which actually benefits consumers - now that is disruptive technology.)

Planned obsolescence is another thing entirely, but there’s a lot of “innovation” for the sake of keeping everyone busy which tend to make a really successful thing slightly less easy to use.

With phones in particular the technology pretty much plateaued 7 years ago and anything new is either a meaningless gimmick or just extra digits on a number (shooting 8k footage on your OLED screen iPhone) which makes very little meaningful difference to a regular user.

God that turned into a bit of a rant.
 
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Merrykoala said:
It continues to be a rigged game.

The answer probably lies within AI but I suspect that once again it will be utilised for the benefit of the few, not the many.

Anyone ever read Future track 5 by Robert Westall? A great dystopian sci-fi book, written in the 80s so pretty dated but scary nonetheless
Click to expand...
Yes I read all of Westall’s stuff when I was a teacher. He was incredibly popular on the back of The Machine Gunners. His stuff was aimed at what was called the young adult audience, but it was still very good. I also enjoyed The Devil On The Road by him.
 
Like most things, its not really the technology, its the people that are in control of it ... almost exclusively the people in control are the problem. Much of todays tech used better could work a lot better for us ... but its all geared up to milking us all (physically, mentally and of course financially) for as much as it can.
 
"Just imagine what things will be like in 50 years."

I`ll miss the advent of that Star Trek machine that feeds you, when you say "fish and chips - mushy peas and curry and a can of Lilt please" and it just appears :love:. I watch Star Trek just to see that machine- wonderous thing, beats those air fryers I bet🤖 🚀
 
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