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Comment by reactjavascript | Hacker News Reader

The technology has progressed. But have humans progressed?

Involved in the industry since 1980, I am intrigued looking back how we just reinvent the same things but with different distractions - I'm thinking of things like the "natural language" program Savvy from Excalibur Technologies running on an Apple II with a CPM card back in 1982 (which I cannot even find referenced online), then the whole computer world got thoroughly distracted with the graphical user interface for a few decades (macOS, Windows) but with applications that hardly even matched the capability of Savvy. Savvy and programs with that level of functionality simply disappeared. Then the world got distracted with smart phones (iOS, Android), with apps really nothing more than portals through to large datacenter applications still with capabilities that hardly matched the capability of Savvy. I guess in a few decades we'll be distracted with Ray Kurzweil-esque red blood cell sized computers swimming in our blood (still with capabilities that will hardly match the capabilities of Savvy). It's as if humans really do not want functionality and capability as much as we want accessibility?

> which I cannot even find referenced online

For these sorts of searches, I use archive.org: https://archive.org/search.php?query=Savvy++%22Excalibur+Tec...

Perhaps https://archive.org/details/InterfaceAge198207/page/n111/mod... ?

Pipes (the tobacco kind, not the Unix kind) used to be a lot more popular back then.

Edit: Dr. Dobb's review at https://archive.org/details/1985-03-dr-dobbs-journal/page/11... . Says SAVVY PC was written in MMS Forth "this despite John Dvorak's statment in his InfoWorld column, "Inside Track," that no decent program was ever written in Forth". :)

So great to hear Savvy mentioned! What an amazing piece of software.

Can you explain what was Savvy please? I had an Apple 2e and do not remember Savvy at all.

I was co-owner of an Apple dealership in Wellington, New Zealand. We used and sold Savvy, which was touted as a "natural language processor" - seemed to be a database with a natural language query system that was dumb as could be to begin with but rapidly gained in intelligence the more it was used. After the Mac was released the spotlight went off Savvy and a lot of my old customers told me their product was purchased back (recalled?) by Excaliber. There are references here that it may have ended up at Sandia Labs. Did it become a national security item? Does that happen?

Yes and no. Big wins include the fact that smoking isn't everywhere the way it used to be, gay marriage and rights, more freedom for women, and generally lower costs for essential - albeit with some serious downsides for those involved in making and distributing them.

Losses include much less economic headroom for everyone who isn't upper middle class or higher, with a fair percentage of the population falling out at the low end, much more homelessness, and a cutthroat nickel and dime everything neoliberal culture in business. So while computers and cars are cheaper, health care and college expenses are much higher.

There was still some lingering benign paternalism in business in the 80s and especially the 70s, but that's much rarer now.

And serious stressors like climate catastrophe are much more imminent.

> So while computers and cars are cheaper, health care and college expenses are much higher.

Technology, transportation, and food are cheaper.

Unfortunately major essentials such as housing, health care, and education are drastically more expensive.

Outside of cartels and rent-seekers, I can't imagine people saying "you know, we really need to make housing, health care, and education unaffordable for more people."

It's particularly disappointing that technology doesn't seem to have reduced the cost of health care or education - the cartels seem to have won by restricting supply and exploiting indirect payment systems.

That’s a good summary. One nit: are cars really cheaper now? I don’t get that impression. They are definitely more reliable, though, and last much longer.

all i see is diminishing returns, marketing and fantasies.

4MB used to make people believe they'd do everything for life, accounting, programming, graphics whatever. It was infinite joy with only 320x200 points.

Now you sell a 4k capable pocket datacenter running on 5W and people are barely satisfied for a year.

Imagine never having sweets in your life, then the first time you having a peppermint your life would be changed.

Now imagine a long life where you had all the sweets you could ever eat available all the time. Your attitude to them is going to be far different.

In addition, back in the 90s computers were going to attract 'computer people' and the rest would ignore them. Now they are just a fact of life, even for the disinterested.

TBF the pocket datacenter does way more than a vintage does though. However I do agree there is an inflation of customer expectation since the 90s.

Just imagine: assuming tech evolves a lot slower. What would happen? People would still be OK, games would still be fun, business would carry on regardless.

I've said this before but the further back you go, the further above average you needed to be or you couldn't even even touch a computer.

Hell yes! Back then here in the USA we had only 2 sexes, 3 TV networks, and all libraries had were these printed website things they called “books”.

Nowadays we have 57 sexes, 570 TV networks, and libraries in the city have evolved to their true purpose of sheltering the unhoused. And soon we won’t be burdened by our privacy belongings!

https://twitter.com/wef/status/800965291215818752?s=21

I mean, who wouldn’t see this as leveling up?

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