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Comment by sho_hn | Hacker News Reader

I often wonder if we (the tech industry) have come up with anything actually good since about 2005 or so, in terms of being a net win for society or something people actually need.

Increasingly, we seem to provide solutions in search of a problem, or worse, substitutes for much healthier activities. The power we have to do so is staggering; we are changing the parameters and modes of how people relate to each other on a daily basis.

I feel a strong urge to have more "ok, so where do we go from here?" and "what does a tech industry that promotes net good actually look like?" internal discourse in the community of practice, and some sort of ethical social contract for software engineering.

The open source movement has been fabulous and sometimes adjacent to or one aspect of these concerns, but really we need a movement for socially conscious and responsible software.

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Maps/GPS navigation is really nice. But it also is a crutch. If I get somewhere with maps, I probably can't find my way back without maps. When I used to plan in advance using a paper map, that was less often the case.

I like online banking, shopping, bill-paying.

Everything else is sort of bleh. I'm as guilty as anyone of killing a few hours on YouTube but don't think I would really miss it.

How to's and videos of experts (not your average randos) doing stuff on the internet has been extremely helpful.

When doing home projects trying to thumb thru 50 VHS tapes of This Old House really isn't practical.

Yeah that is very true. Used to go to the library and get books on home repair for that sort of thing, but it's not as convenient, and for some things nothing beats watching a video. If a picture can say 1,000 words a good video can amplify that 10x or more.

> Maps/GPS navigation is really nice. But it also is a crutch.

This is a really interesting point which can be extrapolated to many different areas. If something is more convinient, but causes us to lose a useful manual skill, should it be classed as good or not?

I too feel this urge. It's a difficult path to go down, and an even more difficult path to lead others down.

Mainly because the destination is an alternate economy where "companies" are smaller, returns are not concentrated to "founders" or investors or even shareholders, and so on.

The tech industry has become "evil" because it has put on social blinders while pursuing profits. To give up that path and choose another path is to choose more prosperity for "we" and less prosperity for "me". It's not a difficult choice in the abstract, but it's a very difficult for people with (oftentimes spurious, but still) bills to pay.

There are vanishingly-few ways to ethically draw a six figure salary (inflation-adjusted for 2016 dollars) out of this economy. Giving up that illusion is going to be really difficult (perhaps impossible) for the people in our industry who were drawn here by that promise and have grown comfortable with the terms of the bargain.

I think we do, and many of them are excellent candidates. But social media + big data + algorithm is really "evil" (use quotes because many may not agree), plus it is often exposed to teens and younger kids. It's like mindless TV channel switching with 1) way more channels, 2) way less information for each program and 3) recommendations.

The laser printer might have been the last good thing. (Just kidding, not really.)

I really like the positivity of your post. This is an attitude I hope more of us (myself included) can adopt going forward in the world of tech we are creating around us.

Our current advances in LLMs might just represent the biggest achievement humans have made since discovering fire.

I completely disagree, unless this was sarcastic.

> Increasingly, we seem to provide solutions in search of a problem, or worse, substitutes for much healthier activities.

LLMs (and generative AI in general) are probably the most egregious and prominent examples of this, IMO.

How would you say they’re solutions in search of a problem? I engage LLMs more than 50 times a week to solve problems at work, in my personal projects, and in my personal life. I respect your opinion but thoroughly disagree.

Just for my own context and perspective, do you use generative AI or not?

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