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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

It seems like most of the things demonstrated are changes to the gloss of interfaces, higher resolution etc... I don't see radical "productivity" improvements - eg. making input significantly easier through BCI. The touch options they show are a scaled versions (larger/more ubiquitous) of what we have now with stylus/touch input and wearables. For example, why is the big drafting table radically better than a tablet or wacom drawing pad and large monitor today? Saying nothing of the holographic 3D table without any HMD or the other "sci-fi" type stuff shown.

I guess to me this looks nice and flashy and all but not really a breakthrough in ergonomics. Maybe I missed that somewhere.

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In college (many moons ago, I was a double major in Mech. Eng. and CS), I took drafting for a semester in my freshman year before we transitioned over to CAD. I do remember the initial feeling, hard to describe, almost claustrophobic, of going from a drafting table to the mouse/desktop setup. Overtime, you got used to it and I never looked back, but do wonder now if a freshman ME would feel the opposite when going from a mouse/desktop to a large, wacom "drafting table".

What struck me was that people were there almost as props. It was as if technology had advanced so much (information gathering and intelligence) that the people were more or less redundant and were 'doing things' just to act out our newfound purpose.

Basically all the information was there and people more or less had veto power --yes or no. I know this is just conceptualization, but they may not be that far off.

It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people.

It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people.

Is that not the "promise of technology?" That is a world I am trying to create - one where we work not out of necessity but out of passion, so I am fully behind that. I just didn't see anything in that video that blew my mind in that respect.

I would love to see something projected which would reasonably leap us to the (next thing) the way the personal computer did 20 years ago. This MSFT thing falls short of that IMO.

Yes, that has always been the promise of technology, to deliver people from tedium. The unanswered question, if people aren't really needed to do 'work' (giving them the free time) where or how do people earn a living?

Moreover, as machines/automation/computers make us more efficient, this hasn't translated into free time individually but rather made people previously employable, unemployable. So the free time that we might think is due us does't come to us, but is diverted to other people up to a point those other people aren't employed and the people who remain employed work just as long as before.

So, i guess the hope is that as people become redundant at work, that there will be a mechanism to compensate people for their lost earning power. Keep in mind, it's not like the world would switch over on a Monday --it would be gradual and that means lots of people falling through the cracks, _if_ a solution was found.

I would argue this is one of the key questions of the 21st century. The best answer anyone has so far is basic income.

The proles of the future will be futzing with the Sharepoint sites that are no doubt the backend of the future of productivity.

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