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Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

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Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#191

Post by pacala »

godelski wrote: post #81
unlinked_dll wrote: post #39

Internet usage starts with users querying information they want, and services learning/adapting to deliver information in a format/context based on their activity. This has created some stellar search tools, a personalized network of services and communities available to people, and made the internet a paradise for new content from all over the world. Despite that all the information in the world is available to us,…

> We wanted it. I'm not entirely convinced this is accurate. It definitely is in part, but not in whole. We wanted these better search tools and we like recommendation systems. But I know a lot of people are frustrated with algorithms like YouTube's recommendation system trapping them. (e.g. watch one Joe Rogan video and you get firehosed with more JRE videos). The thing is we also don't notice that this reinforcemen…

What is the alternative? Our brains simply cannot cope with an endless sea of fresh faces, each of them requiring an acuqaintance effort, only to disappear in the mass of unfamiliar faces within minutes. The known-host / fresh-guest model lessens the burden, as the host becomes a known quantity after a while. With their temperament, leanings, quirks, idiosyncrasies and all that. Conversely, I've observed myself following a certain guest through a string of hosts, which ended up working well as a host discovery mechanism, better than browsing through random youtube recommendations. Note to self: patent this.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#192

Post by missingrib »

goatlover wrote: post #161
sjg007 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was boring. A lot of TV was watched. There were some video games too. You could program too. The only thing you could do outside of that would be to read or socialize. You could read a gauntlet of things that you can do today as well. But YouTube, podcasts, blogs are great.

> The only thing you could do outside of that would be to read or socialize. Hike, play sports, build stuff with your hands, make art, write, go swimming, and a bunch of other things. I don't recall being particularly bored growing up before the internet became a big deal. It's just that now I'm used to having online access to so many things, it's easier to be bored without access to that.

It's probably more likely that you just grew up and the things you found exciting then you don't find exciting now. Because you could just do those things now without going on the internet! They're separate things.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#193

Post by tsimionescu »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #62
abtinf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't lead to free exchange of ideas and values, it has created polarized societies Technology created polarized society? Before internet search, we were better educated and understood each other better?

Newspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at lea…

> They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them.

Newspapers ignored inconvenienent facts all the time, probably for all of human history. Even when they don't completely ignore some facts, they often choose to make a big deal of some facts and not of others.

Some examples of the former would be the missing reporting on the US atrocities in South America, except maybe the Contra deal. The 100 catholic priests murdered in SA by US or US-supported troops were never mentioned, but the Soviet murder of 1 priest was an international scandal (as well it should be, but the others should have been an even bigger scandal).

A very good example of the latter should be the COINTELPRO[1] revelation of the FBI actively seeking to blackmail and even assassinate members of civil rights groups, including an attempt to convince MLK to commit suicide, threatening to reveal his extra-marital affairs otherwise. This was reported to some extent, but then Watergate happened at around the same time, and, despite being much less worrying for normal people, it became one of the largest scandals in media, and COINTELPRO was forgotten from public discourse.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#194

Post by dcolkitt »

jakeinspace wrote: post #126
mherdeg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yishan Wong's response to that worry starts out: > The pre-internet era was boring. Some may say that it was just as stimulating but in different, more "vibrant, outdoorsy" ways, but they are wrong. I have lived in both and the internet definitely makes life more interesting. In fact, combining the outdoors with the internet is one of life's greatest pleasures. https://www.quora.com/How-did-people-waste-their-time-in…

This implies boredom is inherently bad. As a child, a lot of creative play came from boredom. Of course, we're all bound to lose some of that as we mature, but I can't help but feel that the availability of cheap distraction in the form of boundless information is allowing me to sabotage myself.

I think our relationship with boredom over the past 30 years mirrors that of hunger post-industrial revolution.

Humans evolved in environments where both calories and information were very sparse. Natural selection encouraged a continious psychological drive to seek those resources whenever and wherever possible. Over-consuming food or stimulus was such a rare condition that we have very few naturally in-built mental mechanisms to avoid it.

And then all of a sudden our environment drastically changed. Sometime in the 20th century the central risk related to food went from starvation to obesity. In the 21st century the central risk of stimulation has gone from mind-atrophying boredom to compulsive zombie-like wire-heading.

To resist obesity we had to re-evaluate our relationship with the feeling of hunger. Always giving into our base impulse would mean that we gorge on calorically dense, hyper-palatable, nutritionally poor food from morning to night. Modern people had to learn that feeling a little hungry sometimes is okay. It's necessary for a baseline level of healthy physiology, and actually not that unpleasant when you get used to it.

I think we have to re-learn the same lesson with boredom. The skeptics are right. The average level of moment-to-moment boredom in 1980 was extremely high, and well past the point of necessity or even marginal benefit. But virtually no one with a smartphone ever experiences anything like 1980 boredom on a daily basis. While a lot of boredom is bad, we have to learn that a little bit of boredom is necessary for healthy cognitive and emotional functioning.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#195

Post by alanbernstein »

greggman2 wrote: post #165
sideshowb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are also not supposed to step from sidewalk into road without looking.

It's hard for me to have sympathy for cyclists as I see so many run red lights and plow directly through pedestrians even when the pedestrians have the right of way. Maybe that's a few bad apples but it happens enough that it feels like the norm. Yes, 2 wrongs to make a right. If the light is red and the pedestrian is crossing without looking then I'd also be upset at the pedestrian.

Try paying attention to cars running stop signs and red lights (and speeding!) some time. You might be surprised to realize how often you've ignored this happening.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#197

Post by hundreddaysoff »

JDiculous wrote: post #98

Depression. People are spending the majority of their lives staring at a screen, and then wondering why they're depressed. In the moment it might not feel lonely. Exchanging DMs and posting on Reddit / HN / social media might feel like real communication. But ultimately there's a sense of emptiness to it, and it can't substitute real flesh-to-flesh human connection. But it feels like we're always expected to be on ou…

This is one reason I changed careers from research to medicine. Now social interaction is built into my job, whether I want it or not, and I'm a much happier man for it. Sometimes all the grind does have a useful endpoint.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#198

Post by blendo »

tropo wrote: post #99

Younger people are less likely to be able to deal with directories. (er, "folders", and get off my lawn) They are also less clear about what is on the local machine. They use iOS and Android. They don't use a file manager, and certainly don't use a command line. Chromebooks are now common in education. Stuff goes on the Google drive. This is causing trouble when these people end up needing to use traditional desktop…

They just haven't yet figured out everything behind

  ./a.out

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#199

Post by cheschire »

gorgoiler wrote: post #167

Journey time calculations in Google maps, Uber etc. mean no one I know is ever on time. If you need to be somewhere at 8:30 and the journey “takes 17 minutes”, one psychologically sets 8:13 as the deadline for leaving the house. You pick up your keys at 8:13, actually leave a few minutes later, hit traffic or take a wrong turn or two, and end up crossing the threshold at your destination fifteen minutes late. It’s no…

Yeah I wish there was a "door-to-door" buffer that was enabled by default. I don't think a lot of people are ever taught the concept of backwards planning.
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