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Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

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21–30 of 498 posts

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#21
Anything proximate to human communication.

That people in the West communicate largely over platforms controlled by entities with economic interests has been highly destructive. Beyond mere vitriol and "misinformation", there's the accelerationism of human social functions powered by instant communication and full of perverse incentives on the part of the platform controllers. There are also lots of incentives for individuals that are harmful to society in the aggregate.

To me, this kind of thing is the primary cause of the western malaise.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#22
post #12
post #6

I reach for my smartphone the microsecond I have idle time. I can't read things longer than 280 characters.

Thanks for this comment. It will make me put down my smartphone. (After writing this comment of course.)

TL;DR. Could you make that into a meme?

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#23
post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

> I know this is an extreme view

Doesn't mean it's wrong!

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#24
Everything requires a telephone number now, and many (due to spam/abuse/whatever) don't accept VoIP/disposable numbers, so it's basically like a universal tracking cookie.

I have like six phones to keep my various identity facets separate. It's gross and annoying, and I worry about everyone else who just has one number and uses it for everything and links their accounts everywhere together; most people in the world are going to become very easy to blackmail/coerce/extort in the coming years.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#25
Novelty

Watching places and people on instagram/youtube for the first time takes away the awe factor of what could have been possible in real life. Imagine seeing the Pyramids for the first time in person vs watching them through a travel vlogger. Or visiting Japan in pre-internet era vs now when you have already read hundreds of blogs on what cultural differences to expect even before landing in the country.

I know it's still a wonderful experience to see things in reality. But I am sure the experience is dampened due to the endless dopamine consumption we saturate ourselves with.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#26
post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

I've thought a lot about what plagues our modern world and I've come to the same conclusion. I'm at a loss for what can be done about it though.

We can't very easily ban advertising. Any regulation has to be lightweight because it's nearly impossible to enforce at internet scale (as we've seen again and again).

Curious if you've thought about any ways to fix the problem we're in.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#28
Signal-to-noise ratio.

There is just too much stuff going on, information, news, good/bad tech, entertainment, people doing their things, the list goes on.

We were blissfully ignorant of all the information that exists in the world. It's impossible to keep up with everything that's happening, you're always behind, even finding out when/how to care or where to look for actually good content is hard.

Everything has to be generic enough to account for everything, so market expansion is as fast as the snap of fingers, even if it doesn't matter.

Today I woke up feeling like an old man, I know.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#29
I think there is an 'optimum' level for technology of all kinds, below that you really want more and it is clear that there is room for improvement. But once the optimum has been reached any further additions will degrade the experience.

Examples:

Car controls:

  pre: direct taps and gauges plumbed into engine parts and such, real switches and levers. 
  optimum: does what it should, not more, not less, more reliable than the old stuff, easy to fix and relatively cheap to fabricate
  too much: touchscreens. For everything.
(ICE) Car electronics:

  pre: carburettors, bad winter starts, bad fuel consumption, pollution
  optimum: EFI, highly reliable, aftermarket parts interchangeable between brands
  too much: DRM on everything, parts won't even fit same model a year older, are ridiculously expensive and unreliable to boot
TV:

  pre: two channels, black and white, bad image quality, crappy small screens
  optimum: 20 channels or so, in a way already more than you can consume, good quality color image, fairly easy to see screens (say, up to 3' across).
  too much: wall-to-wall screens that intrude on your privacy every chance they can, inability to build up your own collection of content (DRM), pay *for ever* for the same stuff
  way too much: youtube.
CPUs:

  pre: 8 bits, too slow for many applications, nice and better than an abacus though
  optimum: 1990s OS, very little eye candy, just enough to take the edge off, fast, and enough horsepower to do meaningful work
  too much: 2020 OS, nothing but eye candy, reduced functionality, telemetry, spyware, forced updates that are just as likely to improve things as they are to leave you stranded
and so on, you get the idea.

Technology has and always will have a place in my life. But my car is a 1997 model that doesn't phone home to the factory, has buttons instead of menus, my phone is a Nokia, and so on. Technology is my slave, not my master.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#30

Same with restaurant or bars. More and more use some scummy third-party platform that requires an account, asks for more personal information than necessary and will no doubt use said information for nefarious purposes such as spam. Similarly, since the pandemic, paper menus have been replaced by a stupid QR code that often loads a bloated page or PDF and may contain trackers. Doesn't help that phone service is usual…

Carry cash and leave your smartphone off and your payment cards at home (this is what I do). A lot of these systems fail open if you say "sorry, I don't have a SIM card in my phone" or "my service is shut off" or "I don't have a credit card".

You also make it easier for the next person.

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