It saddens me whenever I go out wit my friends and I try to have a conversation, that everyone is glued to their phones and can't have face-face conversation.
Find different friends. Not everybody is like that.
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
71–80 of 443 posts
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#72> We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.
I think that the only way we can do this is for out technology to make our values impulsive.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#73Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…
I think the more apt metaphor is lead in Roman pipes. They knew lead exposure made you crazy but they still used it in their pipes, on their plates - and it drove them mad. After the planet has warmed beyond a point of no return, after antibiotic resistant bacteria make routine surgery a life-or-death decision, after we have squandered away our resources and used what little we had left to wage futile wars, we will f…
Besides actual lead concentration in water being disputed (per comments in the parallel subthreads), I think this analogy isn't good for another reason - Roman aqueducts were meant to solve a problem, to get fresh water into towns, improving comfort as well as sanitation. Most apps made today are not about solving problems, they're about bundling a minimum amount of features that would trick the users into doing something (paying with money, paying with daya) that profits the app creators.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#74First world problems. This post was really disgusting. "Oh, no, I have to look at pictures of bars...Manipulation!", "Oh, no, they are offering me to tag myself on a picture - systemic oppression and manipulation!" "Nooo... Fuck, now have to say 'You're welcome' " Fuck this author. A spoiled, rich cunt complaining that someone will auto-play a video after a countdown on his newest iPhone. ... In the meantime, slaves…
Just a small nitpick, all slaves make $0 per diem. It's sort of the main benefit of slavery.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#75Some of the design anti-patterns he's describing smell a lot like the broken window fallacy [1]. Sure, apps can get big on getting users addicted and "engaged", but there's no actual economic benefit being produced by such design - just tons of opportunity cost to users. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
The ads intermittently injected into the user's stream benefits the company.
Cigarette sales benefitted cigarette companies. That doesn't mean they benefitted the economy because the costs of smoking were eventually passed on to health insurance and/or taxpayers. Money that could have been spent elsewhere.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, yeah. It's like talking to climate "skeptics" - people who believe climate change is real but disagree on the level of human agency. You can show them graph after graph of greenhouse gas emissions being pumped into the atmosphere at alarming rates and they'll say "I'm not that alarmed, we don't know how much of an impact it will have." Meanwhile, coral reefs are bleaching, Florida is flooding, and we are experie…
But what? The problem with the constant doom is that we get exhausted. At least in the US all we truly care about is war and old people (looking at where the money goes; http://whatwepayfor.com/ ). The problem with the doom sayers is they have no solutions or actionable items that we can say yes or no to. Its just lions and tigers and bears 24/7.
Reduce our emissions. This has one potential and one actual effect.
1) Potential: If climate change is significantly affected by human output, then we may curb or counter the current climate trends.
2) Actual: Healthier environment for life on this planet. We won't have cities like Los Angeles used to be, or Beijing is now where people can barely go outside without taking a year off their life. This is, without a doubt, a good thing unless you explicitly want poorer health to be the norm.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, yeah. It's like talking to climate "skeptics" - people who believe climate change is real but disagree on the level of human agency. You can show them graph after graph of greenhouse gas emissions being pumped into the atmosphere at alarming rates and they'll say "I'm not that alarmed, we don't know how much of an impact it will have." Meanwhile, coral reefs are bleaching, Florida is flooding, and we are experie…
But what? The problem with the constant doom is that we get exhausted. At least in the US all we truly care about is war and old people (looking at where the money goes; http://whatwepayfor.com/ ). The problem with the doom sayers is they have no solutions or actionable items that we can say yes or no to. Its just lions and tigers and bears 24/7.
I'll give you an example. I live in Ithaca, NY, not far from some of the richest shale gas deposits in the United States. This town is also ground zero for fracking hatred. Post something awful about fracking, and people will eat that shit up whether it's true or not. I know, because I was one of them.
Then I started dating a hydrogeologist. As luck would have it, her very MS thesis was on fracking. She dispelled rumors left and right: "fracking causes earthquakes!" - actually it's poorly built injection wells and wastewater storage that causes earthquakes; "fracking injects radioactives and other poisons into our groundwater!" - nope, the fluid itself is relatively benign (except for a single phase of high-concentration HF/HCL) and the radioactives are actually pumped UP from the crust, not the other way around. And as much as we hippies like to believe - the 60s/70s never really ended in Ithaca - our town is powered by dirty, dirty coal, not magical fairy dust; natural gas would hugely reduce our CO2 emissions.
Point is, it's fair to be scared. Improper fracking CAN cause earthquakes, it CAN poison groundwater, but it is very obvious where and how it happens, and it can be regulated and prevented.
The only real problems arise when people refuse to reconsider their opinions in the face of facts.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what? The problem with the constant doom is that we get exhausted. At least in the US all we truly care about is war and old people (looking at where the money goes; http://whatwepayfor.com/ ). The problem with the doom sayers is they have no solutions or actionable items that we can say yes or no to. Its just lions and tigers and bears 24/7.
Reduce our emissions. This has one potential and one actual effect. 1) Potential: If climate change is significantly affected by human output, then we may curb or counter the current climate trends. 2) Actual: Healthier environment for life on this planet. We won't have cities like Los Angeles used to be, or Beijing is now where people can barely go outside without taking a year off their life. This is, without a dou…
Reminds me of a comic I see floated around Facebook from time to time of an auditorium of scientists seated beneath a banner reading "Climate Change Conference," and someone raises their hand and says something to the effect of "But what if we're wrong about climate change and we make a better world for nothing?"
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#79Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…
This is why I generally choose small open source Linux based tools over smartphone apps and the like. I just don't trust app and web developers because they have repeatedly worked against my interests.
There's nothing to trust app developers with. The mobile app ecosystem is ridiculous - most apps are so limited compared to what they could be that it boggles the mind. The primary problems: they force you to use the interface provided by the author, and they don't talk to one another.
Android phones become infinitely more useful with Tasker[0] and AutoApps plugins[1][2]. They let you work around the limitations of many apps, force them to talk to one another and to the underlying operating system. Sure, you can technically program Android, but the standard interface to that (Java, APKs) is so heavy and complicated that you can do whatever you need in Tasker quicker than you can create a hello world in Android Studio. Oh, and you can do this on the go, from your phone.
[0] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....
[1] - http://joaoapps.com/
[2] - I only discovered them like few days ago, despite using Tasker for years, and I've already integrated many features from them, with clear path to using even more. They make Tasker many times more powerful than it already is. They e.g. solved my problem with creating custom commands for Google Now.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#80Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…
Getting people hooked/addicted is not new, it's been used in TV series and shows for decades. I'll explain it all in my next post...
Please elaborate in the form of a list of weird tricks