Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 443 posts

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#361

Post by themartorana »

phantarch wrote: post #334
greggman wrote: post #290

I had a mildly negative reaction to this article which seems different from most people's reactions here Yelp example: I get that yelp is limiting my options but what did I do before yelp? Pretty much I just went to the 4 or 5 places I already knew instead of seeing if there was something new nearby. I tried hundreds of new places because of recommendations from Google Maps or Yelp that I likely would not have tried…

There's definitely positive value in the services and apps that you mention, otherwise people wouldn't begin using them initially. I think the key difference between the services and living life with "Pre-Internet" substitutes is that all of the services have been designed and engineered to elicit a certain usage. When you use something that was designed, there's a certain set of axioms governing that thing. You've g…

I'd rather have the fire hose with the bad that comes with it than what came before - severely limited information, often old or stale, often requiring travel to find it.

Having the wealth of the world's information LITERALLY at your fingertips is going to come with some bad. But holy moly is it just so much better this way.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#362

Post by barrkel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #152
stinkytaco wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious what you specifically are doing that's such a huge lifestyle boost for you. I really use apps on my phone for: 1. Calendar 2. Email 3. Messaging (mostly with one other person, but occasionally a few others) 4. looking stuff up on the web 5. Reading a bit in my downtime 6. Listening to music, podcasts or audiobooks 7. Checking the weather I suspect most people are in the same boat, give or take a fe…

It's about being able to quickly automate away any thing that either annoys me or that I think it would be cool if it could be done. Some things I've been using Tasker for: 1. "Quiet hours" before quiet hours were a part of Android. I had a task that automatically reduced the volume levels for calls, notifications, etc. between 00:00 and 06:00. I've recently updated it to also go full volume if a certain number is ca…

Tasker is excellent, and AutoApps looks like a useful extension.

I wanted add Locale. I find Tasker is easier to work with for edge-based transitions - reactions to events - while Locale is easier to work with for level-based states, i.e. to enable some setting when a certain set of criteria are true, but go back to defaults if they're not.

I use Locale for toggling wifi when leaving home and silencing when at work, for example.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#363

Post by danenania »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #77
cpt1138 wrote: post #68

Earlier 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.

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 rum…

Are you referring to the kinds of "regulations" that led to the entire Gulf of Mexico becoming contaminated with oil?

It doesn't matter that it CAN be done safely. No one in their right minds trusts either the companies or the government not to eventually cut corners and make severe mistakes.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#364

Post by stinkytaco »

TaylorGood wrote: post #288
stinkytaco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key phrase in his post is "intuitively bad". If you enjoy programming, gardening, running, watching a bit of tv or whatever then good for you. But I think all of us have reached point with one thing or another (from too much computer Solitaire to overeating) where we realize it's not really making us much happier.

For me, the key is being honest as to when any hobbies or time / attention commitments become distractions i.e. detours. While it is possible a detour can become the shortcut, the likelihood of a "lightbulb moment" happen by refreshing X social media feed is less fertile than dedicated focus on Y.. be it a problem, project, etc.

Of course, everything doesn't need to be a lightbulb moment either. That is also part of this issue. We use all these apps to keep us constantly productive or more efficient in finding things that make us happy. The drive is to read reviews so we don't waste our money on a bad dinner or product or experience, or to follow the right people on twitter so we get lots of high quality content and less cruft. And by and large I actually think the modern consumer ecosystem is good at accomplishing this.

But we have to ask ourselves if that's a worthwhile end goal. Perhaps a bit of detour is actually what we need.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#365

Post by alerting »

marknutter wrote: post #139

Interesting read, but is the author being serious when they suggest that the FDA should be setting standards for how software UX is designed? I can't even begin to imagine how much of an unmitigated disaster that would be.

No need to worry -- FDA people are probably addicted to those software as well, if not worse

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#366

Post by saryant »

danenania wrote: post #363
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rum…

Are you referring to the kinds of "regulations" that led to the entire Gulf of Mexico becoming contaminated with oil? It doesn't matter that it CAN be done safely. No one in their right minds trusts either the companies or the government not to eventually cut corners and make severe mistakes.

FWIW, the entire oil industry knew that BP was a ticking time bomb. They were (in)famous in Houston for flouting every safety regulation and best practice the industry had ever come up with.

This is why, post-Deepwater, BP wasn't allowed into the club of Gulf producers pooling mutual aid and research efforts toward safer deepwater drilling. Everyone knew they were reckless.

Had Deepwater Horizon been a Shell or Exxon operation, there never would have been a crisis.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#367

Post by dredmorbius »

tsunamifury wrote: post #25

It's called "railroading" and it's been around forever. The only new trick is to add more options that still railroad you in the same general direction. The problem is human minds are smarter than you think and they tend to disengage when they sense this and they strongly want to get off the rails. The user does this by quitting and/or deleting the service. Over time you realize it's best to give the user all their o…

I've certainly been railroaded out of specific retailers, away from specific products, and off of specific Internet / tech sites or concepts on account of this behavior.

I draw attention to the negatives and expressly flag, block, or otherwise mark the antipattern.

HN's increasing practice to deprecate anti-ad-blocking, clickbait, and the like is a positive counter-signal.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#368

Post by ljk »

qrendel wrote: post #348
ljk wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the demo was with a graduation photo, and a few suggested responses like "You look great!" "Congratulations, so happy for you" or something similar). Don't know why anyone would actually use features like this. It's very impersonal and insincere

So are greeting cards but those are huge, for many people receiving one is a requirement for every Hallmark holiday.

good points about greeting cards, but people usually add to greeting cards... right?

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#370

Post by gruez »

Animats wrote: post #197

Hm. Maybe we need a system for mail and messaging which puts most items into a bin to be read later. Once every N hours, it shows you the "later" items. (One real headache is the demise of third-party messaging clients. You can't write a Twitter client any more, or a Facebook client, or a WhatsApp client, or a Slack client. This is a big problem, because the vendor clients work for the man, not for you. With email, y…

I imagine that this could be done on android by batching notifications for display at specified intervals. Not sure about iOS (without jailbreak) though.
Post reply on HN