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How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

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Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#381

Post by TeMPOraL »

barrkel wrote: post #362
TeMPOraL wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Thanks! I've seen the name before, but somehow assumed that this app must have something to do with languages and stuff... :). I'll check it out.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#382

Post by mclovinit »

lars wrote: post #30

Wow, 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…

One of the interesting side effects of social media is the social "guilt" of "unfriending". I suppose this is another form of the inconvenience associated with using a technology. Individuals feel briefly butthurt by someone consciuosly disassociating themselves after intelligently beating the system. For example, I first unfriended all connections prior to deleting my Facebook account which allowed me to stay away forever instead of coming back to reactivate my account. You might have heard of similar approaches such as the "overwhelming force" of paying someone when it comes to quitting smoking if they happen to catch you smoking. Instead it seems companies have countered this by selling electronic cigarettes which seem to be socially appealing (e.g. asthetically appealing color and pattern choices). If someone does to act quickly enough on their plan to "leave the system", they may quickly get pulled back in with a counter move on behalf of some business.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#383

Post by cJ0th »

lars wrote: post #30

Wow, 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 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.

This would be my feelings as well. However, you have to acknowledge that this is only one possible scenario. It could be that somewhere in the future all of a sudden we discover a puzzle piece which is as of yet unknown and boom everything makes perfect sense and the way we did things in the 00s looks incredibly quaint and idiotic.

Atm I try to ignore FB et al as much as I can but there is a slim chance that this makes me look like a fool one day.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#384

Post by Dr_tldr »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #255
smitherfield wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that really ought to be stressed about Chernobyl is that it was a really shitty reactor design (probably just about the most unsafe reactor design ever) manned by poorly-trained and incompetent people. With the outlier of Chernobyl, nuclear energy has a very good safety record. Shoddy and dangerous Soviet engineering has a very bad safety record. The operative variable here is shoddy and dangerous Soviet en…

FINALLY! Someone who understands the reality of the situation and backs it up with FACTS! If people weren't so terrified of nuclear energy by movies like Silkwood or TV shows like The Simpsons they might actually look past their own emotional hinderances and do some trivial comparisons, like, say, the extraction-to-power-generation death rates of nuclear energy versus coal and oil (not to mention air pollution) of th…

So what do we do with the waste that takes 10,000+ years to become safe, given that the average corporation has a lifespan of less than a hundred years?

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#385

Post by xg15 »

majewsky wrote: post #322
excalibur wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that they're currently protected at all is a joke.

There are a lot of people out there protecting digital rights and privacy right now. "Protecting" something is an entirely different thing as it being "protected" already.

Depends who he means with "we". Being a Google Design Ethicist, you'd expect he means Google - which isn't exactly well-known for protecting privacy.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#386

Post by xg15 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #192

A note of slight relevant interest: fastmail.com's native client doesn't actually have a manual refresh button. You only get a notification for a new mail if the server pushes one to you.

A manual refresh button apparently doesn't help, because now you stumble from the "constant interruptions" trap into the "slot machine" trap...

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#387

Post by zatkin »

hypertexthero wrote: post #222
bikamonki wrote: post #18

Does anyone else feel the slot machine effect here on HN is the karma displayed on the top-right? After a submission or comment, is that number the first thing you check when you come back to the site?

https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental... > If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.

Or, conversely, they'll do whatever they can to make it go down. I'm guilty of buying a small ICQ number.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#388

Post by grey-area »

smitherfield wrote: post #248
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have come a long way from Chernobyl. Most of the people posting here probably weren't even alive when it happened. Nuclear power is so well-controlled (unless you build reactors on earthquake hotspots or tsunami zones, I mean c'mon Japan) that you can't even use regular statistical models because the only probable risks are human. Reactors are really, really well-designed these days to seal themselves off in the (…

One thing that really ought to be stressed about Chernobyl is that it was a really shitty reactor design (probably just about the most unsafe reactor design ever) manned by poorly-trained and incompetent people. With the outlier of Chernobyl, nuclear energy has a very good safety record. Shoddy and dangerous Soviet engineering has a very bad safety record. The operative variable here is shoddy and dangerous Soviet en…

With the outlier of Chernobyl, nuclear energy has a very good safety record.

Fukushima is another example showing that fission power is dangerous and expensive - because of the safety precautions, insurance, disaster recovery and cleanup costs, and worse it shifts those costs and dangers from the power plant to the host country and surrounding countries. It's far more expensive in those terms than most other ways of generating power save coal (which has worse problems), maybe it should be part of the mix but only if there are no simpler alternatives like hydro, wind, wave and solar.

Fusion will be far better when we work out how to contain it. It's amazing to think of the progress we could make if energy was almost free.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#389

Post by tim333 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #250
ArtDev wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about leaks (almost common in old plants) and the nuclear waste storage problem? There is plenty of energy out there. Recent advances in solar and wind technology make it within reach. Nuclear is simply not an economical solution.

Exactly as you said: old plants. We don't update them as we should to make them as safe as they can be. That's not an engineering problem, that's a political problem. Waste storage? Same story. We have plenty of useless desert in the US, but people don't want to be anywhere remotely near them. Recent advances in solar and wind technology might make it within reach...if we were dealing with 1-2 billion people, not clo…

Nuclear capacity globally 386 GW in 2016 up from 375.5 GW at the end of 2010.

"By the end of this year, cumulative global installed solar photovoltaic capacity will surpass 310 GW, compared with just 40 GW at the end of 2010"

Which of those looks like it's producing the futures capacity?

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#390

Post by tim333 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #199

This is classic game theory. You lose as a company if you don't build in these addictive features. So everyone does it because as he made clear, attention is the currency of business currently. All of these companies, and new companies would have to agree not to build these behaviors in. The idea of an FDA or bill of rights for technology is great in the holistic macro sense, but I think unrealistic as it is not alig…

I agree a FDA for tech addictiveness probably won't happen. Now a Chrome extension to block much of it similar to adblock. That would be doable.
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