31–40 of 66 posts
Given that, it's like we hungered for them all along. They click into us like a lego brick.
Also, I see "employers" demanding that their "employees" be accessible via cellphone basically all reasonable waking hours. So it has us by the wallet now.
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I confess that I can't see what gradient this ranking follows. It looks like the users get progressively more anonymous, except Reddit has the most anonymous users and it's in the middle; it also looks like the average use time per day goes down, except I have no idea whether that's the case.
BBS, Usenet and Email don't have ratings, likes or follower counts. I think the gradient follows less 'dopaminergic' services that don't offer rewards beyond the intrinsic content people send.
But HN has an advantage in that it has a specific audience (the sort of people who know that Ycombinator is a thing). So the content is already probably relevant. Maybe that model has advantages we haven't fully explored yet.
This was covered in a comment already re: Netflix, but it can't be stressed enough: much of this is a consequence of free software services that need users to spend as much time as possible on the service in order to maximize ad revenue. If the software service required a subscription, then none of these issues are present. In fact, the provider company would have a fairly neutral position on usage, as long as costs…
We have the example of services like cable tv where people pay for a service to be inundated with ads. So not necessarily the case. We have a pretty diseased relationship with the corporations which are suppose to serve us but instead prey upon us.
Wow, such a negative view. > Never before in history have 50, mostly male, 20-35 year old designers, living in California, working at 3 tech companies, influenced how a billion people spend their time. This is an incredibly specific statement that wouldn't be true if scaled back a bit. The result of this seems to be pure FUD. I have to say what an incredibly biased piece. The attention economy did not start with the…
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> I have a plan and I execute it according to schedule This makes no sense. The single best thing about a phone is removing friction from the last mile and last fifteen minutes of meeting friends. Checking in and fine tuning last minute details is great for friendships. If someone changes venues on you, consider that maybe it accommodated the needs of other members of the group. If someone is late, it's not a problem…
As another replier said, everyone has different needs. > Checking in and fine tuning last minute details is great for friendships. I hate this culture of "checking in". If we agree to meet at place X and time T, is it so difficult to just ... actually be there? I remember the life in the pre-smartphone days when things were just that simple. Also, when arranging to meet at a place, I am usually specific. Like, "meet…
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>Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone. I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. I doubt your conclusions are very accurate. I suspect many of the people you see engaged with their phones are enriching their real lives, not just the life in the phone, but the life outside of…
> I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. If by "cursory" you mean "many years of close, and 24x7 observation, including of close relatives and friends", then what's not to love? It's not like people saying that are some tourists to Earth that have just some short-term cursory relationship with the "other people". At some point, there's eno…
However this romantic idea that without phones people would be living vivid moments to the fullest also needs to die. Lets not romanticize the lived experience of a boring commute as a sensory roller-coaster just to score a few points against people glued to their phones.
People who make arbitrary distinctions in the book/e-reader/smartphone spectrum are just wrong. Many people use their phones productively during their commutes.
When I lived in Vancouver, I'm sure many people mistook me for a Candy Crusher or Facebook Scroller, but I was actually learning japanese.
As I think and wonder sometimes: human race have some kind of "bug", we are not prepared for phones and notifications.
I actually am very far from addicted to my smartphone. I spend very little time trying to digest information on a 6" screen when I can wait till I get home and digest it on a 4K display and able to concentrate on my work. For me the most annoying thing is that other people expect me to be glued to my smartphone like them. They expect that I can be reachable at any hour, any minute, and always checking my messages. Pe…
> I have a plan and I execute it according to schedule This makes no sense. The single best thing about a phone is removing friction from the last mile and last fifteen minutes of meeting friends. Checking in and fine tuning last minute details is great for friendships. If someone changes venues on you, consider that maybe it accommodated the needs of other members of the group. If someone is late, it's not a problem…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone. I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. I doubt your conclusions are very accurate. I suspect many of the people you see engaged with their phones are enriching their real lives, not just the life in the phone, but the life outside of…
> I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. If by "cursory" you mean "many years of close, and 24x7 observation, including of close relatives and friends", then what's not to love? It's not like people saying that are some tourists to Earth that have just some short-term cursory relationship with the "other people". At some point, there's eno…
Totally unrelated but I feel the louve is a massive misuse of space in a lot of cases. The room right before the lisa on one side is a massive long gallery with around a hundred gigantic (8'x12' or bigger) religious passion paintings that no one really looks at with a few gems sprinkled throughout. The other side is a very high gallery with some great paintings 20'+ up in the air. It's like the louve has so many paintings they feel it just all has to be out on display without thought about how people will look at it (or at least that section is). I found the impressionist museum much better but this is 16 years ago.