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'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#171

Post by MrQuincle »

alansammarone wrote: post #164
fortani wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The problem here is not the smartphone per se, but our increasing dependence on it and the "outsourcing" of our thinking and desires to our smartphone. Imagine the follow scenario: * Need to get to a place? Just ask Google Maps, no need to think. * Need to decide what and where to eat? Don't need to think, just use an app that optimizes for health/variety/preferences/budget and you don't even need to leave th…

I don't think all of these are a problem per se. The problem is (and probably always was) people with empty minds. Sure, now they can fill it more easily with junk, but the whole point of technology is to make life easier after all. If you're learning or working on something you love and you want to have more time to do, its a perfectly reasonable choice to outsource "what I'm I going to eat next" or "how do you I ge…

In my opinion you are conflating two roles for technology. I quote from the article itself:

"Finally, Eyal confided the lengths he goes to protect his own family. He has installed in his house an outlet timer connected to a router that cuts off access to the internet at a set time every day. “The idea is to remember that we are not powerless,” he said. “We are in control.”"

In an admittedly handwaving manner, there is tech that gives you time (think dishwasher) and that steals it. I tried to write this down a few days ago: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-craves-our-attention-ann...

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#172

Post by amazingman »

deepGem wrote: post #167
apatters wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GU…

If the program controls the users, and the developer controls the program, then the program is an instrument of unjust power. I'd modify this statement as the program can potentially be an instrument of unjust power. I like to believe that the opposite of this will most likely occur. What if such a program manipulates people's minds towards the good, what if it can turn terrorists against terrorism. Whenever we think…

I think you’re fundamentally failing to interact with the scale of the problems arising from the attention economy, basically handwaving with the word “just”.

Even if I were to grant—though I don’t—your claim that addiction isn’t necessarily bad, it wouldn’t follow that it’s perfectly fine for businesses to boundlessly seek more effective ways to capture more human attention more of the time. ”Just” run the simulation in your head, and gradually turn up parameters such as:

- amount/quality of information about how the human brain works

- % of humans addicted to addicting-by-design software experiences

- number of unethical people who realize the financial and political opportunity a pathologically distracted electorate presents

And then maybe take another look at what’s happening in our world today.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#173

Post by floatrock »

rubinelli wrote: post #73

Can we hijack this loop to create or reinforce good habits instead of selling ad space? Can we use the skinner box to dole out intangible rewards for activities with real, long-term benefits like exercising and eating better? This looks like an obvious opportunity to me, so what work is being done in this area?

For all its downsides and astroturfing, reddit actually does some pretty good things in that regard. Some of the best posts on there are when people go out of their way to be, you know, human towards other humans. There are subreddits out there dedicated towards exercising and eating better... the orange you-got-a-new-response seratonin-bump envelop icon appears when people give social acknowledgements towards someone's exercise progress or meal prep.

It most definitely gets co-opted... karma whoring, reposting, marketing campaigns posing as that goodwill to the kid in the children's hospital with cancer amateur picture... but that's exactly what this article is about: the forces of maximizing shareholder value find what works and wiggle their way in.

The resistant subreddits appear to be the ones that look at it as a human problem, not something needing a technical fix. That is, they create community rules around what is acceptable content and what isn't welcome, they encourage the content that furthers the subreddit's mission, they moderate away content that seems to break the rules, etc. Some communities are even organized around recognizing these things (eg r/hailcorporate)

Again, all of that can be (and does get!) co-opted for evil, but there are methods that can make groups in social media more resistant.

Problem is at the end of the day, those things don't pay the bills. Ultimately you need to find a way to align profits with good habits. Until we find that, go hit the donate link on the Guardian article. And I think Wikipedia was doing a fundraising campaign recently too.

If you're not paying for it, you're the product.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#175

Post by [deleted] »

hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

[deleted]

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#176

Post by hodgesrm »

amazingman wrote: post #166
hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

Your comment contains great content, but it’s also fairly non sequitur. It appears that you didn’t read the article, and instead are responding to the (silly/stupid) headline. The concerns addressed in the article make it much more difficult to take the posture you’re taking here.

Thanks. I just want to say I did read it. It has a number of concerns that are mixed together in a way that's not entirely consistent, compelling, or even especially new.

Consider the idea that democracy is being destroyed because people are helpless addicts of social media. You can make a plausible argument that American society and democracy are going through a troubled spell. But it's a big step to say that's all or even largely the fault of social media. It's true that Facebook makes it easier to develop echo chambers that group people by political persuasion. But hey, there's emerging poll evidence that American conservatives and liberals don't even want to marry each other. [0] There are many other causes at work here like failing education systems, economic dislocation, the capturing of the the political system by moneyed interests, etc. That's not even considering real political disputes over things like health care, immigration, and crime. Plus many of the disturbing trends we see now predate social media.

Also, the article essentially dismisses fake news and trolls ("symptoms of a deeper problem"). The fact that you can't verify sources easily is not a symptom. It's a fundamental problem with the Internet today that is not all that different from the dark money problem in American politics.

Overall this article reads like a variation of Nick Carr's "The Shallows" which I read and quite enjoyed. However, I don't think the threat to our intellects is as dire as he says. In the current article it's even a little surprising to me that tech people discount the possibility that something will come along that really upsets the apple cart at Facebook and Google. These are pretty new companies after all and they were the first to get really big on the Internet. This is not the end of the story, especially if the Internet breaks up into essentially national blocks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/upshot/are-you-married-to...

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#177

Post by atomashpolskiy »

alansammarone wrote: post #164
fortani wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The problem here is not the smartphone per se, but our increasing dependence on it and the "outsourcing" of our thinking and desires to our smartphone. Imagine the follow scenario: * Need to get to a place? Just ask Google Maps, no need to think. * Need to decide what and where to eat? Don't need to think, just use an app that optimizes for health/variety/preferences/budget and you don't even need to leave th…

I don't think all of these are a problem per se. The problem is (and probably always was) people with empty minds. Sure, now they can fill it more easily with junk, but the whole point of technology is to make life easier after all. If you're learning or working on something you love and you want to have more time to do, its a perfectly reasonable choice to outsource "what I'm I going to eat next" or "how do you I ge…

> but the whole point of CONSUMERIST technology is to make life easier after all.

FTFY

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#178

Post by kwhitefoot »

> Rosenstein, Pearlman and most of the tech insiders questioning today’s attention economy are in their 30s, members of the last generation that can remember a world in which telephones were plugged into walls.

Umm. Yoohoo! We're still here, you remember us, those who created the hardware and the computing concepts you all use now? Well maybe not me personally but I was there using and developing computing hardware and software starting in 1970. I remember when telephones were plugged in to wall too!

And we've been questioning the direction that it's all going in since before Rosenstein, etc., were in kindergarten.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#179

Post by bostik »

vonnik wrote: post #47

This excellent article fails to mention artificial intelligence. Facebook has recruited one of the world’s top AI teams, led by Yann LeCun. Their work and Google's are the equivalent of tobacco companies engineering cigarettes to ensure that nicotine hits a smoker's brain more quickly. Facebook and other social networks are the cigarette companies of the mind. Cigarettes blackened our lungs with tar, and social media…

I'm going to make a prediction. If you are correct with the analogy of comparing FB to modern cigarettes (and I am inclined to believe you've hit the nail in the head here), then FB is going to find a way to make money off of two more categories of people.

1: Those who do not use FB, and who make every effort not to be under their influence; and more importantly..

2: Those who do use FB and want to limit their exposure, along with the damage that have endured.

If there is a way to turn the second group into a lucrative business case, FB will make sure they have a piece. After all - throughout the history of the human race, few things have been more profitable than selling both the poison and the cure.[ß]

ß: Incidentally, we have already seen this, perhaps by accident, with the very same tobacco industry you made the comparison to. Tobacco industry sells addictive nicotine products. The pharmaceutical industry sells what they can to make money off of that addiction. Both industries are required to manage their wealth responsibly... and via an intermediary or three, own decent chunks of each other. The more money they individually leech off of their customers, the bigger the second bite is.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#180

Post by Freak_NL »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #178

> Rosenstein, Pearlman and most of the tech insiders questioning today’s attention economy are in their 30s, members of the last generation that can remember a world in which telephones were plugged into walls. Umm. Yoohoo! We're still here, you remember us, those who created the hardware and the computing concepts you all use now? Well maybe not me personally but I was there using and developing computing hardware a…

The author probably means that people in their 30s will be the last generation to have witnessed telephones plugged into walls — i.e., the generations after them, people in their 20s and younger, won't have.

That anyone in their 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. has witnessed and used telephones plugged into walls is implied.

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