Not using facebook or a smartphone is the new 'I don't watch TV'. The parallels and complaints are fairly similar.
Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
71–80 of 191 posts
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#72Their hearts are probably in the right place, but I wonder if there's a more effective strategy than what they're suggesting; trying to teach teens about the dangers of tech via ads. That hasn't been a very effective strategy historically. If anything, it feels like it just produces the opposite desired effect.
I've found teens react fairly well to messaging on how to avoid 'the man' from manipulating you.
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#73With smartphones being ubiquitous, and we all have a few minutes here and there to spare...we just need to come up with a better and productive way to kill those time where you are idle. Any suggestions? Right now I'm waiting on my wife to get ready before we head out and spending it here on HN, but still, it's not productive.
The extra time I have is usually 15 or so minutes before starting at work. Sometimes more than that, depending on how smooth traffic was getting to work. What I've been doing lately is to do programming. On my phone.
I have a secret gist at Github. Enable desktop mode. Resize the screen just right. It allows me to get a little bit done here and there, and it helps that what I'm working on is pretty simple. Update the gist when I'm done. Later, at home, I can pull the gist, fix it up, make it work, and recommit.
It's painful though. My phone's software keyboard is horrible for doing development work. But it works.
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should be considered that you are intentionally missing the point by using an overly narrow and domain-irrelevant interpretation of "supercomputer". Do you think that the users of any of those supercomputers would turn down an offer to run their projects on Google or Facebook's fleet instead of their "one" supercomputer (given some time to adapt their software)
This brings me back to something I discussed here in the past - are there scientific problems that are simply not compatible with running in the cloud, and require a supercomputer? I can't, off the top of my head, think of anything where the performance would degrade enough with the increase in communication latency between components, that the increase in available (on-demand!) resources wouldn't keep up.
Depends how Googles network is set up and how fast and over provisioned it is - how much budget you have for networking also comes into it (that's the power budget btw)
Brad Hedlund has some interesting articles on the challenges
http://bradhedlund.com/2011/11/05/hadoop-network-design-chal...
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#75Their hearts are probably in the right place, but I wonder if there's a more effective strategy than what they're suggesting; trying to teach teens about the dangers of tech via ads. That hasn't been a very effective strategy historically. If anything, it feels like it just produces the opposite desired effect.
I've found teens react fairly well to messaging on how to avoid 'the man' from manipulating you.
I think we've had enough ads about how books make you smart and tv makes you stupid to know that whatever is cool and enjoyable is more likely to win in that crowd, no matter what well meaning parents and teachers and PSAs try to tell them.
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#76Is there any trend currently for young people or new college grads to avoid these huge manipulative companies like Facebook or Google? I honestly have no idea, I haven't talked to a student or recent grad in awhile, but after the events of the past 24 months I wonder what a 20 year old pondering internships thinks about all this? When I graduated in '98 the most "cool" thing was to work for the biggest name possible…
This is purely personal experience based on what my university colleagues tell me, but I think the solidarity gets surprisingly diluted as money is thrown in their faces. Tech aside, money is really the game changer in getting people to cave on their personal values. As long as these companies have huge salaries to throw around, people will take it, even if it means biting their tongue and closing their minds. It's depressingly ironic how many students will vocalize their anti-Facebook or anti-Google sentiments, then turn around and interview with those same companies because who doesn't want to make $200k+ with cushiony perks after living off fast food and dealing with college debt. Then if they leave after 2-3 years, the next batch of hired help comes in to run the machine, and it's just rinse and repeat for Facebook and Google.
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#77Is there any trend currently for young people or new college grads to avoid these huge manipulative companies like Facebook or Google? I honestly have no idea, I haven't talked to a student or recent grad in awhile, but after the events of the past 24 months I wonder what a 20 year old pondering internships thinks about all this? When I graduated in '98 the most "cool" thing was to work for the biggest name possible…
I think the allure of working at Google/FB is too great. Facebook pays insane amounts to new grads. Then there is the google recognition, where simply having google on your CV seems to open every door around. Startups advertise their companies as being founded by “googlers” more than they actually try to sell their business ideas half the time. The brand recognition is powerful.
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big 5 is a misleading concept because Microsoft, Apple and Amazon make money by providing actual products and services. The whole sleazy attention-economy stuff could be outlawed tomorrow and they wouldn’t skip a beat. Unlike the other two.
Amazon in particular has AWS, I think as a majority of profit. Apple and MS might care due to secondary effects, such as a reduced rate of mobile device replacement? It would probably not matter too much though, and they could adapt. FB and Google would just implode with a wet thuck .
I suspect Google could get a lot of people to pay for a "Google Prime" subscription if they had to.
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon in particular has AWS, I think as a majority of profit. Apple and MS might care due to secondary effects, such as a reduced rate of mobile device replacement? It would probably not matter too much though, and they could adapt. FB and Google would just implode with a wet thuck .
I suspect Google could get a lot of people to pay for a "Google Prime" subscription if they had to.
Sub to what? Their search engine? I’d rather use DDG most days without Google trying to charge me. To something like YouTube? How is YouTube Red going?
Re: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology
#80Cool, I'm in. That said, using a Facebook group as a way to "get involved" is on a whole new level of ironic.
I think it’s rather un-ironic. The central thesis is not that the technology itself is flawed, but that it needs to be done in a way that is more adaptive to the needs of humans. The best way to reach people is where they are, and people are overwhelmingly on Facebook.
>people are overwhelmingly on Facebook
Is hypercentralization not a major problem of tech at the momemt, both in terms of security and freedom of thought?