Great question. I've been writing about this broad topic for a while. There are 50+ examples here: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/
I hope you enjoy reading them. (One of my favorites was on AVs.)
Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
221–230 of 387 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#222Everyone is oblivious to their surroundings. Whether it’s because they’re looking down at their smartphone or listening to a podcast or music on their AirPods, people aren’t paying attention to what’s happening around them, and they are walking out into streets without looking for cars, assuming no one is coming. I bike most places, and the number of pedestrians (and other bicyclists!) who can’t hear my bike bell is…
> I bike most places, and the number of pedestrians (and other bicyclists!) who can’t hear my bike bell is astounding.
I recently started to notice how many people - young and old - nowadays are walking on the wrong side of the road, i.e. in the same lane with other traffic in the same direction.
As a kid I always learned you should be in the opposite lane, so you can monitor oncoming traffic coming towards you, jump out of the way if needed. A safety measure (4 watchful eyes instead of 2).
I guess more than half of people no longer do that, and I wondered if that was also an effect of our self-centered, smartphone society: 'I can't be bothered to take note of you, but I expect you to take notice of me'.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#223I've heard this topic come up before. I belive it is interesting and valuable to think about. I don't have much to contribite of the top of my head, but I did stumble across this blog a while back (it might have actually been from here on HN, don't remember) that explores this very topic. It's even named after it :) maybe other will enjoy it. I like the author's writing style, usually a pleasure to read. https://unin…
Hey, glad you like my writing!
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#224Noise. Auditory: I can't tell you how accustomed to hearing stuff constantly everyone is. Cars (even just the tires on a busy street), Air Handling, Refrigerators, Beeping timers (ovens/microwaves/calendar reminders). Visual: Web notifications, web advertisements, billboards, "news," spam phone calls/texts. Social: Many people have an expectation that sending a message entitles them to an immediate response. In the a…
> Social: Many people have an expectation that sending a message entitles them to an immediate response.
This one honestly bothers me the most. “But I sent you a message! You didn’t respond, you could have been dead in a ditch!”.
Or, you know, I didn’t look at my messages for a few days. If you were worried you could have called any time.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#225I'm sitting in front of a device that will let me peruse what is practically the collected sum of all human knowledge, play all the games, watch all the movies, listen to all the music, communicate in realtime in multimedia with anyone, anywhere in the world, almost all for free, and will send a pizza to my house if I'm hungry. And I'm still bored.
Perhaps an evolution of the "true joke" that there are 1500 television channels and nothing to watch.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#226Internet usage starts with users querying information they want, and services learning/adapting to deliver information in a format/context based on their activity. This has created some stellar search tools, a personalized network of services and communities available to people, and made the internet a paradise for new content from all over the world. Despite that all the information in the world is available to us,…
I saw an interesting argument that we've always had the so called filter bubbles before the internet, it's only more noticeable NOW, because of public spaces like twitter.
There’s a classic theory in communication science by the German researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann called the “spiral of silence”[1]. It basically says that people have an idea of the general public opinion on a topic, and in case their own opinion differs too much, they will stay silent in order not to be excluded from the group. This was classically seen with the negative result that the publicly acceptable opinion may not be the same as the majority opinion, as more and more people stay silent in a kind of spiral.
What we’re seeing today in online spaces is the possibility of people connecting online, forming their own bubbles of people with their own spirals – it has become much easier to sidestep the “general” spiral of silence.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#227One of the big things for me is the demise of trustworthiness in just about everything. Extremely cheap phone calls plus Caller ID spoofing has made the telephone almost useless (raise your hand if you only answer callers in your contact list!), email has never been trustworthy, and the internet has made it possible for hoaxes to spread farther and faster than ever.
This is a good article on that topic: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-made-dupes-cynics-of-us...
> The internet is increasingly a low-trust society—one where an assumption of pervasive fraud is simply built into the way many things function.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#228Journey time calculations in Google maps, Uber etc. mean no one I know is ever on time. If you need to be somewhere at 8:30 and the journey “takes 17 minutes”, one psychologically sets 8:13 as the deadline for leaving the house. You pick up your keys at 8:13, actually leave a few minutes later, hit traffic or take a wrong turn or two, and end up crossing the threshold at your destination fifteen minutes late. It’s no…
Google should calibrate it by how long it takes to leave your house :)
Or cross reference calendar events with directions lookups and actual arrival times, and if you’re consistently late then overestimate the time.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard for me to have sympathy for cyclists as I see so many run red lights and plow directly through pedestrians even when the pedestrians have the right of way. Maybe that's a few bad apples but it happens enough that it feels like the norm. Yes, 2 wrongs to make a right. If the light is red and the pedestrian is crossing without looking then I'd also be upset at the pedestrian.
Have that same attitude but change the word 'cyclist' for 'blacks' or 'latinos' or 'jews' or 'women'. Then you will see why your attitude is abhorrently wrong. Or maybe not. Up to you.
...you do know that people actively choose to be cyclists, right?
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#230Everyone is oblivious to their surroundings. Whether it’s because they’re looking down at their smartphone or listening to a podcast or music on their AirPods, people aren’t paying attention to what’s happening around them, and they are walking out into streets without looking for cars, assuming no one is coming. I bike most places, and the number of pedestrians (and other bicyclists!) who can’t hear my bike bell is…
> I bike most places, and the number of pedestrians (and other bicyclists!) who can’t hear my bike bell is astounding. I recently started to notice how many people - young and old - nowadays are walking on the wrong side of the road, i.e. in the same lane with other traffic in the same direction. As a kid I always learned you should be in the opposite lane, so you can monitor oncoming traffic coming towards you, jump…
At least where I live (not US), the law states that bikes should not go against the traffic.
Accidents are more dangerous in frontal collisions and the reaction window is shorter.
I bike daily and I've been surprised a few times by other bikers coming against the traffic, especially in turns.
edit: I think I misread you. You're talking about pedestrians. Oops.