Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#251

Post by microtonal » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

tracer4201 wrote: post #242

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

Not a parent yet, but I certainly don’t plan on giving my kid a touch device... certainly not with internet access. I grew up using the internet as a 90s kid. Today, the internet is even more messed up.

Our 5yo has an iPod Touch to play music. But she also has a Linux PC (she enjoys typing things and playing gcompris). But probably our best purchase is a Micro:Bit. Her programs are still simple, but it’s clear how much she enjoys being creative and that she can make the Micro:Bit do what she wants.

We are not forcing her to use tech in any way. The Linux PC and Micro:Bit are just there and it’s up to her own curiosity to explore them when she feels like it.

I think the problem is that TV and iPads are convenient for parents. You can put your kid behind one, and they’ll occupy themselves for hours. Whereas with real computers, Micro:Bits, or even Lego, you have to help them understand.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#252

Post by Buldak » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

I see this observation on HN pretty often, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. Do later generations know fewer things, or just different things?

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#253

Post by kkarakk » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

muzani wrote: post #178

We've learned that better tools doesn't actually create more productivity. Lots of people talk about how they dread email. A singular mega tool like Facebook or Evernote isn't great. Lots of disparate little tools isn't much better. We've learned that data is unreliable. The highest click through rates come from nudity, or totally gross things like gore and trypophobia triggering holes. The highest CTR on text comes…

In my experience, hardware scales exponentially. Until business figures out a "need" for all the extra data they have they tend to under value IOT and use it counter productively - like monitoring employees in draconian ways.

There are lots of efficiencies that only show up once you monitor equipment for a couple of years but project leads don't really have that kind of time to show benefits

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#254

Post by PrototypeNM1 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

JDiculous wrote: post #98

Depression. People are spending the majority of their lives staring at a screen, and then wondering why they're depressed. In the moment it might not feel lonely. Exchanging DMs and posting on Reddit / HN / social media might feel like real communication. But ultimately there's a sense of emptiness to it, and it can't substitute real flesh-to-flesh human connection. But it feels like we're always expected to be on ou…

I find it important to note that small communities where it is reasonable to know everyone and expect to be known are just as "real" as offline communites. I think there were a few years - at least for myself - where social media were mistaken and masqueraded as the same as small communities.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#255

Post by diffeomorphism » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

Buldak wrote: post #252

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

I see this observation on HN pretty often, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. Do later generations know fewer things, or just different things?

That seems like the wrong question.

The topic was computer literacy and knowing different, non-computer things is irrelevant and knowing stuff about Fortnite, while computer-related, is not literacy.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#256

Post by genidoi » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #79

As tech gets more and more advanced and we get higher and higher levels of abstraction, I've noticed more and more programmers just don't understand _what_ their code is doing. There can be a lack of understanding of how calls translate to system calls and machine instruction. The abstraction is good, it allows you to do more and do it quickly. But when you don't understand what the abstraction is, then you are progr…

I think that's more of an emergent behavior of modern languages being much more accessible to the "masses". If you can write enterprise code in C, it's likely you're an experienced developer. The same isn't true for Python since it's relatively easy to be able to write something useful.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#257

Post by ksec » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

USB-C, the intention of one port to rule it all leads to 5 different cables using the same port all supporting different set of spec and functions. Or actually using something similar / variation of USb-C Plug but does not actually confine to any USB spec at all, aka Nintendo Switch.

Leading to Powering and Display in the same port ( aka Thunderbolt ) which is great in theory and idea, in practice there are much higher failure rate of frying the CPU or display controller for all sort of reasons.

USB-C could have worked if we have much more stringent spec, and force only two types of cable, Thin for anything below 25W, and Thick for heavy duty with 100W. Unfortunately USB4 doesn't want to be a better spec.

There are two things I hope Apple will never adopt at its current form, that is AV1 and USB-C. And it looks like Apple is making great decisions on the two so far.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#258

Post by ludwigvan » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

Productivity tools.

You end up being more productive and finishing things faster; but most of the time, that ends up in no decrease in the time you spend on working stuff since the system quickly adapts to your new productivity level and you still spend all your time working.

Unless you are the one taking the majority of the surplus of your actions, which is rarely the case in a capitalist society, it is a dreadful feeling.

The end feeling is alienation followed by depression.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#259

Post by concordDance » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

muzani wrote: post #178

We've learned that better tools doesn't actually create more productivity. Lots of people talk about how they dread email. A singular mega tool like Facebook or Evernote isn't great. Lots of disparate little tools isn't much better. We've learned that data is unreliable. The highest click through rates come from nudity, or totally gross things like gore and trypophobia triggering holes. The highest CTR on text comes…

> We've learned that better tools doesn't actually create more productivity. Lots of people talk about how they dread email. A singular mega tool like Facebook or Evernote isn't great. Lots of disparate little tools isn't much better.

I'm struggling to figure out what you mean by this.

Obviously it's not literally true (I've saved my colleagues thousands of hours with some of the tools I've made), but I can't figure out what else you could mean.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#260

Post by Joeri » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 9:42 AM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

I chuckle to my self sometimes when I see a toddler walk up to a TV or video advert and try touching it a few times, then walk away confused because what they thought was a touch screen isn't doing anything when they touch it.

I also chuckled when my 2yo did this, but stopped chuckling when he actually got it to switch channels. Turns out our tv has small near invisible touch controls beneath the screen and we just didn’t know.

of course, he wouldn’t stop messing with the tv after discovering this, and found a control combination (undocumented) to put the tv in demo mode: superbright, oversaturated and automatically forgetting its settings after a while.

I was not amused.