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

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

#341

Post by geggam »

icebraining wrote: post #332
geggam wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely opposite of the nations foundations, I had no idea the concept of property being theft was actually entertained as a feasible concept "America's Founders understood clearly that private property is the foundation not only of prosperity but of freedom itself. Thus, through the common law, state law, and the Constitution, they protected property rights" https://www.cato.org/cato-handbook-policymakers/cato-ha…

The concept of private property advocated by America's Founders is mostly based on Lockean ideas of "labor mixed with natural resources creates property". But as Benjamin Tucker pointed out, that doesn't justify absentee ownership (either as landlord or as employer), since you're no longer there actually mixing your labor. And landlords and employers are exactly the roles who Proudhon and other anarchists see as ille…

Slavery has always existed and does to this day. We are all slaves to the banks who create currency out of thin air and loan it to others. The irony of calling the US a free country with the number of incarcerated is obvious.

The fact remains property is required to exercise any right. I wish the US would go back to only landowners being able to vote. Would realign society IMO

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

#342

Post by traverseda »

degenerate wrote: post #54
unlinked_dll wrote: post #39

Internet 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,…

It's almost as if... shiny new technology can't solve the human condition. Have you tried turning it off, and on again?

I mean we've had the technology to solve the human condition since what, the 40s?

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

#343

Post by jkoudys »

gorgoiler wrote: post #167

Journey 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…

The plus side is that I can kill time on my phone while I wait for late people to arrive.

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

#344

Post by omarchowdhury »

dorgo wrote: post #304
omarchowdhury wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you hold access to it, not the knowledge itself.

You don't have a copy of wikipedia on your phone?

Wikipedia doesn't include everything, but I get your point.

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

#345

Post by joe-collins »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #244
danschumann wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to own music. Now I have all the music, but also none of it.

I ditched streaming services a while ago, because I was fed up with the lousy curation of their catalogues and the tendency for albums to randomly disappear and reappear based on licensing disagreements. Now I'm back to a ~25K track FLAC library and a small collection of LPs for fun. It's backed up to a NAS, to a cloud storage account and to a portable drive I keep in my locker at work. Nobody gets to take the music…

I've moved to purchasing music only on Bandcamp, where I get the option of downloading every purchase in the format of my choice (and offers artists an 85/15 profit split!).

And, after one adverse incident, I am very diligent about exercising that download option. Turns out, artists can withdraw themselves and their music from the platform at any time, which leaves customers without access... mostly. For some reason, I still have access to that music on my phone, though I haven't tested whether that's only thanks to the local cache.

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

#346

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Terretta wrote: post #319
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Being able to use a keyboard or a mouse is different. By comparison, is not being able to drive a car. I sure know nothing about engine but can drive. A computer illiterate needs the minimum of being able to maneuver it. Files might disappear, they are an abstraction after all.

Surely “mouse” is not a particularly modern artifact. Remember Scotty from Star Trek trying to talk into one? Mouse was because you couldn’t manipulate directly, iPad you can. Keyboard is because you can’t talk to it. But now one can. As for not driving a car... why would you need to know how once it can drive itself better? The car’s purpose is to get you from A to B, not to be driven. Clearly we are on an appliance…

I absolutely agree, the problem is that we are not there yet.

While I can see mouse being pointless, voice recognition is slow, problematic (can you imagine saying something private by voice, like firing someone?) and prone to error. Keyboard usage is still very necessary for any profession that need to be efficient at using a computing device.

And for multi language speakers (using 2 terms from different languages in the same sentence for example), voice recognition is very behind. Not to mention is very behind on non-english languages (this is based solely on my experience with italian though, no objective data)

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

#347

Post by ltbarcly3 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #108
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at lea…

> Newspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at l…

Yep, I think you're making good points, but you missed my point. I said newspapers were 'expected' to present information to provide information to readers. Your criticisms can't even be applied to Breitbart, or Rawstory. They aren't trying, and there is no expectation that they are, to be presenting information to inform readers of what is happening in the world. They are explicitly biased and delivering propaganda, designed to agitate their readers into an emotional response. There is no expectation that they would not do this, people are going to these sites to reaffirm their stupid biases in service of some agenda which will never benefit them.

It's a huge difference. In one case you have a system meant to deliver information to inform, and which can be criticized if it fails to do so, which it often (or even mostly) failed at. Then there is these new media sources of 'information', which are not even trying, and nobody expects to try. One is a subversion of the standards which are explicitly expected, and the other is a system that has no standards whatsoever.

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

#348

Post by ahartmetz »

Terretta wrote: post #319
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Being able to use a keyboard or a mouse is different. By comparison, is not being able to drive a car. I sure know nothing about engine but can drive. A computer illiterate needs the minimum of being able to maneuver it. Files might disappear, they are an abstraction after all.

Surely “mouse” is not a particularly modern artifact. Remember Scotty from Star Trek trying to talk into one? Mouse was because you couldn’t manipulate directly, iPad you can. Keyboard is because you can’t talk to it. But now one can. As for not driving a car... why would you need to know how once it can drive itself better? The car’s purpose is to get you from A to B, not to be driven. Clearly we are on an appliance…

A mouse is actually useful. Best for looking at is large and at eye level. Best for manipulating is smaller and at elbow level. Having several buttons is also useful. It matters if you're doing it all day.

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

psv1 wrote: post #261
greggman2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I hate being tracked watching videos. I have a self identity I want to put forward. I hate being judged differently based on what I watch. For this reason there are plenty of shows I don't watch via streaming. If I really want to watch I'll find another way. If it's youtube I'll do it not logged in (it's possible it's still attributed to me but I doubt it). It's illegal for a video rental company to share your w…

> (it's possible it's still attributed to me but I doubt it). It's still attributed to you.

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by greggman2 »

psv1 wrote: post #261
greggman2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I hate being tracked watching videos. I have a self identity I want to put forward. I hate being judged differently based on what I watch. For this reason there are plenty of shows I don't watch via streaming. If I really want to watch I'll find another way. If it's youtube I'll do it not logged in (it's possible it's still attributed to me but I doubt it). It's illegal for a video rental company to share your w…

> (it's possible it's still attributed to me but I doubt it). It's still attributed to you.

can you prove that or is it just another conspiracy theory?
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