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The New Smoking (2021)

conorbroderick.net

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Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#11

Post by nradov »

rhacker wrote: post #2

I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything. Might as well call it or fight back.

The people who spend all day sitting and staring at screens will end up with lower reproductive fitness due to obesity, weakness, and various endocrine system disorders. So over a long enough time scale, evolution will sort us out.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#12

Post by thecatspaw »

A new-to-me term I learned recently which I feel quite nicely relates to this post is Consumer neuroscience.

Wikipedia clinically describes the field as "The goal of the field is to find neural explanations for consumer behaviors in individuals both with or without disease." Personally I have a less favourable description of it. How to make people addicted to your product, and spend more money than they should.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#13

Post by cratermoon »

rhacker wrote: post #2

I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything. Might as well call it or fight back.

I recently read How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. In it she advocates we "wrest our focus from the attention economy and replant it in the public, physical realm". Chapter 4 in particular covers being outdoors, in physical public spaces.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#14

Post by semicolon_storm »

rhacker wrote: post #2

I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything. Might as well call it or fight back.

Digital and real world hobbies are not mutually exclusive. If you have an outdoor hobby, you've probably noticed it being busier than ever over the last few years. Hiking trails, beaches, surf breaks, running paths, etc have all been the busier than they ever were before COVID. People may be spending more time than ever online, but people are also spending lots of time in nature.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#15

Post by nonrandomstring »

cratermoon wrote: post #13
rhacker wrote: post #2

I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything. Might as well call it or fight back.

I recently read How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. In it she advocates we "wrest our focus from the attention economy and replant it in the public, physical realm". Chapter 4 in particular covers being outdoors, in physical public spaces.

The message I took from Jenny's book seemed more about rebuilding human relationships. My tagline in Digital Vegan was "take back tech" because I see technology as complementing and facilitating human relations. Currently it's designed to do the opposite, to corrode the interpersonal and make us more insular and selfish.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#16

Post by DerekBickerton »

If you like this article, I would suggest reading these too:

I Don’t Want to Be an Internet Person: https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/04/i-dont-want-to-be-an...

The Internet is Made of Demons: https://www.damagemag.com/2022/04/21/the-internet-is-made-of...

When traveling, I carry a dumb phone, specifically a Nokia feature phone that doesn't even connect to The Internet. The only distraction on it is the Tetris app which kills time waiting for the bus, or waiting to be seen by a doctor, etc

I dedicate a small window of time (1 hour at most) to social media, and trained all my feeds to be high signal, so I come out of scrolling educated and informed.

I don't engage in phubbing[0] which is a portmanteau of 'phone snubbing'.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#18

Post by adrianhon »

Self-promo: I recently wrote a book critiquing gamification of this kind, examining it across health and fitness and lifestyle apps, video games, workplaces, finance, and more. It’s called You’ve Been Played and you can find a bunch of excerpts and reviews and discussions here: https://www.metafilter.com/197065/Youve-Been-Played

I think I have a unique perspective on the topic as CEO of a games company (Six to Start), designer of a fitness game with 10 million players (Zombies, Run!), and being a former neuroscientist.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#19

Post by solaarphunk »

This is why China released comprehensive regulations governing algorithms that are aimed at companies which use dark patterns and ranked newsfeeds to fuel addiction and also exploit hourly workers, like delivery drivers, whose livelihood is determined entirely by an app. Interesting that they are ahead on this problem, of all things.

Re: The New Smoking (2021)

#20

Post by nonrandomstring »

thecatspaw wrote: post #12

A new-to-me term I learned recently which I feel quite nicely relates to this post is Consumer neuroscience. Wikipedia clinically describes the field as "The goal of the field is to find neural explanations for consumer behaviors in individuals both with or without disease." Personally I have a less favourable description of it. How to make people addicted to your product, and spend more money than they should.

BJ Fogg [1] is someone who could have contributed to our recent "Things you built and regret" thread. His "Persuasive Computers" paper gets blamed (for example by Tristan Harris) for the explosion of attention economics. That's perhaps unfair as his Tiny Habits work seemed geared toward wellbeing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._J._Fogg

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