Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 411 posts

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#151

Post by firebones »

hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

How many wikipedia articles have you read on your smartphone vs. ones you've read on your laptop/desktop?

"In your pocket" represents a world of difference.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#152

Post by hodgesrm »

firebones wrote: post #151
hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

How many wikipedia articles have you read on your smartphone vs. ones you've read on your laptop/desktop? "In your pocket" represents a world of difference.

More on my laptop but that's only because I work on a laptop and have to look up (mostly) work-related stuff.

I read a lot of 18th/19th century lit. Wikipedia is like having footnotes for anything you are reading. I use it regularly, almost exclusively on my iPhone.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#153

Post by andrei_says_ »

apatters wrote: post #149
hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GU…

Thank you for this. Putting Stallman’s quote in context helps me see how forward his thinking is and how important the distribution of power and consent can be in software.

I see a parallel with food companies spending money on researching and marketing foods that are more addictive and more profitable.

Yes, people do “want” addictive foods, but that’s not the type of want we want empowered; rather it is a hook into addiction and transfer of power by inducing an addiction.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#154

Post by yoz-y »

apatters wrote: post #149
hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GU…

I don’t know. I think the Stallman quote can be read in two ways. Either the control is about free software (which is what I suppose he meant). In this case it would mean that if you can not read and modify the source code of your program then you are its instrument. I can't agree with this. For me there is little difference in end result for most users between not being able and not being capable of modifying the software.

The other way to read this would be about how the program is used. If my morning starts with my phone telling me it is not going to rain and i go out into a downpour without an umbrella then I put too much confidence into the algorithm. This could get much worse though.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#155

Post by afro88 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #24

Does anyone think that Hacker News fits the bill of addictiveness? Or is HN different than Facebook/Reddit/Twitter for some reason?

Yes. I went away a few months ago with my fiancé for 4 days and we did an unofficial smartphone detox. We just got there and said to each other, why not turn the phone data off and leave the phones in the corner of the room. So we did. The holiday was very relaxing.

But the most interesting part was when we got back. When I jumped onto hacker news I was overwhelmed by all the headlines about totally different things all simultaneously being interpreted by my brain as must reads. It was total overload, and not at all what I was expecting. The Hacker News feed is it’s own kind of brain hack. I wonder how much more pleasant (but less addictive surely) it would be if each page had say 5 headlines with a few paragraphs underneath. Like a newspaper.

Another interesting thing that i’ve Observed since I started observing my Hacker News usage: I read maybe 2 paragraphs of an article then read the top 3 or 4 comments then go to the next thing. I don’t stop until I have some kind of realization about something. Or I see my own views on something validated. Then I put the phone down seemingly satisfied. It seems I come here for the hit of dopamine that comes from “you learnt a thing” or “people agree with your view on a thing”. The addictive part seems to stem from this. I stay here until I get that moment.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#156

Post by pdkl95 »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #88
vonnik wrote: post #47

This excellent article fails to mention artificial intelligence. Facebook has recruited one of the world’s top AI teams, led by Yann LeCun. Their work and Google's are the equivalent of tobacco companies engineering cigarettes to ensure that nicotine hits a smoker's brain more quickly. Facebook and other social networks are the cigarette companies of the mind. Cigarettes blackened our lungs with tar, and social media…

Your analogy of cigarette companies and Facebook was accurate but deeply shocking, I felt a chill in my hands and almost lost my grip on my phone. I’ve always wondered if in the near future, working for Facebook and Google might be considered shameful, just like how working for Big Tobacco became. I remember one person from college who got a job with a tobacco company promoting Reynolds brands cigarettes to his regio…

The cigarette company analogy also includes the "secondhand smoke"-style problem: Even if I don't personally use their services, I'm still exposed to the problem indirectly with gmail/GA/etc.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#157

Post by ekianjo »

apatters wrote: post #149
hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GU…

Control at the time of the quote is not at all what you interpret it to be now. Control for RMS was control on how you can modify the software or share it. It had very little to do with mind control per se. Context matters.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#158

Post by apatters »

yoz-y wrote: post #154
apatters wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GU…

I don’t know. I think the Stallman quote can be read in two ways. Either the control is about free software (which is what I suppose he meant). In this case it would mean that if you can not read and modify the source code of your program then you are its instrument. I can't agree with this. For me there is little difference in end result for most users between not being able and not being capable of modifying the so…

If the software has a free license, then someone can fork it, and provide an alternative that's less abusive.

Of course, unless you're making the modifications personally, you'll need to trust the developers behind the new project. But at least their work is free software too. That means it can be audited publicly, so for instance you can always find out why their news feed algorithm shows you some stories and not others. And if they get too abusive, someone might come along and fork them.

In this sense free software's main benefit is that it lowers (though doesn't eliminate) switching costs. Businesses have been well aware of this advantage since Microsoft's abuses in the '90s, and that's a big reason much of the software in use today is free. Consumers, though, haven't learned this lesson yet.

Now, I certainly don't think free software is the complete and only solution. It strikes me that the bigger issue is trust and where we place it. For most of human history the face we looked at when we first woke up was of the person we loved most in the world. Now it's Apple or Google, who by their nature as publicly traded companies actually _can_ be trusted to act in a certain manner, but certainly not in a manner that puts our best interests first.

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#159

Post by chubot »

burnte wrote: post #114
chubot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another part to the analogy: we've all woken up to the fact that corporations re-engineered the food supply after World War II. They were hacking the human body. I think I didn't get this say in the year 2000, but I really get it now. Think about what your grandparents ate vs. what your parents ate (assuming you grew up in the U.S. and are in the 20's-30's age range. Anecdotally the effect seems to have been…

Could you expand on what you feel the goal of their hacking was/is?

Another reply summarized my view: there doesn't need to be a goal other than optimizing for profit for this type of "hacking" to arise.

I guess the word "hacking" conveys intentionality, or an explicit goal, but I'm using it in the sense that it's "exploiting bugs" in human brains.

Human brains/bodies didn't evolve in a situation with unlimited supplies of fat, sugar, and salt. Likewise, human brains didn't evolve in a situation where you can have an instant audience of 1,000, 100K, or even 100M people.

If you consider facts of about human biology (we like fat, sugar, salt, and to belong to a social group, etc.), and if you understand what a powerful mechanism capitalism is, then it's not surprising that corporations could remake the entire food industry or remake our social lives / belief systems in the span of a single generation.

Whether it's intentional or not is perhaps a secondary issue. I'm saying that in the absence of any opposing force, it would be surprising if this phenomenon did NOT occur.

So I guess my takeaway is that it doesn't hurt to treat current social networks and tech products like smartphones as adversaries. Just like it is reasonable to treat McDonald's and cigarette companies as adversaries. They were designed to deliver concentrated pleasure to your brain without regard to long term consequences.

My impression is that tobacco was a traditional, social, harmless pleasure until "capitalist optimization" morphed it into something deadly and addictive.

(BTW there is evidence that the human brain grew bigger to keep track of our peer group, i.e. it didn't grow big in order to solve math problems. The social part of the brain is large and critical for survival.)

Re: 'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

#160

Post by fortani »

apatters wrote: post #149
hodgesrm wrote: post #144

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is…

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GU…

Agreed.

The problem here is not the smartphone per se, but our increasing dependence on it and the "outsourcing" of our thinking and desires to our smartphone.

Imagine the follow scenario:

* Need to get to a place? Just ask Google Maps, no need to think.

* Need to decide what and where to eat? Don't need to think, just use an app that optimizes for health/variety/preferences/budget and you don't even need to leave the house, just it delivered right to your doorstep.

* Need to think deeply about something? Just Google for the right articles. No need to waste time thinking.

* Feeling bored? Just consume a game, song, movie, Reddit/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc.

* Don't know what to do next week? Have an app that auto-suggests what you can do based on your preferences, your friends' schedules, activities in your city, past user ratings for an event, etc. Taking this further, have an AI virtual assistant that plans your entire year's activities.

* Need to date someone? Use an AI virtual assistant (built with the latest in Natural Language Processing and AI technology that optimizes for the right words to use, the correct responses, the best times to send a message, the best jokes to be using, the best emotions to elicit) that has already done all the swiping on Tinder/OKCupid and done all the texting conversations to set you up on a date.

When this point in the future arrives, without a smartphone, you would become almost feel like an empty shell (or even suicidal). Your very existence becomes tied in to the smartphone. Your daily whims/desires becomes dependent on the smartphone.

If you were given a life sentence: give up an arm or a leg, or give up the right to own or use a smartphone for life. I think increasingly in time, people would rather give up an arm or a leg than give up a smartphone for life.

The question then becomes: Do you own a smartphone, or does the smartphone own you?

Post reply on HN