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Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

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Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#21

Post by A_Duck »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #16
A_Duck wrote: post #11

Why is the iPad so addictive that children have to be kept away from it? Because every single person designing apps and websites is incentivised to try and win 100% of your attention. Reed Hoffmann put it nicely — "We're competing with sleep, on the margin." The default apps, browser excluded, are pretty harmless - their incentive is to create a device you decide to welcome into your home. I don't see children spendi…

> The challenge is to think of another model for creating apps and content — one that retains most of the innovation without the harm This is impossible! You missed the whole point of the article! Like sugar is addictive because it is extracted from the fruit that carries all the nutrients, the apps are addictive because they are extracted from the challenge of imagination and boredom. The last line of that essay: "Y…

I disagree with the conclusion of the article

An invention comes as the solution to a problem. The qualities of the solution depend on the parameters of the problem.

Many/most technologies have not scaled to the point where their negative externalities outgrow their benefits: GPS, Cordless power tools, OLED TVs, Contactless payments. Of course all have some negatives.

We're learning that if the problem is 'make as much ad revenue as possible for the inventor', the solution is going scale harmfully

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#22

Post by _Algernon_ »

cess11 wrote: post #5
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when all is said in done, people like to own things and other people. The form will differ, sure, but the concept stays.

How do you explain the saying 'sharing is caring'? If you're correct and people inherently enjoy the exploitation of others, how could such a saying spontaneously develop and resonate with rather large groups? And how did the feasts of large religions develop? Things like iftar, where you communally share lots of food with both people you know and strangers, including the impoverished and disadvantaged? There ought t…

Don't look at what people say, look at what they do. People like feeling virtuous, but rarely act that way unless they stand to gain from it.

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#23

Post by deltarholamda »

CalRobert wrote: post #7

I disagree with his take on traffic jams though. Public transportation, bikes, and well designed cities really do solve traffic

True enough, but those are technological solutions to a social problem. E.g., if the public transportation is terrible because it's dangerous or you get hassled on it, people don't use it.

The guy sitting in a 4 hour commute every day is doing it for a reason. It's a cost he's willing to pay for some benefit.

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#24

Post by i80and »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #19
A_Duck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge is the system of incentives around the technology If chair designers were paid based on the number of hours you sat in the chair, I expect we'd see some very different chairs. Probably not better ones for anyone whose life ambitions involve getting up out of a chair.

>The challenge is the system of incentives around the technology The solution is simple: Outlaw advertising. It should have been done decades ago, considering the negative externalities it puts on society (in terms of visual pollution, and harmful incentives it creates). There is no real reason for it existing. The original argument was that it provides customers with information based on which to make purchasing dec…

I'm deeply jealous of the few US states that have banned billboard advertising -- it really feels like pervasive advertising is outright caustic to my brain.

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#25

Post by FollowingTheDao »

A_Duck wrote: post #21
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The challenge is to think of another model for creating apps and content — one that retains most of the innovation without the harm This is impossible! You missed the whole point of the article! Like sugar is addictive because it is extracted from the fruit that carries all the nutrients, the apps are addictive because they are extracted from the challenge of imagination and boredom. The last line of that essay: "Y…

I disagree with the conclusion of the article An invention comes as the solution to a problem. The qualities of the solution depend on the parameters of the problem. Many/most technologies have not scaled to the point where their negative externalities outgrow their benefits: GPS, Cordless power tools, OLED TVs, Contactless payments. Of course all have some negatives. We're learning that if the problem is 'make as mu…

> An invention comes as the solution to a problem.

What is the problem that the invention of email solved? And what problems did the invention of email create?

Inventions do not solve problems. An invention is a mental fabrication, nothing more.

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#26

Post by yapyap »

Kvakes wrote: post #12
A_Duck wrote: post #11

Why is the iPad so addictive that children have to be kept away from it? Because every single person designing apps and websites is incentivised to try and win 100% of your attention. Reed Hoffmann put it nicely — "We're competing with sleep, on the margin." The default apps, browser excluded, are pretty harmless - their incentive is to create a device you decide to welcome into your home. I don't see children spendi…

Absolutely, 100%. Not all tech is the same. A chair is a form of technology, but it doesn't try to make you sit all the time. Although some technologies (like books) are replaced with e-readers through which we handle over a certain degree of freedom to whomever the platform we use belongs to.

a chair is a form of technology?

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#27

Post by theoreticalmal »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #19
A_Duck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge is the system of incentives around the technology If chair designers were paid based on the number of hours you sat in the chair, I expect we'd see some very different chairs. Probably not better ones for anyone whose life ambitions involve getting up out of a chair.

>The challenge is the system of incentives around the technology The solution is simple: Outlaw advertising. It should have been done decades ago, considering the negative externalities it puts on society (in terms of visual pollution, and harmful incentives it creates). There is no real reason for it existing. The original argument was that it provides customers with information based on which to make purchasing dec…

> There is no real reason for it existing

Except the fundamental human right to be able to say what you want, when you want, how you want, even (especially?) for commercial purposes.

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#28

Post by johntitorjr »

A_Duck wrote: post #11

Why is the iPad so addictive that children have to be kept away from it? Because every single person designing apps and websites is incentivised to try and win 100% of your attention. Reed Hoffmann put it nicely — "We're competing with sleep, on the margin." The default apps, browser excluded, are pretty harmless - their incentive is to create a device you decide to welcome into your home. I don't see children spendi…

[dead]

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#29

Post by keybored »

Silicon Valley or SC-ideological technologists have this ideological short-circuit for social problems. Let’s call it the Law of SC since every short-circuit needs an authoritative-sounding name, I mean law.

- The premise is that there is a social problem

- There are some examples of this repeating through history

- It always plays out this way

- Therefore we will conclude that it is technological determinism

- Bonus: Argue that this is fundamentally human nature-determinism by evoking Darwin, Buddhism or Stoicism

- Since this is Determinism (tech. or human) it can’t be solved

- You have now achieved the end-goal: “Explaining” the problem, which gives you smartness cred

- Bonus: Argue that technologists were already in the know. (Steve Jobs once admitted that his kids weren’t allowed to use the iPad.)

That this is a hopeless attitude is revealed in the conclusion:

> You don’t win by keeping up. You win by stepping out.

Because you cannot step out. You can’t rewind the clock. This is reactionary in the political sense since it aspires to go back to the past—but you can’t.[1]

We have made these technological dependencies for ourselves, or fetters. Now we need to deal with them. We need to make them work for us. What we don’t need is to stick our heads in the snad and proclaim that the best we can do is to take timeouts from technology, to create smartphone-free zones or whatever. Really? You advance these gadgets to the point where you need them (or a laptop/desktop) to minimally function in society... and then you become scared of them? No.[2]

What’s the incentive for technology companies? To prey on your attention, your time, and erode your self-worth. This is already known. Where’s the technological determinism here? Just look at the Wizard, pulling the strings—is this your technological determinism?

You (or we) are just complicit in making shitty technology. Don’t blame technological determinism or human nature. Blame yourself.

Commutes don’t expand. Home prices go up into stratosphere near any place people have to work. And the car industry lobbies against public transport. These are all human-made problems. There is nothing deterministic about them.

Your Dilbert-style laws are a crutch. Try to expand your focus beyond your narrow expertise. Then you’ll see that something better is possible.

[1] Try to become a hermit. Civilization (modernity) will eventually encroach on your little hermitland.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43510559

Re: Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

#30

Post by i80and »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #22
cess11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you explain the saying 'sharing is caring'? If you're correct and people inherently enjoy the exploitation of others, how could such a saying spontaneously develop and resonate with rather large groups? And how did the feasts of large religions develop? Things like iftar, where you communally share lots of food with both people you know and strangers, including the impoverished and disadvantaged? There ought t…

Don't look at what people say, look at what they do. People like feeling virtuous, but rarely act that way unless they stand to gain from it.

My experience is that if people are in an environment where helping others is socially encouraged rather than punished, most people want to help even strangers providing no benefit to themselves other than the healthy little dopamine hit. There's exceptions of course, but not enough to actually cause a problem.

Unfortunately I find there's a lot of social pressure (at least in the US) telling people that if they help others they're a rube and a mark, or worse, so help isn't normalized.

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