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

theguardian.com

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

#231

Post by stevenleeg »

Years ago I wrote a blog post[1] talking about this at a higher level, essentially vetting my frustration about people being addicted to their phones all day rather than living their real lives.

Here we are, 4 years later, and while I think I saw a surface level societal change at that point, I completely missed the bigger picture of society being actively manipulated by companies, governments, etc. through tech for their own gain.

Crazy times we live in.

[1] https://www.stevegattuso.me/2013/11/30/a-society-of-phone-zo...

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

#232

Post by ekianjo »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #168
ekianjo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that misrepresents Stallman's concerns. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html for instance. It is clear that free software is a tool for political ends not merely an end in itself.

That piece is from 1997. RMS 10 years before that had a much more down to earth concern about software. Like everyone he has evolved in his thinking.

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

#233

Post by danohu »

peterhartree wrote: post #227
keeptrying wrote: post #196

If this is true Then it also presents a unique opportunity. I.e. There should be a very real and observable productivity boost from being able to ignore your phone and working on career building/family-relationship projects. If you can tear yourself from your phone for 3 Hours a day and work on career building projects, you should be able to get far ahead of others in your social circles who can't break the addiction…

> If this is true Then it also presents a unique opportunity. I.e. There should be a very real and observable productivity boost from being able to ignore B J Fogg, who gets brief mention in this article, teaches his students to cause behaviour by making the behaviour easy and then delivering timely triggers [1]. If you find yourself behaving in ways you don't reflectively endorse, your basic approach should be to fl…

Easier than avoiding triggers -- and almost as effective -- is just to delay the response. Let yourself check your phone, but only 10 minutes after you feel the urge to do so.

This is much easier than complete abstinence, but breaks down the habit-forming link between trigger and instant gratification.

And just as you say, it's something I started doing after reading about training [1] and inverting the priciples

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31052.Don_t_Shoot_the_Do...

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

#234

Post by afarrell »

keeptrying wrote: post #196

If this is true Then it also presents a unique opportunity. I.e. There should be a very real and observable productivity boost from being able to ignore your phone and working on career building/family-relationship projects. If you can tear yourself from your phone for 3 Hours a day and work on career building projects, you should be able to get far ahead of others in your social circles who can't break the addiction…

This is the reason why https://freedom.to/ exists

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

#235

Post by VOBOSHI »

coldtea wrote: post #229
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…

> I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. That's might be because of thinking of first order effects only. > Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. Well, who said access to Wikipedia is something good in itself? For one, it might (and I say it does) r…

Access to all kinds of information is good. It will always be up to the individual to investigate and draw up conclusions. People who state that they can just look something up on Wiki and be knowledgeable (or gasp experts!) will have been ignorant 10 years ago, 100 years ago etc. If they wouldn't have had Wikipedia or a newspaper, they'd have had religion (or anything else) to allow feeling knowledgeable.

Also, I disagree that reading a book is a REQUIREMENT for study. It can be beneficial, but it's just another tool.

There are a lot of wrongs on this planet, unfortunately.

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

#236

Post by mgkimsal »

crypt1d wrote: post #216
keeptrying wrote: post #196

If this is true Then it also presents a unique opportunity. I.e. There should be a very real and observable productivity boost from being able to ignore your phone and working on career building/family-relationship projects. If you can tear yourself from your phone for 3 Hours a day and work on career building projects, you should be able to get far ahead of others in your social circles who can't break the addiction…

Last year I went on a 2 week long entrepreneur-ish conference on a cruise ship. Due to satellite internet limitations, my phone/laptop usage was limited to 1-2hrs per day, usually in the evenings. Rest of the time I spent mingling, joining workshops, talks, or just having fun on the boat. Now mind you, I'm not a particularly social person. Being around people so much was very much out of my comfort zone, but it still…

and... you were on a cruise ship. had a similar experience on a cruise ship a few years back, and I don't think the feelings were entirely just 'info detox'. You're in a physically different space, probably exposed to the elements more than you normally are day to day (more sunshine, etc). You're around a whole other set of people, many of whom are more relaxed than the normally are (because many are on 'vacation' of some sort). Normal issues of food shopping, housework, etc are taken care of for you (well, those concerns are replaced with other concerns, at minimum).

So... agreed that the 'info detox' aspect is not bad, but I suspect that just doing an info detox in your 'regular life' wouldn't give you the same boost you experienced.

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

#237

Post by ironic_ali »

archiepeach wrote: post #228

As noted multiple times in the article, the unethical design we’re seeing in popular apps and services today is largely a result of the widespread use of advertising as a revenue model. This is an appropriate time to show appreciation and support for the companies who are trying to demonstrate successful revenue models which are NOT based on advertising: Medium - the replacement of “Recommends” with “Claps” was to al…

After 18 years as a (mainly contract) BA with some PM work on govt and big Corp business and/or software solution contracts, I'd had enough and did a diploma in enology and viticulture (wine making and growing). In one of my first assignments I referenced Wikipedia on malolactic fermentation and sent it in for marking.

The lecturer gave me a b+ and went on to berate me for using Wikipedia as a source that was not to be trusted. I was 42 (older than than the lecturer) at the time and had innumerable experiences of people questioning facts during my previous life because they didn't fit their narrative, and politely asked him to point me to where in the Wikipedia entry the political manipulation strayed from the science and process... He couldn't and after a phone call to confirm, my mark was bumped up.

Utter academic bs and cognitive bias clouded all judgement on his part. I was pretty pissed off he'd dismiss something before reading it, and the rest of the diploma was spent playing to what they would accept as sources.

Two years later my Pinot noir got 95/100, ironically marked (in part) by our other (more experienced and realistic) lecturer in a blind tasting.

Fuck academia and their fucking higher than thou bullshit based on nothing other than their own ego. And don't get me started on that other clusterfuck Turnitin.

/rant

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

#238

Post by walterstucco »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #224
ben_w wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They (or, rather, the software they connect to) are holding me back from precisely that. If there was no social media, the novel I’m writing would have been done a year ago.

It wouldn't. You would spend a lot of time watching TV, reading novels, or hanging out in the bar.

At one point you stop watching TV, because there are no more new things to watch, you stop reading novels because they aren't novel anymore, you stop going to the bar because there's a fixed amount of alcohol you can consume, it costs money, the bar has opening hours.

Smartphone follows you everywhere, all the time.

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

#239

Post by barrkel »

archiepeach wrote: post #228

As noted multiple times in the article, the unethical design we’re seeing in popular apps and services today is largely a result of the widespread use of advertising as a revenue model. This is an appropriate time to show appreciation and support for the companies who are trying to demonstrate successful revenue models which are NOT based on advertising: Medium - the replacement of “Recommends” with “Claps” was to al…

I somewhat agree with your examples, except Wikipedia. It has no business being much more than a server farm and software tweaker. That's not something that needs large ongoing investment by many people.

http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-fr...

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

#240

Post by Chathamization »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #194
jansho wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they also provide access to Wikipedia [etc] But let's be honest, most smartphone users spend their time confined in a limited number of domains: social media, games, shopping etc. In that sense, we can be called a bit zombie in the head.

If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family . Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do. And it is also critical to doing anything together with other people. The Internet has lifted constraints of time and geography from communication - which is why you see people on IM in situations where, without the phone, th…

> If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family. Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do.

I disagree. Pre-social media, people would talk with friends and family using e-mail and programs like AIM, and there would actually be deep and meaningful conversations. This has been supplanted by social media, which is often simple banal comments on an article/rant that someone threw up for everyone to see.

If someone told you 15 years ago that people would stop having conversations by e-mail and communicate by LiveJournal posts/comments instead, it would have seemed like a hilariously terrible idea, but that's more or less where we are.

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