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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?

#241

Post by onion2k »

pbosko wrote: post #220
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…

Google's estimation for my country is always less than what is achievable if you stick to the speed limit. I guess they calculate it based on other drivers.

In practical terms speeding actually makes very little difference to your journey time.

Eg if you have a 100 mile drive on a 70mph road and you drive the entire way at 85mph your reward is saving about 10 minutes on a 1.5 hour trip.

The downside risk is getting charged for speeding and being delayed for much more than 10 minutes.

I've never though the cost/benefit shows it to be particularly worthwhile.

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

#242

Post by tracer4201 »

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

Not a parent yet, but I certainly don’t plan on giving my kid a touch device... certainly not with internet access. I grew up using the internet as a 90s kid. Today, the internet is even more messed up.

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

#243

Post by jdpigeon »

dwaltrip wrote: post #203
jaxn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not as quick to assume reading a textbook is inherantly more meaningful than playing WoW.

Sure, perhaps not inherently. But do you think, looking across the world, that the median hour spent playing WoW is likely less meaningful than the median hour spent reading a textbook?

Hell yes. 90 hours of cumulative textbook reading time is pretty much an undergraduate degree. 90 hours of WoW is like.. getting to level 40

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

#244

Post by KozmoNau7 »

danschumann wrote: post #78
danschumann wrote: post #8

I'm miserable and all the tech that has "enabled me to do anything" has made everything seem arbitrary. If you can do anything, why do anything?

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 from me.

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

#245

Post by lordnacho »

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…

I'd guess it isn't because of specific services like Google, but the fact that you can now say "I'll be 5 mins late" while you're on the way. People used to not be contactable until the appointed time, now it feels like you're already there with them.

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

#246

Post by pmjordan »

pbosko wrote: post #220
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…

Google's estimation for my country is always less than what is achievable if you stick to the speed limit. I guess they calculate it based on other drivers.

For Austria at least, their car travel estimates are eerily accurate in my experience, including accounting for normal levels of traffic for that time of day/week. Traffic jams mess with it to some extent of course, as they appear and disperse relatively suddenly. And no, I don’t speed.

Their bike estimates are consistently wildly optimistic however. If it’s an easy route and I pedal flat out with no traffic and without hitting any red lights, I can get close to the estimated time.

OK, I don’t have a road racing bike or e-bike, and there are people who are more athletic than I am, but I’d say I’m fitter than the median. Their model seems to assume around 25km/h average speed, which isn’t really sustainable (Or safe) in everyday cycling with other road users about.

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

#247

Post by FDSGSG »

onion2k wrote: post #241
pbosko wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's estimation for my country is always less than what is achievable if you stick to the speed limit. I guess they calculate it based on other drivers.

In practical terms speeding actually makes very little difference to your journey time. Eg if you have a 100 mile drive on a 70mph road and you drive the entire way at 85mph your reward is saving about 10 minutes on a 1.5 hour trip. The downside risk is getting charged for speeding and being delayed for much more than 10 minutes. I've never though the cost/benefit shows it to be particularly worthwhile.

There are exceptions to this though. If you're driving through Europe at night you can easily spend most of your trip on highways safely going 180kmh or faster, saving you many hours on longer trips.

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

#248

Post by kkarakk »

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

Yup, my bro in law panicked when he realized this - even school assignments are on a touch and record based interface so no interaction- and got my nephew a low powered windows 10 machine(dual core i3 from 2013 so the thing CHUGS) and gives him "assignments" to make something creative with 3D printing or just type a story out in MS Word

The idea is to get him comfortable with older computing paradigms and make him appreciate "new" software via exposing him to low powered hardware and how difficult it is to use comparatively.

He tried doing a raspberry pi computer for the kid but said it was too underpowered to do anything meaningful+setup was a hassle

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

#249

Post by kkarakk »

pbosko wrote: post #220
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…

Google's estimation for my country is always less than what is achievable if you stick to the speed limit. I guess they calculate it based on other drivers.

It does. Speed limit in my hometown is 30km/h but google always estimates it based on 60km/h that people actually go at.

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

#250

Post by kkarakk »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

Motion-sensing automatic doors can be opened by deer, bears (which has led to some excitement in hotels and hospitals), and even birds. I've seen birds that can activate the doors in the hardware store near me, and that know where the birdseed is on the shelves in the garden department.

yup my favorite story of animals adapting to human environments is dogs riding subways in Russia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxJf2L2B5fY
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