61–70 of 89 posts
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Time spent on HN was very rarely wasted, and more than once led me to things that directly improved what I do for money. If HN was a subscription-only service, I'd subscribe in a heartbeat. (It would have a number of downsides, of course.)
Nah, somebody would make a free version.
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Imagine the world a hundred years from now, where almost everything is presented as augmented reality, and where someone who doesn't have permanently augmented vision is seen as an outsider, much like the Amish today. Think about nothing being sold with a color or pattern anymore, because you can just customize it to whatever you want in your AR view. Think about products not having any sort of printed imagery, becau…
I assume you look at that world as bad. Though that's purely assumption on my part, since you offer no value judgement. But using that assumption and for the sake of discussion, I'll point out that your dystopian vision could be applied to most technologies. Imagine a time when anyone can get a hold of you. They no longer need to write a letter or go to a telegraph office, your voice is there, whenever they want it.…
I can turn off my phone most of the day and still interact with society, though. A ubiquitous AR has a high probability of being nightmarish ~50 years in, IMHO.
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I would argue the opposite. The poor are incentivized to use free (but containing ads) products. The rich can pay their way out of those attention seeking ads.
I would agree with this, but it isn't even just straight ads. Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person, so if they don't use it or use it for one or two shows they don't care. To the poor person they need to use it to justify the expenditure. So essentially they are incentivized to consume more, in a very indirect way.
Netflix has a hundred million subscribers. It's hardly a rich man's entertainment.
Strikes me that the ability to focus and direct ones own attention will (or already has) become a new form of class divide; those who can concentrate and those who can't. And it will likely have much different boundaries than earlier class divisions like wealth - in fact the wealthy are more likely to struggle given greater access to a wide range of digital products.
I would argue the opposite. The poor are incentivized to use free (but containing ads) products. The rich can pay their way out of those attention seeking ads.
People who already have a bunch of good connections can relax because they know they're embedded enough in the minds of their friends and colleagues that dropping off Twitter for a week won't be risking missing the one opportunity that they need to break into the next social class up.
We haven't seen nothing yet. Smartphone addiction is a thing, but at least you can put your phone in your pocket on silent and go on with your day. But AR lenses are coming and will be the next big thing in my opinion. Imagine being immersed in this semi-virtual world all day long. Imagine being a child and grow up in a world where these things are ubiquitous. Imagine what this will do to their attention.
Just as you can put your phone in your pocket, you can take off your AR lens. (At least until it's surgically implanted. Even then, it should still have a silent mode, just like your phone.)
Oh dear HackerNews, how dearly I love thou, but how many hours of me life has ye taken already? I’d rather not know
The difference that I justify for using HN over a lot of other aggregators in the quality of the content tends to be much higher. I still have a large backlog of repos and writeups that I'd like to study, all found from submissions on HN.
:)
I have one too. The relevant question is, are those things relevant for your work and projects? If not (that's my case), there isn't much difference.
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I assume you look at that world as bad. Though that's purely assumption on my part, since you offer no value judgement. But using that assumption and for the sake of discussion, I'll point out that your dystopian vision could be applied to most technologies. Imagine a time when anyone can get a hold of you. They no longer need to write a letter or go to a telegraph office, your voice is there, whenever they want it.…
Yes, I'm old enough to remember how glorious it was that, as a kid, you would be unreachable most of the day without even your parents freaking out. I think smartphones are a small piece of a current dystopia. I can turn off my phone most of the day and still interact with society, though. A ubiquitous AR has a high probability of being nightmarish ~50 years in, IMHO.
But humans will constantly optimize their lives for greater happiness.
Each piece of technology that makes life better, can also be a trap of addiction. But we will figure this out.
I have access to stimulus like sugar, drugs, alcohol, and gambling, all of which are easily overindulged, but somehow most of us figure out a good balance. Those that can't get the balance right, are supported with in different ways like laws that protect the public.
The AR integration will be the same. When it gets to the point that long term suffering outweighs temporary happiness society will set up boundaries and EVERYONE will be ok with that. Maybe some people will think you are silly for not having AR lenses in all the time, but it won't be that much different from being that guy who doesn't drink at a party.
We haven't seen nothing yet. Smartphone addiction is a thing, but at least you can put your phone in your pocket on silent and go on with your day. But AR lenses are coming and will be the next big thing in my opinion. Imagine being immersed in this semi-virtual world all day long. Imagine being a child and grow up in a world where these things are ubiquitous. Imagine what this will do to their attention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I'm old enough to remember how glorious it was that, as a kid, you would be unreachable most of the day without even your parents freaking out. I think smartphones are a small piece of a current dystopia. I can turn off my phone most of the day and still interact with society, though. A ubiquitous AR has a high probability of being nightmarish ~50 years in, IMHO.
We all worry about that future, and have seen the crazy AR video about SPAM on vimeo. But humans will constantly optimize their lives for greater happiness. Each piece of technology that makes life better, can also be a trap of addiction. But we will figure this out. I have access to stimulus like sugar, drugs, alcohol, and gambling, all of which are easily overindulged, but somehow most of us figure out a good balan…
I think the current diabetes and opioid epidemics show that a huge chunk of society is not "optimizing their lives for greater happiness".