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Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#81

Post by cletus »

Video games.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet.

There's simply too much money nowadays in micro-transactions, in-app purchases, loot boxes, pay-to-win and in-game advertising that almost everything is "free" to play and it's literally horrible.

what we have now is mostly copy-pasted franchise titles (with a year after their name) that are just another optimized hellhole of extracting money from you a small slice at a time.

There are exceptions and this is part of the reason why Nintendo as a brand is still loved by many. I consider Zelda Breth of the Wild to be one of the most amazing games and experiences of my video gaming life.

I also like board game adaptations to mobile because they tend to be limited in in-app purchases.

Other than that? By God, there's a ton of crap out there. It's no surprise how many people will go to great efforts to play games that are 20, 30 or more years old now.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#82

Post by cheese_van »

I might include diplomacy, statecraft and foreign policy.

Before communications were instant, ambassadors were provided a long view of state relationships and foreign policy goals. During his tenure then, the ambassador was guided by these long term visions of how to fulfill policy.

Now, thanks to instant messaging, an ambassador and embassy must (or can) immediately adjust daily to their home office's reaction to events. Instant communications have reduced both the role and need for an embassy's long view of policy stance and goals. Thus, while not necessarily "worse", the autonomy of an ambassador has greatly declined. I suppose the contrarian view would welcome the lessened dangers of an incompetent diplomat who can be micro-managed by their home office.

But to the personal aspect, my career supported this area, and thanks to modern communications, often sleeplessly.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#83

Post by rg111 »

Learning.

From my childhood, I have always loved to learn new stuff- all kinds of interesting stuff.

Before, when I became interested in something, I looked it up on the net, read books, and asked people about resources.

But with "feed"s, everything went downhill very quickly.

When more and more resources became available, I struggled to keep up with them.

There were not only too many resources I came to know about on topics that interested me, I also came to know about a lot of topics themselves.

There were not only too many things on things, but there were too many things!

I feel a lot more pressurized, a lot more agitated and anxious because I know about so many different kinds of things that I would be interested about and I am sure (at least in my mind) I would be good at.

These things range from a new programming language or a framework, to a new region and its culture that I suddenly came to know about.

The resources come as articles, essays to books, GH repos, MOOCs, and even diplomas.

I am so grateful because of the internet and specific kinds of social media because I got to know about a lot I otherwise would have missed, and my life would have been completely different. But after a certain amount, or velocity, things go to the dogs.

I believe there is a rising curve that plateaus after a certain distance in the X axis where Y is learning and acquiring knowledge and X is flow of information.

Before, learning was just super fun, and now I am often paralyzed in my free time and I do nothing so that I don't mourn not doing other things, and end up doing nothing.

I am thinking of ways to put a stop to this, and have so far come up with a few ways.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#84

Post by tfehring »

Nextgrid wrote: post #58
chrismorgan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically don’t encounter any ads in my day-to-day life, digital or physical. I have no TV, and use uBlock Origin (including annoyances lists) on laptop and phone. I live in a tiny rural town so that practically the only advertising posters within a 35km radius are first-party advertising on two or three Telstra public phone booths, and in the decent-sized towns 40km away in either direction there’s barely any more…

Advertising is cancer and should die, but billboards and real-world display advertising is probably the least bad version of it. I'd prefer if online advertising (and the associated data collection and privacy violations) were nuked first.

I can't think of a less bad alternative to billboards, so I don't disagree with your claim, but I'll say that I didn't realize how much billboards suck until I spent time driving in Vermont, where they're banned. (I'm originally from Wisconsin, where the freeways have billboards for sex shops, CBD, fireworks, and fetuses every few hundred feet.) The driving experience is so much better without them that I'm pretty confident in saying that their negative externalities are dramatically higher than their economic value and the only reason they exist is that those externalities are externalized.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#85

Post by handrous »

hwers wrote: post #7

It's not a new point but for sure tech has ruined my attention span. I was once lucky enough to get away from major needs to use tech for a few months (which I spent reading) and it really showed me how much these things affect the brain and how unfortunate it is that there seems to be near no other option than to use it because of the career arms race that you need to participate in in order not to die.

It's bad enough that I'd say 75% of my joy from vacations to even very nice places is that it nudges me to all but completely stay off the Web for a few days. The rest of the time I hardly go an hour without looking at a glowing rectangle for one reason or another.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#86

Post by ericmay »

amelius wrote: post #70
ericmay wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not advertising completely but at least targeted advertising. Many problems and borderline unethical business models stem from targeting .

> Maybe not advertising completely but at least targeted advertising. Non-targeted advertising is still distracting. Why not ban it completely? Or perhaps allow dedicated advertising places, so everybody can be happy.

I used to think that too but a complete ban probably doesn't work well. What else would you be banning? Bumper stickers and logos on cars (get rid of the Apple logo on the back of your Mac), yard signs for political campaigns, newspapers, I mean there's a lot there. And then once you start selectively allowing it then you also create hyper-competitive scenarios for the ads that are allowed and I'm thinking if you do that then the ads that are allowed become crazy addictive and effective because the cost to advertise would be so high.

Really what is the purpose of advertising in an ideal world? I'd say it's local, and lets people know what your business is and what services you offer. So if you run an inn in a small town, having a sign hanging outside of your business to let visitors know you're an inn and open for business seems pretty good. People have been doing that for hundreds of years.

The current model though is, as you say, at a minimum distracting. But I think we can grab some low-hanging fruit. If I were dictator I'd ban targeted advertising in any form. No collecting personal data. And I'd ban billboards and other large signs. Idk if this is exactly a good thing to do but I'd also explore banning in advertising in which you're not paying for the service. So if I pay for cable TV and they want to advertise to me, that's fine because I'm engaging in an interaction with the company. I shouldn't have to be subjected to ads that I don't agree to see. It's kind of a form of mind-violence IMO. Question is just where do you draw the line.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#87

Post by dogleash »

tiffanyh wrote: post #62
ok_dad wrote: post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

How do you discover information you’re not actively looking for? Eg maybe being environmentally friendly is super important to you. You don’t even realize that today the detergent you’re using isn’t as such. Advertising allows for someone to educate you that products exist that you’re not aware of that align to your needs/wants/desires.

>Advertising allows for someone to educate you that products exist that you’re not aware of

This thin edge of a wedge doesn't justify more than the tiniest fraction of what the advertising industry does.

You don't need to hold onto these stock answers for quieting cognitive dissonance. I've found it a huge mental relief to stop lying to myself and just admit to anyone who asks that I'm morally complicit in abusing the worlds collective psyche for money.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#88

Post by dfghdfhs »

jacquesm wrote: post #29

I think there is an 'optimum' level for technology of all kinds, below that you really want more and it is clear that there is room for improvement. But once the optimum has been reached any further additions will degrade the experience. Examples: Car controls: pre: direct taps and gauges plumbed into engine parts and such, real switches and levers. optimum: does what it should, not more, not less, more reliable than…

Do you think it's possible that what you call optimum are exactly the state of things in your late twenties / early thirties? And anything more you just call "too much"?

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#89

Post by Eric_WVGG »

ok_dad wrote: post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

I bet you'll love these before-and-after photos of Sao Paolo after their outdoor advertising ban: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

Anti-advertising was one of the pet causes of Generation X, back before more pressing things like "the war on terror" and a financial collapse and health care crisis took the stage. And those are bigger deals, but man, advertising is just awful too.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#90

Post by DataGata »

gherkinnn wrote: post #33

Algo-paranoia. Every time I interact with a remotely "clever" system, I keep thinking how my input will feed some machine. How fast do I scroll, what is in my viewport. What do I listen to and when. Is this an A/B test? Will something I do on a whim affect that machine to predict something incredibly stupid tomorrow? It only became obvious recently, as I was readying an actual, physical book. The relief to realise th…

It should be reassuring to know that most of the things you interact with are actually too bandwidth constrained to care about those things, and the algos you interact with are fairly obvious and explicit (Feeds, curated things, etc)
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