[HN Gopher] The New Smoking (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
The New Smoking (2021)
Author : conzar
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-11-20 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (conorbroderick.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (conorbroderick.net)
| draw_down wrote:
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Same feeling. Mostly when I see that I unlock my phone two
| hundred times in last 24 hours. The habit to must have been
| somehow occupied is just toxic.
| polynomial wrote:
| > 'm starting to believe a lot of the technology we engage with
| on a daily basis is doing us more harm than good
|
| Who is "us" here? The users of the technology? Absolutely, it's
| terrible for your mental health. Or so you mean the owners of the
| technology who deploy it? In which case it's great, it super
| profitable and barely regulated.
|
| But I expect you mean society as a whole where we have to
| integrate the above. Good question.
| bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
| I'm reminded of the moral panic my parents generation had around
| televisions.
|
| And their parents generation had over serialized plays on the
| radio.
|
| And several generations removed, the panic over _the printing
| press_.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Early usage of TVs consisted in living the tv set turned on
| constantly, which in the hindsight was insane. With time, we
| learned to << master >> the technology that was put in our
| hands. Much along the lines of what this article points out.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The voice of inexperience with early TV sets is loud here.
| You would never do that with early sets, as the damn vacuum
| tubes would burn out very quickly, then Dad would get mad,
| take the back off the set, take ALL the tubes out, cart them
| down to the drugstore, use their tester to find the burned
| out tube, and buy a replacement. Dad, being a busy man, would
| not appreciate doing this very often, and so tightly
| controlled our use.
|
| We didn't get our first color + solid-state set (a huge
| marketing term back then) until 1978. That was probably about
| 5 years later than typical. It was a Zenith Space Command,
| also our first with a remote control. It used no batteries,
| pressing a button struck a metal tuning fork set for an
| "ultrasonic" frequency that a microphone in the set listened
| for. I quoted "ultrasonic", because as a child I could
| definitely hear it.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There are still people who do leave the television on
| constantly.
|
| Far worse, there are many, many, many public spaces ---
| waiting rooms, bars, restaurants, cafes --- in which
| televisions are ominipresent and, again, always on.
|
| This has become far worse, rather than better, with thinner
| and cheaper displays.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| That's considerably more prevalent in the US. I choose my
| bar and restaurants by the abscence of large screens. ( Not
| only obviousely but if it can be avoided, I do )
| owisd wrote:
| Was there actually a moral panic about TV in general? There was
| one about TV violence specifically. The general concerns about
| TV like reduced physical activity are still a concern and
| aren't imaginary.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| See Elizabeth Eisenstein, _The Printing Press as an Agent of
| Change_ (book: <https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/printing-
| press-as-an-ag...>) and the similarly titled article
| (<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1877720>).
|
| The printing press (~1440), and subsequently cheap pulp-based
| paper (despite its rapid decay due to high-acid content), and
| increasingly-capable powered presses, and greatly-expanded
| literacy (19th century) _did_ revolutionise the world,
| splitting the Christian faith, launching first the 100 Years
| War then the Long 19th Century (1789--1914
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century),
| including the Revolutions of 1848 in which over 50 nations saw
| some form of political ferment
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848).
|
| Radio played a huge role in the rise of fascism in Italy
| (Mussolini), Germany (Hitler), and the US (Father Coughlan,
| McCarthyism). Television revolutionised US politics,
| particularly at the presidential level (Kennedy-Nixon debates),
| as did cable television, talk radio, and the nascent Internet.
|
| In _The Matrix_ (1990), John S. Quartermann 's introduction
| details the influence of then-nascent computer and fax networks
| on the Tienanmen Square protests in China. Even early in the
| 1990s, the role of Usenet and BBSes in conflicts in Yugoslavia
| and Turkey was noted (see especially Serdar Argic:
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic>).
|
| McLuhan (who influenced Eisenstein), Harold Innis (who
| influenced McLuhan), Neil Postman (another McLuhan protege)
| Edward S. Herman, Jerry Mander, Noam Chomsky, Robert W.
| McChesney, Andrew Shapiro, and many others have made similar
| observations (bibliography here: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredm
| orbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...).
|
| _If you change how information flows through a system, you
| change that system._ This applies directly to media and its
| influence on culture, politics, business, and more.
|
| The reason that the fears seem so quaint is _because we live in
| the landscape that emerged_. We _are_ the consequence. The Time
| Before seems so difficult to conceive of and understand
| _because it was all but entirely supersceded_.
|
| We face a similar situation in all likelihood with further
| algorithmic-driven media and GD ML AI ourselves.
| [deleted]
| chips_n_fries wrote:
| Tangent, but I never understood the cargo-cult anti-smoking
| culture in the US; it was a perfect reflection of their media
| hypnotization. The people that would do a thousand different
| rebellious, risky, or damaging stuff would recoil in horror if
| you ask if they ever had a cigarette, as if one puff will char
| and shrivel your lungs or something.
| 737min wrote:
| All true. It's not free of government involvement however...
| Notable is the mention of TikTok, which supplies CCP-curated
| content that differs by country.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tiktok-in-china-versus-the-uni...
| guntars wrote:
| Wasn't this debunked? Kids in China, when asked what they want
| to be when they grow up, overwhelmingly say influencer.
| ekanes wrote:
| How does that debunk the concept of CCP-curated content?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Heck, even pornhub shows you different content in different
| countries... at least a friend told me so.
|
| I guess CCP involvment is guaranteed in some form, but I would
| expect rather light touch and strong monitoring. To spot
| dissent early and weed it out in the roots. And to have
| something for blackmails on everybody in future.
| leetbulb wrote:
| > Heck, even pornhub shows you different content in different
| countries... at least a friend told me so.
|
| This is true, and even more fine grained. All content driven
| industries optimize their delivery to target audiences.
| 737min wrote:
| OC here - the point is that there is a difference between a
| for-profit content push and a totalitarian government
| content push.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| The real question for me is how do we fix it? Both at the
| societal level but especially at the personal level for me I've
| been aware of this habit but unable to kick it for years now.
| vsareto wrote:
| We can't if we keep running a society that's working people
| into a minimal life.
|
| Reduce work and living expenses to give people back some time
| and energy to actually pick up something more complicated than
| social feeds or digital entertainment.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Tax and regulate the everloving heck out of the field.
|
| Prior to the 1830s, Britain had exorbitantly high tax rates on
| advertising, I'm given to understand. (I've found relatively
| little material on this fact, and forget where I picked up the
| information.)
| lonk11 wrote:
| The way I am trying to solve this is by building a different
| kind of content feed. One that is not optimized for "time-
| spent-on-site" but for "will you be happy to have spent time on
| it".
|
| This is how https://linklonk.com works: you upvote content that
| you found useful and the system gives more priority to users
| and RSS feeds that posted this content in your future content
| recommendations. As a result you see content from those who
| have brought to you useful information in the past - a feedback
| loop that is better aligned with your needs.
| gumby wrote:
| I miss smoking (well, not really; I'm not a smoker). But all the
| rituals around it were very important for modulating the cadence
| and even nature of conversation, offering shared rituals, give-
| and-take, and, by convention, forced but acceptable pauses.
| bogomipz wrote:
| That's interesting because it does seem like despite how
| unhealthy it is, it was very much a social activity. And I
| think the indoor smoking bans only reinforced that social
| ritual as smokers were forced to gather outside bars and
| restaurant to smoke. "Do you have a light" has probably been
| one of the biggest conversation starters in history. What I see
| now is mostly people having a cigarette in one hand and the
| smart phone in the other. The chatting with fellow smokers
| seems to have been replaced by scrolling. A smoke break used to
| literally be taking a break from whatever it was you were
| doing. Now it looks like more of an opportunity to satisfy two
| addictions at the same time. It seems kind of depressing.
| iisan7 wrote:
| Interesting point, re the pauses to take a drag on a cigarette.
| The only thing I can think of like that now in a workplace or
| chance social encounter is taking a drink of water or coffee,
| but I suppose it hasn't really replaced smoking. Maybe carrying
| a small water flask to give ourselves moments to pause
| meaningfully in a conversation!
| revskill wrote:
| Stupid parenting is what causes current issue. Yes, they're too
| busy to take care of their children, so let's just give them a
| phone and done, you're free!
|
| If all parents forbid their children to touch the phone, problem
| solved.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| I don't think keeping phones away from kids is enough to solve
| smartphone addiction. There are lots of smartphone addicts who
| were already adults before smartphones were invented-- I was
| well into my 20s when the iphone was invented, so I definitely
| wasn't using it as a kid, yet I don't think I have a healthy
| relationship with the technology.
|
| I also don't think it's particularly helpful to blame
| individual parents (most of whom are doing the best they can at
| a very difficult job!) for what is ultimately a social issue
| that all of us contribute to.
| leetbulb wrote:
| How else are parents going to have time to tend their virtual
| farms?
|
| Edit: Yeah go ahead, down vote, but this is intended to be a
| humorous take on a systemic problem, as other have mentioned.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Boomers, few of whom are presently toddlers, pre-teens, or even
| adolescents, seem as prone to screen-addiction as any other age
| group.
|
| This is unlikely a result of bad parenting brought about by an
| extant technological environment in their own youth:
|
| "Baby boomers can't stop staring at their phones" November 12,
| 2022
|
| _But there is another demographic that is struggling with
| putting down their devices: Baby boomers. Smartphones came into
| their lives late, but they were quickly won over. Now some of
| their children say they are hooked, staring at their screens
| constantly, even when they should be paying attention to their
| own grandchildren. Two-thirds of boomers own a smartphone and
| about 6 in 10 are on social media, according to a 2019 Pew
| Research Center survey._
|
| <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/12/boomers..
| .>
|
| Archive/paywall: <https://archive.ph/Tz5Lj>
|
| The Pew study on which that article is based:
| <https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/09/us-
| generati...>
| program_whiz wrote:
| Not to be pedantic, but smoking is actually the new smoking. Its
| just now being normalized through weed (which is rationalized as
| healthy or cool) and vaping (which is seen as less harmful than
| smoking cigarettes). The sheer number of smoke shops has
| exploded.
| googlryas wrote:
| Smoke shops have exploded but it isn't clear to me that there
| is higher availability - every convenience store in the US sold
| cigarettes and most still do. Even pharmacies like
| CVS/Walgreens used to sell them. I think just now you have
| dedicated storefronts for certain types of smoking products.
| bogomipz wrote:
| I think the difference is that cigarettes and packaging were
| almost completely uniform - the same size and footprint
| regardless of brand. As such they were relatively easy for
| stores to maintain. I think the sheer variety and variability
| of vaping hardware and packaging almost requires a dedicated
| smoke shop to be able to service customers.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yeah it really bugs me how inconsiderate weed and vaping
| smokers can be. I've had weed smokers casually walk by my
| family blowing smoke everywhere without care, like this was the
| 1950's. In a sense this is even worse as not only did I not
| agree to me or my kids breathing in this cancerous cloud of
| smoke, but it is psychoactive too.
| thefaux wrote:
| I'm with you that we should consider clean air a human right.
| Personally, I find vehicular exhaust a much bigger problem
| than weed smoke though.
| minitoar wrote:
| Minor nitpick: nicotine is also psychoactive.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Yeah, I thought this was going to be about vape pens.
|
| God bless humanity, almost got rid of the vice completely only
| to have a reincarnation absolutely plunge a new generation into
| addiction.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The vice was the war on drugs that was disproportionately
| applied to minorities. Legalizing weed is taking one weapon
| out of the arsenal of the police state.
| tonymet wrote:
| very good point
| ekanes wrote:
| Something that's helped in a "high leverage" way is interrupting
| the impulse to open an app that takes me into glazed eyes
| territory, or "licking the phone" as I describe it to my kids. :)
|
| None of the kids actually want to waste time on social media...
| but we all still struggle with it. I ran across an (iOS) app that
| they've come to accept and even appreciate. Rather than blocking
| apps completely, it adds a pause of maybe 8 seconds; enough time
| to take a breath and maybe your higher self gets a word in
| edgewise. It's free (though I think you pay for more apps) and
| it's called "One Sec". Installing it requires a few steps, but I
| found myself opening Youtube much less so the next day was "ok
| kids, bring me your phone."
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| I think this could be a really helpful tool. Whenever I find
| myself having a compulsion (check my phone, order fast food,
| skip the gym) I try my best to make myself wait 10-15 minutes
| (depending on the circumstances) and most of the time I'm no
| longer interested because I'm thinking more clearly. Very much
| applies to shopping as well. Do I really need a new laptop?
| Let's see how I feel next week, there's always another sale.
| [deleted]
| wyldfire wrote:
| > This extends to video games, usually of the free-to-play type.
|
| Free games are mostly hot garbage, with a couple of rare
| exceptions. Many of these are also pay-to-win games which strike
| me as the most preposterous use of time imaginable.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| A good heuristic for determining whether a game is worth your
| time is to determine if the game will provide the same
| experience regardless of when you play it. If the answer is no,
| the game probably isn't worth your time and you probably
| shouldn't be playing it.
|
| Features that require you to play a game n days in a row or
| that require you to play a game at certain times of the day or
| that require you to stop playing the game and come back the
| next day are red flags in terms of the game being low quality
| because there's no need to exploit people's FOMO if you've
| actually created a good work of art that stands on its own
| merits.
|
| I also more or less completely ignore phones as gaming
| platforms. Those platforms have such bad reputations that a
| game (that isn't a port of a retro classic like the early
| Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Grand Theft Auto games) even
| being available on them tends to be a red flag that it is a low
| quality game. There's no reason why good games can't be
| released on iOS or Android but generally speaking they aren't
| because of the stigma that those platforms have due to all of
| the "free-to-play" garbage that has been released on them over
| the years.
| hoherd wrote:
| Mobile phone games are why I bought a 3DS. Some were good,
| almost all being paid games, but so many were just repetitious
| gambling for worthless achievements, portable slot machines.
| When I quit putting games on my phone and used that time for
| books and 3DS games my life got notably better. Breaking that
| repetition and proceeding through a story with characters and
| new ideas is so much more rewarding.
| kennend3 wrote:
| I bought all my kids their own 3DS' long ago.
|
| the other added benefit is no "micro-transactions" or other
| ways of "monetizing the user".
|
| With the 3DS you pay for the game upfront, and for the most
| part that is the end of things.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| If you like this article, I would suggest reading these too:
|
| I Don't Want to Be an Internet Person:
| https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/04/i-dont-want-to-be-an...
|
| The Internet is Made of Demons:
| https://www.damagemag.com/2022/04/21/the-internet-is-made-of...
|
| When traveling, I carry a dumb phone, specifically a Nokia
| feature phone that doesn't even connect to The Internet. The only
| distraction on it is the Tetris app which kills time waiting for
| the bus, or waiting to be seen by a doctor, etc
|
| I dedicate a small window of time (1 hour at most) to social
| media, and trained all my feeds to be high signal, so I come out
| of scrolling educated and informed.
|
| I don't engage in _phubbing_ [0] which is a portmanteau of 'phone
| snubbing'.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing
| eastbound wrote:
| Serious question and not snarky (despite appearances): How come
| you comment on HN? It looks like it falls in addictive
| experiences, albeit maybe necessary to keep on top of IT news.
| If the theory of "quitting" was right, we wouldn't see anyone
| commenting about quitting while still online. I'm asking
| because I wonder how to keep on top of things / what part
| should news-reading take in my less-dopamine life.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| > How come you comment on HN?
|
| Just for the record, karma is a useless metric to me. It
| gives visibility into how one of my submissions performs, but
| that's it. I don't chase karma.
|
| > It looks like it falls in addictive experiences
|
| Addiction is when a thing controls you, and you don't control
| it. I am in charge of my experience here on HN, and as I
| said, I don't chase upvotes & karma.
| eastbound wrote:
| Equivalent to what a Youtube or Instagram user would say.
| So, if I understand, you see any other app as bad, but you
| don't see HN as bad because you are in charge of your own
| experience?
|
| I personally think I don't want to masquerade my
| participation as something else than an excitement to be
| part of an interesting online community, an interest in
| being up to date with trends, but nonetheless, an
| _addiction_ , since it takes time and doesn't create that
| much value in my life, and if I had to quit it, I would be
| doomed by being unoccupied.
| civopsec wrote:
| Many, many people point this out but most of them don't seem to
| have much insight beyond the symptoms.
|
| I've thought about the apparent paradox that I keep distracting
| myself with a phone/computer while also not getting any
| fulfillment out of it. Right now I think it is about self-
| loathing and hating my own company. I hated being undistracted
| since that meant more attention for my thoughts. Those nagging,
| awful thoughts.
|
| I've also had some experience with meditation. I was never
| succesful. But I did manage to have the mini-insight that I am
| not my thoughts. So I didn't pick up meditation again but I did
| try to carve out some 10 minutes here and there where I just sat
| with myself, focused on the moment, and didn't look at my phone.
| I used to get super-annoyed at myself when I did this because my
| mind would always start to wander. But that mini-insight might
| have actually had some lasting effect, since now I was able to
| not get annoyed when I noticed myself -- um, I mean _my thoughts_
| -- just blahblahblahing. Because chatty mind is fine as long as
| you can observe it with detachment. At least at my level.
|
| I don't know if it did anything, but it has correlated with a
| change in attitude towards these distractions. I now have better
| impulse control, am more optimistic, have more initiative, less
| irritable. And I have a better attitude and partial control over
| those nagging thoughts--I can either let them play out in the
| background or pivot them. Sometime. Total mastery of the chatty
| mind is a long ways off.
|
| So how do I resolve this paradox? Before I hated myself and my
| mind--which I identified with myself--so much that I instantly
| reached for distractions whenever nothing was happening. Was past
| me an idiot for doing that? No. He simply didn't know any better;
| he was knee-deep in the ramblings of the chatty mind, either
| reacting to it or arguing with it.
|
| Writing periods like this down feels like I am a leaving a note
| to my future, possibly confused self. From my now-lucid self.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| For me I can't even say I'm using it to escape negative
| thoughts, it's just a compulsion. I pull my phone out and
| scroll when I pee. Yep, apparently I can't even have 1 minute
| of downtime without my hand automatically reaching for my
| pocket.
| [deleted]
| thecatspaw wrote:
| A new-to-me term I learned recently which I feel quite nicely
| relates to this post is Consumer neuroscience.
|
| Wikipedia clinically describes the field as "The goal of the
| field is to find neural explanations for consumer behaviors in
| individuals both with or without disease." Personally I have a
| less favourable description of it. How to make people addicted to
| your product, and spend more money than they should.
| leetbulb wrote:
| Having worked in related industries, I've always referred to
| this as the "dopamine / reward loop" (I think this is fairly
| well accepted?). Some people are predisposed to hardcore
| exploitation (e.g. gambling addicts), but from what I
| understand, and generally speaking, we're all capable of
| falling victim to some degree (we're all susceptible to some
| level of superfluous dopamine response). Not helping, industry
| shaping our society to modulate where the average falls on this
| spectrum. A _normal_ child having a cellphone is very similar
| to a _normal_ child taking amphetamines, both yielding
| unnatural amounts of dopamine. Both can very well cause ADD-
| like symptoms _after_ being taken away. There 's also a
| parallel here to sugar and Type 2 diabetes, and other
| disorders.
|
| I think there may be a balance, but whatever is happening today
| is totally exploitative and should be regulated in some way, at
| least up until a certain age.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| > should be regulated in some way, at least up until a
| certain age.
|
| Its called proper parenting. As a father of little 2
| miracles, I can clearly see how easily they get addicted to
| basically everything-screen, and many more things like junk
| food. And its 1-way road.
|
| The hard part is going into full relentless battle with your
| own children who will use various psychological tricks, just
| like adult addicts, to get their kicks. Almost nothing is off
| the table. So you often end up with verbal contracts like you
| are buying next twitter to have some rule of sanity, but kids
| tend to ignore it anyway.
|
| We personally are +- not there yet, so its relatively easy to
| manage 1 and 3 year olds for screens. But we see lost battles
| all around us, kids small and big glued to phones, tablets,
| tvs, just that parents can have some time off. Not everybody
| fails, but we see success mostly with parents that simply
| dont have tv at home and use (rarely) phones more like old
| nokias (with attached camera) rather than smart phones. You
| can't expect kids to respect prohobition when parents are
| clearly ignoring it.
|
| Proper parenting these days is hard, I guess also due to
| higher bar for parenting success than just 'kids are alive
| when entering adulthood'.
| leetbulb wrote:
| Totally agree. I cannot imagine how difficult it is for
| modern parents to manage this issue. By "regulated" I did
| mean 90% parenting, but it's also a larger, systemic
| societal issue that needs to be at least considered,
| quickly, before the current generation(s) who realize it no
| longer have influence and the issue solidifies as normal in
| our culture.
|
| On the other hand, it's probably just the, albeit sad,
| natural order.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Maybe the trick is to clearly label these addictions
| across whole society as harmful, the lower the age the
| more intense/deep/long lasting harm and act accordingly.
| When we managed it rather quickly globally on proper
| narcotics this should be achievable.
|
| I've met parents who were saying 'we have digital kids'
| when their kids were acting like heroin addicts on
| withdrawal just to play on phone another 30 mins, and
| they were saying this as something normal. I get it why,
| admitting you are raising hard addicts and it was you who
| failed to prevent that must be outright unacceptable for
| many. People have this innermost desire to feel good
| about their actions and decisions and this would be
| properly undefendable if hard truths were told.
|
| But it comes back to parents too - spending more time
| with kids instead of chasing career and money kids have 0
| interest in (which is smart!), more meaningfully, be an
| example in ie activities, sports and hobbies. In an age
| when obesity jumps through the roof, people are seriously
| messed up after 2 years of covid lockdowns and all news
| are about doom and gloom. Tough.
| leetbulb wrote:
| > I've met parents who were saying 'we have digital kids'
|
| Never heard this. Very interesting.
|
| To your point, I agree. I am curious if there's been an
| official term coined for this... is it actually "digital
| kid?" I am curious if there will end up being a stigma
| applied to whatever it is as a sort of natural course-
| correction, or if it becomes the "norm." Humans love
| labels and their connotation.
|
| PS: Hats off to you and the other parents in this thread
| with similar understanding.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| If there is one thing that I took from my marketing classes, it
| is that marketing basically starts with trying to understand
| people as they actually are. You cannot sell stuff well if you
| do not understand how people work. For example, as annoyed as I
| was to discover it, it is genuinely hard to argue with Patzer's
| looks[1] and how perception can alter my disposition towards
| buying something.
|
| I genuinely hate the ads-tech, ad-ridden web, and ads in
| general, but I cannot help but to admire it for starting from a
| very simple 'this is how things really are'.
|
| [1]https://gordonpatzer.com/
| cratermoon wrote:
| You may also find this interesting:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captology
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| BJ Fogg [1] is someone who could have contributed to our recent
| "Things you built and regret" thread. His "Persuasive
| Computers" paper gets blamed (for example by Tristan Harris)
| for the explosion of attention economics. That's perhaps unfair
| as his Tiny Habits work seemed geared toward wellbeing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._J._Fogg
| cratermoon wrote:
| Fogg was pretty early in identifying some of the risks,
| although at the time (late 90s) I don't believe he took them
| seriously. One of the earliest critics from inside the
| industry, that I can find, was Joe Kraus, a partner at Google
| Ventures. You can watch his 2012 (I think) talk at
| https://vimeo.com/240721308
|
| ETA Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr, 2008
| adrianhon wrote:
| Self-promo: I recently wrote a book critiquing gamification of
| this kind, examining it across health and fitness and lifestyle
| apps, video games, workplaces, finance, and more. It's called
| You've Been Played and you can find a bunch of excerpts and
| reviews and discussions here:
| https://www.metafilter.com/197065/Youve-Been-Played
|
| I think I have a unique perspective on the topic as CEO of a
| games company (Six to Start), designer of a fitness game with 10
| million players (Zombies, Run!), and being a former
| neuroscientist.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. Great!
|
| EDIT: Mention of Lewis Mumford is already bodes well.
| solaarphunk wrote:
| This is why China released comprehensive regulations governing
| algorithms that are aimed at companies which use dark patterns
| and ranked newsfeeds to fuel addiction and also exploit hourly
| workers, like delivery drivers, whose livelihood is determined
| entirely by an app. Interesting that they are ahead on this
| problem, of all things.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Not to mention kids playing too much video games, which is also
| a concern.
|
| Yes the thing which China does well is regulated capitalism,
| they permit capitalism, they allow billionaires and so on, but
| only if it's in the interest of the state, which still reigns
| supreme. In the US and the West, the corporations give orders
| to the governments.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Surprised not to see Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" on the
| list - though the author may just not know about it.
|
| I finished the audiobook yesterday, and highly recommend it. When
| framed against the active, intentional social media strategies
| suggested in the book, the argument that "normal, every-day"
| social media usage is just like smoking becomes very persuasive.
|
| EDIT: Also recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil
| Postman. It's about television, but every salient point applies
| directly to modern social media as well.
| rhacker wrote:
| I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing
| candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real
| downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are
| people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the
| population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the
| next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything.
| Might as well call it or fight back.
| semicolon_storm wrote:
| Digital and real world hobbies are not mutually exclusive. If
| you have an outdoor hobby, you've probably noticed it being
| busier than ever over the last few years. Hiking trails,
| beaches, surf breaks, running paths, etc have all been the
| busier than they ever were before COVID. People may be spending
| more time than ever online, but people are also spending lots
| of time in nature.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| If anything, tiktok/instagrammers are too prevalent in
| natural areas these days, harvesting those areas for likes
| and influence.
| leetbulb wrote:
| I think this is a somewhat self-manifested societal dichotomy
| requiring debate. One route leads to, as you say, a "matrix"
| society, which may or may not be a good thing. But we as humans
| need to make the decision if it's correct, because ultimately
| the humans profiting from the setup will end up irrelevant, and
| I don't think that's understood ( _ironic_ ).
| nradov wrote:
| The people who spend all day sitting and staring at screens
| will end up with lower reproductive fitness due to obesity,
| weakness, and various endocrine system disorders. So over a
| long enough time scale, evolution will sort us out.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Nah.. we'll evolution won't get a chance. Between cybernetics
| and genetic engineering we'll eventually overcome issues with
| our physical bodies way before evolution comes into play.
| vsareto wrote:
| Bad food and portion sizes carry most of the blame for
| obesity. You can be a gym nut and still addicted to
| technology though.
| rwbt wrote:
| I'd imagine there's a lot less motivation to build new physical
| recreation spaces like skateboards etc if almost everyone is
| starting at a screen every waking minute.
| nikanj wrote:
| At the same time, appearances are more important than ever,
| so it might make business sense to sell equipment to people
| who want to pose with them. Same with rec spaces too, people
| don't actually have to partake in the activities, they just
| have to pay for the membership (and the tagging rights)
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| It isn't like they were really building these places before
| smartphones, though. These are things that are generally
| either services and cost money rather than make them _or_
| they are for-profit places that don 't always have much
| demand. I don't know why it seems surprising that the
| "motivation" to build these isn't there now since the same
| restraints are still there.
| harvey9 wrote:
| I agree. Local skateboarding places that are free get
| pretty well-used. Hiking is still popular but requires a
| bit more time unless you live near somewhere suitable.
|
| Part of the problem is so many people don't have free time
| and/or money to do anything more than scroll on their
| phones. That goes for people with good career jobs with
| long hours, and those scrolling on the bus as they go from
| one of their low paid part time jobs to another.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Not disagreeing with you, but what determines that skiing or
| hiking is more 'valuable' or more worthy of spending time on
| than candy crush or tiktok?
| oblak wrote:
| It pains me seeing how nature is being treated when large
| amounts of lowest common denominator visit the woods. Lots of
| noise, junk food wrappers, bottles, beer cans. In that sense,
| it's more "valuable" having these types away from nature
| cratermoon wrote:
| I recently read _How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention
| Economy_ by Jenny Odell. In it she advocates we "wrest our
| focus from the attention economy and replant it in the public,
| physical realm". Chapter 4 in particular covers being outdoors,
| in physical public spaces.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The message I took from Jenny's book seemed more about
| rebuilding human relationships. My tagline in Digital Vegan
| was "take back tech" because I see technology as
| complementing and facilitating human relations. Currently
| it's designed to do the opposite, to corrode the
| interpersonal and make us more insular and selfish.
| tonymet wrote:
| it won't be the "new smoking " until it's stigmatized and taxed
| out of existence
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