[HN Gopher] The Shitty Technology Adoption Curve (2022)
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       The Shitty Technology Adoption Curve (2022)
        
       Author : smartmic
       Score  : 65 points
       Date   : 2024-04-28 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
        
       | 082349872349872 wrote:
       | "Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer. What's
       | wrong?"
        
       | AdamH12113 wrote:
       | > This inability to understand the difference between _using_ a
       | technology and having the same technology _used against you_ is
       | endemic to the industry. Take Crossover, which bills itself as
       | "the Fitbit of productivity," but whose customers rhapsodize
       | about the product giving them "powers of near X-ray vision." The
       | point of a Fitbit is to help you improve something that matters
       | to you - but Crossover's customers want to use it to punish other
       | people for failing to follow orders. It's the difference between
       | a Fitbit and a prisoner-tracking cuff - which make crossover "the
       | ankle-braclet of productivity."
       | 
       | This was the most insightful point in the article for me. The
       | distinction between being a user and being a target applies to
       | much more than bossware, too. (Generative AI being an obvious
       | recent example.)
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | (2022)
       | 
       | Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32550336
        
       | burlesona wrote:
       | If we want to prevent surveillance capitalism we're going to need
       | to establish a constitutional right to privacy in the US (and the
       | legal equivalent in other countries).
        
       | classichasclass wrote:
       | The electronic health records bit totally resonated. I was
       | involved in a selection committee for a new health record for the
       | municipal public health clinics I worked for a number of moons
       | ago as the physician champion. They went with the product that
       | the billing, finance and statistics department wanted, ignoring
       | the fact that the interface was poorer for the clinicians and
       | that the beancounters worked with the data, not with the program
       | itself (i.e., forgetting that "garbage in garbage out"). I made
       | the strategic mistake of saying honestly that we could learn to
       | work with anything but it was suboptimal; they heard the first
       | part but not the second and went with it, then they got mad when
       | I refused to endorse it and sell the other clinicians on it. In
       | the end it was never implemented and they chose Epic a few years
       | later that now everybody hates. A massive waste of time and
       | money.
        
       | QuantumG wrote:
       | If you're the kind of person who goes to the comments first, I'm
       | here to tell you there's no need to read the article. Just say
       | "bossware" to yourself 10 times.
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | Cory be like "I wrote about this in a story of mine in 2019" when
       | the bit about YT's mom in her office in Stephenson's Snow Crash,
       | 30 years before TFA was written, perfectly captures the present
       | situation.
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | Wow. This linked article is pretty eye opening.
       | 
       | https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy73n7/ehallpass-1000-thousa...
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-28 23:01 UTC)