[HN Gopher] Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds
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Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds
Author : delaugust
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-03-28 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chrbutler.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chrbutler.com)
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Byung-Chul Han in burnout society introduces the concept of
| hyperattention, which is the kind of attention that seems
| efficient at first, because it gives the impression of enabling
| you to multitask, but in reality it robs you from any deep and
| meaningful connection to anything around you.
|
| That's is pretty much what happens with anything tech nowadays.
| Because we see technology as a pure feat of rationality where in
| fact what we consume are nothing more than cultural artifacts,
| which will invariably reflect the fundamental problems of the
| society in which these artifacts are forged. In our case, in the
| Burnout Society, it's potentializing hyperattention.
| l33tbro wrote:
| Is he really saying anything new here with this concept? I've
| read a few of his books, and I can't think of one original or
| incisive idea or framework that is genuinely interesting or
| provocative. Eg, he talks about us today being aspirational
| subjects in a neoliberal world. I do agree, but this is not
| exactly illuminating .
|
| I don't mean to dump on him, but he's mentioned so often now
| when subjects like this are brought up.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Maybe he's just not for you. This is actually really unfair
| to anyone writing philosophy these days. That the dude has to
| revolutionize the way we think with some deep and original
| insight otherwise his work is worthless. Is that really the
| only value taken from philosophy? How about hermeneutics or
| social communication? I believe Han excels in the latter and
| is bringing more and more thinkers from different fields to
| think about the fundamental problems of society, people with
| technical and scientific backgrounds that would otherwise not
| join the debate and help design a better society.
| l33tbro wrote:
| It's a fair question. I'm not sure that I need to have my
| mind blown. There's certainly philosophy I read where
| somebody will be writing broadly about a school of thought
| or a niche aspect. I think what I find dull about Byung-
| Chul Han is that he writes with the affect of gusto, but
| there is no insightful pay-off to match. There's nothing to
| grab on to, at least for me.
| popalchemist wrote:
| IMO this means that your internal "algorithm" is over-
| trained for novelty.
|
| The truth, once discovered, ceases to be new. Does that
| mean the truth is not worth anything after an initial
| moment of discovery? Or (this is rhetorical, obviously),
| is it possible that the things that our mind tells us are
| worth pursuing/engaging and those things that are
| ACTUALLY worth pursuing/engaging are not always (or even
| OFTEN) commensurate?
| 9dev wrote:
| The way I see it, engagement with concepts that you have
| fully understood is meaningless in that you'll only
| marvel at your ability to understand things, rather then
| come up with a new insight from the engagement.
|
| But most of the time, we don't actually fully understand
| things, and intimately reflecting on something will often
| yield new facets, insights you didn't have before, and
| deepen your understanding.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > I believe Han excels in the latter and is bringing more
| and more thinkers from different fields to think about the
| fundamental problems of society, people with technical and
| scientific backgrounds that would otherwise not join the
| debate and help design a better society.
|
| He had one hit book eight years ago and now exists
| primarily as a meme. One doesn't really see people deeply
| engaging with his arguments; they tend to agree that
| whatever the object of the new book is "a problem" and fill
| in the details with their own ideology.
|
| Or maybe I'm wrong! I'd be interested in a link to someone
| actually taking him seriously, whether within or without
| philosophy.
| imska wrote:
| If his notion of psychopolitics (as opposed to Foucault's
| still dominant notion of biopolitics) is nothing new, than
| what do you consider new? I also remember what he wrote about
| AI and I have not heard anyone else bring a phenomenological
| argument forward against the "AI can think" hype.
| prisenco wrote:
| Burnout Society came out back in 2010 so maybe it's a
| _Seinfeld Isn 't Funny_ situation.
| tines wrote:
| > The "digital echo" is more than just the awareness of this; it
| is the cognitive burden of knowing that our actions generate data
| elsewhere.
|
| I don't really feel any burden of this myself, I don't feel
| weighed down by the data generated by my actions. If someone else
| wants to clutter up their database with some useless info, that's
| on them. I mainly feel the "direct" burden of distraction.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Just came from a thread where people are discussing Foucault's
| literal panopticon (Bentham really but Foucault popularized it)
| and it seems relevant here. Just knowing that someone is
| watching changes how you behave.
| ta8645 wrote:
| But that is not always a bad thing, and it might not change
| how people behave _enough_.
|
| This one minute Youtube short, gives an example of a guy
| dancing, without regard to being watched. And how a large
| internet crowd reacted to him being shamed by others at the
| dance.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n2rtYzzSgL0
|
| I think we tend to focus on the negative effects of constant
| surveillance, without giving a nod to the positive once in a
| while.
| tines wrote:
| I guess that's what I'm saying: I don't feel like I'm being
| watched. I don't feel as though some website recording my
| clicks is burdensome to me. I leave them to their little
| games and microoptimizations, and I don't take their bait---I
| have much more important things going on.
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| Have you ever accidentally clicked on a YouTube video and
| then had your recommended videos turn into pure garbage for
| a little while?
|
| It doesn't have to be a high stakes situation, sometimes
| small annoyances can add up
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Not even the fact that someONE is watching in the moment. I'm
| 1/8E9 - there's too much concurrent data from all of us
| "ants" for anyone to observe for me to care too much.
|
| It's the fact that online my data isn't ephemeral and someone
| COULD watch in the future, if they care - or deploy someTHING
| to do their watching for them - and I'm unsure of what will
| be cared about by "the powers that be" in the future. I'm
| sure someone could dig up my embarrassing ideas about music
| and religion from 30 years ago on usenet. But people probably
| don't care enough, and that data may or may not still be
| available. And there wasn't a ton of political discussion -
| and certainly nothing about (now) current politicians.
|
| But right now, if I say "A sucks", it's probably saved online
| forever, and depending on where I say it, it's easily
| available to LLM-derived bots. Including to those currently
| tearing down civilization who might have taken a bribe from
| "A" without my knowledge to punish anyone who dislikes them -
| or who take a bribe from "A" in the future.
|
| And "LLM agents" will be deployed to scour the 'net for such
| sentiments, find those who they can easily connect to a real
| identity, and possibly punish them retroactively.
|
| At this point, I'm keeping my head "down" 100x more than I
| did just 6 months ago. Heck, I worry if even this post is too
| much and I'll regret it later.
|
| I used to go online as a kid to "escape a not-so-great
| reality" (geek/nerd, not a great athlete, not popular, etc).
| These days, I long to "disconnect" to escape. But I'm a
| software guy, and if I get off the "keep up with the latest
| tech" treadmill too long, I risk losing my livelihood..
| gchamonlive wrote:
| I agree. It's less like treating data as something alien and
| pathologic, and more like an extension of yourself and your
| identity that's just harder to control and to maintain.
| Aerroon wrote:
| The problem isn't the data, it's how other people react to
| it.
| crawsome wrote:
| This reminds me of when the news channels back in 2014 always
| said "Harmless metadata" as damage control after the Snowden
| leaks.
|
| Compromised smart devices has been leveraged to hurt people all
| around the world. Do you think you are immune?
|
| A very low-key life would really help, but the next bored
| hacker is waiting for the right metadata to be combined and
| they will leverage it against you.
| doright wrote:
| I think there is a more interesting point made by the essay than
| "digital echoes," which are pretty abstract in comparison to day-
| to-day distractions that tangibly reduces time.
|
| It's that there's a notion of a device that has so many features
| that it becomes "too useful." There is only so much time you can
| devote to so many features. Yet it's clear, for example observing
| the uptick in sci-fi computer interfaces in movies and such at
| the time, that crossing a threshold of "enough features" at once
| was useful at a certain point - having a pocket-sized Internet-
| capable device with a small-format camera that didn't suck for
| one thing.
|
| There was also the essay posted recently that argued for a macOS
| release focused on bugfixes and stability over the disruption of
| new features with accompanying issues.
|
| I've been wondering for a long time now, at what point will so
| much innovation have already happened since the 90s-00s that
| there won't be enough actually useful features to tack on to the
| next release of X thing except ones that solve problems we didn't
| have? Has that point already passed? I remember some iDevice
| releases weren't as notable upgrades as their predecessors for
| example.
|
| In my opinion, if the AI revolution hadn't happened exactly when
| it did a couple years ago, this problem of diminishing tech
| returns would have been much more obvious than it is already. In
| fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a flood
| to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would have
| otherwise occurred.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| > In fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a
| flood to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would
| have otherwise occurred.
|
| We've been running on the remnants of research from the 50s -
| 70s for awhile now. Businesses have slow rolled the tech as
| long as they could, but the truth is, we're at the end of the
| research that's been accomplished. Given that and the exodus of
| researchers to go do things like optimize ads, I think the tech
| landscape will be fairly flat for the foreseeable future.
| Humans sailed for thousands of years before the steamship was
| realized. Our level of advancement over the past 100 years has
| been impressive, and there's a lot we can do with it, if we
| don't wipe ourselves out, but I expect this to be humanity's
| current limit for the foreseeable future. I believe the next
| big breakthrough that is needed to realize a technical
| breakthrough is a societal one. We need to value education,
| research, and stop fighting with one another over every single
| thing that exists. Whatever form of society that looks like,
| will be when humanity finally breaks free of its limits.
| nehal3m wrote:
| >I've been wondering for a long time now, at what point will so
| much innovation have already happened since the 90s-00s that
| there won't be enough actually useful features to tack on to
| the next release of X thing except ones that solve problems we
| didn't have?
|
| I think we've passed that point a while ago. 4K is a smidgen
| beyond what most eyes can resolve, the smartphone has not seen
| the revolutions the early years did for a long time (since
| iPhone X I guess?), VR did not bring the Metaverse, NFT's
| flopped. I suppose the cloud was a shift in how we do things
| though.
|
| Before I read your last paragraph I thought you were going to
| comment on how AI was not the revolution that was promised.
| There's some use cases and it's amazing that the tech works as
| well as it does, but I just don't see the mass adoption in the
| numbers or around me at all.
|
| I used to be wide-eyed and excited for tech. I was an early
| adopter of all manner of gadgets from the Palm Pilot to the
| iPad, but the phenomenon described in the article as well as
| enshittification and the constant hype trains have
| disillusioned me. I buy a phone because it does everything I
| need to do life admin and it takes nice pictures, but like the
| article describes I wish it wasn't a data mine and an attention
| draining rectangle. I feel like there's more people at work
| trying to drain my brain and my wallet than building cool tech.
|
| Back when not everything was connected to everything else by
| default all the time, the avenues for stealing my attention
| just weren't there and selling me a gadget had to be done on
| its merits. Maybe that's why innovation in the sense of utility
| is down and out.
| degun wrote:
| I wonder if this is why BlackBerry phones (best ones ever made)
| went extinct. Because the media used to grab attention more
| aggressively, images and short videos essentially, are better
| experienced on a bigger screen. That's why there are no more
| iPhone minis. It's either convenient for Big Tech to keep us
| engaged to that type of media, or just simply user preference.
| Guess I'll never know, but I do miss smaller phones, and
| especially a physical keyboard.
| jgust wrote:
| I've never been able to type on a touch screen as efficiently
| as my blackberry 9000 keyboard. RIP
| crawsome wrote:
| >That's why there are no more iPhone minis.
|
| I think the minis have a 5.4" screen, meanwhile the SE has a
| 4.7" screen. I own and prefer an SE.
|
| >I do miss smaller phones, and especially a physical keyboard.
|
| There's these "Clicks" but it's a rubber slip case that has an
| extended keyboard at the bottom. They're pretty hideous.
|
| I also wanted a physical keyboard, so I waited and found on
| EBay a Moguls Mobile iPhone 6 Keyboard case, which actually fit
| the SE after I dremeled-out the camera hole a little! My rose
| tinted glasses were a bit strong though, because swype is
| faster than thumb physical qwerty.
|
| I fondly miss when HTC was making innovative devices, when
| everything was up in the air. I had the G1, a mytouch4g slide,
| A Samsung Galaxy S relay. All QWERTY slider phones and all
| amazing experiences.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| The author is largely correct, and I've personally been doing
| something similar to him for the last few year: purchasing
| physical media, shunning unnecessary smart gizmos that I don't
| directly control, and otherwise trying to just be disconnected
| for a period of time each day.
|
| Each time I find some small anachronistic way to be offline a
| little more I can feel myself relax just a bit.
|
| A well lived life is not an exercise in optimization, but our
| phones lead us to live that way. So, I think I'm done looking for
| the best way to do things for awhile, and I'm going to focus on
| finding the most enjoyable way to do them.
| jgust wrote:
| Have you tried putting your phone in "grayscale" mode? Works
| wonders for turning your smartphone back into a "tool" instead
| of a "toy".
| icedchai wrote:
| Disabling or dialing back notifications for various apps also
| helps a bunch. I'm fine with a Slack popup notification, but
| I don't want a sound or vibration.
| BeetleB wrote:
| On Android I used to have an app that would just kill most
| notifications. If you got a notification, the app would put
| its own notification on the bar, and not turn the light on
| or ping you.
|
| So even if I got 3 text messages, 2 missed calls, and other
| random notifications, the bar would show only _one_
| notification, and I would not get a sound /light. You'd
| have to click on it to see the actual notifications you
| missed.
|
| You could, of course, have whitelists to let certain
| notifications through.
|
| Best. App. Ever. It's great to be able to work or do
| whatever for hours, knowing that your phone _can 't_
| interrupt you (unless someone calls, which they rarely do).
|
| Sadly stopped working after some Android update. I'm sure
| there are similar apps, though.
| mentalgear wrote:
| See also: "How Phone Use Alters the Formation of Memories and
| Makes Time Pass Faster".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZi0fUocGyo
| tamad wrote:
| > It turns out I don't want a phone at all, but a camera that
| texts -- and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now.
| I know I'm not alone, and yet this product will not be made.
|
| See the Light Phone III released this week.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I agree to a lot of this. But there is something even more
| disturbing than the constant surveillance. With the rise of AI we
| can no longer be sure if what we devote our attention to is an
| artefact of culture or just some derivative that has been
| automatically created to keep our attention up. And we ultimately
| have to ask ourselfs what the hell are we doing here? If history
| is removed from the artefact it becomes meaningless but how do we
| evaluate that and what is the consequence? Live music and theatre
| plays instead of movies and video games?
| garyrob wrote:
| > The penultimate "smartcar" drives itself.
|
| Er... the second-to-last one?
| divan wrote:
| > It turns out I don't want a phone at all, but a camera that
| texts -- and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now.
|
| RayBan Meta glasses is quite close to it, seriously.
| divan wrote:
| Also just saw Light Phone announcement yesterday:
| https://www.thelightphone.com
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The "digital echoes" naming is perhaps the most attracting part
| of this piece.
|
| It's interesting that there is no parallel drawn to the more
| bland and every effects of our actions, the non digital echoes,
| where buying corn soup at the supermarket generates data on which
| brand sold what to who (in particular if it was paid by credit
| card or with a loyalty number attached). Or how public service
| attendency is usually tracked in very rough numbers, so going or
| not to your local library has rippling effects. Or how choosing
| to bike instead of driving at a place will impact one's town
| urban policies etc.
|
| We' be always been part of an ecosystem, and our mere presence
| has effects on it. Caring too much about it will becomes an
| unsurmountable source of stress, and I feel that's where kids
| getting a natural sense of it earlier on probably avoids these
| kind of very late waking up to reality.
| ronbenton wrote:
| A dumb phone with good camera, texting, etc seems like a good
| product idea. Has it been done?
| netsharc wrote:
| I feel like it would suffer feature-creep.
|
| Personally I'd want WhatsApp and Google Maps.
|
| And if you want to deal with QR codes that redirect you to a
| restaurant menu or ticket ordering portal (I was visiting a
| country once, it had a long queue for visas on arrival, but it
| also had a QR code where I could get said visa online), it
| would need to have a web browser, well there you go, a portal
| to distraction has been opened.
|
| And then there's a need to have the payment app for the WeChat-
| esque "Scan QR code to pay" payment system that exists where I
| live...
| ronbenton wrote:
| Yes this is what I was thinking too. Everyone's "must have"
| features will be different. Once we add them all, we'll be
| looking at an iPhone.
| keybored wrote:
| Digital information has affordances. One of them is potential
| infinite permanence. You put something out there and it can be
| perfectly replicated forever. In a conversation you have the ear
| witnesses and just multiple levels of hearsay after that. Not so
| for data. So now you are one copy-paste from leaking your diary
| to the Wayback Machine.[1]
|
| Everyone talks about this affordance in how it makes things
| better. People also talk about how digital information is easy to
| leak. But few seem to talk about it as a direct and irrevocable
| burden.
|
| Smartphones can do everything. So now you have to put in a lot of
| effort for it to do less.
|
| For smartphones though it is less inherent. You can make software
| that limits it so that a million people don't have to go through
| the same procedure. We could make a real concerted effort towards
| that, as a society. But not right now. Because companies won't
| make money from _less_ attention or less things bothering people
| and whatever else. So we can't do it as a society. Because there
| is no business model and that is what dictates what the projects
| that ultimately impacts normal people should be taken on.[2] But
| there will be projects though. There will be at least a dozen
| projets on GitHub that only software enthusiasts will use.
|
| We could make a better world if we put our minds to it. A better
| world for normal people as well.
|
| [1] Eight years from now some bot is going to connect this
| sentiment I've shared here, find similar sentiments from other
| accounts, cross-reference them with other similarities, and then
| maybe ultimately find out who I "really am".
|
| [2] Instead we can bicker about the usual anti-consumer topics.
| They chose this. They bought the smartphones. Huh, if people
| _really_ cared they would have bought a dumbphone. What, they
| need a smartphone for work? To use their bank? Then they would
| have bought a dumbphone as well for their analog (relatively
| speaking) weekends.
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