'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphonedystopia

"Neodome Admin" wrote

| Just now I drove home behind numerous people
| diddling their phones. It's become a maddening,
| dangerous problem. One man was driving several car
| lengths behind everyone else, with his brakes on.
| I finally passed him and beeped. He didn't even
| look up from his phone. And it wasn't a college kid.
| It was a man probably close to 70. Salt and pepper,
| neatly trimmed beard. Perhaps a professor.
|
| TBH it's not the technology fault. There used to be people who were
driving
| and reading newspaper at the same time.
|

It certainly isn't the technology's fault. But you're
looking at it backward. "So what, other people did it
too!" is not a justification for the behavior.

People would like to think they're excused or can't
be expected to help themselves. Somehow they think
the cellphone is a special case. I've never seen anyone
reading a newspaper in their car, but if they did they'd
at least try to manage it, or pull over. What I saw in this
case, and see repeatedly, is an attitude that people
think they shouldn't have to relate to the outside world.
The phone is separating them, socially and perceptually.

This man was in rush hour traffic, holding up the works,
with no sense of social responsibility. In other words,
it's not just that he's addicted to his phone. That
addiction has made the world around him seem unreal.
When I pass and beep my horn he doesn't realize that
the beep might be a message to him. He's lost the sense
of relationship with the world around him. It's a kind of
functional psychosis.

That disconnection seems to be part of the phone
diddler pathology. People develop a connection with
the activities on the phone that seems more real to
them than the real world. They're habitually not
where they are. The person in the next car, or in front
of them on the subway, is a generic stranger, while
the chatterers online are providing constant, personal
feedback.

But while a grown man is responsible for paying attention,
it's also true that the phones are very addictive. And
they're designed to be addictive. And there are thousands
of talented halfwits engineering that addiction whose vision
extends no further than trying to cheat people out of their
money by any means necessary. They think that's clever.
And they think it's hip merely because it uses the latest
technology. They are responsible for their actions, just
as the scam artist is not absolved by the innocence of the
victim.

But the issue has raised some interesting points. Some
people have been moved to recognize that they were never
thinking for themselves in the first place. I guess that's
progress of a kind.

"Ant" wrote

| What about people on computers all day and daily like me instead of
| smartphones?
|
Hopefully you're not doing it in the fast lane
of the interstate.

But doesn't it really depend on what you're doing?
A receptionist might be on the phone all day but
is working and paying attention. Likewise, an investor
or architect might be on a computer all day, but
they're merely using it as a tool. The article linked was
really talking about peoples' experience and views
being shaped by online services designed to be
addictive, and how those sevices begin to become
people's lives and meaning.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 Mayayana wrote:
"Ant" wrote

| What about people on computers all day and daily like me instead of
| smartphones?
|
Hopefully you're not doing it in the fast lane
of the interstate.

Um, reread what I said. I don't use smartphones online. :P


But doesn't it really depend on what you're doing?
A receptionist might be on the phone all day but
is working and paying attention. Likewise, an investor
or architect might be on a computer all day, but
they're merely using it as a tool. The article linked was
really talking about peoples' experience and views
being shaped by online services designed to be
addictive, and how those sevices begin to become
people's lives and meaning.

Well, I use the Internet daily and almost all day like right now. :P
--
Quote of the Week: "The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man... Made courage, or made order, or made grace,... Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place... In scaled invention or true artistry,... Pull down thy vanity,... Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance." --Ezra Pound's poem
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
( ) ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link.

On 10/11/2017 12:54 PM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Wed, 11 Oct 2017 07:40:09 +0100, Martin Edwards
wrote:

On 10/10/2017 8:54 AM, David_B wrote:
Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so
addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis
reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks alarmed by a race for human
attention
by Paul Lewis in San Francisco

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...alley-dystopia


“A handful of people, working at a handful of technology companies,
through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking
today”. (Tristan Harris, a 33-year-old former Google employee)

So don't have a smartphone, I haven't.

Great decision. Most people nowadays don't want to rely on a home line
anymore for contacts and feel that they need to be accessible wherever
they are "in case of emergency." However, they don't see how much of a
prison they've created for themselves by doing just that. Back in the
day, if you were out of the house then you were free of all concern.
Now, with the smartphone, you're still within reach for all of your
responsibilities. I can't imagine how that is better for anyone
without considering what addictions such a device also ends up
creating.

I have a mobile, but not a smartphone.

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman

On 11-Oct-17 5:57 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
It's sort of like people who have a DVR and those who don't. People
without a DVR, and I know a few, are always arranging their schedule so
that they can be home when their favorite programs air. The rest of us,
with our fancy DVRs, take a completely different approach. We're not
chained to the TV schedule. Our programs will be recorded when they air
and will be available at our convenience, not at someone else's
convenience. Again, it's extremely liberating.


We hardly ever use our DVR nowadays.

Don't you have the equivalent of BBC's iPlayer?

--
David B.

On Thu, 12 Oct 2017 07:40:41 +0100, Martin Edwards
wrote:

On 10/11/2017 12:54 PM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Wed, 11 Oct 2017 07:40:09 +0100, Martin Edwards
wrote:

On 10/10/2017 8:54 AM, David_B wrote:
Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so
addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis
reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks alarmed by a race for human
attention
by Paul Lewis in San Francisco

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...alley-dystopia


“A handful of people, working at a handful of technology companies,
through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking
today”. (Tristan Harris, a 33-year-old former Google employee)

So don't have a smartphone, I haven't.

Great decision. Most people nowadays don't want to rely on a home line
anymore for contacts and feel that they need to be accessible wherever
they are "in case of emergency." However, they don't see how much of a
prison they've created for themselves by doing just that. Back in the
day, if you were out of the house then you were free of all concern.
Now, with the smartphone, you're still within reach for all of your
responsibilities. I can't imagine how that is better for anyone
without considering what addictions such a device also ends up
creating.

I have a mobile, but not a smartphone.

I would have gone in that direction myself (now that Apple and Google
have both exposed themselves as anti-conservative) but won't since
I'll be getting a Linux-based Librem smartphone once it is released.

"Char Jackson" wrote

| It's amazing to me that we've acclimated to such
| madness. But that's really another topic. There's
| cellphone addiction -- always fearing one will miss
| something, as Char put it, and thus living in a kind of
| mental hamster wheel of faux urgency --
|
| Actually, what I said was that having mobile phone/data is extremely
| liberating, which I believe is exactly the opposite of all of that noise
| above. It's amazing to me that someone could skim what I wrote and come
| away so confused.
|

"There's a very good reason why people glue their smart phone
to their face - it's an endless source of information and communication.
Once you have something like that, you ask yourself what took so long."

So your interpretation of gluing your phone
to your face is that it's "extremely liberating"?
You don't know how you lived without it before.
That sounds to me like you're afraid you'll miss
something if you leave home without it or don't
answer every beep.

I'd call that an addiction. Being a source of info
and communication is not the problem. The problem
is that one can't do anything else properly with
a phone glued to their face... and many people
don't realize it.

I find it hard to believe that knowing your
friend just entered Starbucks and plans to
have a lemon coffeecake is so important that
you should risk being run over while crossing the
street, in order to get that information *this second*.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE4so_oYK0I

These discussions too often turn into an issue
of "if you're not a technophiliac then you're a luddite".
There's a lot of area between those two extremes.
Like using a cellphone to make and receive phone calls,
without gluing it to your face; without trying to update
your Facebook while you walk down the street; without
trying to text-chat with a friend while you drive. Without
spending hours glued to the tempo of Twitter prattle.
That's just common sense.

"Neodome Admin" wrote

| No, they didn't. They were doing the same thing people are doing with
| cellphones now.
|

Another interesting look, if you're curious:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/..._the_next.html

Werner Herzog made a video about the rising road
deaths from texting. But that's only part of the story.
The video was funded by AT&T. They're pushing the
anti-texting-while-driving angle while pretending that
talking on the phone is fine. Texting is positioned as
scapegoat.

On 12-Oct-17 8:01 AM, David_B wrote:
On 11-Oct-17 5:57 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
It's sort of like people who have a DVR and those who don't. People
without a DVR, and I know a few, are always arranging their schedule so
that they can be home when their favorite programs air. The rest of us,
with our fancy DVRs, take a completely different approach. We're not
chained to the TV schedule. Our programs will be recorded when they air
and will be available at our convenience, not at someone else's
convenience. Again, it's extremely liberating.


We hardly ever useÂ* our DVR nowadays.

Don't you have the equivalent of BBC's iPlayer?

Well?

Cat got your tongue?!!

D.

Boris wrote in
5.223:

snip

Corrections (should have proofed):

snip


Well, the car didn't stop and crashed into my rear end, and my trunk
ended up in my rear seat. We smashed into the car in front of us, and
did a 18

did a *180*

and kept yelling 'open the door, open the door')

*I* kept yelling

snip

On Sat, 14 Oct 2017 18:14:49 +0100, David_B
wrote:

A dreadful tale. :-(

So pleased to learn that you and your wife weren't killed or seriously
injured, Boris.

A warning to newcomers:

https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php

DON'T click on any links he posts. They are usually malware.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

On 14-Oct-17 7:03 PM, Shadow *LIED* .... AGAIN.

On Sat, 14 Oct 2017 18:14:49 +0100, David_B
wrote:

A dreadful tale. :-(

So pleased to learn that you and your wife weren't killed or seriously
injured, Boris.

DON'T click on any links he posts. They are usually malware.

I've never posted malare, as well you know.

You are a fraud, Shadow. So sad. :-(

On 15-Oct-17 12:48 AM, Diesel wrote:
David_B
[....]
I've never posted malare, as well you know.

Actually, you have posted links to urls that contained various scripts
that would qualify in one way shape or form as malware. The fact YOU
were unaware it was present doesn't negate your responsibility.

If this is true, it is YOUR responsibility to advise me WHEN this happened.

You claimed that I had NOT sent you any malware samples!

You are a fraud, Shadow. So sad. :-(

It's you who's the fraud, David. It's always been you.

Not so. I'm the most honest person posting here! :-)

--
David B.

David_B
Sun, 15 Oct 2017 11:41:54 GMT in
alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

On 15-Oct-17 12:48 AM, Diesel wrote:
David_B
[....]
I've never posted malare, as well you know.

Actually, you have posted links to urls that contained various
scripts that would qualify in one way shape or form as malware.
The fact YOU were unaware it was present doesn't negate your
responsibility.

If this is true, it is YOUR responsibility to advise me WHEN this
happened.

It's true. It's not my responsibility to baby sit you. I've tried
previously to provide you sound advice and I wasted my time. I see no
reason to continue doing so and expecting a different outcome.

You claimed that I had NOT sent you any malware samples!

That's true. You never sent me anything that was malware, despite my
asking you to do so, several times. Instead, you wanted me to crack
into the server hosting the website(s) themselves and have a closer
look around. When I told you I'd be more than happy to examine any
specific urls you thought might point to malware, but, I wasn't going
to crack into the servers and go on a wild goose chase, You offered
to pay me to do it. When I politely declined your job offer, you
decided you'd try to blackmail me into doing it by posting a gsv of
what you thought was my house, several times, in several different
newsgroups. Most of which, btw, I was not subscribed to.

When Aardvark asked you in person why you did that, you gave him
quite the song and dance and admitted that I might consider you doing
something like that a security risk to myself and others due to my
past that you were well aware of prior to doing it. In other words,
you blew smoke up his ass.

What you did was intentional on your part and you did it because I
politely declined your repeated requests, including offer of payment
to commit illegal computer trespass for your own personal benefit.
Not one single time did you provide even a suspicious url for me to
examine. Not once. You didn't contact me out of the blue, either. You
were trying to build a 'friendship' with me so that you could talk me
into doing some shady things for you later on down the road. You
selected me because of what you'd already read about me. You thought,
incorrectly that if you portrayed yourself as a user of my freeware
program that was having difficulty you could get to know more about
me and later, abuse the 'friendship' you incorrectly thought you had
acquired from me. You had alterior motives from the first email you
sent me and thought you could outsmart me. I'm not sure why you
thought you could, but, obviously your efforts to do so not only
failed, but caused your own doxing on a much wider scale to occur.

A doxing, that, you've tried for years now to punish me for all to no
avail. It seems to me that you think it's okay to do rotten things to
others, but, it's not okay for anyone else to treat you like the pile
of **** you actually are. Where you get such a silly idea, I do not
know.

It's you who's the fraud, David. It's always been you.

Not so. I'm the most honest person posting here! :-)

No, you aren't. That's akin to pcbutts claiming that remove-it was
his original work and not the copy/paste job it actually was. In
other words, it was a program he took a copy of from someone else and
placed his own name on it. And, it was proven he did this, multiple
times, too.




--
Now for a cheeky message from our sponsors:
Life's Law: NOTHING ever happens until it does.

On 10-Oct-17 10:37 PM, Paul wrote:
David_B wrote:
WHY are you a chronic nym-shifting psychopath troll, John Doe?


David, I like to think of you as a chronically off-topic
troll, who likes to crosspost. Does that description
fit you better ?

Â*Â* Paul

No.

What did you think of the article, Paul?

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...alley-dystopia

--
David B.