Technology doesn't just make life easier, it changes how we think, how we act, and what we come to expect from the world around us. The biggest shifts show up slowly, fold into everyday life, and eventually become invisible. Over time, a tool or system starts shaping behavior:
Smartphones - Smartphones didn't just improve communication, they removed its boundaries. Messages became instant, information became constant, and waiting became optional.
Before smartphones, there were natural gaps in the day. Time between conversations. Time without updates. Time where nothing was happening. Those gaps have largely disappeared.
Now, attention is continuously pulled in multiple directions. Notifications interrupt focus, and moments of silence are often filled automatically.
[...] GPS Navigation - Finding your way used to require memory, awareness, and decision-making. People learned routes, recognized landmarks, and built mental maps of the places they lived and traveled through. GPS replaced much of that process: following instructions rather than remembering directions.
[...] In fact, studies have suggested that reliance on GPS can weaken spatial memory over time, as the brain outsources that responsibility.
[...] Social Media Algorithms - Social media introduced systems that decide what you see. Early platforms showed content in chronological order but over time algorithms began prioritizing posts based on engagement, predicting what would keep you scrolling the longest.
This changed behavior on both sides. Users consume what is most attention-grabbing, and creators adapt by producing content that performs well within the system. Over time, this creates feedback loops, where certain types of content are amplified while others disappear. What you see begins is heavily filtered and shaped, yet it feels like a reflection of reality.
Related:
- The 'Engineering of Addiction' - 3 Ways Meta and YouTube Are Claimed to Have Harmed Users
- Smartphones Promise Satisfaction and Meaning, Deliver Only More Searching
- Turning Phones on Silent May Increase Phone Checking
- Smartphone Addiction - It's not Just for Kids
- Should Smartphones Come with Health Warnings About Psychological Addiction?
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Related Stories
As reported in The Guardian:
Smartphones are psychologically addictive, encourage narcissistic tendencies and should come with a health warning, researchers have said.
A study by the University of Derby and published in the International Journal of Cyber Behaviour, Psychology and Learning found that 13% of participants in the study were addicted, with the average user spending 3.6 hours per day on their device.
[...] The study examined the responses of a self-selected sample of 256 smartphone users who were asked about how they used their device as well as questions intended to establish their personality traits.
Social networking sites were the most popularly used apps (87%), followed by instant messaging apps (52%) and then news apps (51%).
[...] "Narcissism is a negative personality trait and if a person is spending a lot of time on Facebook or Twitter they're more likely to display these types of traits," said [study Co-author from the University of Derby’s psychology department Dr. Zaheer] Hussain.
Interesting article on smartphone addiction, written by a 45-year-old who suffered from it.
We touch our smartphones -- tap, click, swipe -- more than 2,500 times a day. That's probably 100 times more often than we touch our partner. The reason we do it is that the phone constantly demands attention by sending us notifications. It does so every time someone wants to connect with us, every time something changes in an app, every time an artificially intelligent entity decides we need information. Notifications have a barely veiled commercial purpose: Once we start playing with the phone, we're likely to open more apps, see more ads, buy more stuff.
It's relatively easy to retake control; I went into my phone's settings and banned every one of the 112 apps from sending notifications. Now, I only check my personal and corporate email accounts, as well as two messenger apps, when I want to, not when my device wants me to. That means my friends must wait longer than they used to for a response. They haven't noticed -- or at least they haven't commented on it. We overestimate the need for immediacy in communication; perhaps our kids don't because they live their addiction to a greater extent than we do, but an adult finds it easy to wait for a response.
Recovering addicts know it's impossible to be perfectly clean: Even if you don't use your favorite substance, you miss it. At the end of his opium essay, Cocteau wrote wistfully that perhaps "the young" might someday discover "a regime that would allow one to keep the benefits of the poppy" without getting addicted. That remains impossible for drugs but maybe not for smartphones.
I can sympathize. I went through a massively stressful period a couple of years ago, which involved being on-call for a project basically 24/7. Continuous status notifications and emails. This got me into the habit of leaving those notifications on, and every time any sort of message arrived, I'd check the phone, which would lead to using the phone, even if the message itself was unimportant.
The continuous flood of interruptions makes you feel needed, important, connected, or whatever. It also destroys your ability to concentrate (when working), or to participate in your family's life (when at home). Turning off all notifications was a very, very good thing...
'Common sense' advice to halt smartphone distraction may actually be misguided:
Telling people to turn their smartphones off, or set them on silent as a strategy to ease distractions or avoid addictive internet behaviors may backfire on some folks, according to Penn State researchers.
In a study, the researchers report that people checked their phones more often when their devices were in silent mode. They added that those who scored high in "Fear-of-Missing-Out" and "Need-to-Belong" personality tests checked their phones even more when silencing them and, in some cases, stayed on phones longer.
"The general, commonsensical approach to overcoming addiction or any kind of substance overuse or dependency is by cutting back on that substance," said Sundar, who is also an affiliate of Penn State's Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. "The industry approach to curbing smartphone overuse has generally been to try and figure out ways to cut off your access to phone, or to reduce the number of notifications or to give you the option of turning off the sound. While these are commonsensical approaches, we really do not know if they are psychologically effective. This seems to be one of those instances when cutting back can actually backfire or boomerang."
[...] People with high levels of FoMO checked their phones about 50 times a day when the vibration signal was on. In silent mode, though, the number of checks soared to about 120 checks a day for those participants. The researchers also found that people with high levels of FoMO stayed on phones significantly longer if their phones were in silent mode.
People with high levels of the Need-to-Belong trait did not pick up their phone more when their phones were in silent mode, however they did stay on phones longer if their phones were either on silent or vibration-only mode.
"Imagine, in class, the instructor tells the students to turn off their phones, we think that now everyone is paying attention to the instructor," said Sundar. "But, what our research is the opposite, in that they are preoccupied thinking about all the things that they're missing, so it might be even more distracting."
Journal Reference:
MengqiLiao and S. ShyamSundar, Sound of silence: Does Muting Notifications Reduce Phone Use?, Comput Hum Behav, 134, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2022.107338
[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]
Smartphone users will be disappointed if they expect their devices and social media to fill their need for purpose and meaning. In fact, it will probably do the opposite, researchers at Baylor and Campbell Universities found in a recently published study.
[...] The researchers' results provide a sociological link to the psychological studies that point to connections between digital devices and media use with feelings of loneliness, depression, unhappiness, suicidal ideation and other poor mental health outcomes.
"Human beings are seekers – we seek meaning in our relationships, our work, our faith, in all areas of social life," Pieper said. "As researchers, we were interested in the role that smartphones – and the media they give us instant access to – might be playing in meaning-seeking.
"We conclude that smartphone attachment...could be anomigenic, causing a breakdown in social values because of the unstructured and limitless options they provide for seeking meaning and purpose and inadvertently exacerbate feelings of despair while simultaneously promising to resolve them," Pieper said. "Seeking itself becomes the only meaningful activity, which is the basis of anomie and addiction."
[...] "Our research finds that meaning-seeking is associated with increased smartphone attachment – a feeling that you would panic if your phone stopped working," Nelson said. "Social media use is also correlated with increased feelings of attachment."
The science of smartphone addiction:
This is huge news, a landmark verdict that will inform hundreds of cases to come. While the plaintiff, a 20-year-old identified only as KGM, has been awarded $6m in damages, it's the verdict itself that's most damaging, as it opens the door to many more lawsuits against tech companies.
KGM's lawyers, in their closing remarks, said: “How do you make a child never put down the phone? That’s called the engineering of addiction. They engineered it, they put these features on the phones. These are Trojan horses: they look wonderful and great … but you invite them in and they take over.”
One literature review by Italian pediatrists linked digital addiction in children with depression, diet, and psychological issues, as well as 'sleep, addiction, anxiety, sex related issues, behavioral problems, body image, physical activity, online grooming, sight, headache, and dental care'. KGM was six years old when she first got addicted to social media, according to her testimony.
Researchers in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands have also linked 'high social media usage' among adolescents to 'a statistically significant change in the developmental trajectory of cerebellum volumes', a part of the brain associated with emotional control. It could literally influence the brain's physical development.
Another report says: "frequent social media use may be associated with distinct changes in the developing brain in the amygdala (important for emotional learning and behavior) and the prefrontal cortex (important for impulse control, emotional regulation, and moderating social behavior), and could increase sensitivity to social rewards and punishments".
However, it's worth noting that none of these findings are yet conclusive.
They're not entirely wrong. The basis of addiction is all about hijacking the 'mesolimbic system', the part of the brain responsible for associating certain behaviors with rewards, both natural (food, sex, play) and artificial (drugs such as alcohol and nicotine, and notifications). Once a reward is achieved, dopamine is released.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JamesWebb on Wednesday April 08, @10:53AM (7 children)
The camera extends this into the physical world.
A camera is permanent adversarial observation. It never blinks. It never looks away. It never grants the silence between glances that allows a person to relax, to be unperformed, to let the shadow regenerate. Under a camera, you are always on. Your posture adjusts. Your face arranges itself. The performance never stops because the observation never stops.
A judge once told feuding neighbors: "Get it on video." The prescription was permanent mutual surveillance — each watching the other, forever. Neither can heal because neither ever stops watching. Both locked in mutual shadow saturation, each depleting the other's ability to regenerate, each generating evidence that the other is the problem while their own observation IS the problem.
This extends to every security camera, every doorbell camera, every dashboard camera, every body camera, every ring of cameras around every building. We have built a civilization of permanent observation and then wondered why anxiety is epidemic. We removed the silence from the commons and called it safety. We made it impossible to be unobserved and then prescribed medication when people couldn't relax.
The surveillance isn't the solution to the anxiety. The surveillance IS the anxiety.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday April 08, @01:29PM (6 children)
In this hypothetical situation, this actually would help. They were already depleting whatever they're depleting with mutual suspicion. By automating the process, they gave themselves time to heal because the video automated the surveillance they were already exerting considerable effort to do. Further, it kept them honest. Whatever shenanigans were going on between the two would now be on video.
Cameras don't just magically show up. They show up in societies of low trust where there are actual problems. It might be something simple like a large number of people in one place; maybe law enforcement is spotty; businesses are understaffed for some reason; or the government is tightening its grip, 1984-style. In each of those cases, we would still have those serious problems even if the cameras weren't there.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @03:21PM (5 children)
We have cameras, we have the ability to record - we don't. We listen to the birds and watch the garden. I don't want to live a life where I "got it on video" and then seek justice / retribution.
Justice is a lie.
Retribution doesn't require video evidence.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday April 08, @04:10PM (3 children)
There's a third use of a courtroom: mediator of last resort. When it gets to the point where neighbor disputes end up in the courtroom, they need something. The judge in this alleged case provided a kick in the pants to both parties. And I already noted the value of cameras as both automation of existing paranoia (giving them more mental space for other things) and as a de-escalation tool.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @05:50PM (2 children)
We have a neighbor, he keeps chickens. He doesn't keep them well, they can get out of their coop, other things can get in. We have hawks, owls, coyote in the neighborhood. My neighbor has a camera. My neighbor "caught my cat in his yard on his camera" and so came to inform me that "your cat has been murdering my chickens." "Did you see that on your camera?" "No, I saw YOUR cat on MY property, and the next time I see YOUR cat on MY property I'm going to shoot it." Our cat has never killed anything even 1/4th the size of a chicken. Squirrels, moles, little birds, sure. A chicken? Get real.
A quick review of local laws finds that the most likely outcome if he does shoot / injure or kill our domestic cat, even if it is found on his property, is that he would be found guilty of animal cruelty and most likely sentenced to 20 hours of court appointed anger management therapy. So, thanks for telling me ahead of time that it's you who is likely the killer of our cat. That was almost 2 years ago now, apparently he has cooled off since. Not sure how many more chickens have "been murdered" but our cat is still doing fine.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by corey on Wednesday April 08, @09:20PM (1 child)
Your should keep your cat inside anyway. They kill lots of small animals and birds. Maybe it’s different there but here in Australia, introduced cats are the number one killer of native animals and have led to the extinction or near extinction of a number of small animals who never evolved the need to evade cats.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @09:38PM
Here in suburban Florida, introduced cats are part of the ecosystem. We don't really have much in the way of native animals to speak of - I mean, raccoons, armadillos, opossum, squirrels - other human-environment-adapted species, sure. Quite a few migratory birds. Basically, our suburban ecosystem is so far removed from "native" - anything that can't evade cats is pretty much extinct already.
Cats don't kill chickens. They also don't kill the turkeys that come through from the woods, or the coyotes. They'll take the occasional bird, but not nearly as many as the raptors do. Owls and hawks kill 10x or more the number of cute little songbirds as the cats do. Our cats seem to be able to take down baby squirrels but not the mature ones. Let me assure you: the squirrel population is far from endangered, very far. Moles... in 13 years our yard cats (we've always had one) have delivered about 4 moles to us. I'd like them to deliver 4 moles a month if they could - earthworms areate our soil quite enough, thank you, I don't need tunnels that I can break my ankle in.
If I were to move to the NZ bush / countryside, I'd take your advice and be kind to the native wildlife. Even if I end up in Port Lincoln SA, I can see how cats don't belong outside there. However, from my perspective, the answer isn't to have a pet cat, cut off its fingers (declaw) and imprison it where it can only longingly look out at the environment it wishes it could participate in while making it shit in a box that you have to smell throughout the home - filling the indoor environment with toxoplasmosis parasites - the answer is to not have a pet cat at all if it can't be outside at least some of the time.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08, @04:19PM
we also now have the ability to alter those recordings so they aren't admissible in court
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday April 08, @11:02AM (34 children)
None of which are true if you're a grown adult.
My smartphone provides instant access to information? Great. No discussion, let's LOOK AT THE NUMBERS... oh look, I was right/wrong. Now I have FAR MORE TIME to do... other things, like conversations, natural gaps, have a cup of tea.
Do I have to phone Jim to speak to him live and interrupt him mid-flow? Nah, I can send him a message and he can get around to it when he wants to.
Do I have notifications pinging off all day long? Nope. I silenced them. When I'm free, THEN I pick them up. My attention is more focused than ever since smartphones became mainstream.
GPS? Yep, my satnav is very helpful. You know how? I load it every morning so it tells me about traffic. I don't look at it for the rest of the journey unless it pipes up about traffic. Then it will detour me and, in doing so, I have learned a dozen alternative routes that I would NEVER HAVE FOUND on my own. I'm also quite fond of just going for a drive at random, exploring the area, knowing that I can just sat-nav my way back if I ever get lost.
Sure, if you're LAZY....
Social media? I've pretty much cut it out because it's NOT social. It has nothing to do with society or socialising at all any more. It's just nonsense that isn't true, stuff I'm not interested in, crap about popular TV, and stuff that nobody cares about. I gave up on Facebook because I realised that in the last several visits to it I hadn't seen A SINGLE POST from anyone that I actually know or speak to. It's just... a stream of content that people lock into because they're bored, and then don't come out of until it starts getting repetitive. That's not what I use it for.
All of this is prevented by just... consuming media like an adult. Using your brain rather than just doing "what everyone else does". And using things as tools, not crutches or replacements.
My smartphone/GPS/apps are AMAZING. It's literally James Bond/Sci-Fi stuff. Incredible. I use it as everything from a torch to a workstation. But that's the point. I USE IT. I have a purpose in mind, I use it for that purpose. When I have other things I need to do... I do them instead. Like an adult. And that means ignoring texts that come through while I'm driving, knowing the satnav is wrong and ignoring it, and not giving a damn about what vague celebrity that I wouldn't be able to pick out of a line-up has done what with who on what island in front of the cameras.
None of this is the device's fault, same way that "TV" didn't turn us into brainless morons, and lightswitches and push-buttons didn't make us lazy or stupid. It's nothing to do with the DEVICE. It's to do with YOUR USAGE OF IT. And your usage of it? Is dictated by YOU.
Whenever I hear about those people who have to have six alarm clocks, and self-imposed warnings on their time spent on games/social media, and people who have to have gambling controls of their apps, I don't think "Oh, my gosh, isn't technology terrible?!". I think "You're a fecking idiot with no self-control like a normal adult would have".
Stop blaming the technology (no violent movies don't make kids violent. You know what does? Then doing NOTHING BUT watching violent movies, because their parents don't give a damn what they do.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JamesWebb on Wednesday April 08, @11:05AM (4 children)
Consider a child growing up with a screen in their hand from age two. The child's natural rhythm — attention, play, boredom, imagination, rest — is interrupted thousands of times per day by a device that provides stimulation without rhythm. The child never learns what regeneration feels like because they are never allowed to reach it. The moment of boredom — the pause between heartbeats where the shadow would fill back in — is immediately filled by content. By someone else's rhythm. By a feed that was designed, literally engineered, to prevent the user from ever reaching the silence.
The child doesn't develop their own pulse. They borrow one from the device. And when the device is taken away, they feel the absence not as peace but as panic — because the device was performing the function their own internal oscillation was supposed to learn. They never learned to hold the beat because someone else always held it for them.
This is why screen-addicted children can't sit still, can't tolerate boredom, can't self-regulate. It's not a discipline problem. It's an architecture problem. The silence they need to develop their own rhythm was filled before they could build one.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday April 08, @01:30PM (3 children)
Consider a child growing up with free access to a toybox. They'll be interrupted a thousand times a day by whatever takes their fancy.
Which is why we PARENT and limit play-time and keep kids on task and spend time out of the day to learn and make them deal with and ignore distractions and make them come to the dinner table, and so on and so on.
If you are expecting the device to babysit your kid and raise them for you, it isn't going to happen, whether that's a smartphone, tablet, the TV, video games, or that annoying toy that just talks constantly.
This is the same thing I just said. It's not the DEVICE that's the problem. It's your use of it. Using it to babysit a kid that you're not supervising, limiting screen-time, steering their learning, teaching proper behaviour (when it's time to put it away, etc.) - that's the problem. Which is, precisely, 100%, a discipline problem. NOT a technical problem.
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @06:47PM (1 child)
>Which is why we PARENT and limit play-time and keep kids on task and spend time out of the day to learn and make them deal with and ignore distractions
Or, you know, just chuck 'em in daycare with a 15:1 ratio where the 1 is paid minimum wage, but they're "really good with kids" and there's lots of primary colors everywhere so it must be a good environment, right? After all, look at all the other kids in there.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08, @07:43PM
Add job requirement: "Must be REALLY good with kids AND spend quality time with EVERY child". Fixed.
(Score: 2) by JamesWebb on Wednesday April 08, @09:30PM
Lol -- Are you saying parents will solve it.... Jokes?
(Score: 5, Informative) by turgid on Wednesday April 08, @11:06AM (15 children)
Whenever I hear about those people who have to have six alarm clocks, and self-imposed warnings on their time spent on games/social media, and people who have to have gambling controls of their apps, I don't think "Oh, my gosh, isn't technology terrible?!". I think "You're a fecking idiot with no self-control like a normal adult would have".
If only it were that simple. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday April 08, @01:48PM (14 children)
Given that it is that simple, what's your next narrative? How much society should we destroy because there are idiots in the world?
(Score: 3, Touché) by turgid on Wednesday April 08, @02:10PM (13 children)
I'm one of those idiots.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday April 08, @02:26PM (12 children)
(Score: 5, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday April 08, @02:35PM (4 children)
Who said anything about crippling society? I got a wife. Now I don't need an alarm clock. Innovation, that's the solution.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday April 08, @03:24PM
My view is that new technology routinely obsoletes old processes. We don't do much math by hand when we have calculators, right?
Consider the story. So much of it is nonsense. Smart phones removing "natural gaps"? Those natural gaps were filled back then too - sometimes with productive stuff like reading and sometimes with unproductive stuff like developing an alcoholism problem.
You still need to understand the map program in order to understand where you're going and how long it'll take to get there.
Terrible stuff. Delivering what you want to read.
(Score: 3, Funny) by pTamok on Wednesday April 08, @03:52PM (2 children)
Ah, so now you can sleep in while your wife prepares breakfast for you and lays out your clean clothes for the morning in your dressing room.
* This post might contain significant levels of non-seriousness.
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday April 08, @04:00PM (1 child)
No, she has a pointed stick. When the alarm goes off, she prods me in the ribs causing me to leap out of bed. Then she goes back to sleep.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @06:50PM
>When the alarm goes off, she prods me in the ribs causing me to leap out of bed. Then she goes back to sleep.
You may tell her she's one of a kind, but she's not.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by acid andy on Wednesday April 08, @02:37PM (5 children)
The obvious rebuttal is a society where everyone enjoys plenty of sleep and no-one is destitute due to gambling addictions sounds like a really cool place to live. If you don't want a crippled society, don't cripple its people.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 08, @03:25PM (2 children)
All you need is better people. Classic Marxism problem BTW.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday April 08, @03:46PM (1 child)
Sorry, we are out of better people. You'll just have to make do with the ones you've got.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @06:54PM
No, see, the plan is to deport the bad ones... that will cure everything almost as good as that Ayn Rand novel. Then, anyone "outside the environment" https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?si=4fapkEw2CPCC6iVK&t=88 [youtu.be] who's a nuisance can just be nuked back to the stone age - it's so simple, why didn't anyone think of it before?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @09:24PM (1 child)
>If you don't want a crippled society, don't cripple its people.
When I lived in the City of Miami, 30-40 years ago, there were some rough parts near the neighborhood - everybody in the stores: workers, customers, everybody was angry / hostile all the time. Life was hard for them, too many expensive problems and not enough money, and they got to look across the street at the "privileged people" and see just how easy everything was for them by comparison, and it turned into a cess pit of bad vibes with sprinkled violence mixed in.
Who wants to live in that kind of society where you're pressure cooking a big chunk of your population? Where the people are pissed off, with obvious reasons, and you're just daring them to step out of line so you can have the police brutalize and/or arrest them, just to piss them off more when they get out? It's not like you're killing enough of them to lower their numbers, the killings just piss them off more - and with obvious reasons, the "privileged people" don't seem to get harassed / brutalized / killed by arbitrary police action nearly as often. You may think: they're so disadvantaged and weak they aren't a threat. Newsflash: God created man, Smith & Wesson made 'em all equal, and present interpretation of the 2nd Amendment means that basically anybody who wants one (or more) can get handguns, and pissed off desperate people living in fear and with victimhood chips on their shoulders are a lot more likely to make the effort to own and carry.
So, yeah, now let's make 'em all stupid and addicted to misinformation channels too..
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday April 09, @08:43AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Wednesday April 08, @05:56PM
The problem is that it creates idiots. Often times the ability to opt out completely is just not there at all. Many sites will purposefully hide useful information and push rage bait in order to keep you engaged, which either leads to being stressed/angry or just outright checked out.
On top of that, the constant dings for attention drain attention span and an increasing number of people have ADHD like symptoms, even though they haven't got ADHD, their nervous system just keeps getting dinged for attention every few minutes preventing the brain from resting.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday April 08, @02:33PM (8 children)
In my experience the six alarm clock thing usually happens when the thing the person needs to get up for is so exploitative, abusive and exhausting, that each time the alarm sounds their sleep deprived body and anxious brain are screaming at them "JUST. FIVE. MORE. MINUTES!"
Nothing to do with idiocy or immaturity. It's their survival instincts desperately trying to protect their health.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday April 08, @02:55PM
That's a good way of looking at it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday April 08, @05:58PM (6 children)
That's part of it, and part of it is that people don't know how to manage their sleep cycles. The ideal is always to rise and rest based on your particular circadian rhythm, but the next best thing is to control the light, body temperature and food intake to help keep things in sync. There's no reason why everybody has to eat at the same time, but it's generally advisable to eat relative to when you wake up at a similar point in your day.
Also, as unpleasant as they can be, James Bond Showers help, a lot. That blast of cold water in the morning will wake just about anybody up, and if that's not enough, you're probably running at a massive sleep deficit and should get more of it.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday April 08, @07:04PM (4 children)
It might be hypochondria but I always feel like if I had a really cold shower my heart might stop, not that I have known heart problems, but seriously I wouldn't be too surprised if I fainted from the rapid change in temperature and hit my head or something.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Wednesday April 08, @07:46PM (3 children)
People with heart diseases would want to take it easy on that. But, what constitutes a "cold shower" varies a lot in terms of anything from luke warm to actually code. I'd certainly not do so or exercise a great deal of caution if I had any heart conditions. I personally have more issues in terms of my respiratory system temporarily seizing up if I'm not in the practice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @09:26PM (2 children)
>heart diseases ... what constitutes a "cold shower" varies a lot in terms of anything from luke warm to actually code.
Thus: code blue?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday April 08, @09:30PM (1 child)
Not that bad for me, but around here the average temperature here varies between 45F and 53F depending on the time of the year. The one time I was anywhere near that point was when I took a dip in a small lake with an iceberg in it.
I've found that if I build up to it starting from half/half mix of cold and hot to just hot, but anybody with a heart condition should be really careful about it.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday April 09, @06:50AM
Perhaps you should move somewhere where the use Centigrade?
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08, @09:58PM
Bold to assume their bosses (yes, plural) aren't fucking with their schedulues on the regular.
I know, I know, it's hard work to fight to prevent the "fuck you, got mine" viewpoint from infiltrating your head.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @06:01PM
> I gave up on Facebook because I realised that in the last several visits to it I hadn't seen A SINGLE POST from anyone that I actually know or speak to. It's just... a stream of content that people lock into because they're bored, and then don't come out of until it starts getting repetitive
I gave up on BlueSky because I realized that (like Twitter before it) people are driven to posture and seek wider audiences, and that distorts their authenticity. It was interesting for a little while, I connected with someone claiming (quite believably) to be connecting from mainland China, and a (much) lesser known actress, and a couple of other "real" people - but almost all the content on the platform was primarily concerned with "making it big" getting a wider and wider audience, and the platform feeds that by putting big players in your face, making you part of thier audience. No thanks, not interested in the competition or being part of the crowds.
Facebook does have a few people from my past, and they do occasionally write things, but we don't need Facebook to "stay in touch" any more than those 2 page summaries of "our 1994 highlights" sent with all their 1994 Christmas cards kept us in touch back then.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday April 08, @06:31PM (1 child)
Yup!
Don't have a phone. Didn't have one as a kid, haven't found a need for one now.
GPS is only useful when travelling unknown areas, but you still have to be aware that GPS can lead you into a ditch or river.
Social Media Algorithms... don't have a phone and my only 'Social Media' is SN.
Heh: i remember when they banned the 'bad scenes' from the Road Runner cartoons showing kids that you can fall from great heights and you just become an accordion, etc.
Only the stupid kids would have thought that because we sure as hell knew better...but stupid kids are always stupid and ruin things for everyone else. And they grow up to be stupid adults who raise stupid kids.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09, @12:55AM
Ditto. Tried an early cell phone on a trip. The damn thing didn't work correctly, returned it when I got home for credit (minus the minutes I'd used) and never looked back. If I really need one now (for example, a trip or to coordinate a meet-up), I can borrow one from a relative who rarely uses it.
For GPS, I have one of the Garmins that sticks on the windshield, use it when I'm going somewhere I haven't been before...but always plan my route on paper maps in advance (paper maps still free if you are a member of the American Automobile Assn, AAA).
SN uber alles!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 10, @01:32AM
I find this link useful (for desktop browsers): https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr [facebook.com]
There are still ads, but I see lots of posts from people I know.
What I'm unhappy about is as the Android version numbers go up, I've been losing more and more control over my phone. Tasker loses more and more ability to control my phone features.
(Score: 5, Touché) by SomeGuy on Wednesday April 08, @11:41AM (10 children)
Or even if it not what one expects, it is what is forced on them.
I need quiet time to get work done. But others find that unacceptable. If I don't get their irrelevant alerts in my face every five seconds then I am not "being a team player", or I am being a"troublemaker". They might as well put a metal bucket over my head and keep hitting with a wrench, but they literally can't and won't see the problem.
Similarly, to communicate with some people means signing up to certain social media sites and sifting through piles of shit.
GPS? That reminds me, are there still any good sources of paper maps?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by turgid on Wednesday April 08, @12:06PM (2 children)
Similarly, to communicate with some people means signing up to certain social media sites and sifting through piles of shit.
I have a simple solution to that problem. If they want to use some godawful anti-social media platform to communicate with me, they don't communicate with me. Nothing of value is lost.
GPS? That reminds me, are there still any good sources of paper maps?
Ordnance Survey maps are the gold standard.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday April 08, @03:57PM
Printed on linen. My father had 'a number'.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09, @01:04AM
> ... are there still any good sources of paper maps?
In USA, join the Auto Club (AAA), not only do you get free towing when your car decides to quit, they have many paper maps (all included in the annual dues). Over the years I've used nearly all the state maps, some Canadian provinces, many larger city maps and some excellent regional maps too.
As others point out, a decent paper map is great for trip planning, often I'll spot possible places of interest that may be only a short way off my main path. This is one reason that small screens are limiting.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 08, @12:26PM (1 child)
I was recently surprised to discover my state travel department still gives out free state maps, good quality poster size folding ones.
I suppose anything that's cheap and encourages people to travel and spend tons of money is a net gain for that office.
I still find them useful for scanning along a path. "what fun things can I find along the way" is not answered very well by online maps or even worse by LLMs.
The resolution is very high. Must be at least 100 DPI times a couple feet across thats a lot of pixels.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08, @03:24PM
I have been a fan of USGS topo maps for various reasons for decades. They're easier than ever to obtain today.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lonehighway on Wednesday April 08, @03:49PM (3 children)
Rand McNally Trucker’s Atlas was my bible for more than 20 years but sadly not very useful for around town below the level of major streets. But while I use Google street view to see what an unfamiliar place looks like, I would never use a turn-by-turn GPS. Sadly few people take pride in things like that anymore.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday April 08, @04:02PM (2 children)
Meanwhile, the most up to date street atlas for my nearest city (population > 1 million) is from 2023. I think the publisher does not plan to issue any more. I guess there is insufficient demand.
Perhaps there is scope for on-demand printing from OpenStreetMap. The index to street names linking to grid squares would be a challenge, as would the stylised public transport route maps.
(Score: 1) by RootTwo on Wednesday April 08, @07:21PM (1 child)
it seems printing OSM maps is a solved problem: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_on_Paper [openstreetmap.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Wednesday April 08, @07:50PM
Printing the map might be.
Printing the street and 'notable landmark' index with references to grid-squares on each page of a map-book (atlas) is not. At least, as far as I know.
E.g.
Magnolia Sq. Dunkville 10: F9
Main St 1-58, Podunk 52: A13
Main St 59-212, Podunk 52: B13
Main St 213-236, Podunk 52: C13
Major Avenue 1-34, Podunk 54: B5
Major Avenue 35-190, Podunk 54: C5
Major Avenue 191-194, Podunk 54: D5
Mercator Monument, Podunk 52: B12
(Score: 1) by Undefined on Wednesday April 08, @10:42PM
If you have a phone, a solid workaround is to search up and download a/many great map(s.) Then you can have it/them at your fingertips with zero added bulk. You can find just about any map you can imagine online very quickly, on demand.
I've got a bunch of topographic maps on my phone along with a mapping/topo/hiking GPS I use when rock hunting. While I also have an aftermarket GPS in the travel vehicle, all it is used for is trip mileage, as a precise speedometer, and time/distance to destination estimates. You can set the destination for just about any town or address, or directly as GPS co-ordinates. They're great tools. If you use them right.
The key thing to understand is that neither a map or a GPS system will ever be 100% up to date WRT recent changes, traffic, accidents, detours, or road hazards.
We need to use our heads. But that doesn't mean we can't leverage tools. Absolutism is quite often a path to error.
I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08, @07:45PM (1 child)
Can we add
1) Fresh running water
2) Electricity
3) Vehicles
All of these caused massive erosion of my natural God-given ability to search for water, perform menial tasks for hours and walk for miles carrying heavy loads.
(Score: 2) by jb on Thursday April 09, @08:31AM
Taking each in turn:
In some parts of the world (generally the most arid parts) the ability to search for and find water is still a highly valued skill. Little known fact: unlike the folks at the local utilities agency, in the entire history of mankind there has never been a recorded instance of water diviners going on strike.
Electricity doesn't make people dumber. Only stupid uses of electricity do that.
There are still some circumstances where being able to walk for miles carrying heavy loads is useful. But they are few and far between. These days a car will get you pretty much everywhere ... and almost anywhere a car can't go you can still most likely get to on a motorbike (or better still a horse). But so what? Driving a car (or riding a bike or a horse) does not make you stupid (unless it's one of those ridiculous self-driving ones, but nobody with any self-respect would ever buy one of those) ... and when you get out of the car you can still walk the rest of the way (e.g. I'm sure you're not really silly enough to try driving your car up the stairs when you go visit someone who lives on the 8th floor).
On the other hand, mobile phones have demonstrably made most people much stupider. Prior to mobiles, the average adult could remember at least a hundred (sometimes even over a thousand) 7-or-8 digit phone numbers off the top of his head. Now he's lucky if can remember even just his own number without having to look it up. That's a 99% decline in medium term memory over just 3 decades: pretty sure there's no time in history when that's ever happened before. [plus all the examples in TFA of course]
(Score: 2, Funny) by mrbiginthepantaloons on Wednesday April 08, @08:48PM (3 children)
It is depressing how much ludditesk anti-tech sentiment on tech forums there are today.
However, I am old enough to have read slashdot during the beginning of cloud computing and Web 2.0 when people where saying it was no different to what existed and what a waste of time.
And, like it or not, now we have things like online apps people use all the time.
So I think this is an apt parody and invokes the ridiculousness of it all in the most tech-centric way possible: a Monty Python parody.
And yes, I used Google Gemini Pro to create this because that just makes all of this even more funnier.
And the multi-layered meta-irony of it all pleases me a great deal. :)
And predicting the knee-jerk AI hate coming my way, I have only this to say:
"If you moderate me down, my mirth will only become more powerful than you possibly imagine"
Hate on brothers and sisters, hate on!
----
(Scene: A dimly lit, ironically well-ventilated basement. A group of self-proclaimed neo-Luddites, the PEOPLE’S FRONT FOR NATURE, are huddled around a reclaimed wood table. The room is illuminated by LED candles that they pretend are real.)
LUDD: (Pacing furiously, gesturing wildly)
They’ve drained our souls, the lab-coated bastards! They’ve taken our attention spans, our natural connection to the Earth, and replaced it all with microchips, artificial preservatives, and algorithms! We're slaves to the screens! And what have Science and Technology ever given us in return?!
FRANCIS: (Tentatively raising a hand)
Penicillin?
LUDD: What?
FRANCIS: Penicillin. It cured my strep throat last week.
LUDD: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. That's true. Yeah.
WENDY: And vaccines.
STAN: And refrigeration.
LUDD: (Frowning, slightly thrown off rhythm)
Yeah. Alright. I'll grant you penicillin and refrigeration. And the vaccines, obviously. Two, well, three things that Science has done.
ARTHUR: The electrical grid.
LUDD: Well, yes, obviously the electrical grid, Arthur. I mean, we're not savages.
WENDY: Clean drinking water.
FRANCIS: Anaesthesia. Remember when they used to pull teeth with pliers and a shot of whiskey?
LUDD: Alright, fair enough! I concede the pain-free dentistry and the sanitation! But apart from penicillin, vaccines, the electrical grid, clean water, refrigeration, and anaesthesia—what has Science and Technology ever done for us?!
STAN: The internet.
LUDD: (Sighs heavily)
Yes, the internet. Obviously the internet. How else would we organize these meetings, send the newsletter, and run the subreddit? That goes without saying, Stan.
WENDY: Weather forecasting. It’s nice knowing when a hurricane is coming.
ARTHUR: Flight! I went to Bali last year. In the sky! In a metal tube!
FRANCIS: Eyeglasses! Half of us in this room would be walking into trees without optics.
STAN: Agriculture! I mean, high-yield crops. We’d all be starving without synthetic fertilizers and mechanization.
LUDD: (Getting increasingly agitated, losing control of the room)
Alright! Fine! But apart from the internet, aviation, meteorology, optics, modern agriculture, safe water, the electrical grid, refrigeration, vaccines, and anaesthesia! What have the scientists ever done for us?!
WENDY: (Softly)
Heart transplants?
FRANCIS: Eradicating smallpox.
STAN: (Cheerfully)
Oh! GPS! I used to get completely lost just going to the farmer's market!
LUDD: (Red in the face, shouting over them, slamming his hand on the table)
All right! But apart from the internet, aviation, meteorology, optics, high-yield agriculture, sanitation, the electrical grid, refrigeration, vaccines, anaesthesia, organ transplants, eradicating ancient plagues, and the global positioning system! WHAT HAS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EVER DONE FOR US?!
(A long silence falls over the room. The members look at each other, scratching their heads, thinking hard.)
ARTHUR: (Quietly)
Brought longer life expectancies?
LUDD
Oh, longer life expectancies?!
Shut up!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bentonite on Thursday April 09, @12:08AM (2 children)
Clown computing and "web 2.0" were in fact no different to what already existed years prior and thus getting caught by such buzzwords and also future buzzwords was and is in fact was a waste of time.
It is an error to conflate real technology and achievements to anti-technology proprietary degeneracy, designed to prevent achievements.
Online cr...apps exist, but they're all functionally terrible - but real software does exist.
Some technologies were miniaturized and power reduced to make producing a portable smartphone possible, like fast, low power SoC's, eMMC, insanely energy dense batteries, very lightweight, not bad pressure sensors, gyroscopes, accelerometers, low power GNSS receivers, low power full duplex radio's and very small CMOS sensors, but of course every last improvement was were sabotaged with proprietary software and digital handcuffs, to ensure smartphones are anti-computers.
What can be installed is restricted, as well as computations that can be carried out - after all, no matter how good a sensor is, or how low power and fast a SoC is no good if you're not allowed to use all of it.
The reason for such restrictions is by design - smartphones are specifically designed for spying on you and if the user had full control of the device, the on-device spying could be removed (location tracking is still possible via the mobile towers, but if the user had control of the mobile chipset, it could be made to swap between a large pool of IMEI's and data-only SIM account pairs, actually make the GNSS chip turn off (rather than only go into a low-power mode), not report the GNSS location, add artificial delays to increase apparent distances to the tower and more - which would make it difficult to spy on people's location).
Conveniences like GNSS navigation with routing (that often has wrong routing displayed) happen to be available, but that always comes in second place to the spying (all proprietary GNSS software sucks - osmand~ seems to be least bad, as it does work offline).
Smartphones did not improve communication - actually working instant messages and phone calls over the internet were implemented long before on computers - the only difference smartphones made was to make anyone with a tracking device be able to receive messages 24/7, with an instant reply of course excepted, as the tracking device assumed to be always on you.
Designing and implementing an algorithm that makes a complete waste of time, that achieves nothing (social media), to be addictive is not a technological achievement.
Of course you proceeded to boil an ocean, rather than use your brain for 5 minutes to write a better skit.
(Score: 1) by mrbiginthepantaloons on Thursday April 09, @02:26AM
I think I read one of you Slashdot posts on the topic in 2005... :)
I am not saying it is all good. Neither were the people in the skit. But it also was not all bad.
Bias, hype, and the sort of cynicism on display lead you one way or the other. And we had problems and abuses in 2005 also.
That was the whole point of the Skit.
Time is moving on. Wishing it were not so and spending all your time complaining will achieve exactly nothing and have you miss the opportunities that do exist.
Not to mention failing to enjoy the fun/interesting aspects of it all while they last.
(Score: 1) by mrbiginthepantaloons on Thursday April 09, @02:29AM
PS: I just love how a cynical/negative takedown of a major technology (yes, with MANY positives) with a final ad hominem as the icing gets upvoted.
You kind of made my point for me.