| I think a lot of people can feel how these apps affect their wellbeing. But how do we clearly state what the issue is, is a more difficult question. For me this brings a larger topic that has to do with software development... any maybe it underpins the issue behind all those addicitve apps. The issue is that typically, it is software and hardware that dictates the apps, rather than a human looking at a human, problem, and creating an app to solve a human problem. Of course that's the story we tell ourselves but it isn't the truth. Most of us who code have stumbled upon those decisions many times: suddenly you realize a pattern in your code, and how convenient it is, that you could also use it for something else. A vary basic example of this is, well since we have profiles, now we can "connect" them. Why don't we add a "suggestion" feature that shows a lot of "interesting" profiles? And let's also allow to "follow" someone, because the software pretty much says : it's easy to do so wtf not? You see what I mean? People will deny that and say that eg. YouTube "suggestions" are purely a commercial, ie. completely rational and premeditated decision. But again I'd argue it's not the full truth. The full truth, is it becomes a reality because sofware and hardware made it not just possible , but easy. Essentially: we let software and hardware tell us what to do, based on "what can be done". Look over the web and you find gazillions of example of that. Gazillions of completely unnecessary apps that exist solely because "we can do it". And now we have AI... and one can only imagine the gazillions more awful applications of AI that will happen, that already happen today... "just because we can do it". |