[rcates]

I am sad to agree with you. We in tech love to believe - with our inflated egos due to recent successes improving the world - that every problem is solved through more tech. I think we need to watch tech fail to solve some problems and experience that failure first hand to really believe that some problems are rooted in culture and social norms, not in a lack of guidance or convenience from some app.

I feel like we've lost connection and patience for each other from lack of practicing empathy. More technology is not the answer to that. I hope we find an equilibrium where we move past such an infatuation with tech that we let it be the right amount of a participant in our lives and place more of an emphasis on the human experience and condition and value our humanity first.

[rcates]

I guess what I'm saying is: if we need an app to remind us to call family, maybe there's a larger problem at hand.

Book 4 of the Pendragon series (The Reality Bug) comes to mind. That was a formative book in my young adulthood.

[TheOtherHobbes]

People are lonely because corporate culture - including, but not limited to, work culture - is outrageously demanding and often insane, not because they need an app to remind them to phone grandma.

Everyone - who isn't financially independent - could benefit from shorter hours and more creative freedom and financial security. Apps that try to parent us are not a solution.

[specialist]

"We in tech love to believe ... that every problem is solved through more tech."

As a recovering technophile [1], I remind you that Arabic numerals, alphabets, double entry accounting, and a zillion other things are also technologies.

Technology is more than modern hardware and software and algorithms.

Sometimes it's just a new take on old problems.

Sometimes it's starting with a new set of assumptions.

Sometimes it's revisiting problems after the economics have changed, identifying new opportunities.

[1] Postman's Technopoly, Wright's Nonzero.

[kup0]

An exception I could see to this is if somehow technology could be employed to affect those cultural/social norms? Maybe the problem is where we're aiming the technology, and not technology itself.

Though, I could be wrong about that. I agree that there are some problems not solved through more technology and the "there should be an app for that" mentality can be a problem.