[slowmovintarget]

The Three Trends (according to the article):

1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR

2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate

3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay

By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers of the brain... but not by much.

Makes me wonder if there's a market for the equivalent of health food where we go back to social media and deliberately avoid "recommendation media" (which may be the most important two words in the entire post).

[thelock85]

This reminds me of the evolution of the slot machine (as read in Matthew Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head). A rough analog would be:

1. Medium: Mechanical reel > Digital reel

2. Gameplay: Fixed odds > Adjustable odds > Programmatic adaptive odds

3. Experience: Pull the lever and win or lose > Pull the lever and win even if you lose (e.g. get back change) > Swipe a card and win even if you lose > Swipe a card and watch the game auto-play until you're out of money

After reading that book (in 2014), I made my last Facebook post (the history of the slot machine) and promptly downloaded my data and deleted my account. I'm paraphrasing but Crawford's point was basically that social media is a socio-emotional slot machine.

[BigHatLogan]

Fantastic book. The stories about the slot machine players who wear black pants so that they can urinate without being noticed was shocking, to say the least. They are so addicted to the machines that they won't even get up to use the restroom.

The phrase he used, "playing to extinction", very much reminds me of what's happening now across most entertainment categories, broadly speaking (autoplay, loot boxes, slot machine-style gaming content, etc.)

[nraford]

Brings to mind the old Bruce Sterling answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Why haven't we discovered life yet amongst the vastness of the stars?

Because they wanked themselves to death in VR pleasure palaces.

[HappySweeney]

It isn't so much that they are addicted (though they are), but that someone will take their spot while they are up.

[jonny_eh]

That's just a rationalization they tell themselves.

[HappySweeney]

It's more than that. In a game like roulette, probability has no memory. In slots, the payout must come eventually, and playing losing rounds only brings you closer to that. There are slots players just waiting for others to go bust so they can swoop in.

Also, one would hope that those that are so addicted that they are fine to just haul-off and piss themselves would be able to think ahead and simply wear a diaper.

[drekipus]

> In slots, the payout must come eventually, and playing losing rounds only brings you closer to that.

Riiiigggghhhhttttt

[ryandrake]

Reminds me a little of Star Trek TNG's The Game[1], where the crew becomes addicted to an automated AR/VR game that just sits there autoplaying, directly manipulating the brain's pleasure sensors. Something like this, but one that also slowly transfers the contents of the user's bank account to a corporation, could be the ultimate end-result of our current capitalist-technologist trajectory.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_...

[thaumasiotes]

> Reminds me a little of Star Trek TNG's The Game[1], where the crew becomes addicted to an automated AR/VR game that just sits there autoplaying, directly manipulating the brain's pleasure sensors.

Huh. That appears to be a mostly-accurate summary of Wikipedia's description of the episode, which heavily features the term "addicted". But it's an awful summary of the episode itself, which doesn't use the concept of addiction at all. (Also, the game doesn't autoplay; it is shown on screen requiring effort from the player.)

The game is a malevolent agent which intentionally makes very specific modifications to the players' minds. The relevant concept is infection, not addiction. The plot of the episode is essentially identical to that of the TNG episode Conspiracy[1], or the Buffy episode Bad Eggs[2].

And while not completely identical, the plot is also very similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers[3]. It's a very, very common theme. (As shown by the fact that TNG did it twice!)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(Star_Trek:_The_Nex...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Eggs_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Sl...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers

[ryandrake]

Interesting take. As a TNG geek who's watched the episode multiple times, all I ever took away from it was an extremely overt, stereotypically early-90s "Drugs/addiction are bad" message. Particularly, Wesley and Robin's discussions about addiction sound like they are straight out of a DARE pamphlet.

[thaumasiotes]

Here are some plot elements associated with addiction:

- People neglect their responsibilities in order to indulge their addiction.

- People consume their resources (e.g., by selling their property) in order to indulge their addiction.

- People fail to achieve their goals because they are distracted by their addiction.

- People alienate their social contacts, either through neglect (see above) or through what is seen as excessive focus on their addiction.

None of these elements appear in the episode. No addiction-related themes appear in the episode.

Here are the plot elements that do occur in the episode:

- A foreign influence infiltrates the group and spreads uncontrollably. It is difficult to perceive directly.

- The foreign influence brainwashes and enslaves everyone who is exposed to it, substituting its own goals for theirs. Far from neglecting responsibilities, brainwashed victims will happily do extra work for no other purpose than to further the foreign goals.

- People who should be absolutely trustworthy, such as Captain Picard or Wesley's mother, are "replaced" by impostors who share their knowledge but whose goals are nefarious. (In this case, the person is not replaced in their entirety, but their mind is replaced with a new one.)

How would you describe that plot?

If you want a TNG episode themed around the perils of drug use, that would be The Naked Now, where the altered mental state of the crew threatens to destroy the ship. If you want one themed around addiction, that would be Hollow Pursuits, where Barclay's "holodiction" severely interferes with his performance of his duties.

[floren]

> Also, the game doesn't autoplay; it is shown on screen requiring effort from the player

I don't have the clip handy but at one point a character points out to Wesley something along the lines of "want to know the trick to this game? It plays itself!"

[thaumasiotes]

Yes, that is a line in the episode:

> ALYSSA: You know what the secret is, don't you? Don't force it. If you just let the game happen, it almost plays itself.

But at the beginning of the episode, you see Riker playing:

> ETANA: Concentrate. Make the disc go into the cone.

> RIKER: How do I do that?

> ETANA: Just let go. Relax. You'll do it.

> the first one misses, the second is a success

( http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/206.htm )

You could make the argument that everyone misses their first shot for no other reason than that it gives them a false feeling of accomplishment when they make the second one.

But it would make more sense to say that victory in the game comes from assuming a particular state of mind, presumably one that allows the game to do its thing.

You don't need to "let the game happen" for an autoplaying game to play itself.

[beckingz]

"To unlock more Dopamine Crystals, please do this Mechanical Turk task and complete a side quest for Pepsi flavored Vat Fluid"

[hiptobecubic]

Isn't this what a job already is?

[gammarator]

A related academic work is “Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas” by Natasha Schull.

[psychomugs]

“You only started trying it out once they moved to GANS and VR headsets. You are not pathetic or anything, could get a real girl if you wanted to. Just don't have time. Have to focus on your career for now. "Build your empire then build your family", that's your motto.

You strap on the headset and see an adversarial generated girlfriend designed by world-class ML to maximize engagement.

She starts off as a generically beautiful young women; over the course of weeks she gradually molds both her appearance and your preferences such that competing products just won't do.

In her final form, she is just a grotesque undulating array of psychedelic colors perfectly optimized to introduce self-limiting microseizures in the pleasure center of the your brain. Were someone else to put on the headset, they would see only a nauseating mess. But to your eyes there is only Her.

It strikes you that true love does exist after all.”

- 8fhdkjw039hd

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418657

[nraford]

I did a deep dive a few years ago into Microsoft's "emotional" chatbot Xiaoice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaoice).

It has over 660 million users these days, the vast majority of whom are single men.

Something like 30% of the users tell it "I love you" on a daily basis.

[charcircuit]

sounds better than wasting your time on actual females

[dang]

Please don't do this here.

[Breza]

Thank you

[ssalazar]

> By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world.

Doesn't seem all that different from 99% of media consumption thats existed in my lifetime.

[prox]

From Edward R Murrow famous speech: This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

[wutbrodo]

The novel element is combining the passive medium with infinite content. In my circles, sitting slack-jawed in front of the TV for hours was something that only those with little mental energy or drive did[1]. By contrast, probably 75% have some non-trivial degree of slack-jawed passive social media consumption, even more so since IG and Tiktok.

To wit, I think what's interesting about this Era of media relative to the TV Era is the vanishing proportion of the population that's able to escape the habit.

[1] Not a value judgment: my sister and her husband consume massive amounts of TV but they're also both early-career doctors. I would be braindead at the end of the day too.

[650]

Idk how people do this, its just so boring. I tried tiktok and the first 200-300 scrolls were interesting, but then its just people regurgitating the same comedy/meme. Sure you can find a niche subject you're into like cooking, but most topics do get kind of dry after a while. I do think I'm in a minority though and know quite a few who spend hours a day on tiktok/insta.

[EricMausler]

It's enjoyable for 20 minutes a day, especially when waiting on something.

The key things are:

1) time offline is on your side. you can saturate yourself with current trends that interest you pretty quickly. You need to allow actual real world time to pass for those trends to update.

2) scroll with purpose and intent. aggressively dismiss things that don't immediately get your attention from any unknown source. (Helps the algorithm actually cater to your interests)

3) tell the algorithm when you don't like something. There's usually a "don't show me content like this" option somewhere. I felt dramatic about it at first, but it's the only tool you have to keep the algorithm from incorrectly assuming you enjoyed the content when you did watch the entire thing (out of sheer curiosity / hope / general inaction).

I noticed I now get a lot of low profile things in my feed that are actually pretty cool and fit the medium nicely. Lots of trade work stuff, before / afters, machines doing stuff, stand up comedy bits, etc. Those personalized things do not have room to flourish if I am giving too many things a chance.

[650]

One idea I had was being able to share your curated algorithm to others. ie. Your instagram explore page, or your specific tiktok recommends. People could subscribe to x person's recommends and see what they see.

[che_shirecat]

In this spirit, I think Tiktok would actually be a tremendously good matchmaker for finding either friends or romantic partners. I think a lot of their recommendation AI actually figures out what you might like ahead of actually showing it to you, by trying to sort you into a cohort of people with very similar tastes. Which is why as a new user its sometimes scary how Tiktok can almost predict what you might like. E.g. people into cars, 30-40 yrs old, rural probably also like DIY.

[EricMausler]

What a coincidence, me too. I think there should be a marketplace for them. Ability to lock changes, or go back to an earlier version of your algorithm. Power user tools for curating it better.

That's the next influencer game imo. Having people want to see your feed(s)

[csixty4]

yeah that's basically describing broadcast tv & radio

[karaterobot]

No, that's not what he's saying. Broadcast TV & radio is human-generated, audio and video, and not immersive. It's several steps behind the trend he's predicting. And they are also not equivalent in terms of getting user engagement and attention, which is why those industries have shrunk so much.

[guelo]

TikTok isn't that far off from America's Funniest Home Videos.

[prawn]

I wonder if there are individual YouTube compilations of similar videos (think "Funny Cats" montages) that have generated more profit than Funniest Home Videos shows.

[Banana699]

None of those are AI-generated (therefore don't have the potential massive automated scale) or auto-play.

[adolph]

Max Headroom was a human powered simulation of such a future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom

[mftb]

There was a time I hadn't thought about Max Headroom in years, now I feel like he's all over the place again.

[dylan604]

are you sure? it sounds like the exact same playlist on every station with the same owner in the same market with such little care about the content in the playlist but only based on an algorithm.

so maybe AI === brain dead corporate owners?

[mftb]

You can't ignore matters of degree. It does sound similar, but just by reducing the content chunk length to ~20 secs, they've dramatically improved the algorithmic manipulation and ad insertion (from their point of view), making it all far more effective.

In the old model people left the tv droning in the background, in the new model, people are riveted by their phones (with 2nd and 3rd screens (and radio (and billboards)) droning in the background).

[ajmurmann]

IMO the differ here is less about AI vs human curated, but curated/generated for a very broad audience vs one specific consumer, ideally live as their mood or interests change. We aren't there yet with the highly dynamic mood and interest changes (e.g. interest fading after 5 Dr pimple popper videos, let's throw in some wingsuit stuff), but it's on the same trajectory. Address broad audience -> address smaller, niche audiences -> address individuals -> address individuals in the moment

[mola]

Yes, we already have "slow AI". It's the corporate paperclip machine. It's has a strict value function; make money to shareholders. And it will do what ever it takes to make more of it.

All these ppl scaring us with AGI are either distracting us from the clear and present dangers of slow AI so they can keep profiting from it , or are just duped by silly technooptimism.

[oefnak]

Why do you think that a malevolent AGI wouldn't use these tactics to make money / influence public perception?

I think these are two sides of the same coin.

[julienb_sea]

Broadcast radio & tv are definitionally auto-play, arguably much moreso than social media apps which have pause and rewind and browsing functionality.

I digress, the scalability point is fair and this is an irrelevant sidebar

[throwyawayyyy]

Being only semi-serious, but: wouldn't an auto-generated Netflix look pretty much like Netflix?

[croes]

In my lifetime the content didn't get automatically adjusted to my needs to get me hooked.

[tshaddox]

No, but it was undoubtedly produced with the intention to get the most people hooked as possible. Traditional media was just less effective at hooking people because of the limited number of distribution channels and the cost of producing content.

[cwkoss]

VR is never going to be a replacement for short form video. Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being able to fit in between other activities easily. I'm never going to want an immersive experience when I have 2 minutes to kill waiting for a friend to show up at a bar - I just want easily digestible content snacks.

[ryandrake]

> Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being able to fit in between other activities easily. I'm never going to want an immersive experience when I have 2 minutes to kill waiting for a friend to show up at a bar - I just want easily digestible content snacks.

This presumes the existence of important "other activities", and relegates this content consumption as some lower-priority thing done between these activities. I know people who really don't have any important other activities: passively scrolling through video after video is their primary activity. For this [I'd guess growing] group, VR's ability to block out the unimportant real-world is the next obvious step.

[guelo]

The fact that a lot of viral videos are produced with built-in video game split-screens proves that people don't want full immersion. To fully engage our focus-deprived adhd brains you need multiple inputs at once.

[layer8]

If/when VR becomes as easy as putting on a pair of sunglasses, then it won’t be much different from pulling your smartphone out of the pocket. Luckily, we’re probably decades away from that being feasible, on the technological front.

[cwkoss]

VR is by its nature immersive. Immersion is inherently at odds with quick and easily digestible.

3d video served by an AR sunglass display is plausible (but probably way overkill for the next decade), but feeling like you're in an entirely different environment while waiting in line at the post office is never going to be a thing people want.

[layer8]

I disagree that it’s that much different from people being immersed in their smartphones, not taking notice at all of their surroundings anymore. With a sunglasses-like solution, you probably would/could still see the actual surroundings in your peripheral vision, or via pass-through, similar to how you can still hear your surroundings through non-sealing earphones, or via pass-through for sealed ones.

[cwkoss]

Very implausible imo, have you used VR before? Will never be safe to use in public spaces: what and who is around you is unpredictable, so only AR will be viable.

[hammock]

>Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being able to fit in between other activities easily

The same was said of video vs. reading. “I’m never going to want a video experience, it doesn’t fit in between other activities as well as reading a page of something.”

[radlad]

To be honest, I still feel this way. I can't stand when content is only available in video format. Give me text!

[mike00632]

I feel this way when I click on a news article and it's actually a video with a headline.

[evouga]

Sure, but plenty of people still browse Reddit or Instagram (or HackerNews), listen to podcasts, etc.

There is a middle ground between "AR will never take off as an entertainment medium" and "AR will kill video/images/text."

[buildsjets]

Likewise. I'd never want to have to take out my handheld computer, boot it up, and connect it to the internet just to kill 2 minutes looking at pictures of cats, when I can just as easily look at my wallet full of cat Polaroids.

I see a future where you blink twice to power up your ocular nerve implants for a few minutes of stim, then power 'em down when you get a popup that your buddy is nearby and ordering drinks.

[tacotacotaco]

You think people in the future will have experiences in the real world with other real humans. That their buddy isn’t a bot algorithmically refined to maximally connect with it’s user. And that the user can power down their ocular implant. How cute.

[nomel]

To be fair, I think most everyone agrees that XR is the future, not VR. XR could easily take the replacement.

[monkeydust]

Isn't VR a type of XR?

[nomel]

VR is the world real-world excluding half of XR. Excluding the world is often not desirable, which is why VR, alone, definitely isn't the future.

[bmazed]

over/under 2040 ?

[evouga]

Under. Way under.

Google Glass's spectacular failure had a chilling effect on the entire industry, but it failed due to (1) lack of killer apps, (2) poor aesthetics, and (3) consumer concern about privacy.

But ML has revolutionized image and video processing, Apple etc. could design a less hideous headset, and nobody cares about privacy anymore.

[nomel]

> could design a less hideous headset, and nobody cares about privacy anymore.

I think it would help to not make most of the promotional material about video recording, and not make a huge camera the most visible feature. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Quest lineup, including rumored Cambria and Apple renders, obscure the forward looking cameras.

Google Glass picture, which looks like a webcam on your face: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/19/google-gl...

[sangnoir]

> I think it would help to not make most of the promotional material about video recording, and not make a huge camera the most visible feature.

The Snapchat glasses, as well as the Instagram/RayBan glasses don't seem to have suffered from having a prominent camera, which suggests there was a change in mass acceptance of cameras.

[froidpink]

BeReal's growth is probably a good example of this kind of "organic" and "healthy" social media

[alpha_squared]

Disclosure: I haven't used BeReal.

I fully expect BeReal's model to change in less than two years from now (probably within a year). I see it quickly devolving into tedium after a while. Users will disable notifications to post, become passive consumers. "Influencers" drive adoption of platforms and it's hard to be the same type of influencer unless you're constantly living that lifestyle, which almost no influencer today actually does.

[prawn]

This is true. Majority of influencers lean on a back catalogue of material, and remix it to maintain the pretext that they're living that lifestyle constantly. Even for people that could afford to live that life, it's exhausting to be switched on and shooting/editing material at all times.

[wwweston]

> Makes me wonder if there's a market for the equivalent of health food where we go back to social media and deliberately avoid "recommendation media" (which may be the most important two words in the entire post).

I think there's definitely a product in there for people who want a tool to help manage their attention, one they can intentionally shape.

But that product cannot be primarily ad-supported, since the fundamental purpose of ad-supported tech is to command (and sell) attention. Users would need to be customers, not the product, which means they would need to be willing to pay. And since attention is power, anyone producing this would either have to be past motivation for more power, or principled about not abusing the potential in abusing an attention management tool.

I'm sure the userbase and builders who can make this happen exist, but they are smaller. The incentives against it are powerful currents. Most of us will choose the opaque cost of selling our attention and behavioral trail over the transparent cost of our currency. Most of us are not past motivation for more power.

[josefresco]

Reminds me of the Pixar movie Wall-E

[monkeydust]

I keep thinking of Wall-E more frequently recently - with macro trends such as global warming , automation as and great resignation plus Elon and his rockets.

[sh4rks]

That would fit under the "video" category

[0000011111]

Its the next step of facebook - meta. Think ready player one.

[Invictus0]

David Foster Wallace predicted it all in the 90s

[nonameiguess]

Arguably, Aldous Huxley got pretty close half a century earlier than that, but I guess he failed to anticipate that the United States would become and remain so ideologically committed to keeping recreational drug use illegal that we'd need to find a more expensive and convoluted means to approximate wireheading.

[skyyler]

I've heard this sentiment before, could you explain what you mean?

[ZantaWB]

He touches on this idea a lot, but most deeply in Infinite Jest where the parallels between between addiction to media and addiction to drugs is a major theme. In that story people have developed 'Entertainments,' basically video segments. Someone makes an Entertainment so unbelievably good that anyone who watches it is immediately stupefied and has no will to do anything but watch the Entertainment over and over. This Entertainment becomes a potent terrorist weapon since it can essentially take out anyone to whom it's broadcast.

[swyx]

see also Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death (fantastic title)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

they were calling this out since 1984 - hard to distinguish between luddism and genuine problems

[reginaldo]

The book "Technopoly", by Postman, is also very well worth a reading. But I'd say the most relevant to this trend is "The disappearance of childhood". The book's thesis is that childhood is a modern invention, in that, before the printing press, and mass education / literacy, there was no need for childhood as a learning period. In the middle ages, childhood ended at age 7, as soon as children became more or less self sufficient in their bodily functions.

Literacy requires effort, and protected time to acquire analytical skills that are not natural to humans. Childhood was, then, embraced, because it's the way to get literacy.

All-encompassing technologies that require no effort, e.g. TV or, as it appears to be the case, AR, might end the need for childhood, hence the book title. Among the novel technologies, the computer would be the one to "save" childhood, but only if society requires active (as opposed to passive) competency with computer technology. Quoting Postman:

"The only technology that has this capacity is the computer. In order to program a computer, one must, in essence, learn a language. This means that one must have control over complex analytical skills similar to those required of a fully literate person, and for which special training is required. Should it be deemed necessary that everyone must know how computers work, how they impose their special world-view, how they alter our definition of judgment—that is, should it be deemed necessary that there be universal computer literacy—it is conceivable that the schooling of the young will increase in importance and a youth culture different from adult culture might be sustained. But such a development would depend on many different factors. The potential effects of a medium can be rendered impotent by the uses to which the medium is put. For example, radio, by its nature, has the potential to amplify and celebrate the power and poetry of human speech, and there are parts of the world in which radio is used to do this. In America, partly as a result of competition with television, radio has become merely an adjunct of the music industry. And, as a consequence, sustained, articulate, and mature speech is almost entirely absent from the airwaves \(with the magnificent exception of National Public Radio\). Thus, it is not inevitable that the computer will be used to promote sequential, logical, and complex thought among the mass of people. There are, for example, economic and political interests that would be better served by allowing the bulk of a semiliterate population to entertain itself with the magic of visual computer games, to use and be used by computers without understanding. In this way the computer would remain mysterious and under the control of a bureaucratic elite. There would be no need to educate the young, and childhood could, without obstruction, continue on its journey to oblivion."

[thundergolfer]

I’m personally quite grateful that to me the computer is an actively engaging machine. If I hadn’t become a programmer, I’d would, like most, find it difficult to resist becoming more and more passive as computer touchscreens engulf our lived environment.

I’ve read both Postman books, and Infinite Jest, but I’m adding End of Childhood to Goodreads, thanks.

[allenu]

> Someone makes an Entertainment so unbelievably good that anyone who watches it is immediately stupefied and has no will to do anything but watch the Entertainment over and over. This Entertainment becomes a potent terrorist weapon since it can essentially take out anyone to whom it's broadcast.

There's a Monty Python sketch where someone comes up with the funniest joke in the world and dies laughing after penning it. It's eventually learned that anyone who reads or hears the joke immediately laughs themselves to death. Of course, eventually the army gets a hold of it to use as a weapon.

[majormajor]

I was thinking the wireheads from Hyperion

[LordEthano]

Exactly what came to mind

[evouga]

"Medium" and "AI" are spot-on IMO, but the "UI" track seems suspect to me.

"Click" and "Tap" are essentially the same thing (on a desktop vs. on a mobile device): the user actively selecting what content to view next. So are "scroll" and "autoplay" (for text/image and video content, respectively). In the former, the user has agency over what to view, and in the latter, the transition is automated.

I'm very skeptical that fully automated UI will ever replace giving the user a small selection of recommended items.

[eloisius]

> I'm very skeptical that fully automated UI will ever replace giving the user a small selection of recommended items.

The TikTok fyp is vastly better than the Instagram discover tab, which gives you a menu of videos as jumping off point before you get sucked into scrollhole. I agree about autoscroll though. Sometimes I want to watch a video like 10 times, and feel very annoyed when Instagram had the auto scroll feature. I think it's gone now. Instead it just nudges the video up with a little messages that tells me to scroll for more. I always thought that must be a first-time user tutorial, but it never stops, so either it's broken or it's broken.

[zild3d]

> "Click" and "Tap" are essentially the same thing

Click in the article refers to plain old web navigation. There are links on the page, you move the mouse around and click on whichever one you want.

Tap is referring to "Stories" interaction, which is more narrowed and less user choice than click. A story is playing, you tap anywhere on the screen and the next story replaces it and begins playing.

I actually think "tap" and "swipe" are basically the same? They are both just a "give me the next one please" interaction. But the rest do progress from more user-directed to more computer-controlled.

(Click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay)

[prawn]

I think a distinction between tap and swipe are that a tap progresses a discrete amount whereas swiping is less discriminating. Almost feels like the attention span is shorter. If tapping is turning a page in a magazine, swiping is more like flicking through the pages and getting glances at content before stopping at something you like.

[jjeaff]

Hmm, so basically you just sink into an overstuffed recliner and stare into a huge screen while it feeds you content interspersed with commercials?

[62951413]

Idiocracy was a documentary

[mike00632]

How much is this recliner you speak of? Can I pay to skip ads?

[croes]

Do you remember the passengers of the Axiom in WALL-E?

[winternett]

Social media is working hard to try to turn itself into TV without realizing that the major component of channels is that they leverage tons of content from independent creators, and that was their distinct lane that made them valid. If they turn into pre-set and pre-programmed media, they are finished... Virtual reality or not.

The discussion concerning trends needs to clearly address which perspective the analysis involves... The OP looks as if it involves recommendations for development trends moving forward, rather than serving advice based on the perspective of creators and contributors of content... That's fine, but the article refers to the Kardassians being upset as creators, as if there aren't tons of other unsponsored creators and app users (without their own TV shows) involved in the process of keeping these platforms vibrant and alive.

As social media apps brutally run towards profit making, they are underestimating the value of creators. If they continue that trend, they will basically turn into pre-programmed TV channels... Losing the very aspect of participation they are built upon. If most app users on TikTok are publishing content, after cycles of being ignored, they simply stop logging in... Not viewing other content, not buying items shown in ads, not engaging, and thus making the app die.

The ideal of opportunity and growth on platforms for independent creators is largely being hijacked on a regular basis, and creators are catching onto it just now, after years of working for little to no reward on platforms that became rich.

There seems to be a constant sentiment to capture the market in order to be a monopoly among social platforms, but the rug gets pulled whenever they do things that alienate users and creators. Instead of thinking about technological advancement and capabilities of platforms, we need to start looking deeply at the value this platforms add to the lives of individuals beyond frivolous entertainment, because instead of creating a user account, for entertainment we could simply watch television, which doesn't sell us the ideal that we can all meaningfully participate and require us to scroll through it on a phone all day.

[gonehome]

Urbit is trying to build the tools that enable this (in part by fixing the ad driven engagement incentives that lead to centralization and the current state).

One interesting bit is if you’re making vegetables when everyone else is giving away heroin it’s not enough to just to make great vegetables, you really need to offer something that can’t exist outside of what you’ve built because your core technology does something different.

I think Urbit’s distribution and handling of auth could be that for distributed DevEx and building collaborative apps in a way that’s way simpler than on the current web stack. It’s not quite there yet but there’s a path to this reality and success is among the potential outcomes.

[elefanten]

Do you have any recommended introduction to Urbit that touches on these possibilities in particular?

[gonehome]

Which particular ones? The DevEx auth stuff or the incentive fixing bit?

The ID model is probably where I'd start since it's what fixes spam/moderation problem in a way that can actually work without centralization. When IDs have a small, but non-zero cost spam becomes uneconomical and it's easy to block an ID. IDs also accrue pseudonymous reputation. From there you can start to fix a lot of the other stuff.

The DevEx bit also heavily depends on that. When you build the OS to handle IDs you move the abstraction up the stack. Modern operating systems don't do this in part because they were built before the web. As a result modern operating systems are largely just machines user's use to open a web browser and every centralized web application has to rebuild their entire auth stack and all of the collaboration tooling. They're incentivized to do this and be incompatible with everything else because centralization tends to lead to ad-driven business models and all the incentive problems associated with that.

If the OS handled IDs and collaboration you could just build your app, distribute it to the network and rely on built in OS libraries to do the complex work relying on guarantees from the OS itself. The users wouldn't need accounts on a bunch of centralized services.

People have tried to do this on the unix stack, but it fails for a few reasons[0][1]. It's not impossible to build something else that could work though and rethinking the stack from first principles leads to something that could work.

Imagine if all linux users could just dm each other because the OS itself handled encrypted communication between IDs. You could build and distribute linux apps without a mess of complexity just by publishing it to your node. You get the capability to build really collaborative applications out of the box because of a lot of these guarantees without having to give up control. There's a lot more possible than this in this model - I think it's a path to escape the local maximum we've been trapped in and get closer to the web the 90s cypherpunks imagined (and the personal computer hackers before them).

[0]: http://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progra...

[1]: https://urbit.org/overview

[grishka]

The fediverse is by design about manually managing your subscriptions. You only see content from people you follow and you're the one who completely controls the presentation of that content.

This entire article is built on the wrong premise that people use social media for entertainment. I certainly don't — I'm not open to any content discovery on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter at all. I use social media to connect with people I mostly already know, and the platforms getting in the way, begging with their "you may enjoy this" is bloody annoying. I'm building my own fediverse project for a reason, after all.

[prawn]

You and I are not in the majority on that. For many, the people they know and want to interact with will be on platforms with constant entertainment, and you'll either have to tag along or exist in a sparser environment.

[cratermoon]

Allow me to recommend Jenny Odell's book, How to Do Nothing[1], or watch a ~30m talk by Jenny[2]

1 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600671/how-to-do-no...

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dveUrpp6vs8

[scottmcdot]

Can I coin the term "recommedia"?

[austinjp]

"Recommercial"

[seydor]

They remind of the characteristics of TV just with different technologies and AI generation instead of sitcoms.

[ru552]

What you describe as the "end of the line totally passive consumption of endorphins" we already have. It comes in various forms of drugs and you can pick the type of world blotting experience you desire.

[benreesman]

You might enjoy The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1]. It addresses these themes quite directly.

The thing is, we're sort of talking (still somewhat hypothetically) about the Internet becoming more like hard drugs here in terms of entertainment/pleasure/addiction potential, which puts pretty much everyone except for (by HN standards) serious conservatives in a bind on slamming social media: liberals like me and the many libertarians on here usually feel that the War on Drugs has been a catastrophe, alongside pretty much all prohibition aimed at people who are turning to escapism because the rungs of the real-world achievement ladder have been knocked out above them.

I personally believe that explosive growth in escapism (see: opioid crisis) is driven by shitty opportunities in the real world. There is always going to be some set of highly potent diversions, and there will always be some fraction of the population that has a hard enough time with them to need professional help. But IMO none of Internet pornography, painkillers, video games, or crazy-optimized recommender systems are going to destroy lives and societies in job lots if those societies have high mobility in real-word achievement. So, not our society right now.

I'm probably biased having worked in social media in my life, but the flip side is that I also know how how the sausage is made, I think that sort of balances out. Everyone has to form their own opinion here, my point can be TLDR'd as: "decriminalize drugs" and simultaneously "fuck TikTok" isn't really a consistent worldview. It's reasonable to say "fuck marketing TikTok to children" alongside "decriminalize drugs", and I'd probably agree with both.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Int...

[ricardobeat]

There is most definitely something different at play here, though I can't point out exactly what. It's hard to imagine a 60-year old grandmother hooked on crack, porn or painkillers, but I know several who spend 8+ hours a day glued to a screen playing Candy Crush.

[gen220]

I think it's that crack, porn, and painkillers are, to varying extents, counterculture or taboo. Whereas an "innocent" Candy Crush addiction is more socially acceptable.

It's fun to speculate on why that's the case, but it seems likely intractable to nail down.

Although, I'll point out that while they're both categories of addiction, pension funds can only invest in and make profits from the more "innocent-feeling" category.

I'd guess that, if there were a regulatory environment that allowed for public companies that could legally encourage people to indulge their $taboo_addiction, then said $taboo_addiction would cease to be taboo and become more prevalent, for better and worse.

[benreesman]

We might come from different socio-economic backgrounds then, because the idea of a 60-year old grandmother addicted to painkillers far in excess of medical need is depressingly mundane to me.

[drekipus]

> if those societies have high mobility in real-word achievement. So, not our society right now.

Our society isn't high mobility? Who has a higher mobility?

(* I realise this is the internet but I'm assuming you're talking about one of the five-eyes nations)

[benreesman]

Well, I mean us after the New Deal but before smash-and-grab, “how many gold bars can I carry” politics and economics starting gaining steam in the Reagan administration.

I appreciate that’s like one human lifetime and high economic mobility had barely started to come in for e.g. black people before rich people decided to loot the place, but we were headed in the right direction for many decades before this kleptocracy-in-broad-daylight shit kicked in.

[guelo]

Quick search says we're #27

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

[benreesman]

I wasn't even aware such a metric existed. You've saved me countless frustrating conversations where I am trying to articulate something that's plain as day but difficult to find citations around (why would that be).

And #27 is worse than it sounds, because most people know there are ~200 sovereign states in the word (195 at the moment I believe), and the WEF only has data on 82 of them for this metric (I'm willing to assume that the "no data" ones wouldn't score highly in most cases). So that's "a bit better than halfway up the list", not "clearly competitive with the leaders".

[drekipus]

Says you. I'm at #16. But I'll concede the point.

[crypto420_69]

That's Peter Thiel's thesis

[benreesman]

We might agree about the problem, but I doubt a pinko social welfare lefty like me and an arch-Randian libertarian “eat the poor” John Galt wannabe agree whatsoever on the solutions.

[the_only_law]

Yeah… “libertarian”

[benreesman]

I put all the qualifiers around “libertarian” precisely because plenty of libertarians are perfectly nice people with no designs of building a Bond villain hideout in New Zealand once there’s nothing left to loot.

[bigDinosaur]

Let's not get carried away. He's far more into infusing the blood of the youth than he is about being a Bond villain. Does he fund even a single true doomsday project?

[xivzgrev]

Yes this is the end game. We have pleasure and pain centers. An app that delivers a steady stream of pleasure, with no pain, will win for most people.

And the ratio keeps getting “better”. Better content, less friction.

Scary.

[nomel]

> It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers of the brain

I don't think we'll ever reach that. I'm sure there will be non-invasive methods, soon enough.

[shalmanese]

The final social network will be named Tasp.

[Kiro]

> a wire into the pleasure centers of the brain

Sounds like the dream. I hope I live to experience it.

[dzuc]

> Makes me wonder if there's a market for the equivalent of health food where we go back to social media and deliberately avoid "recommendation media"

See: https://www.are.na/

[dharma1]

maybe end of the line for AI is ... generate -> consume, us humans can unplug from social media and leave it for bots :)