Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology
59 comments
·March 31, 2025A_Duck
Kvakes
Absolutely, 100%. Not all tech is the same. A chair is a form of technology, but it doesn't try to make you sit all the time. Although some technologies (like books) are replaced with e-readers through which we handle over a certain degree of freedom to whomever the platform we use belongs to.
A_Duck
The challenge is the system of incentives around the technology
If chair designers were paid based on the number of hours you sat in the chair, I expect we'd see some very different chairs. Probably not better ones for anyone whose life ambitions involve getting up out of a chair.
_Algernon_
>The challenge is the system of incentives around the technology
The solution is simple: Outlaw advertising. It should have been done decades ago, considering the negative externalities it puts on society (in terms of visual pollution, and harmful incentives it creates).
There is no real reason for it existing. The original argument was that it provides customers with information based on which to make purchasing decisions. It hasn't done this since at least Edward Bernays'[1] time. And there is no argument to be made that customers with internet existing lack information based on which to make purchasing decisions.
yapyap
a chair is a form of technology?
TheSoftwareGuy
Technology: Noun
1. The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives.
wil421
YouTube kids was banned quickly in my house. My kids can select a movie and sometimes a kids show. They can also play this playground app, 2 iPads can connect and they can play together.
They also don’t have free rein over iPads and maybe they get access to once a week in the car or something. They are 6 and under so I’ll probably tweak rules as needed.
reaanb2
If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.
the_snooze
A very outdated saying. Cars and IoT are very much things people pay for, but tech enables companies to double-dip and turn them into billboards for the highest ad bidder.
Miraltar
> The default apps, browser excluded, are pretty harmless - their incentive is to create a device you decide to welcome into your home. I don't see children spending 4 hours doomscrolling the calculator.
At least Facebook and Youtube are default apps nowadays
freeone3000
Not on Apple devices.
dartos
> The challenge is to think of another model for creating apps and content
The original content model was sustainable for centuries.
Customer pays per viewing, and experiences entertainment for an hour or so.
Then another model emerged after the printing press and record player.
Customer pays once and experiences the same thing as many times as they want.
Now we have a model where a customer pays constantly for no specific entertainment in particular and has no control over when they lose access to some entertainment.
Maybe we just go back to people paying for just what they want…
The issue is the addiction to growth and VC money tech has. We can’t have simple transactions in tech. It needs to be recurring or predatory.
FollowingTheDao
> The challenge is to think of another model for creating apps and content — one that retains most of the innovation without the harm
This is impossible! You missed the whole point of the article! Like sugar is addictive because it is extracted from the fruit that carries all the nutrients, the apps are addictive because they are extracted from the challenge of imagination and boredom.
The last line of that essay: "You don’t win by keeping up. You win by stepping out."
A_Duck
I disagree with the conclusion of the article
An invention comes as the solution to a problem. The qualities of the solution depend on the parameters of the problem.
Many/most technologies have not scaled to the point where their negative externalities outgrow their benefits: GPS, Cordless power tools, OLED TVs, Contactless payments. Of course all have some negatives.
We're learning that if the problem is 'make as much ad revenue as possible for the inventor', the solution is going scale harmfully
FollowingTheDao
> An invention comes as the solution to a problem.
What is the problem that the invention of email solved? And what problems did the invention of email create?
Inventions do not solve problems. An invention is a mental fabrication, nothing more.
keybored
You read what you wanted from the article. Think about what the article is saying. A technologist saying that the technology that they ostensibly co-created is so toxic that it has to be opted out of, the whole game and all. That is rank shirking of responsibility, a self-centered and anti-social non-remedy.
johntitorjr
[dead]
CalRobert
If, like me, you read comments before links, this refers to Umberto Eco, not low water usage cycles on washing machines
CalRobert
I disagree with his take on traffic jams though. Public transportation, bikes, and well designed cities really do solve traffic
deltarholamda
True enough, but those are technological solutions to a social problem. E.g., if the public transportation is terrible because it's dangerous or you get hassled on it, people don't use it.
The guy sitting in a 4 hour commute every day is doing it for a reason. It's a cost he's willing to pay for some benefit.
CalRobert
Sure, and sometimes it’s the reasons you cite and sometimes the lack of an alternative. I always was surprised at people tolerating I-80 even when capital corridor would work for them.
lozenge
None of those are as good as being able to drive a car around somewhere which is traffic free and has ample parking. Of course, it's inherently not possible for that experience to be open to everyone.
CalRobert
True, though when I had a buddy (a poor man’s Vespa) it was close enough to that to feel like a cheat code.
Kvakes
It's a personal essay about how not all—probably most—technology is destined to liberate us.
WesolyKubeczek
Well, when all is said in done, people like to own things and other people. The form will differ, sure, but the concept stays.
Kvakes
I wouldn't say we "like" to do it, but in a certain sense it's an existential necessity to do so.
mattgreenrocks
Disagree: the DiSC personality assessment codifies dominance as a key motivator of behavior. As much as I think the DiSC assessment is just business horoscopes, I still see canonizing dominance as a response to a real impulse, along with a way to easily sell decision makers on the fact that they are, in fact, just wired differently from all those other people below them.
cess11
How do you explain the saying 'sharing is caring'? If you're correct and people inherently enjoy the exploitation of others, how could such a saying spontaneously develop and resonate with rather large groups?
And how did the feasts of large religions develop? Things like iftar, where you communally share lots of food with both people you know and strangers, including the impoverished and disadvantaged? There ought to be quite a bit of violence involved to make such practices palatable if you're correct about this.
Kvakes
There is a great book called The Dawn of Everything (Graeber and Wengrow) that talks about how cultures like that existed, and we (the Western civilization) decimated them.
_Algernon_
Don't look at what people say, look at what they do. People like feeling virtuous, but rarely act that way unless they stand to gain from it.
paganel
Because that saying originated as a US bourgeois thing, people willing to liberate themselves from really caring for the other (much poorer) people living just besides them in exchange for writing some code. Just look at the streets of San Francisco, for example, not much sharing there.
And before someone mentioning that people like Torvalds and such other open-source luminaries are not technically Americans, they’re Americans in spirit, and by this point they’ve already got either US citizenship or a US green card, not to mention the hefty comps coming via US tech colossuses (either directly or indirectly).
As the original article mentions, the secret to all this tech non-sense is to log out and experience life, while always remembering that Uncle Ted was right.
c22
The old school name for this is "tragedy of the commons" and it's not just a tech thing.
keybored
No. Tragedy of the Commons is a bogus thought experiment where the contradictions of mixing private property with the commons was blamed on The Commons.
Miraltar
> In What Technology Wants, he argued that technology evolves like a living system.
Such an interesting take
FollowingTheDao
This is something the Daoists have talked about for 3000 years.
The "easier and faster" is only facilitated by an unseen debt. You cannot have "easier" without a "harder". The harder will always follow, as sure as the night follows the day. The simplicity of technology is a facade.
So yes, I agree; "You don’t win by keeping up. You win by stepping out."
I am happy to see the Dao making itself visible again.
Kvakes
A lot of old wisdom seems to be coming back. It's as funny as it's sad that we have to wait for "scientists" to confirm to us that fasting, extreme hot/cold, are evidently good to us. Also I've recently seen an ad for a company that builds houses out of carbon-negative materials (wood!).
yapyap
I feel like the jump from what the comment u were replying to was saying, I.E. something ‘easier’ might be harder in the long run to saying it’s sad scientists need to collect empirical evidence to prove things like fasting and ”extreme hot/cold” (I assume temperatures?) are good is a big one and not necessarily a good one.
What good would fasting or these extreme temps do and how would we prove it if not for evidence.
Scientists are NOT the problem here.
keybored
Silicon Valley or SC-ideological technologists have this ideological short-circuit for social problems. Let’s call it the Law of SC since every short-circuit needs an authoritative-sounding name, I mean law.
- The premise is that there is a social problem
- There are some examples of this repeating through history
- It always plays out this way
- Therefore we will conclude that it is technological determinism
- Bonus: Argue that this is fundamentally human nature-determinism by evoking Darwin, Buddhism or Stoicism
- Since this is Determinism (tech. or human) it can’t be solved
- You have now achieved the end-goal: “Explaining” the problem, which gives you smartness cred
- Bonus: Argue that technologists were already in the know. (Steve Jobs once admitted that his kids weren’t allowed to use the iPad.)
That this is a hopeless attitude is revealed in the conclusion:
> You don’t win by keeping up. You win by stepping out.
Because you cannot step out. You can’t rewind the clock. This is reactionary in the political sense since it aspires to go back to the past—but you can’t.[1]
We have made these technological dependencies for ourselves, or fetters. Now we need to deal with them. We need to make them work for us. What we don’t need is to stick our heads in the snad and proclaim that the best we can do is to take timeouts from technology, to create smartphone-free zones or whatever. Really? You advance these gadgets to the point where you need them (or a laptop/desktop) to minimally function in society... and then you become scared of them? No.[2]
What’s the incentive for technology companies? To prey on your attention, your time, and erode your self-worth. This is already known. Where’s the technological determinism here? Just look at the Wizard, pulling the strings—is this your technological determinism?
You (or we) are just complicit in making shitty technology. Don’t blame technological determinism or human nature. Blame yourself.
Commutes don’t expand. Home prices go up into stratosphere near any place people have to work. And the car industry lobbies against public transport. These are all human-made problems. There is nothing deterministic about them.
Your Dilbert-style laws are a crutch. Try to expand your focus beyond your narrow expertise. Then you’ll see that something better is possible.
[1] Try to become a hermit. Civilization (modernity) will eventually encroach on your little hermitland.
Kvakes
I think you're right on most accounts. What do we do?
keybored
Tech. companies left to their own devices will push technology that benefits them. People (the majority of society) have to take control over society so that we can find the proper balance: technology that makes our lives better/easier/simpler/more enjoyable and that doesn’t infringe on our attention and so on.
I’m already happy with a lot of software that I use that interfaces with the governmnet. The government wants to do less work. I want to do less work. The software ends up being less work than the prior technology was.
Why are you supposed to rely on Facebook for communicating with your local volunteer group? Why isn’t there a viable option (according to network effects)? Nothing says that we need predatory social media companies that sell people’s data in order to operate local volunteer groups. That’s absurd and and a falsehood that Bit Tech simply wants to convince people of.
Why is the iPad so addictive that children have to be kept away from it?
Because every single person designing apps and websites is incentivised to try and win 100% of your attention. Reed Hoffmann put it nicely — "We're competing with sleep, on the margin."
The default apps, browser excluded, are pretty harmless - their incentive is to create a device you decide to welcome into your home. I don't see children spending 4 hours doomscrolling the calculator.
The challenge is to think of another model for creating apps and content — one that retains most of the innovation without the harm