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> "There’s nothing about a global computer network that necessitates addiction-like behaviours." I've recently reflected that despite the internet having origi

> "There’s nothing about a global computer network that necessitates addiction-like behaviours." I've recently reflected that despite the internet having origins which benefited the military and scientific community, the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. You see it as people endlessly scroll their Facebook feed, spending very little time even paying attention to the photos they are viewing. You see it in Snapchat, where users are encouraged to narcissistic-ly document their life every few seconds. It's on Imgur (granted, that's not too surprising), Buzzfeed, and clickbait (25 Unbelievable photos taken by a skydiver). I'm sold that if you want to make a successful app or website (based on number of users, not quality of content), it needs to revolve around users taking photos...

Alex3917 11y ago
> the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. There are basically two kinds of Internet use that young people engage in -- hanging out with friends, and teaching themselves new skills. The vast majority of young people though are mostly using the Internet to hang out with friends. The exception is apparently affluent white males, who have much higher rates of using the Internet to explore new ideas and teach themselves new skills. This is called the 'participation gap.' (It's perhaps also partly why, for example, there are more male entrepreneurs even though women do better in formal education.) The important thing to note is that decisions about what to use the Internet for have a lot to do with who you are following in your social networks. E.g. this determines what new interests you're likely to discover, what opportunities are made available to you, etc. source: http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Conversation/dp/0745660711 http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...
- rustynails 11y ago
  I know you mention that women do better in formal education. That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice. I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed. I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome. I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I am fascinated by your theory that there was less prejudice a few decades ago. This graph, for example, does not look like a graph of increasing prejudice: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... I read that as decreasing systemic bias in education. At least in law, medicine, and physical sciences.
    - x1798DE 11y ago
      That graph doesn't look to me like something characterized by prejudice at all. Why would people suddenly become sexist in the computer technology field only, practically overnight? The article even suggests that the drop started with the boom of the personal computer. That is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that women do better in formal settings, since that inflection point is essentially the moment it became possible for large amounts of people to teach themselves to be a computer programmer. It seems likely that some pre existing bias (either in interest our ability from girls or more likely an interplay of interest and culture) was just amplified when the flood of autodidacts joined the field, not that everyone decided to exclude women just as the field was getting hot.
      - wpietri 11y ago
        My point is that the other three lines are indicative of decreasing prejudice in education, not increasing. The computer-science line is clearly different and why is an interesting topic, but it's not the topic at hand.
        shkkmo 11y ago
        The computer-science line clearly indicates that 'prejudice in education' is not the only and may not be the strongest cause of that trend.
        VLM 11y ago
        A pet theory I've been developing is the decline in the 80s began with a growth in self destructive behavior in the programming employment sector. Eating junk food, caffeinated energy drinks, lack of exercise, lack of good food, lack of sleep, lack of socializing, lack of overtime pay, lack of professionalism, obsessive game play, lack of life balance, lack of decent working environment. Before the 80s programmer culture felt very engineer / mathematician / academic, after the 80s its kinda felt like an introverts weird interpretation of an all night party, every night. Here have a hot pocket and type all night. A culture that prides itself on twinkies and monster energy drinks isn't going to fit the nearly 100% female readership of the typical health magazine. The stereotypical programming environment is nearly unique in the working world, isn't it? Are there any other job markets culturally like programming? If there were, we could compare how the two fields opposition to personal hygiene or opposition to dressing fashionably, or even dressing in clean clothes might not appeal to women at similar rates, for example. I've only found two work places kinda like programming/IT as defined above. One is military mechanic and the other is SOME trading desks at big finance. Both tend a bit male. That's directly on topic. I suppose from an "eating your own (addictive) dogfood" perspective its kinda self inflicted. It would be interesting to look at male/female relations and ratios for programmers at non-traditional employers, perhaps the government or military or maybe academic. I suspect the lifestyle at a unionized state government office is quite a bit different than "standard" programming environment and theorize almost anything would be an improvement WRT women's interest in that workplace. Perhaps addictive behaviors would vary in those circumstances. Surely there must be some HR statistics buried somewhere at a giant corporation or government about % of programmers participating in the corporate alcoholism project by decade, or something like that, WRT trends in addictive personality by decade.
- kiiski 11y ago
  I think there is a third kind too; consuming media (music/video). I'm not sure how that compares to the hanging out by time-spent, but by dollars-spent I would imagine it's the biggest one.
jkot 11y ago
No! It offers much more, but some users are just not interested.
agumonkey 11y ago
That's a bit cynical. Or realist. Some people would argue strongly that the web made revolt or rescue possible in some aeras. Twitter has a little value as a live wingman for Google. Parts of reddit were very helpful in some actions (finding missing people), almost self organized .. that was something special IMO. Youtube as sink for forgotten videos too (alternative filming of music events etc etc). I tend to see the web as a waste of time. Even HN is mostly fancy tech-centered zapping nowadays (I speak for myself). It's also an ever changing market of trends, from socnet websites to some of its technical structure. That's why nowadays I mostly look at old and limited network medias (ML, IRC). Where the communication is lighter but of higher information content (not always but on average). [1] I also wonder about the ecological effects of all these website. I hosted a gif on imgur the other day, one hour later it used a few GB of bandwidth I felt crass. Even the social side .. so much waste. Let's all meditate and lower the planet blood pressure.
mhurron 11y ago
> the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. If that's how you choose to use it, yes. What makes these devices useful to people is that you do get to choose how to use them.

Alex3917 11y ago

> the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. There are basically two kinds of Internet use that young people engage in -- hanging out with friends, and teaching themselves new skills. The vast majority of young people though are mostly using the Internet to hang out with friends. The exception is apparently affluent white males, who have much higher rates of using the Internet to explore new ideas and teach themselves new skills. This is called the 'participation gap.' (It's perhaps also partly why, for example, there are more male entrepreneurs even though women do better in formal education.) The important thing to note is that decisions about what to use the Internet for have a lot to do with who you are following in your social networks. E.g. this determines what new interests you're likely to discover, what opportunities are made available to you, etc. source: http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Conversation/dp/0745660711 http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...

rustynails 11y ago
I know you mention that women do better in formal education. That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice. I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed. I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome. I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I am fascinated by your theory that there was less prejudice a few decades ago. This graph, for example, does not look like a graph of increasing prejudice: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... I read that as decreasing systemic bias in education. At least in law, medicine, and physical sciences.
  - x1798DE 11y ago
    That graph doesn't look to me like something characterized by prejudice at all. Why would people suddenly become sexist in the computer technology field only, practically overnight? The article even suggests that the drop started with the boom of the personal computer. That is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that women do better in formal settings, since that inflection point is essentially the moment it became possible for large amounts of people to teach themselves to be a computer programmer. It seems likely that some pre existing bias (either in interest our ability from girls or more likely an interplay of interest and culture) was just amplified when the flood of autodidacts joined the field, not that everyone decided to exclude women just as the field was getting hot.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      My point is that the other three lines are indicative of decreasing prejudice in education, not increasing. The computer-science line is clearly different and why is an interesting topic, but it's not the topic at hand.
      - shkkmo 11y ago
        The computer-science line clearly indicates that 'prejudice in education' is not the only and may not be the strongest cause of that trend.
      - VLM 11y ago
        A pet theory I've been developing is the decline in the 80s began with a growth in self destructive behavior in the programming employment sector. Eating junk food, caffeinated energy drinks, lack of exercise, lack of good food, lack of sleep, lack of socializing, lack of overtime pay, lack of professionalism, obsessive game play, lack of life balance, lack of decent working environment. Before the 80s programmer culture felt very engineer / mathematician / academic, after the 80s its kinda felt like an introverts weird interpretation of an all night party, every night. Here have a hot pocket and type all night. A culture that prides itself on twinkies and monster energy drinks isn't going to fit the nearly 100% female readership of the typical health magazine. The stereotypical programming environment is nearly unique in the working world, isn't it? Are there any other job markets culturally like programming? If there were, we could compare how the two fields opposition to personal hygiene or opposition to dressing fashionably, or even dressing in clean clothes might not appeal to women at similar rates, for example. I've only found two work places kinda like programming/IT as defined above. One is military mechanic and the other is SOME trading desks at big finance. Both tend a bit male. That's directly on topic. I suppose from an "eating your own (addictive) dogfood" perspective its kinda self inflicted. It would be interesting to look at male/female relations and ratios for programmers at non-traditional employers, perhaps the government or military or maybe academic. I suspect the lifestyle at a unionized state government office is quite a bit different than "standard" programming environment and theorize almost anything would be an improvement WRT women's interest in that workplace. Perhaps addictive behaviors would vary in those circumstances. Surely there must be some HR statistics buried somewhere at a giant corporation or government about % of programmers participating in the corporate alcoholism project by decade, or something like that, WRT trends in addictive personality by decade.
kiiski 11y ago
I think there is a third kind too; consuming media (music/video). I'm not sure how that compares to the hanging out by time-spent, but by dollars-spent I would imagine it's the biggest one.

jkot 11y ago

No! It offers much more, but some users are just not interested.

agumonkey 11y ago

That's a bit cynical. Or realist. Some people would argue strongly that the web made revolt or rescue possible in some aeras. Twitter has a little value as a live wingman for Google. Parts of reddit were very helpful in some actions (finding missing people), almost self organized .. that was something special IMO. Youtube as sink for forgotten videos too (alternative filming of music events etc etc). I tend to see the web as a waste of time. Even HN is mostly fancy tech-centered zapping nowadays (I speak for myself). It's also an ever changing market of trends, from socnet websites to some of its technical structure. That's why nowadays I mostly look at old and limited network medias (ML, IRC). Where the communication is lighter but of higher information content (not always but on average). [1] I also wonder about the ecological effects of all these website. I hosted a gif on imgur the other day, one hour later it used a few GB of bandwidth I felt crass. Even the social side .. so much waste. Let's all meditate and lower the planet blood pressure.

mhurron 11y ago

> the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album. If that's how you choose to use it, yes. What makes these devices useful to people is that you do get to choose how to use them.