3 ms·

I think your expectations are too high. What else are you expecting other than a website or mobile app? This is the hackathon format: the end product is softwar

I think your expectations are too high. What else are you expecting other than a website or mobile app? This is the hackathon format: the end product is software, so people are going to gravitate to mobile apps, which many believe to be more ubiquitously accessible. Nobody believes the true solution (or biggest thing that needs to be done) to domestic violence is a pure technology solution, so all you're going to see in a domestic violence hackathon are small software products that chip away at the problem. It's not sad. Maybe (shocker) there isn't a lot that tech can do to solve domestic violence.

stcredzero 11y ago
I think your expectations are too high. What else are you expecting other than a website or mobile app? In a way, you just reinforced his point. Maybe (shocker) there isn't a lot that tech can do to solve domestic violence. At the core, most human violence is about some form of pain, fear, or resource shortfall. (Or perception of such.) There is much that tech can do about this, if one is willing to look beyond just the creation of an app. "Ecosystem" creation might well be capable of more than "just an app."
- argonaut 11y ago
  Your first statement is a non sequitur. You also neglected to provide any examples of where tech is the best/necessary solution for solving domestic violence.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    Your second statement is a non sequitur. I never said tech is a best or necessary solution. However, tech can be used to reduce fear or alleviate resource scarcity. My first statement notes that the gp comment basically says they're looking where it's easiest to look, which is the criticism they're also responding to.
    - argonaut 11y ago
      You haven't detailed any evidence showing why and to what degree products that broadly and vaguely affecting fear/pain/resource scarcity (resource scarcity is a dubious assertion in of itself - employee productivity growth in America has slowed - so much for the tech revolution) would affect domestic violence. Even if we take your assertion as "common sense," it could very well be that for every 10% change in resource scarcity, you have a 0.001% change in domestic violence. Not to mention it is questionable whether tech is actually able to make a big dent in fear/pain of the human condition in the short term, absent some wild singulatarian fantasy.
      - stcredzero 11y ago
        You haven't detailed any evidence showing why and to what degree products that broadly and vaguely affecting fear/pain/resource scarcity Ok, if that's your point -- kind of vacuous. That resource scarcity is one of the big underlying causes of violence is well acknowledged in psychological, sociological, and historical fields. Is there any evidence that products can affect resource scarcity? Certainly. Even if we take your assertion as "common sense," it could very well be that for every 10% change in resource scarcity, you have a 0.001% change in domestic violence. Oh, for Finn's sake! Just Google "study wealth rates of domestic violence." Are you sure you're thinking clearly here in command of the evidence? Your sentence above would indicate you're not in command of the facts. I'm just pointing out a possible avenue of lateral thinking about this problem, citing a well known underlying mechanism from multiple fields of study. What's your point, exactly?
bpchaps 11y ago
And yours are too low! :) The end result isn't necessarily software - why does it have to be? For example, data collection/structuring is something that a lot of programmers are very interested in and can be used for others' work. It might end up on a website, but that's just a dissemination platform at that point. Lots of people truly want to help out. But when an app that doesn't solve anything isn't on, or will ever be on, any app store is paraded as an amazing thing in the news, all you'll end up with a thousand mediocre "helpful" apps and a wasted pool of creativity and motivation. That, and a lot of interested folks who're now jaded because the things they make "aren't cool". Mild projection there ;). Edit to add on expectations: motivation and expectation are often a pair. By having high expectations for yourself and others, you tend to push yourself beyond what you normally would think is possible. This goes for everything, but especially with tech, where "That'd take a thousand people!" only takes one. The motivation factor? It's fun.
- pedalpete 11y ago
  Or the end result doesn't have to be software used by victims (which I suspect most were).
- argonaut 11y ago
  I consider data collection to be part of software, so even that I don't think will do much to solve domestic violence. Otherwise, you haven't really shown why we need to have higher expectations, other than some vague statement about pushing people. You're just going to get bigger websites / mobile apps / data science analyses, if you set expectations higher.
  - bpchaps 11y ago
    What I'm suggesting is that there are many, many ways to untie gordian knots. Building bigger * is already happening - it's probably why your expectations are so low! Solving enormous social problems using complexity is a meme that needs to die - this is where bureaucracies and the like come from. Social situations are just too complex to write a complex system that addresses everything. Simple answers to complex problems that come close to the nuance as possible because of their "mediocreness" (think unix, x86, etc). My high expectations are in others' ability to find those simple "do one thing and do it well" solutions together.

stcredzero 11y ago

I think your expectations are too high. What else are you expecting other than a website or mobile app? In a way, you just reinforced his point. Maybe (shocker) there isn't a lot that tech can do to solve domestic violence. At the core, most human violence is about some form of pain, fear, or resource shortfall. (Or perception of such.) There is much that tech can do about this, if one is willing to look beyond just the creation of an app. "Ecosystem" creation might well be capable of more than "just an app."

argonaut 11y ago
Your first statement is a non sequitur. You also neglected to provide any examples of where tech is the best/necessary solution for solving domestic violence.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  Your second statement is a non sequitur. I never said tech is a best or necessary solution. However, tech can be used to reduce fear or alleviate resource scarcity. My first statement notes that the gp comment basically says they're looking where it's easiest to look, which is the criticism they're also responding to.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    You haven't detailed any evidence showing why and to what degree products that broadly and vaguely affecting fear/pain/resource scarcity (resource scarcity is a dubious assertion in of itself - employee productivity growth in America has slowed - so much for the tech revolution) would affect domestic violence. Even if we take your assertion as "common sense," it could very well be that for every 10% change in resource scarcity, you have a 0.001% change in domestic violence. Not to mention it is questionable whether tech is actually able to make a big dent in fear/pain of the human condition in the short term, absent some wild singulatarian fantasy.
    - stcredzero 11y ago
      You haven't detailed any evidence showing why and to what degree products that broadly and vaguely affecting fear/pain/resource scarcity Ok, if that's your point -- kind of vacuous. That resource scarcity is one of the big underlying causes of violence is well acknowledged in psychological, sociological, and historical fields. Is there any evidence that products can affect resource scarcity? Certainly. Even if we take your assertion as "common sense," it could very well be that for every 10% change in resource scarcity, you have a 0.001% change in domestic violence. Oh, for Finn's sake! Just Google "study wealth rates of domestic violence." Are you sure you're thinking clearly here in command of the evidence? Your sentence above would indicate you're not in command of the facts. I'm just pointing out a possible avenue of lateral thinking about this problem, citing a well known underlying mechanism from multiple fields of study. What's your point, exactly?

bpchaps 11y ago

And yours are too low! :) The end result isn't necessarily software - why does it have to be? For example, data collection/structuring is something that a lot of programmers are very interested in and can be used for others' work. It might end up on a website, but that's just a dissemination platform at that point. Lots of people truly want to help out. But when an app that doesn't solve anything isn't on, or will ever be on, any app store is paraded as an amazing thing in the news, all you'll end up with a thousand mediocre "helpful" apps and a wasted pool of creativity and motivation. That, and a lot of interested folks who're now jaded because the things they make "aren't cool". Mild projection there ;). Edit to add on expectations: motivation and expectation are often a pair. By having high expectations for yourself and others, you tend to push yourself beyond what you normally would think is possible. This goes for everything, but especially with tech, where "That'd take a thousand people!" only takes one. The motivation factor? It's fun.

pedalpete 11y ago
Or the end result doesn't have to be software used by victims (which I suspect most were).
argonaut 11y ago
I consider data collection to be part of software, so even that I don't think will do much to solve domestic violence. Otherwise, you haven't really shown why we need to have higher expectations, other than some vague statement about pushing people. You're just going to get bigger websites / mobile apps / data science analyses, if you set expectations higher.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  What I'm suggesting is that there are many, many ways to untie gordian knots. Building bigger * is already happening - it's probably why your expectations are so low! Solving enormous social problems using complexity is a meme that needs to die - this is where bureaucracies and the like come from. Social situations are just too complex to write a complex system that addresses everything. Simple answers to complex problems that come close to the nuance as possible because of their "mediocreness" (think unix, x86, etc). My high expectations are in others' ability to find those simple "do one thing and do it well" solutions together.