12 ms·

Eliminating the Human

200 points by denom 9y ago

pdonis 9y ago
The article conflates eliminating human interaction that is a side effect of something else, with eliminating all human interaction. But there's no reason why that must be the case. Eliminating human interactions as side effects ought to leave more room for human interactions that aren't constrained by being side effects and so can go wherever the humans in question want them to. It's a lot easier to have an interesting conversation with someone if you don't have to finish your transaction quickly to make way for the next person in line.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  In theory yes, in practice are you actually doing that or is it just an available option that you don't usually bother to exercise?
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > is it just an available option that you don't usually bother to exercise? Even if I don't exercise it at a particular time, so what? Why should I be forced to interact when I don't want to? That just keeps me from exercising some other option that would have more value to me at that particular time.
- chandler 9y ago
  Yeah, but where are you going to get the skills of interacting with strangers? Eliminating baseball practice doesn't seem like a way to encourage more games :/
  - jpetso 9y ago
    You're going to get practice where you search out for it, when you're open to and ready for interacting with other people. I can go to baseball practice, work on my game, and go home when it's over. Or I can ask if someone wants to stay and go for drinks after. Everyone's got the choice of what they want to do. If I love the game but not the people then I'll maybe hang out with a different group instead, or with my partner. The point behind eliminating these side-effect interactions is that now you can decide when and with whom to interact, rather than being forced into it when you just wanted to get something else done.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    Baseball is a team game, so interaction is not a side effect, it's part of the activity.
bitL 9y ago
Yes, everything points to automation of higher cognitive functions, rendering everyone but a very few geniuses and owners unemployable. The question is if the underlying economic model changes for everyone to benefit from it, or we go through a complete slumization of the whole world with a vast majority fighting for the scraps. It's also questionable if amending economic model would be beneficial to humanity, removing all challenges, as it might lead to complete hedonism and destruction of civilization in a few generations.
- Scea91 9y ago
  No everything does not point to that. What I see is an endless sea of opportunities that we can't even dream of today. There will always be work for humans. Just on a higher level of abstraction than we are today.
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    Don't look forward to the business owners wanting to spend money on humans "brainstorming in a coffee", though. I fear that my favourite genre -- cyberpunk -- is getting closer to reality with each passing month.
boardwaalk 9y ago
There are lots of reasons one might want to avoid human interaction: 1. Human interaction is perceived as complicated, inefficient, noisy and slow. I can't recall the source of where I heard it, an article or podcast perhaps, but there's the idea the current situation of increasing populism (anti-globalism, anti-immigration, xenophobia) is partly a result of ever mounting complexity in our societies. I wouldn't be surprised if the anti-human interaction thing (as well as hikikomori in Japan f.e.) was another effect. Of course, I'm sure this being HN, people will think it's the obviously just technology marching on -- but I'm not so sure. Businesses go where the money is. Personally, I tried to get away from it as much as possible and it still feels like too much and I have every plan of simplifying down the road. edit: I found the podcast I think was referenced, but disclaimer I haven't listened to it specifically: http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-collapse/ http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-colla...
- losteric 9y ago
  That vaguely reminds me of Calhoun's "mouse utopia": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime... I feel like lessons from software often have parallels in society. There are a lot of parallels between a project developed from scratch by a team that deeply understands their business domain, and a product+team combination that's missing any of those aspects. When the system is worked on by people that don't comprehend the problem or how the system solves it, the project slowly accrues hacks that eventually become an operational death march towards deprecation. It's worth considering the longevity of religions. Those systems were born to explain the supernatural, but the ideas that created social stability were the ones that survived. Religions outlive nations because they have built-in error-correction that prevents process degradation, even when spread by adherents that do not comprehend the context of the rules they preach.
ng12 9y ago
> Is music as a kind of social glue and lubricant also being eliminated? I definitely grew up in a different decade than David Byrne but for me music has always been a digital experience. I know very, very few people in real life who have the same tastes as I do and where tastes do overlap it's often very surface-level (who doesn't like Radiohead?). However I've consistently found little communities online which have had a huge influence on the music I listen to -- from BBSs to Soulseek to 4chan -- which has allowed me to craft my tastes in a way that wouldn't scale to a local social network. It's not bad, just different.
- lacampbell 9y ago
  who doesn't like Radiohead? We exist, and in greater numbers than you might realise.
  - ng12 9y ago
    Haha, fair. But the point is digitally you can explore the long tail in a way that's very hard in real life. Most of my immediate peers would have some opinion on Radiohead but it's relatively unlikely we could deliver meaningful recommendations based on eachother's specific tastes.
    - xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
      This is such a strange position to me. The friends I grew up with have very compatible music tastes as me. My wife and I have a lot of genre incompatibility, but there is a trove of music that we enjoy together. I've managed to find common ground with coworkers across many different jobs and countries. All of these relationships have resulted in a growth of interest in some genre or sub-genre for me.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Before there was digital there were specialist record stores. a taste for the obscure isn't a new thing, although it's easier than ever to indulge.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lacampbell 9y ago
Tiresome article. This has been happening since the industrial revolution. It's nothing new.
draw_down 9y ago
In my opinion this kind of thought is what happens when you refuse to consider things structurally. The reason for the elimination of humans in these models is to drive down labor costs. Humans are expensive to pay, they get sick, they steal things sometimes, they don't always come to work, they need silly things like buildings to work in, close to where they live. Perhaps a mundane point to Mr. Byrne, but with all due respect it's much more salient than "coders are nerds who hate social interaction".
- aerodeck 9y ago
  If humans are just inefficient then we should just get rid of all of them no? Or perhaps just keep the smart, efficient ones with good credit scores.
  - narag 9y ago
    For jobs in which we are very inefficient (compared to machines) we are being replaced, it's not a question of should or shouldn't. Maybe we should reconsider some regulations so we can keep the jobs for which we are still competitive. I mean that, while some requirements are unavoidable, others are a product of regulation, specifically of regulation that was created in an age with very different circumstances.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  IMO both are true: (1) Business wants less costs. (2) Introvert engineer subconsciously model their tech products after their lack of desire for human interaction. One doesn't exclude the other. I've witnessed both, numerous times, during my career.
paulryanrogers 9y ago
Reducing otherwise involuntary interactions can be a good thing.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- theoh 9y ago
  Or it can leave you without the experience or skills to cope when something unexpected does need to be dealt with personally. (Don't judge this article from the URL, it's moderate and well-informed): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how...
  - paulryanrogers 9y ago
    True. There is a balance. And most children are required too interact socially for their own good.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > Reducing otherwise involuntary interactions can be a good thing. You feel the need to breathe not because your body senses it lacks oxygen, but because it senses an excess of CO2, so it'll happily let you suffocate with no warning in an atmosphere with too much nitrogen gas. I think humanity has many more systems like that, which break down in unhealthy ways when removed from some natural constraint or conflict. I think, for many people, one of those is the conflict between the need for social interaction and the desire fulfill basic wants as easily as possible. An easy way to get the latter is by "cutting out the human," (e.g. working and shopping online) but that can leave the former need neglected if someone lacks the urge to seek out social connection on their own. I admit there are people who can be happy with a completely solitary life, but I believe they're very rare. Also, modern industrial society has succeeded in depersonalizing many human business interactions so they're already pretty barren of value (e.g. you can't form a friendship with a store clerk* if it's it's too often a different one), but I think my point still stands. * I have done this several times.
oniMaker 9y ago
ITT: Aspie engineers defend egos.
- dang 9y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines.
  - oniMaker 9y ago
    You are a pathetic little man.
wordupmaking 9y ago
> Is music as a kind of social glue and lubricant also being eliminated? That's also up to those who compose who compose the music and write the lyrics, isn't it? For me, listening to some music has always been a deeply social experience, and I'd rank the depth of it as such: 1. with good friends 2. alone with headphones on 3. with random strangers or people I know but don't click with or can't open up to On the other hand, there's (a whole lot of) what to me is soulless, brainless trash, and listening to that alone just feels like staring in the abyss of humanity, while in a social situation (or when doing chores) and small doses it might be some jolly good fun.
codazoda 9y ago
Correlation is not causation. That's what comes to mind. I doubt that it's intentional, it's probably just cost effective.
- aerodeck 9y ago
  > not intentional > cost effective optimizing for cost is an intention.
  - zardo 9y ago
    Optimization can happen without intentionality. Less cost effective businesses are more likely to stop being businesses.
trjordan 9y ago
There's another force at work here: in the name of efficiency and standardization, companies worked to make human interactions less useful. There's a reason McDonald's is seen as a bottom-of-the-barrel job. There's nothing about it that fundamentally requires judgement, empathy, or decision-making. Sure, the pleasantries are nice, but think about the last time you had something go wrong with a fast food transaction. Did the worker just fix it? Half the time, they have to drag a manager over, or reboot a machine, or some other fix that's above their pay grade. I love interacting with people who own their car repair shops, because they can help me work things out beyond a simple transaction. But larger companies? There's nothing to the interaction besides just talking with another human who's worried that if anything goes wrong, I'll take it out on them and there's nothing they can do to fix it.
- tcbawo 9y ago
  I can't remember the last time I talked with a fast food employee that I thought was incompetent. Most of the time, I'm shocked at how capable they are given how little they are probably making.
  - derefr 9y ago
    I don't think the parent poster was talking about incompetence; rather, they're referring to staff who have no organizational power to do their job—people who are not empowered to help you, but rather are required to go get someone else every time anything you'd assume would be "their job" (i.e. the reason they are being paid, as human, to work there) happens. In most chain fast-food restaurants, if the shift manager does a rotation taking orders, those orders go much more smoothly, and the line moves 10x quicker. Because, under that setup, the person with the responsibility for the order is also the person with the power to ensure the order happens correctly.
  - bamboozled 9y ago
    Honest question, do you ever think about not eating there if you know the staff are getting screwed over financially? My logic is if they have such little regard for their staff, they probably don't have much regard for my health. That and I just think it's cruel to work people like robots.
murbard2 9y ago
> Gig Jobs- TaskRabbit and other services—there are people who perform these tasks in the gig economy, but as a client one does not necessarily have to interact with them in a meaningful way. The alternative for these gig jobs is often to them yourself. House cleaning, furniture assembly, truck loading, tidying, repainting... Hiring help for these services clearly increases human interaction.
- aerodeck 9y ago
  ordering someone around != meaningful interaction.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    In terms of what this article considers to be meaningful interactions, it definitely is.
  - Qwertious 9y ago
    Getting a person at a till to scan stuff you buy != meaningful interaction. We could redefine "meaningful interaction" in a way that reinforces the "technology is destroying meaningful interpersonal interaction" narrative, if you'd like?
- exclusiv 9y ago
  Exactly. I used Task Rabbit to help me move and it was a great experience. I bought the guy BBQ too and we ate food together on my patio. He was a nice guy who had a full-time job but did moving on the weekends for extra money. Contrast that with hiring a moving company - bad experience, poor interaction, less accountability, full-time employees trying to rush to get to the next job, etc.
aeosnthqj 9y ago
This bugs me. He laments that using Amazon removes a human interaction. Then he says: "Note: I don’t consider chat rooms and product reviews as “human interaction”; they’re mediated and filtered by a screen." Well, I don't consider a sales person swooping in to sell me something I didn't come looking for human interaction. I don't consider someone ringing up my order to be meaningful human interaction. I guess it's in the eye of the beholder, but as soon as online shopping became feasible I switched to it for as many transactions as possible because of the low quality of human interactions I was getting at physical stores. The amount of wasted time and energy spent dealing with people who were instructed to up-sell me on the stupidest things was just such a turn-off. No interest in going back to that.
- ianbicking 9y ago
  That also stuck out to me, and the reference to "screens" felt too mechanistic. But it made me think about improvised vs planned interactions... lots of people dislike that moment when you don't know what someone is going to say or do when you'll have to react. Salespeople often manipulate us in that moment. Screens don't matter, people aren't crying out for more video interactions. It's the structure and predictability of automated firms that is appealing.
  - xg15 9y ago
    Chat rooms/forums/social media etc are human interaction but very removed from the face-to-face kind: - The timing is completely different (you have seconds, minutes or even days to formulate your answer instead of the fractions-of-a second in direct interaction); - Modality (it's over text only, you're not even invoking the visual sense, not even talking about the other senses and associated cues. You don't have access to body language and nonverbal communication and you don't have to keep your own under control either) - Social context (e.g. how many people are, right now, involved in the conversation about this post? Can you even tell? What do you know about the people you're talking with?) All that is fundamentally different enough from face-to-face that you can leave them out to get the point across.
  - xg15 9y ago
CriticalSection 9y ago
There is an idea that the dominant form of production in our age is done in a manner that causes alienation on a number of fronts for those who do the producing. Part of this is commodity fetishism, where people can see commodities, but not the social relations surrounding the production of commodities. This sounds like the taking of this to the next level - where the social aspect of exchanging currencies for commodities becomes more and more hidden. You press some buttons on a website, and two days later a box shows up in an Amazon locker or on your front porch. Not only is the social aspect of the production of the commodity hidden, the social aspect of the exchange of currency for that commodity is now hidden as well.
paulsutter 9y ago
Oddly, I found this graphic more informative than the a16z "AI Playbook" currently ranked first on HN: http://davidbyrne.com/images/made/images/uploads/todomundo/mgi-industry-digitization-index_650_927_60.jpeg http://davidbyrne.com/images/made/images/uploads/todomundo/m...
11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
The purpose of reducing human interaction when providing services is to reduce the cost of those services. Looks like nearly all of the examples cited involve one human providing paid services to another. In the name of productivity, the human providing the service is put in play because they are expensive. It would be more telling to look at social behaviors that don't involve transactions. Family reunions, nights out with the gals, little league games, religious ceremonies, ... Is there a technological force reducing human interactions there? Distracted by the smartphone, perhaps? And one could argue that technology enables in-person human interraction as well: Flashmobs, Meetups, etc.
- mc32 9y ago
  It also eliminates variability. Most services strive to offer predictable services, and, as consumers, most of us also want predictable services. Starbucks is notorious for their mediocrity, but it's predictable. There's little worse in commercial experiences than going to my favorite coffee shop and one day getting a great drink and the next day having a flat drink. Getting fleeced of course is worse.
  - losteric 9y ago
    I have found that good local shops start with higher variance but quickly hone in on excellence. It just takes time for the baristas to learn their regulars. However, that presumes the customer has developed their own tastes... when someone's definition of "good coffee" is "sugar, fat, caffeine", the barista doesn't have a lot of information to hone in the taste.
astrofinch 9y ago
>The counterargument to the dangers of social media has been “look at Arab Spring”. My impression of the Arab Spring is that most countries emerged in worse shape than they started in.
- XorNot 9y ago
  Yeah those Twitter powered civil wars are definitely much worse then regular civil wars...
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    One could argue success is a better metric in a revolotion than the body count to those who care about their freedom to decide their nations fate.
iamcurious 9y ago
Was my experience reading that article a human interaction? Is my comment one? Byrne shared something personal and I respond in turn. I mean, it is certainly less of a human interaction than being at a party with Byrne. But isn't this more of a human interaction than going to a bank and asking a cashier to give me money?
- Neliquat 9y ago
  A filtered one, perhaps. But you sure as hell did not achieve a dialouge, just a statement, and a statement to other people about his statement. At no point did you actually interact.
  - iamcurious 9y ago
    And now we have dialogue. This is fun!
fourthark 9y ago
This is an explicit theme of advertising for Seamless, among others.
maerF0x0 9y ago
IMO reducing administrative human friction is fantastic. I want to spend the 10 minutes I save with my friends, family and their respective circles. I reduce low value (pleasantries etc) human interaction so i can go deeper with my people.
- fineline 9y ago
  You are reinforcing David's point about the creation of echo chambers and its magnifying effect on social divisions. You want to cut out seemingly superficial (but sometimes serendipitous) communication with people that you don't know or who are not like you in order to go deeper with "your" people.
- nefitty 9y ago
  It's ironic how superficial your comment comes off, when you seem to have intended to convey your desire for quality human time. I'm slightly offended that you would consider any interaction with another human "low value". It's literally dehumanizing.
acjohnson55 9y ago
To be honest, most of the human interaction I see being eliminated aren't what I'd call "quality time" to begin with. For the most part, the brick-and-mortar commercial world is full of rote interactions with people who are under the gun meet metrics for middle managers and capitalists, in hopes that some of the excess will trickle down. Slightly better are maybe the brokers, who are now obviated by search and decision engines. And if we rewind a bit further to a time when human capital was literally disposable, well, maybe the trend isn't so bad. There's much less haggling and forced pleasantry in the world of online commerce. It's up to us to replace that with more meaningful interactions. Make art, play sports, learn to dance, volunteer.
rixrax 9y ago
I admit. I am an introvert and I have by and large welcomed with open arms every advance in technology that has allowed me to deal less with other people. Maybe subconsciously I have reflected this to some of the work and innovation I've been involved with over the years. With so many other introverts in the field, I am sure others have as well. But I want to thank the author for I've never consciously thought this aspect of technology with such a clarity.
- dkersten 9y ago
  I agree and I especially hate talking to people on the phone, but just yesterday I was reminded how much I hate those automated audio interfaces. After ten minutes of talking to the robot, it took all of my restraint not to yell into the phone (not that the robot would have cared) and it eventually put me through to a human who was immediately able to help me (and made everything I said to the robot pointless as they quickly asked for the same information again and understood it right away, unlike the automated interface where I had to repeat and confirm multiple times). I was never happier to talk to a human!
- marchenko 9y ago
  >I admit. I am an introvert and I have by and large welcomed with open arms every advance in technology that has allowed me to deal less with other people.< I used to feel the same way, until I realized that as an introvert, I am especially reliant upon the regular stream of casual, serendipitous encounters that punctuate everyday life for social and emotional well-being. Because I do not seek out contact, these small bursts of socialization are important to balance my mood and keep me grounded. I first noticed this during long periods in a non-native-language environment, where I realized that landing a good joke with a cashier was better for my equilibrium than any social media success metric.
  - andyjohnson0 9y ago
    That's my experience too. Introversion doesn't mean I don't need interactions with people. I've met unhappy introverts who didn't seem to have ever realised this.
look_lookatme 9y ago
> Engineers and coders as people are often less than comfortable with human interaction, so naturally they are making a world that is more accommodating to themselves. Man, you know things are bad for the fedoralords when even David Byrne turns on you.
thenomad 9y ago
I don't feel like this argument holds up as soon as he goes into examples. AirBnB: this might be a Euro vs US thing, but my Airbnb experiences have involved a lot more human interaction than I'd expect at a hotel, as my hosts show me around. Fiverr, Upwork, et al: if you're expecting to use these with no human interaction you're going to have a very bad time. Detailed and frequent communication is a must if you want to get good work out. Self-driving cars: for me and a lot of other people, the primary interaction they replace is between my hands and the steering wheel. Yes, they will, if they work, also eliminate the taxi, but that's very much a side-product. Video games: OK, this one just feels like him being a Luddite. As a frequent DOTA2 player, I can assure him that the interactions I have, whilst not always pleasant, are most definitely human in nature - and often even involve human voices! Single-player video games obviously don't involve interaction, but they compete for time with other non-interactive leisure activities like TV or reading. It's an interesting thesis - and his points on recommender systems and music are probably the most interesting part of the article - but I don't think he proves his case very well.
- franciscop 9y ago
  Exactly, I think it deserves a whole article on its own but Airbnb is TOTALLY different in Europe, Asia and US (though I have little experience in the latter). In Europe it's super friendly and human interaction is awesome and it feels like what Airbnb claims to be. In Japan they all do this lock key thing which is super weird and impersonal for me but I can see how it fits with their privacy-focuses culture. In the rest of Asia where I've been it's basically just a business and they leave the key with the building staff so it's almost like a hotel check-in. The single time I was in a US Airbnb it was like in Europe just a bit more "giving us space" so to speak.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  I suppose another counter example could be Facebook...in net it results in a lot more human interaction.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Does it? The article distinguishes human interaction per se from the mediated, channeled experience provided by Facebook, and by trivial extension other social media. This is far from the only article to posit that such a distinction exists, and has significance to the question of whether we're building a more connected world, or instead a world that only seems so.
scandox 9y ago
I feel he makes a mistake in introducing the issue of engineering introversion and (dread the word) the spectrum. This desire to reduce human interaction is driven by the desires of the average consumer. In many of the projects I've worked on this is explicit. People want control, transparency and automation. There are services whose entire selling point is reducing the unpredictability of human interactions for consumers. For example, many people would not use taxis historically because they felt the pricing was not transparent and at the whim of a person they would have to negotiate with. People find this stressful. Sometimes the automation makes the rules of interaction much more explicit too. A lot of people are nervous of picking up the phone to, say, something as simple as a restaurant and being told, NO you can't have a table for Saturday. If they book online they can see the availability and not have what they find the social embarrassment of even such a mild rejection. Personally, I am all for human interaction. I positively seek it out. But I do not think this is the trend. A lot of people are almost afraid to pick up the phone, or ask for something that isn't on a menu, or ask for a discount, or negotiate a price. And the number of those people is, in my personal experience, growing.
- smelendez 9y ago
  I can think of a few reasons this might be growing, at least in the US. The types of restaurants that typically require reservations seem increasingly hectic, perhaps because real estate costs mean they need more seatings worth of diners per night to break even. Whatever the case, I try to keep my interactions with hosts and hosts servers, pleasant and brief, because they're so obviously harried. (I actually think this is a problem for big city fine dining restaurants, where servers are expected to do things like refill your water glass every time it drops below full--you feel like you're creating a burden by eating your meal, and it's just stressful to spend a lot of money to eat in someone else's hectic workplace). The same seems true at medical practices and some other kinds of businesses--I just feel bad spending a lot of time on the phone with an obviously extremely busy receptionist trying to find a convenient appointment time.
- itchyouch 9y ago
  I have definitely observed a similar phenomena of people looking to minimize social interactions, especially amongst kids growing up today. I can't tell whether this social anxiety is merely a phase in growing up or becoming wider spread, but I feel like the convenience of growing up in an environment where social interaction can be actively avoided (goto a restaurant with online ordering) may actually be a cycle that reinforces the preference not to interact with others. I've noticed that some folks are abhorrent to the idea that rules and policy can be bended or broken for various circumstances and it isn't until they get older that that they realize that bending the rules is an actual option that can be invoked by asking in-person outside of the standard system (usually an automated site). For example, an individual was having a small melt down as they needed an accommodation to show up to a minimum-wage job 30 minutes later than usual for medical appointments. What was actually a simple explanation of what is going on and shifting the hours appropriately took quite a bit of encouragement and anxiety to get over prior to making the request. I have another friend who will wait months to find the absolute best deal on a gadget, yet will pay more for day-to-day goods on Amazon, than the grocery store to simply minimizes interacting with folks at the grocery store and cites interacting with people the primary reason to avoid the store. Just 30-40+ years ago, by design, everyone had to interact with each other and became practiced at it, but now a days, it's possible to say nothing but "hi" "thanks" "bye" and get just about everything necessary done for you. While I think that productivity and expectations have come so far, I feel like we have lost a little bit of that human-to-human connection while engaging in the day-to-day mundane activities through an interface.
FrozenVoid 9y ago
David can still use old-fashioned services, dial the landline phone and even order a horse carriage for that organic and natural feel. Perhaps he should even hire a driver. Maybe a cook, a personal assistant and some live musicians to perform in his house. Maybe even a personal library with real books and librarian to help sort them out. Such sustainable, organic human-centric lifestyle should be available to everyone at minimal cost and save on resource wasted on that newfangled "digital technology" or whatever its called.
stillsut 9y ago
"...we were not the popular kids that drank, had sex, and partied." - From the current discussion on UploadVR scandal [0] These are literally the most enjoyable things people do together, which has held for all history, for all people from all cultures. It has been criminalized in modern life in an attempt to sterilize all human interaction. I have no problem with an app saving me from the frustration of trying to place a food order over a noisy telephone. But what are we going to do to replace the joy and the messiness and heartache of love? Is VR the only place left where a human can be a human? [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345715

200 points by denom 9y ago

The article conflates eliminating human interaction that is a side effect of something else, with eliminating all human interaction. But there's no reason why that must be the case. Eliminating human interactions as side effects ought to leave more room for human interactions that aren't constrained by being side effects and so can go wherever the humans in question want them to. It's a lot easier to have an interesting conversation with someone if you don't have to finish your transaction quickly to make way for the next person in line.

anigbrowl 9y ago
In theory yes, in practice are you actually doing that or is it just an available option that you don't usually bother to exercise?
- pdonis 9y ago
  > is it just an available option that you don't usually bother to exercise? Even if I don't exercise it at a particular time, so what? Why should I be forced to interact when I don't want to? That just keeps me from exercising some other option that would have more value to me at that particular time.
chandler 9y ago
Yeah, but where are you going to get the skills of interacting with strangers? Eliminating baseball practice doesn't seem like a way to encourage more games :/
- jpetso 9y ago
  You're going to get practice where you search out for it, when you're open to and ready for interacting with other people. I can go to baseball practice, work on my game, and go home when it's over. Or I can ask if someone wants to stay and go for drinks after. Everyone's got the choice of what they want to do. If I love the game but not the people then I'll maybe hang out with a different group instead, or with my partner. The point behind eliminating these side-effect interactions is that now you can decide when and with whom to interact, rather than being forced into it when you just wanted to get something else done.
- pdonis 9y ago
  Baseball is a team game, so interaction is not a side effect, it's part of the activity.

bitL 9y ago

Yes, everything points to automation of higher cognitive functions, rendering everyone but a very few geniuses and owners unemployable. The question is if the underlying economic model changes for everyone to benefit from it, or we go through a complete slumization of the whole world with a vast majority fighting for the scraps. It's also questionable if amending economic model would be beneficial to humanity, removing all challenges, as it might lead to complete hedonism and destruction of civilization in a few generations.

Scea91 9y ago
No everything does not point to that. What I see is an endless sea of opportunities that we can't even dream of today. There will always be work for humans. Just on a higher level of abstraction than we are today.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  Don't look forward to the business owners wanting to spend money on humans "brainstorming in a coffee", though. I fear that my favourite genre -- cyberpunk -- is getting closer to reality with each passing month.

boardwaalk 9y ago

There are lots of reasons one might want to avoid human interaction: 1. Human interaction is perceived as complicated, inefficient, noisy and slow. I can't recall the source of where I heard it, an article or podcast perhaps, but there's the idea the current situation of increasing populism (anti-globalism, anti-immigration, xenophobia) is partly a result of ever mounting complexity in our societies. I wouldn't be surprised if the anti-human interaction thing (as well as hikikomori in Japan f.e.) was another effect. Of course, I'm sure this being HN, people will think it's the obviously just technology marching on -- but I'm not so sure. Businesses go where the money is. Personally, I tried to get away from it as much as possible and it still feels like too much and I have every plan of simplifying down the road. edit: I found the podcast I think was referenced, but disclaimer I haven't listened to it specifically: http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-collapse/ http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-colla...

losteric 9y ago
That vaguely reminds me of Calhoun's "mouse utopia": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun#Mouse_experime... I feel like lessons from software often have parallels in society. There are a lot of parallels between a project developed from scratch by a team that deeply understands their business domain, and a product+team combination that's missing any of those aspects. When the system is worked on by people that don't comprehend the problem or how the system solves it, the project slowly accrues hacks that eventually become an operational death march towards deprecation. It's worth considering the longevity of religions. Those systems were born to explain the supernatural, but the ideas that created social stability were the ones that survived. Religions outlive nations because they have built-in error-correction that prevents process degradation, even when spread by adherents that do not comprehend the context of the rules they preach.

ng12 9y ago

> Is music as a kind of social glue and lubricant also being eliminated? I definitely grew up in a different decade than David Byrne but for me music has always been a digital experience. I know very, very few people in real life who have the same tastes as I do and where tastes do overlap it's often very surface-level (who doesn't like Radiohead?). However I've consistently found little communities online which have had a huge influence on the music I listen to -- from BBSs to Soulseek to 4chan -- which has allowed me to craft my tastes in a way that wouldn't scale to a local social network. It's not bad, just different.

lacampbell 9y ago
who doesn't like Radiohead? We exist, and in greater numbers than you might realise.
- ng12 9y ago
  Haha, fair. But the point is digitally you can explore the long tail in a way that's very hard in real life. Most of my immediate peers would have some opinion on Radiohead but it's relatively unlikely we could deliver meaningful recommendations based on eachother's specific tastes.
  - xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
    This is such a strange position to me. The friends I grew up with have very compatible music tastes as me. My wife and I have a lot of genre incompatibility, but there is a trove of music that we enjoy together. I've managed to find common ground with coworkers across many different jobs and countries. All of these relationships have resulted in a growth of interest in some genre or sub-genre for me.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Before there was digital there were specialist record stores. a taste for the obscure isn't a new thing, although it's easier than ever to indulge.

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lacampbell 9y ago

Tiresome article. This has been happening since the industrial revolution. It's nothing new.

draw_down 9y ago

In my opinion this kind of thought is what happens when you refuse to consider things structurally. The reason for the elimination of humans in these models is to drive down labor costs. Humans are expensive to pay, they get sick, they steal things sometimes, they don't always come to work, they need silly things like buildings to work in, close to where they live. Perhaps a mundane point to Mr. Byrne, but with all due respect it's much more salient than "coders are nerds who hate social interaction".

aerodeck 9y ago
If humans are just inefficient then we should just get rid of all of them no? Or perhaps just keep the smart, efficient ones with good credit scores.
- narag 9y ago
  For jobs in which we are very inefficient (compared to machines) we are being replaced, it's not a question of should or shouldn't. Maybe we should reconsider some regulations so we can keep the jobs for which we are still competitive. I mean that, while some requirements are unavoidable, others are a product of regulation, specifically of regulation that was created in an age with very different circumstances.
pdimitar 9y ago
IMO both are true: (1) Business wants less costs. (2) Introvert engineer subconsciously model their tech products after their lack of desire for human interaction. One doesn't exclude the other. I've witnessed both, numerous times, during my career.

paulryanrogers 9y ago

Reducing otherwise involuntary interactions can be a good thing.

deleted 9y ago
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theoh 9y ago
Or it can leave you without the experience or skills to cope when something unexpected does need to be dealt with personally. (Don't judge this article from the URL, it's moderate and well-informed): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how...
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  True. There is a balance. And most children are required too interact socially for their own good.
Chaebixi 9y ago
> Reducing otherwise involuntary interactions can be a good thing. You feel the need to breathe not because your body senses it lacks oxygen, but because it senses an excess of CO2, so it'll happily let you suffocate with no warning in an atmosphere with too much nitrogen gas. I think humanity has many more systems like that, which break down in unhealthy ways when removed from some natural constraint or conflict. I think, for many people, one of those is the conflict between the need for social interaction and the desire fulfill basic wants as easily as possible. An easy way to get the latter is by "cutting out the human," (e.g. working and shopping online) but that can leave the former need neglected if someone lacks the urge to seek out social connection on their own. I admit there are people who can be happy with a completely solitary life, but I believe they're very rare. Also, modern industrial society has succeeded in depersonalizing many human business interactions so they're already pretty barren of value (e.g. you can't form a friendship with a store clerk* if it's it's too often a different one), but I think my point still stands. * I have done this several times.

oniMaker 9y ago

ITT: Aspie engineers defend egos.

dang 9y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines.
- oniMaker 9y ago
  You are a pathetic little man.

wordupmaking 9y ago

> Is music as a kind of social glue and lubricant also being eliminated? That's also up to those who compose who compose the music and write the lyrics, isn't it? For me, listening to some music has always been a deeply social experience, and I'd rank the depth of it as such: 1. with good friends 2. alone with headphones on 3. with random strangers or people I know but don't click with or can't open up to On the other hand, there's (a whole lot of) what to me is soulless, brainless trash, and listening to that alone just feels like staring in the abyss of humanity, while in a social situation (or when doing chores) and small doses it might be some jolly good fun.

codazoda 9y ago

Correlation is not causation. That's what comes to mind. I doubt that it's intentional, it's probably just cost effective.

aerodeck 9y ago
> not intentional > cost effective optimizing for cost is an intention.
- zardo 9y ago
  Optimization can happen without intentionality. Less cost effective businesses are more likely to stop being businesses.

trjordan 9y ago

There's another force at work here: in the name of efficiency and standardization, companies worked to make human interactions less useful. There's a reason McDonald's is seen as a bottom-of-the-barrel job. There's nothing about it that fundamentally requires judgement, empathy, or decision-making. Sure, the pleasantries are nice, but think about the last time you had something go wrong with a fast food transaction. Did the worker just fix it? Half the time, they have to drag a manager over, or reboot a machine, or some other fix that's above their pay grade. I love interacting with people who own their car repair shops, because they can help me work things out beyond a simple transaction. But larger companies? There's nothing to the interaction besides just talking with another human who's worried that if anything goes wrong, I'll take it out on them and there's nothing they can do to fix it.

tcbawo 9y ago
I can't remember the last time I talked with a fast food employee that I thought was incompetent. Most of the time, I'm shocked at how capable they are given how little they are probably making.
- derefr 9y ago
  I don't think the parent poster was talking about incompetence; rather, they're referring to staff who have no organizational power to do their job—people who are not empowered to help you, but rather are required to go get someone else every time anything you'd assume would be "their job" (i.e. the reason they are being paid, as human, to work there) happens. In most chain fast-food restaurants, if the shift manager does a rotation taking orders, those orders go much more smoothly, and the line moves 10x quicker. Because, under that setup, the person with the responsibility for the order is also the person with the power to ensure the order happens correctly.
- bamboozled 9y ago
  Honest question, do you ever think about not eating there if you know the staff are getting screwed over financially? My logic is if they have such little regard for their staff, they probably don't have much regard for my health. That and I just think it's cruel to work people like robots.

murbard2 9y ago

> Gig Jobs- TaskRabbit and other services—there are people who perform these tasks in the gig economy, but as a client one does not necessarily have to interact with them in a meaningful way. The alternative for these gig jobs is often to them yourself. House cleaning, furniture assembly, truck loading, tidying, repainting... Hiring help for these services clearly increases human interaction.

aerodeck 9y ago
ordering someone around != meaningful interaction.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  In terms of what this article considers to be meaningful interactions, it definitely is.
- Qwertious 9y ago
  Getting a person at a till to scan stuff you buy != meaningful interaction. We could redefine "meaningful interaction" in a way that reinforces the "technology is destroying meaningful interpersonal interaction" narrative, if you'd like?
exclusiv 9y ago
Exactly. I used Task Rabbit to help me move and it was a great experience. I bought the guy BBQ too and we ate food together on my patio. He was a nice guy who had a full-time job but did moving on the weekends for extra money. Contrast that with hiring a moving company - bad experience, poor interaction, less accountability, full-time employees trying to rush to get to the next job, etc.

aeosnthqj 9y ago

This bugs me. He laments that using Amazon removes a human interaction. Then he says: "Note: I don’t consider chat rooms and product reviews as “human interaction”; they’re mediated and filtered by a screen." Well, I don't consider a sales person swooping in to sell me something I didn't come looking for human interaction. I don't consider someone ringing up my order to be meaningful human interaction. I guess it's in the eye of the beholder, but as soon as online shopping became feasible I switched to it for as many transactions as possible because of the low quality of human interactions I was getting at physical stores. The amount of wasted time and energy spent dealing with people who were instructed to up-sell me on the stupidest things was just such a turn-off. No interest in going back to that.

ianbicking 9y ago
That also stuck out to me, and the reference to "screens" felt too mechanistic. But it made me think about improvised vs planned interactions... lots of people dislike that moment when you don't know what someone is going to say or do when you'll have to react. Salespeople often manipulate us in that moment. Screens don't matter, people aren't crying out for more video interactions. It's the structure and predictability of automated firms that is appealing.
- xg15 9y ago
  Chat rooms/forums/social media etc are human interaction but very removed from the face-to-face kind: - The timing is completely different (you have seconds, minutes or even days to formulate your answer instead of the fractions-of-a second in direct interaction); - Modality (it's over text only, you're not even invoking the visual sense, not even talking about the other senses and associated cues. You don't have access to body language and nonverbal communication and you don't have to keep your own under control either) - Social context (e.g. how many people are, right now, involved in the conversation about this post? Can you even tell? What do you know about the people you're talking with?) All that is fundamentally different enough from face-to-face that you can leave them out to get the point across.
- xg15 9y ago

CriticalSection 9y ago

There is an idea that the dominant form of production in our age is done in a manner that causes alienation on a number of fronts for those who do the producing. Part of this is commodity fetishism, where people can see commodities, but not the social relations surrounding the production of commodities. This sounds like the taking of this to the next level - where the social aspect of exchanging currencies for commodities becomes more and more hidden. You press some buttons on a website, and two days later a box shows up in an Amazon locker or on your front porch. Not only is the social aspect of the production of the commodity hidden, the social aspect of the exchange of currency for that commodity is now hidden as well.

paulsutter 9y ago

Oddly, I found this graphic more informative than the a16z "AI Playbook" currently ranked first on HN: http://davidbyrne.com/images/made/images/uploads/todomundo/mgi-industry-digitization-index_650_927_60.jpeg http://davidbyrne.com/images/made/images/uploads/todomundo/m...

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago

The purpose of reducing human interaction when providing services is to reduce the cost of those services. Looks like nearly all of the examples cited involve one human providing paid services to another. In the name of productivity, the human providing the service is put in play because they are expensive. It would be more telling to look at social behaviors that don't involve transactions. Family reunions, nights out with the gals, little league games, religious ceremonies, ... Is there a technological force reducing human interactions there? Distracted by the smartphone, perhaps? And one could argue that technology enables in-person human interraction as well: Flashmobs, Meetups, etc.

mc32 9y ago
It also eliminates variability. Most services strive to offer predictable services, and, as consumers, most of us also want predictable services. Starbucks is notorious for their mediocrity, but it's predictable. There's little worse in commercial experiences than going to my favorite coffee shop and one day getting a great drink and the next day having a flat drink. Getting fleeced of course is worse.
- losteric 9y ago
  I have found that good local shops start with higher variance but quickly hone in on excellence. It just takes time for the baristas to learn their regulars. However, that presumes the customer has developed their own tastes... when someone's definition of "good coffee" is "sugar, fat, caffeine", the barista doesn't have a lot of information to hone in the taste.

astrofinch 9y ago

>The counterargument to the dangers of social media has been “look at Arab Spring”. My impression of the Arab Spring is that most countries emerged in worse shape than they started in.

XorNot 9y ago
Yeah those Twitter powered civil wars are definitely much worse then regular civil wars...
- Neliquat 9y ago
  One could argue success is a better metric in a revolotion than the body count to those who care about their freedom to decide their nations fate.

iamcurious 9y ago

Was my experience reading that article a human interaction? Is my comment one? Byrne shared something personal and I respond in turn. I mean, it is certainly less of a human interaction than being at a party with Byrne. But isn't this more of a human interaction than going to a bank and asking a cashier to give me money?

Neliquat 9y ago
A filtered one, perhaps. But you sure as hell did not achieve a dialouge, just a statement, and a statement to other people about his statement. At no point did you actually interact.
- iamcurious 9y ago
  And now we have dialogue. This is fun!

fourthark 9y ago

This is an explicit theme of advertising for Seamless, among others.

maerF0x0 9y ago

IMO reducing administrative human friction is fantastic. I want to spend the 10 minutes I save with my friends, family and their respective circles. I reduce low value (pleasantries etc) human interaction so i can go deeper with my people.

fineline 9y ago
You are reinforcing David's point about the creation of echo chambers and its magnifying effect on social divisions. You want to cut out seemingly superficial (but sometimes serendipitous) communication with people that you don't know or who are not like you in order to go deeper with "your" people.
nefitty 9y ago
It's ironic how superficial your comment comes off, when you seem to have intended to convey your desire for quality human time. I'm slightly offended that you would consider any interaction with another human "low value". It's literally dehumanizing.

acjohnson55 9y ago

To be honest, most of the human interaction I see being eliminated aren't what I'd call "quality time" to begin with. For the most part, the brick-and-mortar commercial world is full of rote interactions with people who are under the gun meet metrics for middle managers and capitalists, in hopes that some of the excess will trickle down. Slightly better are maybe the brokers, who are now obviated by search and decision engines. And if we rewind a bit further to a time when human capital was literally disposable, well, maybe the trend isn't so bad. There's much less haggling and forced pleasantry in the world of online commerce. It's up to us to replace that with more meaningful interactions. Make art, play sports, learn to dance, volunteer.

rixrax 9y ago

I admit. I am an introvert and I have by and large welcomed with open arms every advance in technology that has allowed me to deal less with other people. Maybe subconsciously I have reflected this to some of the work and innovation I've been involved with over the years. With so many other introverts in the field, I am sure others have as well. But I want to thank the author for I've never consciously thought this aspect of technology with such a clarity.

dkersten 9y ago
I agree and I especially hate talking to people on the phone, but just yesterday I was reminded how much I hate those automated audio interfaces. After ten minutes of talking to the robot, it took all of my restraint not to yell into the phone (not that the robot would have cared) and it eventually put me through to a human who was immediately able to help me (and made everything I said to the robot pointless as they quickly asked for the same information again and understood it right away, unlike the automated interface where I had to repeat and confirm multiple times). I was never happier to talk to a human!
marchenko 9y ago
>I admit. I am an introvert and I have by and large welcomed with open arms every advance in technology that has allowed me to deal less with other people.< I used to feel the same way, until I realized that as an introvert, I am especially reliant upon the regular stream of casual, serendipitous encounters that punctuate everyday life for social and emotional well-being. Because I do not seek out contact, these small bursts of socialization are important to balance my mood and keep me grounded. I first noticed this during long periods in a non-native-language environment, where I realized that landing a good joke with a cashier was better for my equilibrium than any social media success metric.
- andyjohnson0 9y ago
  That's my experience too. Introversion doesn't mean I don't need interactions with people. I've met unhappy introverts who didn't seem to have ever realised this.

look_lookatme 9y ago

> Engineers and coders as people are often less than comfortable with human interaction, so naturally they are making a world that is more accommodating to themselves. Man, you know things are bad for the fedoralords when even David Byrne turns on you.

thenomad 9y ago

I don't feel like this argument holds up as soon as he goes into examples. AirBnB: this might be a Euro vs US thing, but my Airbnb experiences have involved a lot more human interaction than I'd expect at a hotel, as my hosts show me around. Fiverr, Upwork, et al: if you're expecting to use these with no human interaction you're going to have a very bad time. Detailed and frequent communication is a must if you want to get good work out. Self-driving cars: for me and a lot of other people, the primary interaction they replace is between my hands and the steering wheel. Yes, they will, if they work, also eliminate the taxi, but that's very much a side-product. Video games: OK, this one just feels like him being a Luddite. As a frequent DOTA2 player, I can assure him that the interactions I have, whilst not always pleasant, are most definitely human in nature - and often even involve human voices! Single-player video games obviously don't involve interaction, but they compete for time with other non-interactive leisure activities like TV or reading. It's an interesting thesis - and his points on recommender systems and music are probably the most interesting part of the article - but I don't think he proves his case very well.

franciscop 9y ago
Exactly, I think it deserves a whole article on its own but Airbnb is TOTALLY different in Europe, Asia and US (though I have little experience in the latter). In Europe it's super friendly and human interaction is awesome and it feels like what Airbnb claims to be. In Japan they all do this lock key thing which is super weird and impersonal for me but I can see how it fits with their privacy-focuses culture. In the rest of Asia where I've been it's basically just a business and they leave the key with the building staff so it's almost like a hotel check-in. The single time I was in a US Airbnb it was like in Europe just a bit more "giving us space" so to speak.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
I suppose another counter example could be Facebook...in net it results in a lot more human interaction.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Does it? The article distinguishes human interaction per se from the mediated, channeled experience provided by Facebook, and by trivial extension other social media. This is far from the only article to posit that such a distinction exists, and has significance to the question of whether we're building a more connected world, or instead a world that only seems so.

scandox 9y ago

I feel he makes a mistake in introducing the issue of engineering introversion and (dread the word) the spectrum. This desire to reduce human interaction is driven by the desires of the average consumer. In many of the projects I've worked on this is explicit. People want control, transparency and automation. There are services whose entire selling point is reducing the unpredictability of human interactions for consumers. For example, many people would not use taxis historically because they felt the pricing was not transparent and at the whim of a person they would have to negotiate with. People find this stressful. Sometimes the automation makes the rules of interaction much more explicit too. A lot of people are nervous of picking up the phone to, say, something as simple as a restaurant and being told, NO you can't have a table for Saturday. If they book online they can see the availability and not have what they find the social embarrassment of even such a mild rejection. Personally, I am all for human interaction. I positively seek it out. But I do not think this is the trend. A lot of people are almost afraid to pick up the phone, or ask for something that isn't on a menu, or ask for a discount, or negotiate a price. And the number of those people is, in my personal experience, growing.

smelendez 9y ago
I can think of a few reasons this might be growing, at least in the US. The types of restaurants that typically require reservations seem increasingly hectic, perhaps because real estate costs mean they need more seatings worth of diners per night to break even. Whatever the case, I try to keep my interactions with hosts and hosts servers, pleasant and brief, because they're so obviously harried. (I actually think this is a problem for big city fine dining restaurants, where servers are expected to do things like refill your water glass every time it drops below full--you feel like you're creating a burden by eating your meal, and it's just stressful to spend a lot of money to eat in someone else's hectic workplace). The same seems true at medical practices and some other kinds of businesses--I just feel bad spending a lot of time on the phone with an obviously extremely busy receptionist trying to find a convenient appointment time.
itchyouch 9y ago
I have definitely observed a similar phenomena of people looking to minimize social interactions, especially amongst kids growing up today. I can't tell whether this social anxiety is merely a phase in growing up or becoming wider spread, but I feel like the convenience of growing up in an environment where social interaction can be actively avoided (goto a restaurant with online ordering) may actually be a cycle that reinforces the preference not to interact with others. I've noticed that some folks are abhorrent to the idea that rules and policy can be bended or broken for various circumstances and it isn't until they get older that that they realize that bending the rules is an actual option that can be invoked by asking in-person outside of the standard system (usually an automated site). For example, an individual was having a small melt down as they needed an accommodation to show up to a minimum-wage job 30 minutes later than usual for medical appointments. What was actually a simple explanation of what is going on and shifting the hours appropriately took quite a bit of encouragement and anxiety to get over prior to making the request. I have another friend who will wait months to find the absolute best deal on a gadget, yet will pay more for day-to-day goods on Amazon, than the grocery store to simply minimizes interacting with folks at the grocery store and cites interacting with people the primary reason to avoid the store. Just 30-40+ years ago, by design, everyone had to interact with each other and became practiced at it, but now a days, it's possible to say nothing but "hi" "thanks" "bye" and get just about everything necessary done for you. While I think that productivity and expectations have come so far, I feel like we have lost a little bit of that human-to-human connection while engaging in the day-to-day mundane activities through an interface.

FrozenVoid 9y ago

David can still use old-fashioned services, dial the landline phone and even order a horse carriage for that organic and natural feel. Perhaps he should even hire a driver. Maybe a cook, a personal assistant and some live musicians to perform in his house. Maybe even a personal library with real books and librarian to help sort them out. Such sustainable, organic human-centric lifestyle should be available to everyone at minimal cost and save on resource wasted on that newfangled "digital technology" or whatever its called.

stillsut 9y ago

"...we were not the popular kids that drank, had sex, and partied." - From the current discussion on UploadVR scandal [0] These are literally the most enjoyable things people do together, which has held for all history, for all people from all cultures. It has been criminalized in modern life in an attempt to sterilize all human interaction. I have no problem with an app saving me from the frustration of trying to place a food order over a noisy telephone. But what are we going to do to replace the joy and the messiness and heartache of love? Is VR the only place left where a human can be a human? [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345715