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I think it's about something much more insidious: FOMO. Today it's easier than ever to create e.g. a decentralized or independent means of doing pretty much an
by rjf72 8y ago
I think it's about something much more insidious: FOMO.
Today it's easier than ever to create e.g. a decentralized or independent means of doing pretty much anything that could easily let people escape those walled gardens, if they wanted. The problem is people don't want to: FOMO. If they leave the walled garden, they have the Fear Of Missing Out on what's happening inside the walled garden.
You can even see this phenomena in real life. You have a dozen people at a table or whatever. Unless you have some good sample bias, a good chunk of them will be constantly glancing at their phones if not having their noses glued to them. You have significant things that could be happening in your immediate vicinity, supplanted out of concern for missing what are invariably trivialities in a mostly fake world.
This is a people problem - not a business or technology problem. And the worst part is that it's so incredibly insidious that people don't realize the harm involved. A person addicted to gambling will trend towards the same thing as a person addicted to drugs - losing everything they have. And so it's quite easy to see the consequences. A person who's mind is increasingly fogged and attention driven entirely to the pale glow of that screen and the little dopamine bumps it provides, by contrast, will see no immediately visible negative effects. And the addiction is so ubiquitous that even as consequences do begin to emerge, they're not really noted because it's 'normal.'
- hevi_jos 8y agoI believe you miss the main issue: Most people don't know or don't want to do computer systems administration. People don't need to know mechanics to drive a car, or architect to live in a house and Facebook, Google... are doing the same with computers. You don't need to know anything about how computers work in order to use them. There is no FOVO when you can convince your friends or family members to use a different and better alternative. The problem is that there is no alternative. There is no alternative. There is not some kind of box I can buy for 30 dollars, connect to my network and instantly being able to connect with my friends, family or workers with another box automatically and without work on my and their side like you can do with a physical telephone. There are lots of tinkering boxes for geeks. But they are too complex.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoThat's the main problem. But there's also a secondary problem, often tangled up with this one, that IMO deserves a separate attention: the problem of drawing everything down to the lowest common denominator. Geeks are fine with tinkering boxes, and those boxes give them superpowers. But the computing environment is moving to remove this ability across the board - to make it impossible to use your tinker-box to interact with the world at large, essentially neutering much of the use for it.
- type0 8y agoRight, and right now we are having the choice to use just those oligopolies. If we bring this down to the car analogy, it would be like if you had the choice between Ford, Toyota, VW and a bicycle. You could ride your Ford on the ford-roads, your Toyota on toyota-roads VW on vw-roads and if you feel mighty you could even bike but there's no way you will be allowed on the same road as the big guys and eventually you'll meet the dead end.
- 908087 8y agoWhen businesses tune their platforms to elicit exactly this type of behavior, and have psychologists on staff to help them do so, it's absolutely a business problem as well. People aren't blameless, but neither are the businesses exploiting them.