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Author here. Previous two discussions on HN: 2009 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471353 2013 - https://new

Author here. Previous two discussions on HN: 2009 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471353 2013 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349447 It's interesting to look at the pushback from my fellow HN'ers when this first came out. I'm quite interested to know if many of them still feel that way. The essay does not have any answers. The thesis is that the main problem is that most people don't understand that there is a problem or why it exists. That may have changed over the last ten years. Back then I was quite concerned that I didn't have any good recommendations. The best I had was some version of "We need to develop a new set of personal values before they're programmed into us." I still feel this way. As software continues to eat everything, I feel that the programming community is going to drug into morals, ethics, law, and philosophy whether we want to go there or not. We're at the heart of most everything now.

guicho271828 8y ago
First time reader. The definition of technology seems very narrow --- almost exclusive to the entertainment. I don't think e.g. an optimized GEMM on GPUs or SQL query would be covered in this article.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  That's a great point. You're absolutely right. For context, initially HackerNews was a site for startups, so the topics were generally along the lines of "using tech to make something people want" (People will debate what the site was about. I came here for startup stuff 2-4 months after it started. Ask PG) Later on it switched to the more generic "Things hackers are interested in" (Once again, I'm generalizing) So at the time, we were all swimming around in the question "How do we build things that people use a lot?" After a few years of that, I started wondering what would happen if we got what we wanted -- people using our stuff a lot without, perhaps, being able to look back years later and feel like they had spent their time wisely.
scottie_m 8y ago
I think the comparison to heroin is unhelpful for a start. People who are inclined to dismiss your concerns are given ammunition from the title alone, because it is after all, wildly hyperbolic. Then the first half of your piece is equal parts ahistoric and overly dramatic. Trying to associate social media with heroin and cocaine is a bad idea, it’s easily dismissed. While social media can be addictive, it’s nothing compared to either drug mentioned. People are not dropping out of life and into homelessness, crime, and an early grave because of FaceBook. Facebook is a good thing to avoid, it monetizes you, abuses you, and wastes your time. It’s still nothing like heroin or cocaine. Facebook and social media are unpleasant and lead to some really bizarre behavior, but I’m yet to hear of people losing their families and lives over it on anything like the regularity you’d expect from a peer of hard drugs. Social media, imo, tends to lead to a more homogenous and boring type of interaction, but again if that’s all you got from heroin it wouldn’t be the problem it is. Beyond that you lionize a time you clearly don’t know much about. Music went from being something where you actively paid close attention to a complex piece of art to just another sound in your environment. Music is all around us now – though we take it completely for granted. This may shock you, but there was never this time period of attentive bliss you describe. There was a lot of shitty music, ubiquitous and talentless buskers and amateurs, and the equivalent of pop music. Of course very little of that survives today, because we’ve selected for the most virtuoso, most entertaining and most memorable pieces of music from the past. Many people also really appreciate music today, and you simply gloss over them as if they didn’t exist. Reading your piece reminds me of people who think that disposable crap is a new invention, instead of realizing the survivorship bias inherent in that perspective. The disposable crap was disposed of while the bulletproof appliances and such, remain. That doesn’t mean that cheap blenders or clothing was just invented however, far from it. Instead of pearl clutching about a past that never existed as a motivation to discover a conscience, there are more pressing issues with tech. The immense amount of trash production and wasted energy is a problem, along with planned obsolescence. Something like Bitcoin which exists to enrich a few at the expense of burning energy wastefully is a problem. Treating people like guinea pigs for fun and profit, marketing gambling for children, hoovering up every iota of personal information and then storing it until it inevitably leaks is a problem. The transition of manned to unmanned combat is a huge problem. There are so many real, pressing concerns that require programmers to grow a conscience and some empathy, that histrionics about a lost past that never was feels like a self-serving distraction.
unicornporn 8y ago
> In 2019 multiple studies are showing that prolonged screen time has a damaging -- and perhaps permanent -- effect on developing brains Hi! I'd like to read those studies. Where should I look?

guicho271828 8y ago

First time reader. The definition of technology seems very narrow --- almost exclusive to the entertainment. I don't think e.g. an optimized GEMM on GPUs or SQL query would be covered in this article.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago
That's a great point. You're absolutely right. For context, initially HackerNews was a site for startups, so the topics were generally along the lines of "using tech to make something people want" (People will debate what the site was about. I came here for startup stuff 2-4 months after it started. Ask PG) Later on it switched to the more generic "Things hackers are interested in" (Once again, I'm generalizing) So at the time, we were all swimming around in the question "How do we build things that people use a lot?" After a few years of that, I started wondering what would happen if we got what we wanted -- people using our stuff a lot without, perhaps, being able to look back years later and feel like they had spent their time wisely.

scottie_m 8y ago

I think the comparison to heroin is unhelpful for a start. People who are inclined to dismiss your concerns are given ammunition from the title alone, because it is after all, wildly hyperbolic. Then the first half of your piece is equal parts ahistoric and overly dramatic. Trying to associate social media with heroin and cocaine is a bad idea, it’s easily dismissed. While social media can be addictive, it’s nothing compared to either drug mentioned. People are not dropping out of life and into homelessness, crime, and an early grave because of FaceBook. Facebook is a good thing to avoid, it monetizes you, abuses you, and wastes your time. It’s still nothing like heroin or cocaine. Facebook and social media are unpleasant and lead to some really bizarre behavior, but I’m yet to hear of people losing their families and lives over it on anything like the regularity you’d expect from a peer of hard drugs. Social media, imo, tends to lead to a more homogenous and boring type of interaction, but again if that’s all you got from heroin it wouldn’t be the problem it is. Beyond that you lionize a time you clearly don’t know much about. Music went from being something where you actively paid close attention to a complex piece of art to just another sound in your environment. Music is all around us now – though we take it completely for granted. This may shock you, but there was never this time period of attentive bliss you describe. There was a lot of shitty music, ubiquitous and talentless buskers and amateurs, and the equivalent of pop music. Of course very little of that survives today, because we’ve selected for the most virtuoso, most entertaining and most memorable pieces of music from the past. Many people also really appreciate music today, and you simply gloss over them as if they didn’t exist. Reading your piece reminds me of people who think that disposable crap is a new invention, instead of realizing the survivorship bias inherent in that perspective. The disposable crap was disposed of while the bulletproof appliances and such, remain. That doesn’t mean that cheap blenders or clothing was just invented however, far from it. Instead of pearl clutching about a past that never existed as a motivation to discover a conscience, there are more pressing issues with tech. The immense amount of trash production and wasted energy is a problem, along with planned obsolescence. Something like Bitcoin which exists to enrich a few at the expense of burning energy wastefully is a problem. Treating people like guinea pigs for fun and profit, marketing gambling for children, hoovering up every iota of personal information and then storing it until it inevitably leaks is a problem. The transition of manned to unmanned combat is a huge problem. There are so many real, pressing concerns that require programmers to grow a conscience and some empathy, that histrionics about a lost past that never was feels like a self-serving distraction.

unicornporn 8y ago

> In 2019 multiple studies are showing that prolonged screen time has a damaging -- and perhaps permanent -- effect on developing brains Hi! I'd like to read those studies. Where should I look?