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Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
3 times in SF this week, a Cruise AV has driven past my car and triggered my automatic windshield wipers, even though it was totally dry out. (probably the LIDAR interacting with wipers' infrared sensors).
Got me thinking about what unintended consequences can spring up because of new technologies. Anyone have other examples, current or historic?
- relaunched 7y agoTheir security posture is immature, from an enterprise perspective. Many enterprises use slack. Developers love slack. Want to build a slackbot? Build it with ngrok. https://api.slack.com/tutorials/tunneling-with-ngrok https://api.slack.com/tutorials/tunneling-with-ngrok The free version is easy to install, has no enterprise oversight controls and can be pretty dangerous when you are trying to secure a network.
- peterhadlaw 7y agoSemi-related to the Cruise AV, but should we be worried about a sudden increase in LIDAR everywhere from the perspective of protecting eyesight? I understand there are regulations and such to limit the "power" of the light, so just looking for more info.
- ISL 7y agoIf the vendors are complying with known safe-power limits (sub mW laser power), it should be fine. One should primarily be concerned with laser powers that unintentionally exceed design power, or if they're ultra-fast lasers, with the peak power.
- sylk 7y agoCause historically we can trust vendors, right guys?
- jrootabega 7y agoDo those limits take into account multiple sources hitting your eye at once? Maybe with laser pulses the odds of that happening for any length of time is nil
- nomadluap 7y agoThere's already been one allegation that a vehicle-mounted LiDAR unit has damaged a camera [1]. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/01/man-says-ces-lidars-laser-was-so-powerful-it-wrecked-his-1998-camera/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/01/man-says-ces-lidars-las...
- haylel 7y agoWhen you're about to get a message on your cellphone and it interferes with nearby speakers and makes weird chirping noises.
- officeplant 7y agoAh yes, unshielded speakers and cellphones. The terrible noise in the early 2000s letting me know my parents were calling the cellphone they gave me for college in order to force me to keep in touch.
- maest 7y agoThe scenario that you describe is one of those cases where the party you empathise with most changes as you grow older.
- joombaga 7y agoI've never understood why this happens. Is it my phone sort of ACKing the call back to the tower? Because it has to be my phone sending something back, right? Random cell signals are hitting the speakers all the time.
- joombaga 7y agohttps://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/39133 https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/39133
- iamben 7y agoSomething I've noticed a huge amount over the last couple of years in particular - no one has any change for the homeless / those on the streets / those collecting for charity. Contactless has been a 'thing' for a while now, but it really seemed to kick up a gear when phones and watches had wallets and the buses and a decent amount of restaurants went 'card only'.
- dylz 7y agoThe charity people here border on harassment, have card readers, physically try to stop you or block you, and apparently none of what you donate actually goes to the charity, it's mostly paid out in commissions to rent seekers.
- arkitaip 7y agoThis is how I imagined the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4CizzE-zZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4CizzE-zZo
- lovehashbrowns 7y agoAre you talking about the charity people with clipboards in SF? They're seriously the most aggressive people I've ever seen. I'm surprised they have card readers now. I think they used to just write your credit card details on a piece of paper.
- diego_moita 7y agoLike social networks breeding political stupidity, mob rule and demagoguery?
- ghoshbishakh 7y agoExactly. Political parties spend most on social networking teams now! look at India! Entire elections are based on fake news spread on social networks. Nobody cares about healthcare, economy, jobs and of course education. Obviously if you educate people then they will start judging everything rationally just like we are doing on this thread ;)
- joelaaronseely 7y agoClearly you are not one with the body. You must be purged! :)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoI don't believe any of these problems are unique to this state of technology. If you dig into the history you'll find that politics is frequently a very dirty and irrational business.
- danschumann 7y agoI'm miserable and all the tech that has "enabled me to do anything" has made everything seem arbitrary. If you can do anything, why do anything?
- Charlie_26 7y agoUhhh, can you elaborate on this? Tech has enabled you to do anything?
- xwdv 7y agoThere is so much tech in life, it’s hard to know where to even begin. Seems like every time you want to do something it starts with a google search on the best way to do it. If you don’t, you risk wasting a lot of time or money, and then people will call you an idiot for not googling it first, and sometimes the person calling you an idiot is your own self. Life has become nothing but a series of google searches and finding the best tech for the job, while finding the most efficient way to pay bills.
- abtinf 7y agoSo life was better before google—when there was still the risk of wasting time and money, and only limited means of research?
- xwdv 7y agoIt was probably better because at least you were doing the best you could with what you had. There was much self discovery just by living your life.
- danschumann 7y agoAnd people around you had relevance. Your librarian was relevant as a gatekeeper of information. Now we are isolated and even if we do get the best information, we are somehow not satisfied. People are becoming dumber as information is becoming more available, a paradox. Meanwhile, we are centralizing these institutions and therefore power brokers are being more disparate from the powerless, using the technologies that were supposed to give voices to the masses. Now the masses can enforce you to only speak in lock step with them.
- willj 7y agoEveryone is oblivious to their surroundings. Whether it’s because they’re looking down at their smartphone or listening to a podcast or music on their AirPods, people aren’t paying attention to what’s happening around them, and they are walking out into streets without looking for cars, assuming no one is coming. I bike most places, and the number of pedestrians (and other bicyclists!) who can’t hear my bike bell is astounding.
- dajohnson89 7y agogetting around in nyc is more difficult than it has to be, because of people looking down at their phones.
- djbrigidope 7y agoyou are supposed to slow down before running over people. bicycles are still vehicles.
- sideshowb 7y agoYou are also not supposed to step from sidewalk into road without looking.
- greggman2 7y agoIt's hard for me to have sympathy for cyclists as I see so many run red lights and plow directly through pedestrians even when the pedestrians have the right of way. Maybe that's a few bad apples but it happens enough that it feels like the norm. Yes, 2 wrongs to make a right. If the light is red and the pedestrian is crossing without looking then I'd also be upset at the pedestrian.
- alanbernstein 7y agoTry paying attention to cars running stop signs and red lights (and speeding!) some time. You might be surprised to realize how often you've ignored this happening.
- ratsimihah 7y agoI was just thinking on the tube how Steve Jobs wanted to put a computer on everyone's desks, but he ended up putting one in everyone's hands and now we're all crooked and staring down like Quasimodo.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amiga_500 7y agoComputers have made tracking huge quantities of debt feasible which itself is sold as collateral which exists only electronically, allowing private banks to issue usd credit irrespective of the fed. This has made land prices track productivity, leaving most on the breadline forever.
- kliao 7y agoHistorically, misinformation spread due to lack of reliable communications technology (news took a while to travel around the world). Now, misplaced trust in media and abuse of technology spread misinformation.
- ltbarcly3 7y agoI was just thinking about this the other day, in the context of ancient texts referring to things being written down. You come across phrases in ancient accounts like "it is written ....", and in a world where almost all information and news came from word of mouth and rumors, something being written down made it inherently more credible. Today everything is written down, much if not most of the information we receive is via written documents, especially online. There is a level of bias and intentional misleading that is often hard to believe. Hearing something from a well informed friend seems far more credible than a news story now, since you can't depend on journalists to research and relate the available information without intentionally withholding, minimizing, or amplifying to create a narrative that is in line with what they want people to believe. I'm not screaming 'fake news' here. An example would be an NPR story that claimed a certain person, previously employed in a professional field, was 'unable to find work' for 6 years. Clearly the person had struggled with substance abuse, but that was never mentioned, and the narrative was 'In This Economy' despite the fact that if you show up drunk to job interviews that is an essential fact in a human interest story about a person being unable to find work. The journalist and/or their editors wanted to write a story about how hard it is to find a job 'in this economy', so they hid facts that didn't reinforce that narrative.
- lostcolony 7y agoWell, "it is written" was also a statement about the credibility due to an inherent bias towards the educated. Yes, you can't necessarily trust a journalist...but you certainly can't trust a friend's opinion either; they aren't even expected to be well informed.
- ltbarcly3 7y agoI said "a well informed friend". Certainly it is a tautology that a 'well informed friend' can be expected to be 'well informed', no?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoMotion-sensing automatic doors can be opened by deer, bears (which has led to some excitement in hotels and hospitals), and even birds. I've seen birds that can activate the doors in the hardware store near me, and that know where the birdseed is on the shelves in the garden department.
- kylecazar 7y agoThe world's tourist must-see spots are seeing an unmanagable spike in foot traffic.
- qeternity 7y agoAs an expat all of my life, I’ve really noticed this in the last 5 years. It’s also extremely hypocritical because I find myself walking around in places I have lived before, or been to many times, and feeling angry at the “tourists” ruining it.
- buboard 7y agoAs someone who lives in a pop tourist place, my reaction is less about being angry, it s more ‘what the hell are they all doing here’. It feels like those lines outside shops on black friday that i used to see on US TV. How can it be ‘cool’ to travel when everybody’s doing it?
- qeternity 7y agoI grew up in West LA, which is now overrun with tourists, largely Asian. So I feel it both in places that I have a reason to be in, but also in places which I feel I'm more entitled to than others.
- 8ytecoder 7y agoCheaper air travel and the Airbnb effect. Without Airbnb especially there would have been a cap as set by the city using the total number of hotel rooms.
- newnewpdro 7y agoSocial media plays a huge role in compelling more people to travel, since advertising done by your peers has a much higher success rate.
- davidjnelson 7y agoScooters, scooters everywhere :-)
- cweathers30 7y agoI just saw a video of a woman getting hit by a bus because she had her headphones in and looking at her cell phone crossing a crosswalk. Not really her fault, but I guess I would have heard a bus coming.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nomadluap 7y agoI hope her employer had a bus factor > 1.
- carapace 7y agoToo soon.
- danieltillett 7y agoAs tragic as this is, how is this not 100% her fault. Was the bus running a red light?
- greenyoda 7y agoIn a crosswalk, pedestrians have the right of way. So if a driver hits someone in crosswalk while making a turn, the driver is legally at fault. (But that doesn't mean that it's a good idea for people to walk across a street without paying attention.)
- maxk42 7y agoInterest-driven communities online paired with censorship lead people to increasingly radical points of view. Before social media, people were forced to interact and get along with people with varying points of view. Now, we choose to isolate ourselves into groups of like-minded individuals where dissent is silenced, leading people to believe that extremism is normal.
- abtinf 7y agoSo the world was free of bigotry prior to social media? Does it matter what one is extreme about? Shouldn’t we be extreme on certain issues, like the difference between food and cyanide?
- ipython 7y agoIt's a matter of scale; before social media, small groups would be isolated due to difficulty in "finding" each other. Now it's just a quick google search away. The other part of that "scale" is that these fringe views are presented with the same facade of authority as a more mainstream view. Generally speaking, something like Google will present the search results in a non-biased way... so googling for "flat earth" will bring up links, just as "moon landing" would. So to a naive viewer, "Google" is approving of the idea of a "flat earth", if that makes sense...
- throwaway69173 7y agoSpotify’s advertisements in which millennials exclaim amazement at the idea of playing music without an internet connection. Probably accurate for some tiny portion, which is astounding no matter how small of a group that is.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- unlinked_dll 7y agoInternet usage starts with users querying information they want, and services learning/adapting to deliver information in a format/context based on their activity. This has created some stellar search tools, a personalized network of services and communities available to people, and made the internet a paradise for new content from all over the world. Despite that all the information in the world is available to us, we only seek out what we want to see/hear/read and then get fed new information based on those queries. It doesn't lead to free exchange of ideas and values, it has created polarized societies where we are digitally segregated by our own sense of identity and community. People talk a lot about the political side of this, the "echo chambers" online. But I think it's worse than that. We see racial segregation on Twitter, feedback loops of content on YouTube that reinforce themselves, news outlets tailoring their content for users that reach them from their own site and optimizing for usage metrics that feed usage metrics... and we all are in love with it. It reminds me of Farenheit 451 in the sense that this almost-dystopia wasn't created by some fascist dictator or single-party state; we built it ourselves. We wanted it. That's not to say there isn't beauty on the internet, and we live in an era where more people talk and share and love and fight more than ever with language and ideas. It's just a strange departure from where most futurists thought we were going to be.
- abtinf 7y ago> It doesn't lead to free exchange of ideas and values, it has created polarized societies Technology created polarized society? Before internet search, we were better educated and understood each other better?
- ltbarcly3 7y agoNewspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at least considered failures of journalism in hindsight. In the Soviet Union they kept a tight control on the media, and Pravda was controlled by the ruling party to amplify it's message as a tool of propaganda. It would ignore inconvenient facts and stories based on their propaganda value, or if something inconvenient was too well known to ignore it would mention it only to discredit it. Today many people get most of their news from sites like Breitbart or RawStory. Doing this is voluntarily signing up for Pravda like propaganda. Yes, we have a free society and you aren't restricted to a single source of news like Pravda, but if people intentionally and voluntarily limit themselves to a site that is manipulating stories in the same way as Pravda and for the same motivations, we just have two groups of oppositely propagandized people, and of course that will increase polarization. There is no expectation that these sites would uphold journalistic standards, be generally honest beyond when it is convenient, and their bias is considered a feature.
- imoverclocked 7y agoNoise. Auditory: I can't tell you how accustomed to hearing stuff constantly everyone is. Cars (even just the tires on a busy street), Air Handling, Refrigerators, Beeping timers (ovens/microwaves/calendar reminders). Visual: Web notifications, web advertisements, billboards, "news," spam phone calls/texts. Social: Many people have an expectation that sending a message entitles them to an immediate response. In the age of quick answers from Google, people often forget about slowing down for the speed of thought. Mental: We (humans) can only make so many decisions in a day yet we are overwhelmed with false dichotomies constantly in order to choose one or the other of basically the same thing.
- godelski 7y ago> Visual Or just the light pollution. I definitely think this has an affect on people. I used to live in AZ for awhile and the nights were so beautiful. I'd spend hours looking at the night sky. Now I'm in the PNW and almost never look up (something I've done pretty much my whole life). I'd think light pollution has similar effects as cloudy skies. I used to do some of my most creative thinking late at night staring at the stars. But maybe that's just a change in me. Maybe both.
- mauli 7y agoI came across more bird scare devices [0] lately and most are at ~19-23kHz at -20~30dB (personal measures, device ranges differ). I can hear them and it hurts. Fortunarely they are mainly only deployed near entrances and do not have a broad field of effect. Would be interesting to know how many people do not hear this and feel kinda weird/sick while standing at those places for a longer period of time. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_scarer#Ultrasonic_scarers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_scarer#Ultrasonic_scare...
- jackcodes 7y agoI’d run across these all over Tokyo, practically unavoidable on most walks. The worst ones were when you’d be queuing for a ramen for upwards of 30 minutes but you’d be unable to do anything about it.
- 7y ago
- capkutay 7y agowe're all going to have arthritis in our thumbs from typing on our phones so much. I got a hand MRI for a separate injury, but my doctor noticed I had early signs of arthritis at a relatively young age. it's a lot more common because of heavy smart phone usage.
- mooreds 7y agoPeople talking loudly to themselves on the street (if they have airpods in).
- krapp 7y agoI still sometimes have to remind myself that no, those people probably aren't crazy.
- MiddleEndian 7y agoThe weaknesses of the phone system are being exploited and exposed. Telemarketers have learned they can just put whatever they want on their caller ID with zero verification, including the phone numbers of random local individuals. If the FCC and/or the phone companies don't start forwarding originator information so spammers can effectively be blocked by any user, the phone system will (and deserves to) fail. At least among my friend group, most of us don't have each other's numbers, we communicate on chat apps.
- flyinghamster 7y agoIt's gotten worse lately. I'm seeing calls allegedly from Citi, Capital One, etc., that have the identical credit card scam spiel. They go nowhere (but get recorded), since I've used Asterisk to put a CAPTCHA in the way. My "landline" (actually VoIP now) stays blissfully quiet. If it actually rings, I know it's a human...
- lowpro 7y agoDo you have a link or guide on where to start with this? It sounds like something that would be really useful!
- logicalmonster 7y agoThe biggest societal altering impacts may be in terms of dating and reproduction. This has major cultural consequences. * There’s more than 1 reason for this, but approach patterns have changed. Men approaching women in real life is now rarer than it was in favor of online meeting through Apps. * Many relationships now happen based on online dating. In a sense, a series of algorithms are already dictating human reproduction. * Before Apps, people mainly shacked up with equivalent looking people at a fairly young age, but today women have access to the best men in town they’d otherwise never have a chance to meet. The dating marketplace is pretty skewed with roughly 80% of women chasing after 20% of men. Elite men can get dozens of sex partners. Women can usually get sex, but not commitment from lots of men they like. Average or subpar men are essentially invisible in the dating market as evidenced by declining rates of sex by most people. This causes a lot of problems in society as many men drop out and exist as gamers in a dull existence or turn to drugs due to lack of ability to find a connection. * Dating Apps are part of the reason that birth rates are generally dropping in first world countries: at least it can’t help. Alpha males are enjoying life shacking up with the women all chasing after them. Women while away their younger years in careers and chasing after unrealistic men before settling at an older age and maybe having 1 kid. This is a major first world impact because demographics are destiny. As far as cultural impacts go, can’t go bigger than the consequences to reproduction changing.
- maest 7y ago> Average or subpar men are essentially invisible in the dating market as evidenced by declining rates of sex by most people That sounds circumstantial at best and in no way definitive proof. > Dating Apps are part of the reason that birth rates are generally dropping in first world countries That definitely requires some study before being considered true. > Women while away their younger years in careers and chasing after unrealistic men before settling at an older age and maybe having 1 kid. I'm not sure how career factors into all of this; I don't want to strawman you, but your phrasing implies that you dissaprove of the trend. Then, is the implication of what you say that women should focus less on career and dating when they're young and instead focus on getting married early and having multiple children? Separately, how is only having one child necessarily a bad thing?
- 7y ago
- lewiscollard 7y agoOptimising for "engagement". I don't think, at least to start with, that Machiavellian intentions were behind it. But it turned out that optimising for the thing that got the most likes, the most retweets, the most emotional reactions, and the most views from people was a shit way of deciding what information should propagate the furthest. That is a paperclip maximiser. I don't think we, collectively, have fully come to terms with how damaging it is.
- cellularmitosis 7y agoThere was a great series of talks a few years ago called “is anything worth maximizing?”. Unfortunately, the videos seem to be down, but his medium post is still up: https://medium.com/what-to-build/is-anything-worth-maximizing-d11e648eb56f https://medium.com/what-to-build/is-anything-worth-maximizin...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- open-source-ux 7y agoThe internet has enabled developers to track user behaviour in apps and on websites on an industrial scale. And they've done it so successfully and implemented it so widely that the idea of tracking user behaviour in your app or on your website is now considered an expected and completely normal practice. Of course, when it's developers on the receiving end of such tracking they will complain loudly (as they did recently about GitLab). A reflection of the sheer hypocrisy that runs right through programming profession.
- sethammons 7y agoAs tech gets more and more advanced and we get higher and higher levels of abstraction, I've noticed more and more programmers just don't understand _what_ their code is doing. There can be a lack of understanding of how calls translate to system calls and machine instruction. The abstraction is good, it allows you to do more and do it quickly. But when you don't understand what the abstraction is, then you are programming by coincidence and errors are more confusing than they should be.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoI should write a medium article on the questions we asked during interviewing and what the success rate was for each question (spoiler: it was depressing).
- sethammons 7y agoI'd be interested in that!
- jlelonm 7y agoDo it! Perhaps give us a preview?
- genidoi 7y agoI think that's more of an emergent behavior of modern languages being much more accessible to the "masses". If you can write enterprise code in C, it's likely you're an experienced developer. The same isn't true for Python since it's relatively easy to be able to write something useful.
- t34543 7y agoLack of patience. We’re living in a instant gratification society now.
- agnimurthy 7y agoThe platform economics of streaming services incentivizes musicians to release a larger quantity of short, catchier singles that work well in playlists, instead of putting out a sonically diverse album.
- notelonmusk 7y agoThis. Erosion of quality in any kind of art. It's cheaper to do 3d movies than animate. It's easier to sell simpler ideas than a complicated story with a deeper meaning. You also see this in music with stuff like autotune.
- Eremotherium 7y agoAt the same time it's never been easier for producers of niche art to find their audience and capitalize on it, simply because the cost of production and distribution is nearing zero and there are basically no more gatekeepers (in the traditional sense).
- HankB99 7y agoI have a small device in my pocket that provides access to nearly the sum total of human knowledge. I use it to get into pointless arguments with people I don't know and look at pictures of cats. (I wish I could claim that as original but it is something I read on the Internet. Between cats. :-/ )
- 11thEarlOfMar 7y agoLol, I've been telling my kids for years, "I hold in my hand the accumulated knowledge of mankind."
- minxomat 7y agoTry telling a kid you're older than Google.
- omarchowdhury 7y agoWell, you hold access to it, not the knowledge itself.
- dorgo 7y agoYou don't have a copy of wikipedia on your phone?
- omarchowdhury 7y agoWikipedia doesn't include everything, but I get your point.
- platz 7y agoAre you absolutely sure those arguments are pointless
- slx26 7y agomagnificent bait
- 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago'I'm being tracked' paranoia. I have to force myself to stop thinking about the ways may daily activities can be tracked. I find myself feeling increasingly paranoid, especially when reminded that my actions are available to faceless people and how they help to train systems that then exploit my 'humanness'. In fact, I imagine they will get so good that they not only exploit me, but use that very humanness to veil the fact they are exploiting me! Now, back to re-watching Silicon Valley before the season premier.
- greggman2 7y agoYes! I hate being tracked watching videos. I have a self identity I want to put forward. I hate being judged differently based on what I watch. For this reason there are plenty of shows I don't watch via streaming. If I really want to watch I'll find another way. If it's youtube I'll do it not logged in (it's possible it's still attributed to me but I doubt it). It's illegal for a video rental company to share your watch list. I'm not sure that covers Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Youtube, etc.. I suspect they don't share the list though, they just put you in categories and sell marketing to those categories. That still bugs me since I'm being judged. OSes and stores spying on app usage is the same. I've never checked out any of the more risque games or VR apps because I'll be tracked.
- JDiculous 7y agoDepression. People are spending the majority of their lives staring at a screen, and then wondering why they're depressed. In the moment it might not feel lonely. Exchanging DMs and posting on Reddit / HN / social media might feel like real communication. But ultimately there's a sense of emptiness to it, and it can't substitute real flesh-to-flesh human connection. But it feels like we're always expected to be on our "grind", always bettering ourselves in an increasingly competitive labor market, so it's harder to go offline and just enjoy life because there's always that lingering sense of guilt that one is being left behind in our collective arms race to...nowhere.
- WilliamEdward 7y agoThis is the exact position i am in right now. I crave the outside world and human contact like a drug. I am not clinically depressed, just in a state of constant longing for social interaction. I keep telling myself my work will allow me to one day enjoy the outside, ironic really.
- shantly 7y agoIf you don't have to have home Internet service and an Internet-connected phone for work... shut off those services. It's fine. There's more stuff to do without the Internet than a person can reasonably do, anyway, even if you're pretty picky.
- greggman2 7y agoI find that advice hard to accept. I'm older so I spent plenty of time as an adult without the internet (unless you count BBSes). I use the internet to find things to do. Meetups to go to, events on facebook, events and parties friends invite me to, restaurants to go do, etc... I don't know how I would do it without the internet at this point. Maybe it used to be I'd look in the local paper like SF Weekly or LA Weekly but I live in a place that doesn't have those anymore and AFAIK even those are a pale version of what they were in the 80s and 90s
- 7y ago
- tropo 7y agoYounger people are less likely to be able to deal with directories. (er, "folders", and get off my lawn) They are also less clear about what is on the local machine. They use iOS and Android. They don't use a file manager, and certainly don't use a command line. Chromebooks are now common in education. Stuff goes on the Google drive. This is causing trouble when these people end up needing to use traditional desktop software in college or in the workplace. They have trouble with saving files, moving files, and making backups.
- blendo 7y agoThey just haven't yet figured out everything behind ./a.out
- chiefalchemist 7y agoHow "personalization" and "increasing engagement" has created echo chambers and a horrific level of confirmation bias.
- tumblerz 7y agoI do not know how to start with this. Reading through the comments, however, is enjoyable :) my short and random list of less important things: a) annoyingly difficult to leave a window slightly open on an otherwise locked vehicle (live in desert). b) lack of control over raw data on instrumentation due to gui and locked code. impacts science...wherein people are not field and not CS. c) wanton disregard for self-image due to perceived shield of teh webs. vast majority of us do not know how exposed we are. d) total collapse of previously accepted informational authority. e) we need societal help, but we dont know why or how.
- nperez 7y agoFor me, tech has turned into a crutch when I don't know what to do. I've caught myself in the middle of automatic behavior and it's a bit scary - opening Reddit or HN, closing it because I've already read everything on the front page, then opening it again a few seconds later without even thinking about it. I wonder what I would be doing without it. Creating art? Going out? I'd have to do something. It's something I want to explore more. Maybe I'll schedule just an hour each day where every device is turned off.
- mherdeg 7y agoYishan Wong's response to that worry starts out: > The pre-internet era was boring. Some may say that it was just as stimulating but in different, more "vibrant, outdoorsy" ways, but they are wrong. I have lived in both and the internet definitely makes life more interesting. In fact, combining the outdoors with the internet is one of life's greatest pleasures. https://www.quora.com/How-did-people-waste-their-time-in-the-pre-Internet-era/answer/Yishan-Wong https://www.quora.com/How-did-people-waste-their-time-in-the... I'm not sure I'm convinced but it was an interesting very short essay.
- jakeinspace 7y agoThis implies boredom is inherently bad. As a child, a lot of creative play came from boredom. Of course, we're all bound to lose some of that as we mature, but I can't help but feel that the availability of cheap distraction in the form of boundless information is allowing me to sabotage myself.
- dcolkitt 7y agoI think our relationship with boredom over the past 30 years mirrors that of hunger post-industrial revolution. Humans evolved in environments where both calories and information were very sparse. Natural selection encouraged a continious psychological drive to seek those resources whenever and wherever possible. Over-consuming food or stimulus was such a rare condition that we have very few naturally in-built mental mechanisms to avoid it. And then all of a sudden our environment drastically changed. Sometime in the 20th century the central risk related to food went from starvation to obesity. In the 21st century the central risk of stimulation has gone from mind-atrophying boredom to compulsive zombie-like wire-heading. To resist obesity we had to re-evaluate our relationship with the feeling of hunger. Always giving into our base impulse would mean that we gorge on calorically dense, hyper-palatable, nutritionally poor food from morning to night. Modern people had to learn that feeling a little hungry sometimes is okay. It's necessary for a baseline level of healthy physiology, and actually not that unpleasant when you get used to it. I think we have to re-learn the same lesson with boredom. The skeptics are right. The average level of moment-to-moment boredom in 1980 was extremely high, and well past the point of necessity or even marginal benefit. But virtually no one with a smartphone ever experiences anything like 1980 boredom on a daily basis. While a lot of boredom is bad, we have to learn that a little bit of boredom is necessary for healthy cognitive and emotional functioning.
- carapace 7y agoNot exactly the same kind of thing, maybe, but I love London's accidental solar furnace. "This London skyscraper can melt cars and set buildings on fire" https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/london-skyscraper-can-melt-cars-set-buildings-fire-f8C11069092 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/london-skyscrap...
- golemotron 7y agoThe Gutenberg Press led to the Protestant Reformation.
- krapp 7y agoI'm sitting in front of a device that will let me peruse what is practically the collected sum of all human knowledge, play all the games, watch all the movies, listen to all the music, communicate in realtime in multimedia with anyone, anywhere in the world, almost all for free, and will send a pizza to my house if I'm hungry. And I'm still bored.
- drdeadringer 7y agoPerhaps an evolution of the "true joke" that there are 1500 television channels and nothing to watch.
- gao8a 7y agoA resurgence of obsolete analog things
- ngovihungpt 7y agoVery good
- jkhdigital 7y agoDNA tests exposing family secrets that normally people would take to the grave.
- greggman2 7y agoIs that a unintended consequence or an intended consequence? Seems intended to me.
- Dowwie 7y agoI've used Google maps directions assistance for many trips but still enjoy driving somewhere unfamiliar the old fashioned way: using written directions, paying attention, and maintaining a sense of location. I don't remember the feelings associated with driving the old fashioned way. Clearly, driving assistance technology has made driving much less stressful, but also prevents people from acquiring important navigation skills.
- 40four 7y agoI've heard this topic come up before. I belive it is interesting and valuable to think about. I don't have much to contribite of the top of my head, but I did stumble across this blog a while back (it might have actually been from here on HN, don't remember) that explores this very topic. It's even named after it :) maybe other will enjoy it. I like the author's writing style, usually a pleasure to read. https://unintendedconsequenc.es https://unintendedconsequenc.es
- paulorlando 7y agoHey, glad you like my writing!
- 40four 7y agoThere he is!
- sjg007 7y agoFacebook has amplified negativity. I never thought it would be used to develop psychological profiles and the "Russians to elect Trump". Waze and GPS has ruined local neighborhoods and the sense of direction. New kinds of addictions due to instant gratification. Lack of social skills and engagement.
- flyinghamster 7y agoOne of the big things for me is the demise of trustworthiness in just about everything. Extremely cheap phone calls plus Caller ID spoofing has made the telephone almost useless (raise your hand if you only answer callers in your contact list!), email has never been trustworthy, and the internet has made it possible for hoaxes to spread farther and faster than ever.
- muzani 7y agoThere's an app for that: Truecaller. It crowdsources who is calling.
- jmkni 7y agoThere was a news story recently about a journalist who got outed by Truecaller, ended up putting her at risk, I’ll try and find it Edit: https://privacyinternational.org/case-study/2997/betrayed-app-she-had-never-heard-how-truecaller-endangering-journalists https://privacyinternational.org/case-study/2997/betrayed-ap...
- yellow_lead 7y agoAnd adds all your contacts with a misclick.
- munmaek 7y agoWhy would I hand over my contact info to some app?
- muzani 7y agoBecause everyone else has done it for you. It's no worse than LinkedIn but actually useful.
- Deimorz 7y agoThis is a good article on that topic: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-made-dupes-cynics-of-us-all/ https://www.wired.com/story/internet-made-dupes-cynics-of-us... > The internet is increasingly a low-trust society—one where an assumption of pervasive fraud is simply built into the way many things function.
- notelonmusk 7y agoUnnecessary consequence: assuming what is around you as the norm. Like communication across the globe and having a social media account is as common as toasting bread (see the irony in the last part?).
- notelonmusk 7y agoCommoditization of human behavior
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- gorgoiler 7y agoJourney time calculations in Google maps, Uber etc. mean no one I know is ever on time. If you need to be somewhere at 8:30 and the journey “takes 17 minutes”, one psychologically sets 8:13 as the deadline for leaving the house. You pick up your keys at 8:13, actually leave a few minutes later, hit traffic or take a wrong turn or two, and end up crossing the threshold at your destination fifteen minutes late. It’s no big deal and quite a grumpy old man thing to say, and I also don’t know if tech is the root cause, but squeezing travel into unrealistically small and algorithmically created windows of time has killed most people’s sense of punctuality, including mine if I’m not careful.
- trianglem 7y agoI feel exactly the opposite. Google's estimates are usually accurate down to a couple of minutes for me.
- cheschire 7y agoYeah I wish there was a "door-to-door" buffer that was enabled by default. I don't think a lot of people are ever taught the concept of backwards planning.
- busterarm 7y agoMy Uber estimates usually end up being half as long as the trip actually takes in NYC anyway.
- fouc 7y agoI always have to buffer it, but I never quite know how much to buffer. Usually I add 5-10 minutes to the number. Or round it up.
- winrid 7y agoGoogle should calibrate it by how long it takes to leave your house :)
- tlrobinson 7y agoOr cross reference calendar events with directions lookups and actual arrival times, and if you’re consistently late then overestimate the time.
- muzani 7y agoWe've learned that better tools doesn't actually create more productivity. Lots of people talk about how they dread email. A singular mega tool like Facebook or Evernote isn't great. Lots of disparate little tools isn't much better. We've learned that data is unreliable. The highest click through rates come from nudity, or totally gross things like gore and trypophobia triggering holes. The highest CTR on text comes from well, clickbait. At this point everyone realizes this but some still don't notice that data-driven decisions optimizes for weird things. IOT doesn't scale as well as we thought, because hardware doesn't scale at the rate of web software that we're used to. So hardware companies do more poorly than expected. Replace "hardware" with anything else that's hard to upgrade, and you get software-other hybrids like Uber and WeWork which didn't scale as well as anticipated.
- kkarakk 7y agoIn my experience, hardware scales exponentially. Until business figures out a "need" for all the extra data they have they tend to under value IOT and use it counter productively - like monitoring employees in draconian ways. There are lots of efficiencies that only show up once you monitor equipment for a couple of years but project leads don't really have that kind of time to show benefits
- concordDance 7y ago> We've learned that better tools doesn't actually create more productivity. Lots of people talk about how they dread email. A singular mega tool like Facebook or Evernote isn't great. Lots of disparate little tools isn't much better. I'm struggling to figure out what you mean by this. Obviously it's not literally true (I've saved my colleagues thousands of hours with some of the tools I've made), but I can't figure out what else you could mean.
- muzani 7y agoI think it's more like some people walk in the office, comment and tag on Trello, reply emails, deal with messages on Slack, convert and forward files on Dropbox. Then it's lunch. After lunch, they reply to some more emails, take a meeting on Zoom (waiting half an hour for that one guy to fix his microphone). Then they have 1 hour of work before the evening scrum stand-up, which is done on Slack or Zoom because half the team is remote. But the CEO doesn't use Slack and his inbox is always full, so we forward him a report on WhatsApp, which has to be converted to PDF, which he then manually puts in his Prezi presentation for a client meeting tonight.
- aaron695 7y agoBy allowing Democracy to be implemented better, it's worse.
- bryanmgreen 7y agoGood comments from personal perspectives. From a professional one, an absolute uncontrollable addiction to unprecedented amounts of data. I'm not much of a Star Wars fan, so forgive me if my analogy is a little off, but here it goes... It's like the Force. Everyone wants it but few can handle it. Of the few who can, the ones who use it for good are constantly fighting a battle against those who wield it recklessly or with malice. And with modern infrastructure, that data can captured and leveraged in astonishingly quick ways that make it very hard to stop.
- mattrp 7y agoUpgrading to ios 13 and realizing they broke find my iPhone. It used to be I would log in to find my wife’s phone the half dozen times a day she’s forget where she put it. Now... I have to go to iCloud.com in a browser... another irony- her credentials are stored in my passwords whereas the old find my iPhone had no option but to forget credentials...
- mikestew 7y agoI just checked to make sure: yup, I still see all of my wife’s devices in Find My. So it’s not broken out of the box. You did see the new Devices tab at the bottom, right?
- mattrp 7y agoIs she on the same iCloud login or her own?
- mikestew 7y agoHer own iCloud account that is part of a Family. So yes and no? Yes, she has her own account, but no, because she’s also under the umbrella of my account (“Family”). But it has always been this way, yes? One must be under the Family umbrella to see the devices of others?
- mattrp 7y agoThat’s the distinction - we didn’t put her account under the family plan. I must truly be an edge case then!
- mikestew 7y agoI was about to ask, “how would you find her phone if she’s not in ‘The Family’?” And it occurs to me that you probably would enter her creds into Find My Phone, then find her phone. Yeah, that was broken from the start IMO. Though the current model breaks your previous flow, umm, maybe use it as intended (and the way it should have been to begin with) and just use the Family feature? Anyway, probably time for me to let this one go, I don’t even remember the original issue without backtracking up thread. :-)
- corodra 7y agoProgress before people. While the Industrial Revolution is the accepted era as the real beginning of progress before people, I feel the new age of technology will make the Industrial Revolution look like an humanitarian endeavor without a PR team, in comparison. In 2 or 3 decades, we'll look back and at the Industrial Revolution as good old times, even with all its utter failures. I'm sad to see that people don't see beyond modern PR. Even with the recent Silicon Valley scandals and failures... people say they don't believe in religion... but they traded one religion for another. They all pray and tithe to the silicon valley titans and think that's okay.
- sidcool 7y agoTech addiction. Information addiction. Addiction to HN, TechCrunch and Elon Musk. I spend more time dreaming about tech than actually doing anything about it..
- Animats 7y agoArbitrary censorship is OK now. Services do it. Schools do it. Governments do it.
- gitgud 7y agoThe rise of crypto-currency had the unintended result of getting people into investing, rather than starting a new currency people would use...
- kgc 7y agoHead horns and narrower elbows: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190610-how-modern-life-is-transforming-the-human-skeleton https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190610-how-modern-life-...
- amatic 7y agoIt seems most of the comments are about negative unintended consequences; but most positive consequences also might have been unintended.
- paulorlando 7y agoGreat question. I've been writing about this broad topic for a while. There are 50+ examples here: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/ I hope you enjoy reading them. (One of my favorites was on AVs.)
- mattlondon 7y agoMy favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assuming current children innately understand the current tech) Yet while today's kids may know how to stab at a screen to get videos of Peppa pig to play, there are people starting to come through to their mid and late teens who don't know how to use a mouse and keyboard with any level of dexterity, or don't know what a "file" is or what folders/directories are etc because that is all hidden away on an iPad. As a result they struggle to do even the most basic tasks that we all take for granted... and they don't get taught because everyone thinks they already know it having grown up with an iPad in their pram. I chuckle to my self sometimes when I see a toddler walk up to a TV or video advert and try touching it a few times, then walk away confused because what they thought was a touch screen isn't doing anything when they touch it. Fascinating.
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- tracer4201 7y agoNot a parent yet, but I certainly don’t plan on giving my kid a touch device... certainly not with internet access. I grew up using the internet as a 90s kid. Today, the internet is even more messed up.
- danieldk 7y agoOur 5yo has an iPod Touch to play music. But she also has a Linux PC (she enjoys typing things and playing gcompris). But probably our best purchase is a Micro:Bit. Her programs are still simple, but it’s clear how much she enjoys being creative and that she can make the Micro:Bit do what she wants. We are not forcing her to use tech in any way. The Linux PC and Micro:Bit are just there and it’s up to her own curiosity to explore them when she feels like it. I think the problem is that TV and iPads are convenient for parents. You can put your kid behind one, and they’ll occupy themselves for hours. Whereas with real computers, Micro:Bits, or even Lego, you have to help them understand.
- mattkevan 7y agoThat software and tools built by idealists with the aim of increasing personal freedom is being used to create the greatest, most comprehensive system of surveillance and control the world has ever seen.
- ksec 7y agoUSB-C, the intention of one port to rule it all leads to 5 different cables using the same port all supporting different set of spec and functions. Or actually using something similar / variation of USb-C Plug but does not actually confine to any USB spec at all, aka Nintendo Switch. Leading to Powering and Display in the same port ( aka Thunderbolt ) which is great in theory and idea, in practice there are much higher failure rate of frying the CPU or display controller for all sort of reasons. USB-C could have worked if we have much more stringent spec, and force only two types of cable, Thin for anything below 25W, and Thick for heavy duty with 100W. Unfortunately USB4 doesn't want to be a better spec. There are two things I hope Apple will never adopt at its current form, that is AV1 and USB-C. And it looks like Apple is making great decisions on the two so far.
- pritambaral 7y agoWhat's wrong with AV1?
- ludwigvan 7y agoProductivity tools. You end up being more productive and finishing things faster; but most of the time, that ends up in no decrease in the time you spend on working stuff since the system quickly adapts to your new productivity level and you still spend all your time working. Unless you are the one taking the majority of the surplus of your actions, which is rarely the case in a capitalist society, it is a dreadful feeling. The end feeling is alienation followed by depression.
- muffelsong 7y agoThat orchestration technologies like k8s and OpenShift generally make services less stable and less performant. IMO not an unexpected consequence, but clearly an unintended one. I guess this would not happen if people were to use the above technologies with stateless services only, but they don't because the majority of articles, blogs and documentation on the subject leads people to believe that using network based storage for your io intensive state full services is good practice.
- buboard 7y ago- Technical: I hate when i get a call on skype and 2 computers and a phone start ringing in concert. And this is default behavior that cant be turned off. I think a lot of apps do that - Apps that spam your contacts list and notifications that keep coming even when you closed the app. In the name of dumbproofing everything we ve made it hard to keep secrets secret - Probably not getting out of the house as much - An anxiety with people's public image, e.g. not being seen in any picture breaking out of your curated public character. This is something that young people obsess over, while previous generations wouldn't give a toss really. - An extension of this and porn is public nudity / the end of nudism as culture
- cellularmitosis 7y ago...and the other devices continue to ring after you’ve answered the call :(
- odiroot 7y agoI'm out of the dating game (thank god) but I noticed dating apps completely ruined dating in all other areas as well. This is something both my male and female associates complain about.
- karmakaze 7y agoNot so much new tech, but I was out on the deck really late in the summer and heard a horrible sound like a dying alien. After sorting through the noise, I finally recognized it as a mocking bird doing a very bad imitation of a car alarm. I've heard good ones but this was just sounded sickly--perhaps it was blending different types of alarms together.
- roarl 7y agoMaybe this is me getting old(er), but personal unintended consequences is how little I care about new tech, especially the focus of mobile phones and how expensive they have gotten. Not only have I reached a point where I am actively reducing the amount of devices I have and different types of software. This also extends to turning off any kind of notification etc, very few things are important enough to disrupt my chain of thought at all, none when on a regular basis. One of my other gripes is the dumbing down of software, where everything is so simplified that doing your own backups, or finding any kind of backups of a kind is just incredible inconvenient or impossible. I grew up in the 90s (born mid 80s) and I long for that era of computing in terms of my relationship to it. While I absolutely know that I am looking at this with heavy, rose-tinted goggles, but life without the Internet was better. This is in the context of distraction, because the Internet has become the distraction-enabler through mobile phones, iPads etc. While it has enabled communication, it also enabled distraction. I'd wager that the personal productivity and/or happiness is severely reduced for a large amount of people and companies, due to "abusing the web". Oh, I also never use my smartphone. I can talk with my friends for hours on it, but other than a few things here and there, I barely use it. But what I hate is the expectation that one should be available and accessible basically all the time. Friends and family have gotten used to my quirks, but I still feel the pressure of being available when the phone is close by.
- nc30 7y agoThe obsession to make everything mobile first. But mostly that mobile means google or apple approved. I have lost count of the number of times I was unable to access my revolut or N26 bank accounts due to some android app updates that for some reason do not work without google play services. I can't understand how investors still put money on this, how banking regulators don't put a stop on that, or how can people use these "banks" as their main accounts. Plus the fact that there is no easy way to contact them (phone, email) if you are unable to login through their _mobile_ app! (I mention banking apps because they seem more serious, but this happens with all sorts of services with a "mobile" app)
- hullsean 7y agoThe concept of “literacy” is relative to begin with.
- api 7y agoHere's a positive one: smart phones with maps have helped bring about the EV revolution. I got an EV recently and quickly noted how annoying to near impossible finding chargers would be without an app.
- xk3 7y agoI don't really see how this works at all... people would use paper maps or mapquest if personal GPS devices and smartphones didn't exist (Also a full replacement of gas cars to EV will require 96% of all known Nickel Earth deposit so it is definitely not "the solution" to the energy/resource/transportation problem--buses are)
- buboard 7y agooh and people can now work remotely. this was an early promise of the internet that people had kind of given up on , but it came back serendipitously with improved tech.
- danbolt 7y agoMore and more video games require an internet connection and server to be playable. They can't be archived or revisited in the same way that an old Nintendo ROM can be. When World of Warcraft rereleased their "classic" version, there was a lot of dialogue of what that classic experience was and what warranted revising. How could a computer game historian play 2009's Farmville in 2109?