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> First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then images with instagram. Now people want videos that they can consume in short bits of time en mass. What

> First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then images with instagram. Now people want videos that they can consume in short bits of time en mass. What you are describing is the continued fall to smaller and smaller bits of stimulation and information. I’m worried about the consequences of this on the human mind and humanity in general. Our tech is gradually eroding our ability to focus on anything for more than a few seconds. I don’t want a future that is some weird mix of Idiocracy and getting the Black Shakes from Johnny Mnemonic. We need people that aren’t easily manipulated by ads and disinformation campaigns and that can think long and clearly about something.

RandallBrown 7y ago
Videos encode way more information than a snippet of text. If anything, social media is moving the opposite way, where people are requiring more stimulation and information.
- thawaway1837 7y ago
  I think it’s somewhere in between. More stimulation but less information.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  More information, at least in the information-theory sense, but much less knowledge. I.e. videos are much less efficient than text, or even static pictures. Take a second of the most insightful video you can find, and in the same space, you could easily cram an entire textbook on the same topic, complete with high-resolution images.
  - asdff 7y ago
    Just pulling a transcript of a given video, timing your reading, and comparing it to the length of the video would make this evident. And that's if the information delivery is perfectly optimized, which in most cases it's not. Compare 1hr of CNN to a 1hr college political science lecture, for example.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  depends on the image and the text. teens dumping goo on their brother's head and then running away are essentially useless compared to a wiki paragraph on the holocaust.
- randompi 7y ago
  > people are requiring more stimulation and information Perhaps I'm old, but TikTok failed to get me back over and over again.
celim307 7y ago
i cant speak for anyone else, but as a heavy vine/snapchat user, it scratches a specific itch for effortless entertainment in the same vein as leaving the tv on in the background. I still consume long form media as much as i used to. but my turn-my-brain-off outlet is different
nbardy 7y ago
At the same time we have the rise of long form podcasts. Producing quite the opposite effect.
- m_ke 7y ago
  90% of podcasts these days are just people rambling on without much thought while trying to sell you something. I have a feeling that most people who listen to podcasts do so for background noise, as a way inject some dopamine into their boring commute or routine chores. I used to listen to podcasts a ton but switched to listening to lectures or conference talks.
  - asdff 7y ago
    I'm not sure why you've picked up downvotes, it's exactly right. Most podcasts, just like youtube videos, have matured to specific lengths optimized for interspersed advertising opportunities.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    At the same time, the criticism is useless without knowing the podcasts someone is listening to. Pretty big difference between listening to Wendy Williams vs, I don't know, philosophical debates and deep dives into history and all sorts of intellectually stimulating things. Most people I know including myself listen to the latter which is nothing short of welcome mind-expansion and I'm a more interesting person as a result of it. People listening to podcasts or reading books really aren't the people I'm worried about in the modern era.
    - m_ke 7y ago
      I mostly listened to software engineering radio, software engineering daily, talking machines, this week in machine learning, village global, freakonomics, econtalk and other similar tech and business shows. Most of the content in those shows is still fluff and nowhere near as information dense as a lecture from Stanford or MIT. Take talking machines as an example, an interview with a guy like David Blei will be very shallow and watered down for the general audience, I'd much rather listen to him give a lecture at a machine learning summer school.
153791098c 7y ago
there's that fag talk again
matthewmacleod 7y ago
This view seems like the usual textbook moral panic stuff. The people most "easily manipulated by ads and disinformation campaigns" certainly—at first glance—don't appear to be the same people who are most comfortable using modern media channels.
TremendousJudge 7y ago
>Our tech is gradually eroding our ability to focus on anything for more than a few seconds. real quotes from late 19th/early 20th century: https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/ >With the advent of cheap newspapers and superior means of locomotion... The dreamy quiet old days are over... For men now live think and work at express speed. They have their Mercury or Post laid on their breakfast table in the early morning, and if they are too hurried to snatch from it the news during that meal, they carry it off, to be sulkily read as they travel ... leaving them no time to talk with the friend who may share the compartment with them... The hurry and bustle of modern life ... lacks the quiet and repose of the period when our forefathers, the day's work done, took their ease... >So much is exhibited to the eye that nothing is left to the imagination. It sometimes seems almost possible that the modern world might be choked by its own riches, and human faculty dwindle away amid the million inventions that have been introduced to render its exercise unnecessary.
- Invictus0 7y ago
  I know people that cannot go 60 seconds without picking up their phone, with no purpose except to check for notifications that aren't there and then put it back down. Reposting a list of quotes from the past has no bearing on the present reality where people are really struggling to focus.
  - authoritarian 7y ago
    You say that "a list of quotes from the past has no bearing on the present reality" and then go on to say that "people are really struggling to focus" which is essentially the same point, or at least closely related, that the quotes from the xkcd are making. Why are you acting like the quotes are unrelated when they support what you're saying?
    - Invictus0 7y ago
      I think you're misunderstanding why OP posted the quotes. The quotes are mocking people that say that technology is making it harder for people to focus, because a hundred years ago people said the same thing about books and the telegraph etc.
xiphias2 7y ago
Idiocracity is based on the trend that has been a trend for a long time now: as we’re able to scale more in most industries, we need less people relative to the population in the work force, but the minimal intelligence required to fulfill those roles is growing. This is the reason that Silicon Valley is pushing minimal guaranteed income: rich people need to pay off people who they can’t provide a job for anymore.
peheje 7y ago
Some TikToks are highly creative, joy-inducing and a testament to being one happy human (or dog) anno 2019. I agree people also need to enjoy a lengthy book once, an inspiring piece of music or whatever floats your boat, but aren't you painting a too gloomy picture?
kingkawn 7y ago
We are all together solving something about our relationship to symbols. It may be painful to go through, but in the end humanity will be better off for all the hard work we who are here today have done by staring without pause at our phones.
mochris 7y ago
This is the same reason that comments should be abolished. Sites like HN encourage people to read extremely short responses to articles, instead of the full article itself. Similarly, they encourage people to let others determine what is worth reading, rather than making their own decisions.
pmoriarty 7y ago
"I don't want a future that is some weird mix of Idiocracy and getting the Black Shakes from Johnny Mnemonic. We need people that aren't easily manipulated by ads and disinformation campaigns and that can think long and clearly about something." Sadly, those kinds of people make some of the best consumers, and many online companies (from advertisers, to game developers, to news sites) are optimizing for that kind of addictive, short attention span engagement.

RandallBrown 7y ago

Videos encode way more information than a snippet of text. If anything, social media is moving the opposite way, where people are requiring more stimulation and information.

thawaway1837 7y ago
I think it’s somewhere in between. More stimulation but less information.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
More information, at least in the information-theory sense, but much less knowledge. I.e. videos are much less efficient than text, or even static pictures. Take a second of the most insightful video you can find, and in the same space, you could easily cram an entire textbook on the same topic, complete with high-resolution images.
- asdff 7y ago
  Just pulling a transcript of a given video, timing your reading, and comparing it to the length of the video would make this evident. And that's if the information delivery is perfectly optimized, which in most cases it's not. Compare 1hr of CNN to a 1hr college political science lecture, for example.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
depends on the image and the text. teens dumping goo on their brother's head and then running away are essentially useless compared to a wiki paragraph on the holocaust.
randompi 7y ago
> people are requiring more stimulation and information Perhaps I'm old, but TikTok failed to get me back over and over again.

celim307 7y ago

i cant speak for anyone else, but as a heavy vine/snapchat user, it scratches a specific itch for effortless entertainment in the same vein as leaving the tv on in the background. I still consume long form media as much as i used to. but my turn-my-brain-off outlet is different

nbardy 7y ago

At the same time we have the rise of long form podcasts. Producing quite the opposite effect.

m_ke 7y ago
90% of podcasts these days are just people rambling on without much thought while trying to sell you something. I have a feeling that most people who listen to podcasts do so for background noise, as a way inject some dopamine into their boring commute or routine chores. I used to listen to podcasts a ton but switched to listening to lectures or conference talks.
- asdff 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you've picked up downvotes, it's exactly right. Most podcasts, just like youtube videos, have matured to specific lengths optimized for interspersed advertising opportunities.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  At the same time, the criticism is useless without knowing the podcasts someone is listening to. Pretty big difference between listening to Wendy Williams vs, I don't know, philosophical debates and deep dives into history and all sorts of intellectually stimulating things. Most people I know including myself listen to the latter which is nothing short of welcome mind-expansion and I'm a more interesting person as a result of it. People listening to podcasts or reading books really aren't the people I'm worried about in the modern era.
  - m_ke 7y ago
    I mostly listened to software engineering radio, software engineering daily, talking machines, this week in machine learning, village global, freakonomics, econtalk and other similar tech and business shows. Most of the content in those shows is still fluff and nowhere near as information dense as a lecture from Stanford or MIT. Take talking machines as an example, an interview with a guy like David Blei will be very shallow and watered down for the general audience, I'd much rather listen to him give a lecture at a machine learning summer school.

153791098c 7y ago

there's that fag talk again

matthewmacleod 7y ago

This view seems like the usual textbook moral panic stuff. The people most "easily manipulated by ads and disinformation campaigns" certainly—at first glance—don't appear to be the same people who are most comfortable using modern media channels.

TremendousJudge 7y ago

>Our tech is gradually eroding our ability to focus on anything for more than a few seconds. real quotes from late 19th/early 20th century: https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/ >With the advent of cheap newspapers and superior means of locomotion... The dreamy quiet old days are over... For men now live think and work at express speed. They have their Mercury or Post laid on their breakfast table in the early morning, and if they are too hurried to snatch from it the news during that meal, they carry it off, to be sulkily read as they travel ... leaving them no time to talk with the friend who may share the compartment with them... The hurry and bustle of modern life ... lacks the quiet and repose of the period when our forefathers, the day's work done, took their ease... >So much is exhibited to the eye that nothing is left to the imagination. It sometimes seems almost possible that the modern world might be choked by its own riches, and human faculty dwindle away amid the million inventions that have been introduced to render its exercise unnecessary.

Invictus0 7y ago
I know people that cannot go 60 seconds without picking up their phone, with no purpose except to check for notifications that aren't there and then put it back down. Reposting a list of quotes from the past has no bearing on the present reality where people are really struggling to focus.
- authoritarian 7y ago
  You say that "a list of quotes from the past has no bearing on the present reality" and then go on to say that "people are really struggling to focus" which is essentially the same point, or at least closely related, that the quotes from the xkcd are making. Why are you acting like the quotes are unrelated when they support what you're saying?
  - Invictus0 7y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding why OP posted the quotes. The quotes are mocking people that say that technology is making it harder for people to focus, because a hundred years ago people said the same thing about books and the telegraph etc.

xiphias2 7y ago

Idiocracity is based on the trend that has been a trend for a long time now: as we’re able to scale more in most industries, we need less people relative to the population in the work force, but the minimal intelligence required to fulfill those roles is growing. This is the reason that Silicon Valley is pushing minimal guaranteed income: rich people need to pay off people who they can’t provide a job for anymore.

peheje 7y ago

Some TikToks are highly creative, joy-inducing and a testament to being one happy human (or dog) anno 2019. I agree people also need to enjoy a lengthy book once, an inspiring piece of music or whatever floats your boat, but aren't you painting a too gloomy picture?

kingkawn 7y ago

We are all together solving something about our relationship to symbols. It may be painful to go through, but in the end humanity will be better off for all the hard work we who are here today have done by staring without pause at our phones.

mochris 7y ago

This is the same reason that comments should be abolished. Sites like HN encourage people to read extremely short responses to articles, instead of the full article itself. Similarly, they encourage people to let others determine what is worth reading, rather than making their own decisions.

pmoriarty 7y ago

"I don't want a future that is some weird mix of Idiocracy and getting the Black Shakes from Johnny Mnemonic. We need people that aren't easily manipulated by ads and disinformation campaigns and that can think long and clearly about something." Sadly, those kinds of people make some of the best consumers, and many online companies (from advertisers, to game developers, to news sites) are optimizing for that kind of addictive, short attention span engagement.