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> What people desire from technology is well documented and can be summed up with a series of buzzwords. The difficulty isn’t knowing what society wants, it is

by tyre 6y ago

> What people desire from technology is well documented and can be summed up with a series of buzzwords. The difficulty isn’t knowing what society wants, it is knowing the path to get there. > What do we want from our technology? > We want the right to change providers. > We want the right to protect personal data. > We want the right to verify. > We want the right to not be tracked. > We want the right to access. It is well documented that this is not at all what people desire from technology. What people buy directly contradicts this. People _could_ use PGP. They _could_ use strong passwords. They _could_ move to defederated social networks. They _could_ lobby their congressional representatives to break up Apple because their walled garden is a vertical monopoly that harms consumers.* They could do all sorts of things, but they do not. The trade-offs are not worth it to "people". * I don't believe this argument, but it is one.

animal_spirits 6y ago
I don't follow these types of arguments that the market is an true indicator of what people actually desire. If you ask anyone on the street if they would like any of these things out of technology they would unanimously say yes. But I agree it is not worth the trade-offs to actually fight for these things for most people. It doesn't mean these things are not desired, it is just that other things are desired more. Also, why do you put the word people in quotations? Just because most aren't interested in pursuing technological freedoms doesn't make them less of a people.
- tyre 6y ago
  oh I put it in quotations because I was quoting the word the author used. I didn't mean it as "these so-called 'people'", but reading it back I can see how it could read that way. To your first point, I think what people buy does have a reasonable correlation with what they want when there are other options. Taking the costs into account is of course part of the calculation. "They desire it but only if it is free and without any trade-offs whatsoever" isn't a very useful definition of "want".
- njharman 6y ago
  > If you ask anyone The world makes more sense when you learn that what people say and what they do are almost never the same. This is why markets and other analysis of behavior are greater predictors than polls or surveys or esp anecdotes
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    Its more complex than that. People aren't given a choice of "This is the pixel phone with spyware and this is the pixel phone without spyware, they cost the same and are functionally identical" They are shown a pixel and nothing is said of privacy, and then if they know to dig deeper and find an option with more privacy but much more expensive and lacking massive amounts of features. In some cases its impossible to avoid a trade-off. A bigger battery will result in a bigger phone so people who say the would buy a bigger battery phone end up not doing that. But for privacy, there doesn't have to be a trade off.
  - mola 6y ago
    Why do you think what people do is a better indication of what they want as oppose to what they say they want? For example, some addict wants to quit, but continue to abuse. I think a lot of modern tech is designed to make us addicts. So it's pretty apt example. And of course, using the market as the only indication of what people want is creating incentives that optimize for addiction.
  - derbOac 6y ago
    But revealed choice isn't a true indication of preference if the options to choose from don't allow for expression of preference. The market isn't some neutral A/B test because the seller is incentivized to manipulate A and B. It's more of a market game situation, where buyer choice says as much about seller preference as it does buyer preference at some level.
- usefulcat 6y ago
  Talk is cheap. If you want to know what people really value, pay attention to what they do, not to what they say.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    Caveat: this only works when people can have/do what they really want. Ex. In a world where 99% of people haven't even heard of a smartphone that doesn't use Android or iOS, you can't tell if people value things that neither platform provides.
    - WJW 6y ago
      Fair enough. OTOH huge swathes of the dev community, who DO know about the alternatives, still default to iPhones and Androids all the time.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    Desires are expensive. Looking at what people do isn't as great an indicator of what they want to do as you might think it is.
    - usefulcat 6y ago
      'Desires' taken out of context are also not very meaningful (e.g. "if money were no object.." type speculations). Cost, particularly relative to means, being a prime example of such context.
- jaredklewis 6y ago
  I am not on the street and no one asked me, but things have tradeoffs. Do I want the right to change providers, verify, and so on? Sure. Do I want them at any cost? No. I could get a lot of those things today, right now if I was willing to switch to a linux desktop and PureOS phone. I have tried switching to linux many times and and can say with certainty that I am willing to trade quite a bit to be able to use macOS instead of ubuntu, fedora, etc...While I haven't tried PureOS specifically, I did have an Android phone for a while and much prefer iOS.
AlexandrB 6y ago
I don't think even the author thinks vertical Monopolies are bad - he mentions Netflix as a positive the first sentence. I don't remember Netflix giving me the right to access their content on other streaming platforms. Unfortunately other studios have now followed suit.
beloch 6y ago
I didn't realize how awful PGP's usability was until I tried to get a server admin with a technical diploma to use it. This guy sets up and maintains servers for a living. He should be able to figure PGP out fairly quickly, shouldn't he? Boy, was I wrong! The case can be made that people care about the the things in this arcile once their most basic needs are met. Whatever it is, it has to work and the user has to be able to figure out how to make it work in fairly short order. The problem we have is that software that meets users' basic needs and software that lives up to the loftier rights in this article are, far too often, mutually exclusive.
burade 6y ago
That's not a fair assessment. You're judging human beings by their worst tendencies, which is to get addicted to stupid things like Instagram and Coca Cola.
kempbellt 6y ago
Are people actually asking for these things? As in, en masse, and in general? Or is it a loud and frustrated few, suggesting that "people want this"? I genuinely believe that there are a few people who have raised the above concerns, loudly, some other loud people have hopped on the bandwagon, and most people don't think about, nor care about, most of the things on this list. Side nit: On a fundamental level, "wanting a right" is an awkward fallacy, and this is border-lining a philosophical discussion. Like demanding a gift - it's no longer a gift if you demand it be given to you. Is this punitive language necessary or helpful in any way? It comes off as super childish to me to word a request like this...
Glyptodon 6y ago
I think people do "want" those things, just in a soft "so as long as I can keep using everything I'm already comfortable with in the same way for the same price" sort of sense.
jakelazaroff 6y ago
> It is well documented that this is not at all what people desire from technology. What people buy directly contradicts this. Of course, people can only buy what the market provides — and the market will exclusively (or at least disproportionately) provide the most profitable things. So market behavior isn't necessarily the best proxy for people's preferences in aggregate.
- derbOac 6y ago
  This is what I find so ironic about the market as revealed choice argument. This whole discussion is happening in the shadow of the M1 systems and Apple's increasingly controllling behavior. It's not as if Apple is offering an unlocked version of an M1 laptop alongside the locked version. This gets even more tricky in discussing other things, like messaging, that have network effects. There it's not just what's offered, and my preference, that matters, but also other people's past options and choices.
perardi 6y ago
If people cared about any of that, truly, deeply, then why is Gmail so dominant? I’ll use Gmail as an example here, as I think it has less network effects than Facebook. Yes, there’s the big damn hurdle of having to have contacts update your email address, but past that, there are absolutely alternatives like FastMail. But those cost money, so they have not taken off. (I pay for FastMail, I love FastMail, I think they’re profitable, they are not going to set the Nasdaq on fire.) I remember, in the olden days of Facebook, back when it was very college-only, that people would post all sorts of fake news that Zuckerberg was going to start charging for the service, and people would bitch and moan like you would not believe. Privacy is a think people think they want, and arguably do want, but their revealed preference is to trade privacy for free.
ssss11 6y ago
People make the best use of what they have, what they know and what they’re willing to spend money and time on. i dont agree that people have chosen not to have privacy or portability or the other things you mention, they simply dont have an option in the market, they dont have the money, they dont have the knowledge (PGP? Cmon my mum can barely find Outlook and the New Email button). The industry needs to do better, this argument is a cop out.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  Exactly. The entire concept of "revealed preference", to which the parent post was referring, displays an incredible level of arrogance. To say that somebody doesn't like what they say they like, and that it is their own fault for being forced into a choice that they are unhappy with, shows an astounding lack of empathy.
AshWolfy 6y ago
That would only be true if there was a tradeoff inherent in technology people prefer. There isnt, but the best technology often has the worst privacy and most anti consumer practices because it makes more money
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jrsj 6y ago
Part of me is against walled gardens philosophically but in practice it seems like regardless of whether its a monopoly in practice it actually serves to protect consumers from their own stupidity. Just like you have to force your employees to follow security practices, it seems like if we really wanted technology to be secure/privacy friendly we'd basically have to force it upon people for their own good.
TeeMassive 6y ago
You're right. I don't disagree with all those things, but ultimately there is no "we" when it comes to those things. People are lazy and just want the immediate gratification and then wonder why the power gap between the elites them is forever increasing.
WJW 6y ago
I'll go ahead and list some other things I want from my technology: > It should be cheap, preferably free, since I don't have infinite money and would much prefer to spend the money I do have on things like food, housing and entertainment. > It should be easy to use, fast and generally have good UX. > It should be bug-free to a reasonable degree. (Does not need to be flawless but not so buggy that it gets in the way) > If battery powered, I expect it to last at least a day between charges since I am often out for the entire day. > Related to the UX point above: it should be fairly stable. I don't want my phone to stop working because some FOSS dev started working on something else and "forgot" about the package that is now a crucial part of my phone OS. Clearly some of these points conflict with each other and with the points in the original list. That said, I think my list is closer to the revealed preferences of phone buyers than the one in the original article.
johnisgood 6y ago
Is it not the first open phone out there, ever? Regardless, it is too expensive, and I need a phone, so I compromise. I have a shitty Android phone, and I do not store secrets on it.
agumonkey 6y ago
I mostly agree. After complaining a lot about why manufacturers never do the right things, a few guys in the industry came in to say "we did.. we sold nothing, now we're making iphone clones". Consumerism is consumerism. In a different context surely people would buy sturdy, open, simpler, modular stuff.
rektide 6y ago
> They could do all sorts of things, but they do not. The trade-offs are not worth it to "people". This feels like the main gist of your thoughts, but I don't see it like this. To me, people can value things very highly, but poor implementations, a lack of other people also following the same aspirations & hopes... culturation is hard. Reprogramming new behaviors is hard. Just because current implementations fall short doesn't in any way to me indicate a lack of priorities, a non-valueing. To me, what really faila about this posting is not at all the people. What fails is the value system. There are some very strong very serious very good principles espoused in this post. But they are all negative liberties, freedom from harms, freedom from bads. Bass abound, oh yes. But actual liberation, the better "as tech should be" needs to be revamped on entirely different fronts. It's not about freedom froms, not about negative liberties, it's about far advanced freedom to'es, positive liberties. Right now we lack basic basic freedoms, basic wills. We have so little contact with ourselves, with what we desire, for so many negatives dog us, software mediates so much, in un-free, non-positive ways that all we can do is pick out which prison bars we find most tasteless, which negative liberty transgressions we dislike most.

by tyre 6y ago

animal_spirits 6y ago

I don't follow these types of arguments that the market is an true indicator of what people actually desire. If you ask anyone on the street if they would like any of these things out of technology they would unanimously say yes. But I agree it is not worth the trade-offs to actually fight for these things for most people. It doesn't mean these things are not desired, it is just that other things are desired more. Also, why do you put the word people in quotations? Just because most aren't interested in pursuing technological freedoms doesn't make them less of a people.

tyre 6y ago
oh I put it in quotations because I was quoting the word the author used. I didn't mean it as "these so-called 'people'", but reading it back I can see how it could read that way. To your first point, I think what people buy does have a reasonable correlation with what they want when there are other options. Taking the costs into account is of course part of the calculation. "They desire it but only if it is free and without any trade-offs whatsoever" isn't a very useful definition of "want".
njharman 6y ago
> If you ask anyone The world makes more sense when you learn that what people say and what they do are almost never the same. This is why markets and other analysis of behavior are greater predictors than polls or surveys or esp anecdotes
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Its more complex than that. People aren't given a choice of "This is the pixel phone with spyware and this is the pixel phone without spyware, they cost the same and are functionally identical" They are shown a pixel and nothing is said of privacy, and then if they know to dig deeper and find an option with more privacy but much more expensive and lacking massive amounts of features. In some cases its impossible to avoid a trade-off. A bigger battery will result in a bigger phone so people who say the would buy a bigger battery phone end up not doing that. But for privacy, there doesn't have to be a trade off.
- mola 6y ago
  Why do you think what people do is a better indication of what they want as oppose to what they say they want? For example, some addict wants to quit, but continue to abuse. I think a lot of modern tech is designed to make us addicts. So it's pretty apt example. And of course, using the market as the only indication of what people want is creating incentives that optimize for addiction.
- derbOac 6y ago
  But revealed choice isn't a true indication of preference if the options to choose from don't allow for expression of preference. The market isn't some neutral A/B test because the seller is incentivized to manipulate A and B. It's more of a market game situation, where buyer choice says as much about seller preference as it does buyer preference at some level.
usefulcat 6y ago
Talk is cheap. If you want to know what people really value, pay attention to what they do, not to what they say.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Caveat: this only works when people can have/do what they really want. Ex. In a world where 99% of people haven't even heard of a smartphone that doesn't use Android or iOS, you can't tell if people value things that neither platform provides.
  - WJW 6y ago
    Fair enough. OTOH huge swathes of the dev community, who DO know about the alternatives, still default to iPhones and Androids all the time.
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  Desires are expensive. Looking at what people do isn't as great an indicator of what they want to do as you might think it is.
  - usefulcat 6y ago
    'Desires' taken out of context are also not very meaningful (e.g. "if money were no object.." type speculations). Cost, particularly relative to means, being a prime example of such context.
jaredklewis 6y ago
I am not on the street and no one asked me, but things have tradeoffs. Do I want the right to change providers, verify, and so on? Sure. Do I want them at any cost? No. I could get a lot of those things today, right now if I was willing to switch to a linux desktop and PureOS phone. I have tried switching to linux many times and and can say with certainty that I am willing to trade quite a bit to be able to use macOS instead of ubuntu, fedora, etc...While I haven't tried PureOS specifically, I did have an Android phone for a while and much prefer iOS.

AlexandrB 6y ago

I don't think even the author thinks vertical Monopolies are bad - he mentions Netflix as a positive the first sentence. I don't remember Netflix giving me the right to access their content on other streaming platforms. Unfortunately other studios have now followed suit.

beloch 6y ago

I didn't realize how awful PGP's usability was until I tried to get a server admin with a technical diploma to use it. This guy sets up and maintains servers for a living. He should be able to figure PGP out fairly quickly, shouldn't he? Boy, was I wrong! The case can be made that people care about the the things in this arcile once their most basic needs are met. Whatever it is, it has to work and the user has to be able to figure out how to make it work in fairly short order. The problem we have is that software that meets users' basic needs and software that lives up to the loftier rights in this article are, far too often, mutually exclusive.

burade 6y ago

That's not a fair assessment. You're judging human beings by their worst tendencies, which is to get addicted to stupid things like Instagram and Coca Cola.

kempbellt 6y ago

Are people actually asking for these things? As in, en masse, and in general? Or is it a loud and frustrated few, suggesting that "people want this"? I genuinely believe that there are a few people who have raised the above concerns, loudly, some other loud people have hopped on the bandwagon, and most people don't think about, nor care about, most of the things on this list. Side nit: On a fundamental level, "wanting a right" is an awkward fallacy, and this is border-lining a philosophical discussion. Like demanding a gift - it's no longer a gift if you demand it be given to you. Is this punitive language necessary or helpful in any way? It comes off as super childish to me to word a request like this...

Glyptodon 6y ago

I think people do "want" those things, just in a soft "so as long as I can keep using everything I'm already comfortable with in the same way for the same price" sort of sense.

jakelazaroff 6y ago

> It is well documented that this is not at all what people desire from technology. What people buy directly contradicts this. Of course, people can only buy what the market provides — and the market will exclusively (or at least disproportionately) provide the most profitable things. So market behavior isn't necessarily the best proxy for people's preferences in aggregate.

derbOac 6y ago
This is what I find so ironic about the market as revealed choice argument. This whole discussion is happening in the shadow of the M1 systems and Apple's increasingly controllling behavior. It's not as if Apple is offering an unlocked version of an M1 laptop alongside the locked version. This gets even more tricky in discussing other things, like messaging, that have network effects. There it's not just what's offered, and my preference, that matters, but also other people's past options and choices.

perardi 6y ago

If people cared about any of that, truly, deeply, then why is Gmail so dominant? I’ll use Gmail as an example here, as I think it has less network effects than Facebook. Yes, there’s the big damn hurdle of having to have contacts update your email address, but past that, there are absolutely alternatives like FastMail. But those cost money, so they have not taken off. (I pay for FastMail, I love FastMail, I think they’re profitable, they are not going to set the Nasdaq on fire.) I remember, in the olden days of Facebook, back when it was very college-only, that people would post all sorts of fake news that Zuckerberg was going to start charging for the service, and people would bitch and moan like you would not believe. Privacy is a think people think they want, and arguably do want, but their revealed preference is to trade privacy for free.

ssss11 6y ago

People make the best use of what they have, what they know and what they’re willing to spend money and time on. i dont agree that people have chosen not to have privacy or portability or the other things you mention, they simply dont have an option in the market, they dont have the money, they dont have the knowledge (PGP? Cmon my mum can barely find Outlook and the New Email button). The industry needs to do better, this argument is a cop out.

MereInterest 6y ago
Exactly. The entire concept of "revealed preference", to which the parent post was referring, displays an incredible level of arrogance. To say that somebody doesn't like what they say they like, and that it is their own fault for being forced into a choice that they are unhappy with, shows an astounding lack of empathy.

AshWolfy 6y ago

That would only be true if there was a tradeoff inherent in technology people prefer. There isnt, but the best technology often has the worst privacy and most anti consumer practices because it makes more money

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jrsj 6y ago

Part of me is against walled gardens philosophically but in practice it seems like regardless of whether its a monopoly in practice it actually serves to protect consumers from their own stupidity. Just like you have to force your employees to follow security practices, it seems like if we really wanted technology to be secure/privacy friendly we'd basically have to force it upon people for their own good.

TeeMassive 6y ago

You're right. I don't disagree with all those things, but ultimately there is no "we" when it comes to those things. People are lazy and just want the immediate gratification and then wonder why the power gap between the elites them is forever increasing.

WJW 6y ago

I'll go ahead and list some other things I want from my technology: > It should be cheap, preferably free, since I don't have infinite money and would much prefer to spend the money I do have on things like food, housing and entertainment. > It should be easy to use, fast and generally have good UX. > It should be bug-free to a reasonable degree. (Does not need to be flawless but not so buggy that it gets in the way) > If battery powered, I expect it to last at least a day between charges since I am often out for the entire day. > Related to the UX point above: it should be fairly stable. I don't want my phone to stop working because some FOSS dev started working on something else and "forgot" about the package that is now a crucial part of my phone OS. Clearly some of these points conflict with each other and with the points in the original list. That said, I think my list is closer to the revealed preferences of phone buyers than the one in the original article.

johnisgood 6y ago

Is it not the first open phone out there, ever? Regardless, it is too expensive, and I need a phone, so I compromise. I have a shitty Android phone, and I do not store secrets on it.

agumonkey 6y ago

I mostly agree. After complaining a lot about why manufacturers never do the right things, a few guys in the industry came in to say "we did.. we sold nothing, now we're making iphone clones". Consumerism is consumerism. In a different context surely people would buy sturdy, open, simpler, modular stuff.

rektide 6y ago

> They could do all sorts of things, but they do not. The trade-offs are not worth it to "people". This feels like the main gist of your thoughts, but I don't see it like this. To me, people can value things very highly, but poor implementations, a lack of other people also following the same aspirations & hopes... culturation is hard. Reprogramming new behaviors is hard. Just because current implementations fall short doesn't in any way to me indicate a lack of priorities, a non-valueing. To me, what really faila about this posting is not at all the people. What fails is the value system. There are some very strong very serious very good principles espoused in this post. But they are all negative liberties, freedom from harms, freedom from bads. Bass abound, oh yes. But actual liberation, the better "as tech should be" needs to be revamped on entirely different fronts. It's not about freedom froms, not about negative liberties, it's about far advanced freedom to'es, positive liberties. Right now we lack basic basic freedoms, basic wills. We have so little contact with ourselves, with what we desire, for so many negatives dog us, software mediates so much, in un-free, non-positive ways that all we can do is pick out which prison bars we find most tasteless, which negative liberty transgressions we dislike most.