Tech =/= megacorps
That’s like saying food doesn’t make the world better where you mean food industry megacorps producing hunger & poverty.
I’m tired of people seeing everything as binary good or bad. We have more than two brain cells, and life isn’t a fucking meme.
Author is one step away from the realization that Capitalism is the culprit, and technology is just the vector.
So many are…
Technology has never been the problem: there’s nothing wrong with genetic engineering, AI, etc. They can (and have) been used for good.
The problem has always been the “greed is good” sociopaths using it for evil.
Tech isn’t the problem. It’s the people in charge of it. It’s the capitalism/neo-feudalism controlling the politics.
Exactly. I would extend that and the article’s premise to say, tech isn’t innately good or bad, it is just a tool that can be applied in good or bad ways. For example at his cafe, a QR code ordering system could have been optional for those who prefer it, and could be easily implemented without collecting any personal data. And that could actually be a positive thing for those who want to reorder without getting up or who have social anxiety. But by forcing all customers into this confusing and privacy invading system, the tech becomes a bad thing.
The villain of that story is not tech. The villains are the online ordering company that decided to make a data grab, and the cafe owner who decided to buy tech so he wouldn’t have to pay servers.
“In some parts of the city, you can’t even park your car anymore without downloading an app.”
Omg, this. I left my phone at home by accident and quickly found out that I could not pay a meter on the area I went to … You had to download an app to pay or use you phone to register a phone number and manually enter a plate and credit card.
No phone…meant no parking.
Good luck too if your phone happens to run out of battery.
Yet more benefits to cycling then. Just lock it to any reasonably sturdy object.
Yeah but parking has always been bad.
You had to carry change. Meters were always out of order or would just eat your change without issuing a ticket, and the people checking never gave a shit and would give you a fine anyway.
My only complaint is the app, everyone should offer a website or an app, but if you’re going to park there a few times an app does make sense.
Neither a phone nor website would work if your phone battery is flat. The meter should at least have a way for someone to park their car if they don’t have a functioning phone, or internet access, even before the hellscape of needing a separate app for everything.
You’re in a car. There’s probably a charging port there. Sucks if you don’t have a phone, but it sucked before when you didn’t have change.
Parking has always been a privilege not a right, and if you’re not prepared you’re going to get a ticket.
I get that it’s annoying but if my phone broke and I suddenly had to pay for parking with coins, I don’t know what I’d do either. Everything is cashless now, where would I get coins from?
Woo! Let’s make this artificial biome that much more inhospitable for the very creatures that build and live in it!
We must imagine Sisyphus fucking miserable! Ants in an anthill made of broken glass and depleted lion batteries!
also you can walk into basically any bank and ask for a roll of quaters
And if you wear a mask it even free!
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Yep, technofeudalism is here.
Times change. I see nothing wrong with it. Same as you used to be able to park without paying, then you started to pay, and now it’s moving from those machines to phone apps. And in the future there may be other form of pay, or maybe parking is directly forbidden o who knows what but there will be a change, for sure. Because things change.
It’s just nostalgia working. Things change. You were more capable of dealing with change at a younger age and that’s why you see the older the people get the more they complain about everything.
But is just a change, like many other that came before that.
Worst thing to happen to tech is ads.
People weren’t willing to pay with money. Usually every tech product with ads has an “insert coin to remove” option. If you don’t insert coin, advertisers will.
Paying for the product and paying to not be inconvenienced by ads have become separate things. The first is standard business, the second is extortion.
Paying 80 for a product that is worth 100 and have ads is standard practice nowadays, to the point that not doing this puts you in competitive disadvantage. You are than asked to pay the remaining 20 or put up with ads.
You see this in every lemmy discussion about smart TVs. People complain that TVs have ads and there’s always someone that suggest getting a “dumb” TV but complain that they are more expensive. It’s almost like ads subsidize the purchase price or something…
I disagree, I think the removal of ads is often painted as a benefit that had inherent value. Look at YouTube premium or Prime video. Both haven’t actually improved their offering, just made it worse by introducing ads and insisting users that don’t want to see ads have to pay for the privilege of not being advertised to.
This means the total price adds up to higher than 100% of the product value, because it’s a ‘premium’ version that comes without advertisement inconvenience.
Prime video I don’t know so well, but YouTube was free without ads in the beginning, for something that is incredibly expensive to run. They had to introduce any monetization or shut down the service. They went with ads because 99% of users prefer that to payment. Later they gave the option to pay to remove the ads, only as an extra, because very few people are ready to do that.
There are some ad-free video platforms out there but they have a tiny fraction of the user base of YouTube. Most people couldn’t even name one, let alone considering using it, when YouTube is “free”.
The overwhelming majority of software ever written is fucking terrible and causes more problems than it solves.
Since software is easily copiable and mutable, that small sliver of good software gets replicated all over the place and serves as a foundation for other software, both good – and at the risk of repeating myself – and mostly bad.
People would be better off considering new tech as the tool it is rather than seeing every piece of software as inherently better than the thing it replaces.
Open-source technology absolutely is making the world better.
People forget that technology is agnostic to morals and ideals. Which is a big part of why I support FOSS. It is tech with goals that do aim for accessibility and making the world better. I am not a huge donator as I don’t make much money, nor can I code well, but I donate and contribute where I can.
Open source analytics tools are still pushing for ad-driven business models that make the world (and the content) worse. Open source LLMs still waste computational power and pollute. And the list continues. Some open source technologies serve a good goal, some contribute to make the world as bad as some non-OSS.
God, same. I’m to the point where I don’t even want a phone at all anymore. I’m so tired of just… everything.
Tech was ruined in the 90s when capitalistic influences (microsoft being the dominant force but far from the only one) propagandized the industry and eventually populace at large with the idea that competition in the industry is what drives innovation.
Granted, much of their work was already done for them thanks to western influence perpetuating this ideal for ages. But when the frameworks for open standards, interoperability, and collaborative development were being proposed and put into place they were shot down and/or actively sabotaged
As a result 40 years later we have this mess. A landscape filled with nightmare tech. Fragmentation everywhere, design heavily influenced by a small handful of sociopaths with no empathy and active disdain for users, the idea of open standards is something that requires government intervention (and still rarely occurs), interoperability is something that has to be hacked around and frequently breaks as a means to encourage purchasing a competing product.
What could have been. Tech designed for people’s needs rather than tech designed to extract income
Tech was ruined in the 90s
40 years later
Pick one. I’m 41 and was born in 1983.
My basic math skills have been terrible lately. I made a basic math error in a post the other day too. I was a strong student in math too
Is this cognitive decline? I’m not even 40
tbf, the past few years have felt like decades
This past month has felt like two years.
Technology has started to make it easier and easier to be anti consumer. To maximise how much you can extract out of consumers.
It is making it easier to understand and control exactly how they use products and services. This allows you to structure your price and offering to give them the minimum amount they’ll accept at the maximum price. Allows you to strip features out and offer them for extra. Allows you to hide things behind ongoing subscriptions. Allows you to better lock people into products and services, making it more difficult to switch/leave.
All of this was possible (and being done) before, but technology makes this so much easier/better.
Technologies often start out by making something easier for the consumer. But beyond the early stages, it’s all about making the world better - for the corporations developing and selling products and services.
I kinda agree with the article, I genuinely think humanity peaked with the computer of the PS2 era. Or maybe it had something to do with the patriot act. Just feels like after that things had gotten worse substantially
Some parts of life have gotten massively easier. The other day I called my pharmacy to delay my next prescription refill because I still have pills. I was able to do this entirely through voice interaction with an automated system. Huzzah. I get texts when my scrips are about to be filled or ready, and reminders if I don’t pick them up for a while. I can also see this info on demand in an app if I want. What’s not to like?
My entire medical group runs on an app now. I can make appointments with my doctor, see the documentation from prior visits, pay bills, see test results…
Oh but boo hoo this author had to download an app to order a drink. First world problems…
We’d all be better off if we learned to question tech as a gift and see it for its grift.
I think this headline is slightly misleading. Here are some better ones:
- Reclaiming Humanity in the Age of Overbearing Technology
- When Convenient Tech Becomes a Burden: A Call for Human-Centric Design
- How Modern Tech Erodes Human Interaction
Wait. Is this satire? Like these suggested versions have been generated by running through a LLM AI?
This is weird take on an op-ed. OP didn’t alter the title. The only ways I can conceive of a headline being “misleading” is when it declares a falsity (this doesn’t; it’s an opinion) or doesn’t match the content of the titled text (this doesn’t; it matches the text).
