- Jan 2018
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netnarr.arganee.world netnarr.arganee.world
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Consent is also a very big thing in regards to data gathering for me. In the latest iOS 11 update, you can now choose when an app is able to obtain location data from you. I set all my apps to "while using the app" only and not only is my battery saved, but I also feel a certain peace of mind that an app is telling me exactly when it's tracking my location, hopefully for app-related purposes that I'm aware of.
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Brett mentioning Alexa helping solve a murder reminds me of my own Google Home Mini and the conflicts of privacy that some other people that I knew had with it. There's always that sense of things listening in on things that you rather not hear, and I covered that a bit more extensively within my own blog post this week.
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While I'm disappointed that I was not able to be here for this studio visit as I had hoped, this recording made me feel like I was right there with everyone else. Interesting conversations all around and I hope to be there for the next one. Brett had quite a few things of note during this session, and my next two notes will bring up them briefly.
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www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com
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The world is starting to make up its mind about whether it's worth it and whether the sugary hits of digital pleasure justify being worse, both alone and together. We need to make up our minds soon, Mr. Harris said. "I worry that we're not going to get this fast enough."
Ultimately, I feel a major part of all of this comes down to self-discipline and choosing what content you prefer to consume on your phone, if any at all. This article seems to paint smart devices as detriments to social interactions, and yet refuses to point out the beneficial qualities that it does bring to communication. I talk to people who I only meet once every few months most days through GroupMe, for instance.
I feel this crusade towards technology is partially driven by a desire to return to values of years past, where phones were not in the way of communication. Except....if it wasn't phones, it was something else. There are plenty of examples over the years of people being preoccupied in public and private with some other type of media, and phones seem to be the biggest scapegoat of it call because they're typically capable of more than one task. TV used to be the problem of the generation, but now we consume it gladly in favor of other forms of media.
Point is, while this may be like a drug for some people, for most other people it's just a nice way to do work and keep in touch, that's all. While we can certainly condition the younger generation to be less dependent on smart devices to keep themselves preoccupied, they're not the catalyst for the overall detrimental impact on society today, but rather one of several other causes.
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Imagine, Mr. Harris said, if Facebook's app delivered all your notifications at once, at a given time of day, like the mail.
This is actually an option; I used to do that for me back when email was more common for me than notifications.
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She's not the only person to notice the beginning of a turning point in the way people relate to their mobile computers. Just recently, Prof. Wu was thinking of taking out a smartphone in his daughter's preschool class to play a song when he realized it would be taboo, given growing concerns about kids' screen time – like "taking out a toy gun."
That's quite the comparison to make, and also one that I believe isn't exactly the same. It seems the person here was confusing her usage of the phone for a practical purpose as a detrimental one.
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But now it makes us twig helplessly to Facebook notifications and the buzz of incoming e-mail. That's why social media apps nag you to turn notifications on. They know that once the icons start flashing onto your lock screen, you won't be able to ignore them. It's also why Facebook switched the colour of its notifications from a mild blue to attention-grabbing red.
Your milage may vary on this one. I personally found social media notifications so annoying that I limited them only to Twitter, and even then it's only for Tweets from people who I want to receive notifications from. Notifications in general have become so customizable over the years that I feel it's not right to consider yourself helpless towards them.
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"It's Homo sapiens minds against the most powerful supercomputers and billions of dollars …. It's like bringing a knife to a space laser fight," Mr. Harris said. "We're going to look back and say, 'Why on earth did we do this?'"
This comes off feeling like hyperbole to me. At what point do we take responsibility for self-control and knowing what makes technology inherently functional and inhibiting?
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They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.
I feel this is contestable. I feel that technology makes me more productive in areas that I would've normally been otherwise just okay in, and increases the quality of things such as reading books and writing. But I suppose the point of this article is to accentuate the negatives.
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Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. Today, thanks to him, we can sit in parks and not only receive amatory messages and racing results, but summon all the world's knowledge with a few taps of our thumbs, listen to virtually every song ever recorded and communicate instantaneously with everyone we know.
I think people are too busy criticizing the negatives to technology to appreciate things like this. I know it still wows me today.
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Under the headline, "Forecasts for 1907," a black and white cartoon showed a well-dressed Edwardian couple sitting in a London park. The man and woman are turned away from each other, antennae protruding from their hats. In their laps are little black boxes, spitting out ticker tape.
If there's a joke here, I think it went over my head.
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