JollyG

@JollyG@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta Reportedly Eyeing 'Super Sensing' Tech for Smart Glasses⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What does dystopia mean to you?

  In this particular case, the things I find dystopian are the tendency of a disconcertingly high number of people to allow a tech company to mediate (and eventually monetize) every aspect of their social lives. The point I was making is that if this tool were to experience widespread adoption, even putting aside the massive surveillance and manipulation issues, what will inevitably happen is that a subset of people will come to rely on the tool to the point where they cannot interact with others outside of it. That is bad. Its bad because, it takes a fundamental human experience and locks it behind a pay wall. It is also bad because the sort of interactions that this tool could facilitate are going to be, by their nature, superficial. You simply cannot have meaningful interactions with someone else if you are relying on a crib sheet to navigate an interaction with them.

  This tool would inevitably lead to the atrophy of social skills. In the same way that overusing a calculator causes arithmetic skills to atrophy, and in the same way that overusing a GPS causes spatial reasoning skill to atrophy. But in this case it is worse, because this tool would be contributing to the further isolation of people who, judging by the excuses offered in this thread, are already bad at social interactions. People are already lonely and apparently social media is contributing to that trend allowing it to come between you and personal interactions in the face to face world is not going to help.

  This is akin to having sticky notes to remember things, just in a more compact convenient application.

  I really disagree with this analogy. It would be more appropriate to say that this is like carrying around a stack of index cards with notes about people in your life and pulling them out every time you interact with someone. If someone in my life needed an index card to interact with me, I would find that insulting, because it is insincere and dehumanizing. It communicates to others "I don’t care enough about you to bother to learn even basic information about who you are.

  The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the application

  I really cannot stand this bromide. We are talking about a company with a track record of using technology to abuse people. They facilitated a genocide (by incompetence, but they clearly did not give a shit). They prey on people when they feel bad. They researched ways to make people feel bad (so they will be easier to manipulate). They design their tools to be addictive and then manipulate and abuse people on their platform. Saying "technology is neutral is the least interesting thing you can say about tech in the context of the current trends of silicon valley. A place whose thought leaders and influencers are becoming ever more obsessed with manipulation, control and fascism. We don’t need to speculate about technology, we already know the applications of this technology won’t be neutral. They will be used to harm people for profit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta Reportedly Eyeing 'Super Sensing' Tech for Smart Glasses⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A tool that keeps track of people in your life and gives you small talk cues seems dystopian in its self. Relying on that you would just further isolate yourself from others.

  Thinking about it, I am pretty sure I would immediately despise anyone who used this tool on me, even apart from the fact that they would be putting me into a meta database without my consent. I would despise people who use this tool for the same reason I despise people who crudely implement the strategies from “How to win friends and influence people”. Their interactions are insincere and manipulative.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think when most people say something like “technology is making the world worse” they mean the technology as it actually exists and as it is actually developing, not the abstract sense of possible futures that technology could feasibly deliver.

  That is clearly what the author of the piece meant.

  If the main focus of people who develop most technology is getting people more addicted to their devices so they are easier to exploit the. Technology sucks. If the main focus is to generate immoral levels of waste to scam venture capitalists and idiots on the internet then technology sucks. If the main focus is to use technology to monetize every aspect of someone’s existence, then I think it is fair to say that technology, at this point in history, sucks.

  Saying “technology is neutral” is not super insightful if, in the present moment, the trend in technological development and its central applications are mostly evil.

  Saying “technology is neutral” is worse than unhelpful if, in the present moment, the people who want to use technology to harm others are also using that cliche to justify their antisocial behavior.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kagi Introducing Fair Pricing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wish they’d offer an llm free version with no cap on searches. Their products are too expensive and it feels like it is mostly to pay for the llms. I can’t justify paying that much for a product I am never going to use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Used get my haircut at one of those “no appointment needed” haircut chains. Then they got an app, and every time I went it was “Why aren’t you using the app? You need to use the app. Next time use the app. Download the app on your phone. It’s gonna be an hour wait because you didn’t use the app.”

  Now I just go to a local place.