The Woman Whose Phone 'Misdiagnosed HIV' (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report on BBC about a woman in Kenya, who downloaded a prank app that noted that she has HIV simply by "analyzing her fingerprint." While many people would have not trusted an app for such kind of diagnosis in the first place, and some would have figured that something is amiss about the app, the story tells the tale of people who are increasingly finding it hard to deal with the technological advances they see. From the report: Esther sells water on the side of the road in Kenya for a few dollars a day. She also owns a smartphone and ownership of such a device should, according to most of the received wisdom, empower its owner. But in fact it did quite the opposite for her when she acquired an app. It claimed to diagnose HIV simply by analysing her fingerprint on the touch screen. When researchers met her at her roadside workplace, she was worried. "She did not know if it was true and she was panicking," said researcher Laura de Reynal, who worked on a year-long study into the experiences of first-time smartphone users in Kenya. "And she wasn't the only one, there were others that came to us worried about this app and those were just the ones that were willing to speak out." The app was in fact a prank and anyone reading the comments on Google's Play Store would have seen that. However, many first-time smartphone users in Kenya get hold of apps via a friend's Bluetooth connection, rather than downloading them via the net, in order to save data. But the prank would not have been apparent via a Bluetooth share. "People are not able to understand the limits of the technology," said Ms de Reynal. "They think, because it was on a smartphone, it seems real and credible."

Comments

Any sufficiently advanced technology...

[swb]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I also don't think this woman should be criticized. When I see the stupid things people who have grown up with technology do (as opposed to growing up dirt poor in Africa), she's no worse off than they are.

Re:People have blind trust into technology

[bill_mcgonigle]

I have seen it on TV, so it must be true.

Psychologically, it's a "voice of authority". Humans seem to be hard-wired to accept authority. It's a good idea for keeping kids from being eaten by lions.

By adulthood, humans should learn to reject arbitrary authority. But it seems to be very easy for people to delay that maturation by decades or even forever - they accept gods, presidents, and televisions as "voices of authority" and obey their commands.

It's really not good for anybody to have adults thinking and behaving like children, except for those who wish to control them.