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Nest Founder 'Wakes Up In Cold Sweats' Fearing The Impact Of Mobile Technology (fastcodesign.com)
theodp writes: Fast Company's Co.Design reports that Tony Fadell, who founded Nest and was instrumental in the creation of the iPod and iPhone, spoke with a mix of pride and regret about his role in mobile technology's rise to omnipresence. "I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world?" Fadell said. "Did we really bring a nuclear bomb with information that can -- like we see with fake news -- blow up people's brains and reprogram them? Or did we bring light to people who never had information, who can now be empowered?"
Faddell added that addiction has been designed into our devices, and it's harming the newest generation. "And I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens," Fadell explained. "They literally feel like you're tearing a piece of their person away from them-they get emotional about it, very emotional. They go through withdrawal for two to three days." Products like the iPhone, Fadell believes, are more attuned to the needs of the individual rather than what's best for the family and the larger community. And pointing to YouTube owner Google, Fadell said, "It was like, [let] any kind of content happen on YouTube. Then a lot of the executives started having kids, [and saying], maybe this isn't such a good idea. They have YouTube Kids now."
The article suggests Fadell is describing a world where omnipresent (and distracting) screens are creating "a culture of self-aggrandizement," and he believes this is partly rooted in the origins of the devices. "A lot of the designers and coders who were in their 20s when we were creating these things didn't have kids."
Faddell added that addiction has been designed into our devices, and it's harming the newest generation. "And I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens," Fadell explained. "They literally feel like you're tearing a piece of their person away from them-they get emotional about it, very emotional. They go through withdrawal for two to three days." Products like the iPhone, Fadell believes, are more attuned to the needs of the individual rather than what's best for the family and the larger community. And pointing to YouTube owner Google, Fadell said, "It was like, [let] any kind of content happen on YouTube. Then a lot of the executives started having kids, [and saying], maybe this isn't such a good idea. They have YouTube Kids now."
The article suggests Fadell is describing a world where omnipresent (and distracting) screens are creating "a culture of self-aggrandizement," and he believes this is partly rooted in the origins of the devices. "A lot of the designers and coders who were in their 20s when we were creating these things didn't have kids."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If he had not invented the smartphone, someone else would have. It wasn't nearly as original an idea as he thinks. It was written of in popular fiction for decades prior. It was a natural evolution of the technologies that already existed, and its entrance to the market was inevitable.
Maybe it would have taken a few more years. Big deal. The end result would have been the same.
designed by apple in california, the center of individualism, objectivist USA.
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The information age began long before Nest or the iPhone. Also, the Nest is a piece of shit.
you brought them an overpriced thermostat they dont control.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
you brought them a piece of electronic garbage that leaves them without heat in the dead of fucking january
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
and finally...perhaps the most unforgivable sin, you brought them a gadget that sells their personal information to their own utility companies.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
Good people go to bed earlier.
"I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world?"
I think there's a Nest thermostat setting for that, but then Google will use that information for marketing.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I am starting to think that BeauHD, Miss Mash, and "editor" David are all the same person.
Would someone PLEASE tell me what is going on here?
The one good thing we saw from the previous administration was that we can go out and marry whomever we please now. The rest of it, was, well, continuing ENDLESS WARS, ramping up on TORTURE, going HAYWIRE and ARMING MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS TO THE TEETH, and oh, going BALLS TO THE WALL with this endless NSA SURVEILLANCE STATE, and trying to cram down our throats this "TPP/T*P" "agreement" "system" to destroy what's left of our labour bases and....dare I continue?
What is going on here? You start reading a summary and are like, great, Tech news summary, and three or four sentences in, you are faced with this bizarre ultra fake news conspiracy theory "Russians hacked into my brain" story still being spewed. We aren't talking the Jill Stein or Bernie groups here. This is specifically the Hillary narrative vomited upon a news site over and over again. This is bizarre. What special interest group PURCHASED SLASHDOT?
WHO IS BEHIND BIZX, LLC.?
ONLY apps can app apps, NOT LUDDITE software like LUDDITE Nest!
Apps!
Amazing how negative the responses to this are so far.
Cut the cord, sometimes. That's a positive thing. And huge for a kid. And it's not a problem with a device, just with becoming too dependent on it.
I was fortunate as a child to have months where television was unavailable or incredibly limited, and where the video game systems weren't connected or the computer wasn't in the house. The result? A lot of outdoor adventures and a lot of reading. I still enjoy Netflix and video games, but if you want kids to read, make that the dominant available form of entertainment for a while. And find them places to adventure in where they can learn some independence.
It's like at scout camp. Take the electronics away for a while. Children learn.
Real lawyers write in C++
You didn't bring anything to the market that had an impact. Just everyday garbage. Sleep well, moron.
"Did we really bring a nuclear bomb with information that can -- like we see with fake news -- blow up people's brains and reprogram them?"
Probably not.
"Or did we bring light to people who never had information, who can now be empowered?"
Definitely not.
Every technical revolution has its critics. And we need to listen and heed but not fear. The problems will get worked out. Life will continue to improve and mankind will carry on until another extinction asteroid strikes earth.
Sleep easy pal.
The choice is ours as to what we decide to allow a technology to be used for. Technology is a set of tools, nothing more like any other tool set, even including a relatively-simple carpenter's tool set. A claw-hammer can be used to frame a house or brain a spouse.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So of all the proven and hypothetical negative effects of the phones-fucking-everywhere culture, from narcissism and depression and other social media-induced mental health problems to psychologically and financially exploitative mobile apps to cultural acceptance of 24/7 corporate surveillance of our movements and communications to large spikes in traffic accidents and deaths, you're most worried about a few twitter bots spreading lies about candidates you didn't like and that by all accounts had zero measurable impact on anything? Ok then.
It seems the free spread of information is only good when it's information that supports your political viewpoints. The rest of the time we need our trusted MSM and hollywood celebrity gatekeepers to tell us what the "truth" is and what issues we should be worried about.
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I don't agree that he should sleep easy. I will agree that what he's worrying about (at least per the article summary) is not the concern, but the whole, "Internet of Things," really should be instead called the Internet of Insecure and Exploitable Things.
Consider that tech companies, that theoretically understand the technology they're principally responsible for the development of, have trouble with information security and systems security. We have operating systems for even commercial applications of limited-scope like ATMs and Point of Sale systems that are vulnerable to many of the same exploits as desktop consumer operating systems. Do you expect Rheem or Daktronics or AO Smith or Carrier to be able to do even as good a job as a Microsoft or an Apple?
Now consider that not only do these systems communicate on the network generally, but the manufacturers are implementing the model where the customer has to use the vendor's systems on the Internet to control the device. Some do this for consumer devices because it's a convenient way to bypass the problems with ignorance of the user, and some do it for commercial applications to use the Meraki model, to get the customer to pay and pay and pay because without the contract the device simply doesn't work anymore. Either way, the communications loop is not just from the end-user system like the phone, tablet, or computer on the user's LAN to device also on the LAN, but from the device to the firewall, across the Internet to whatever system the vendor has propped-up, then back across the Internet to whatever LAN the end user PC is on.
Daktronics uses Windows Embedded for their modern marquees, and there's no real security on the marquees. They run a website that the software on Windows Embedded connects to in order to check for changes to the marquee. Once the initial account is created for the organzation, the users can add more users, and in many cases the sign-shops that set up these accounts basically with full admin privileges, so that the users can add or delete more users. In a large organization simply managing legitimate users can be a real chore as neither the sign-shop nor Daktronics place emphasis on end-user security.
Now, those servers that Daktronics maintains would be potentially quite a prize, if they can be exploited and if the protocols that update the signs allow for more updates besides the imagery on the sign then that pathway allows for there to be an exploited device on a corporate network that is not necessarily well understood by the IT department and may not be able to be serviced like a normal PC, despite running an OS very much line a normal PC has.
That's only one example. One can probably find similar problems with most other, "Internet of Things," devices. I would encourage every IT department to harshly segregate these devices on the network, no traffic to anything on the corporate network except for possibly ICMP to verify up/down, Internet traffic limited to only those servers required for management, and then only those ports required for that communication. Deny the ability to touch the corporate network, deny the ability to reach any third-party command-and-control servers.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Same things were said about movies, radio, TV, comic books, rock music, pinball machines, video games, personal computers, and now cell phones with large screens.
It's just generational bullshit.
If he's bringing up fake news that basically means two things: Trump & Brexit.
And pizzagate and golden showers and Russian hacking and many, many others too numerous to list.
There's a metric buttload of less important fake news flowing around the MSM nowadays.
Just today a number of MSM outlets(*) report that Polish first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda snubbed President Donald Trump by refusing to shake his hand during his visit to Poland on Thursday.
Of course, this is trivially debunked by simply looking at the images of the meet.
At this point I'm not even sure why they do it; I mean... is it really effective to falsely report something in an attempt to tear down Trump? Does false reporting advance them towards some goal?
Far right news outlets are calling out all the MSM fakeness, and because of this the integrity of the far right outlets has been steadily rising. That's starting to take a toll on the believability of the MSM.
Are they really going to continue this process of "just making shit up and printing it" until people simply don't believe them any more?
I would think that's a path to disaster, but then again I don't work at a newspaper. Maybe it's all part of some elaborate plan.
(*) WaPo, HuffPo, and Daily Express, among many others
"And I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens," Fadell explained. "They literally feel like you're tearing a piece of their person away from them-they get emotional about it, very emotional. They go through withdrawal for two to three days." Products like the iPhone, Fadell believes, are more attuned to the needs of the individual rather than what's best for the family and the larger community.
He must've recently watched The Wrath of Kahn and decided the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Keep your kids' phones locked up, Tony!
#DeleteChrome
Death to CNN! Long live the new flesh!
Don't worry about it, your success was mostly based on various ripoffs (Windows CE, iPod) of work pioneered by others. Heck, even the iPod design didn't survive. In different words, the mobile computing world would look pretty much the same, with or without anything you ever did.
Well I'm sure the average slashdotter is thinking of something involving KY jelly, but I use my iPod to listen to music (it works very well) and my smartphone for sending and receiving phone calls and texts (it works very well). I don't wake up in cold sweats worrying about either device. TFA is whiny snowflaking.
Until we find and kill the gnome that keeps turning on YouTube's AUTOPLAY option repeatedly despite cookies and preferences, there is no hope for human kind. Please join with me. It will take our combined effort to defeat it.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
If young people feel like tech devices are a part of their person, it will be so much easier for them to adapt to direct brain interfaces!
I don't even know if I'm joking...
Make a comparison. The doves {usually left leaning} see great value in lifting everyone up and educating, healing and sheltering all people. The hawks on the other hand feel that if capitalists are unrestrained they will ruin many lives but make the rich better off. They feel that a nation that allows this can raise more wealth, build a much stronger military and capture the wealth of the world. So now we have youth scurrying about with inflated sense of self importance compared to former generations who had stronger social values. But keep in mind there are wonderful people and resources working in the mix. Wikipedia, Linux. Libra and Open Office, YouTube, Ted Talks,open education projects like Mathematica YouTube all have ferocious social value. These types of resources are world bending and shaping. And we are seeing medical diagnostic equipment that functions at a level never before reached by human. The transvaluation of values is a very tricky thing. Many may complain about pistols with two much power and too many bullets in their clips. But a cop forced to fight against violent criminals behind barricades will value that extra deadly pistol quite highly if he is the one holding it during the fight.
"A lot of the designers and coders who were in their 20s when we were creating these things didn't have kids."
"Think of the children!" is how we've gotten into a lot of messes in the first place, and ultimately tends to do them a disservice.
You are taking away a piece of them;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Did we really bring a nuclear bomb with information that canâ"like we see with fake newsâ"blow up peopleâ(TM)s brains and reprogram them?
You made some crappy worthless products history has already forgotten about. Ones that caused real damage to real people in the process.
We've all seen lots of shit like this on various HVAC forums over the years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...
https://www.reddit.com/r/homea...
Energy harvesting scheme in particular you all knew when you did it that it would cause problems yet ..."C" wire too hard = lost sales = customer bitching = fuck it. This wasn't unintentional. It was deliberate.
According to Fadell, this is largely a matter of unintended consequencesâ"but that doesnâ(TM)t free designers and developers from responsibility.
You all know what you were doing (selling your customers out) and why you were doing it (to make money). Building actual functional products gets about as much attention as smartphone voice quality.
Fadell wants there to be a Hippocratic oath for designers, where they pledge to work ethically and âoedo no harm.â âoeI think we have to be very cognizant of the unintended consequences, but also acknowledge them and then design them outâ"make sure that we are ethically designing,â
Yea sure... back in the real world we have firms hiring physiological experts to maximally get users addicted to their "platforms" to maximize advertising profits. Unintended consequences. I'm sure the drug industry didn't intentionally cause an opioid epidemic either... It was all "unintentional". If your going to bother reflecting on "ethics" you should probably start by admitting what you really did and why you really did it. Not that any if it matters.
The guy expressed some fears about his kids, and you try to turn it into a discussion about a bunch of gadgets? Way to miss the point.
Previous generations had similar problems. It's just they have forgotten about them. Spreading rumours? That happened with kids writing messages about each other and putting them on the school noticeboards. Rumours could spread simply by word of mouth without any need for Twitter, Facebook or IM. Teenagers would spend hours talking to each other by telephone. When we lived in terraced streets, mothers would be desperate not knowing where her daughter was, when it was dinnertime. Then, she would have to call around everyone else to find out where she was.
Teenagers spending too much time playing video games. In the past, they would spend too much time surfing, skateboarding, hanging around the shopping mall, playing football, baseball or any other activity.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
We are not engaged in a land war against Russia in Syria right now. I think that means Clinton didn't win.
Those guys who wanted to build that pipeline across Syria (the real reason a lot of globalists wanted a regime change in Syria) must be sweating bullets at this point.
Unrelated question:
When the fuck did Slashdot get so based?
"Do you expect Rheem or Daktronics or AO Smith or Carrier to be able to do even as good a job as a Microsoft or an Apple?"
We wouldn't trust these manufacturers to develop secure IoT interfaces for their hardware all by themselves, and we don't have to. That's what IT security companies are for.
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You basically did nothing for the last two years with your product... you'll be fine...
Literally, the only feature you implemented in nest is the one I sent via the 'suggestion box.' I'm not taking credit for it because it was obvious, but that was fairly coincidental. It was also the only worthwhile improvement you made. Wake up in cold sweats? Shit, if you worried so much why don't you do something worthwhile with your product?
Previous generations had similar problems. It's just they have forgotten about them. Spreading rumours? That happened with kids writing messages about each other and putting them on the school noticeboards. Rumours could spread simply by word of mouth without any need for Twitter, Facebook or IM.
Yes, previous generations had similar problems. But it is happening on a much greater scale now: It used to be 'just' the people you knew and hung out with. These days, you get not so nice 'remarks' from random strangers from all over the world, harassing you on Twitter/Facebook. And in the past a rumor would dwindle out over time up to the point that no one could remember it: But now, once it's on the internet, it tends to stay there and pop up over and over again and follow you around for pretty much your entire life. Things have changed,
Fuck this piece of shit. It's unfortunate that all these assholes that make this tech weren't thoughtful BEFORE making their millions...!
Providing information relevant to parent post now got modded as "troll"?!
If the information is fake, post and point it out.
Shame on the moderator who did this.
fuck you YouTube for not allowing blocking of shitty uploaders.
If YouTube were to add such a feature, how would it provide for "shitty uploaders" to be identified? Would the definition depend on a particular user, or would it be service-wide?
The one thing YouTube does better than, say, your own private MediaGoblin instance is the related videos column at the right side of the video. What's the alternative to YouTube for finding related videos?
Dude is trying to care about other people, but he's so absorbed in his narcissism that he thinks the danger of being distracted by a cell phone he helped create is somehow equivalent to the danger of nuclear arms.
I guess his heart is kinda in the right place, but it seems he's completely out of touch with the real dangers that exist in the world. Maybe if he volunteered with Peace Corps or Red Cross or one of the other organizations that helps people who are actually facing real problems beyond "I'm too busy playing candy crush to make friends", he'd be less angsty about his contributions to technology.
Previous generations had similar problems. It's just they have forgotten about them. Spreading rumours? That happened with kids writing messages about each other and putting them on the school noticeboards. Rumours could spread simply by word of mouth without any need for Twitter, Facebook or IM. Teenagers would spend hours talking to each other by telephone.
You're missing the point. Just as the telephone (and long distance telephone) was an exponential leap in communication -- a communications revolution -- that drastically affected society, constant data interaction (the tipping point seemed to be smartphones with 4G-ish speeds) is ALSO an exponential leap.
The problem is that this second leap combines the mutliband communication power of the internet with the psychological attachment issues of a Skinner box, partly as a result of most of the Internet being funded by advertising dollars and sponsorship. Facebook, YouTube, and many other things wouldn't feel the need to be (quite) so addictive if they were simple subscription services instead of demographic tracking opportunities for selling micro-targeted ads.
Want more proof that it was a revolution? I'm hard-pressed to think of *any* science fiction stories or films of the 20th century that accurately predicted the psychological impact of always-on mobile data access that we're seeing now. Sure, plenty of stories imagined the technology (think Star Trek TNG's PADD's, etc), but no one seems to have predicted the impact on human sociology that we're already seeing. It wasn't expected.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
The business model for IoT is to gather consumer data and sell it. To do so, they offer Things that function like toasters and door locks and thermostats always did. Except that they are hugely vulnerable to software malfunction or malicious interference.
Someone here opined that this will all get worked out in time. Not in my lifetime, I think. When I am finally forced to buy a Thing that needs its mother ship, there will be anti-Thing software to spoof it and keep data in and intruders out.
in his long-lost short story Le Telephon-Photographique
http://www.theonion.com/articl...
"Rudeness becomes ubiquitous, as the device's infuriating notification-chimes invade every corner of public life," McGraw said. "When the ethically bereft begin transmitting images obtained under questionable circumstances, espionage becomes so prevalent as to threaten the integrity of the French populace."
(or at least the Onion was on to this 13 year ago)
That's true. The sudden appearance of home internet connections back in 1993. It was a rapid jump from dial-up modems with kermit/crosstalk terminal servers to TCP/IP stacks with SLIP/PPP all within a year. That allowed web browsers, usenet readers and email to be used by everyone.
Modems went from 9600 baud to 19.2K 38.4K, 56K and then ADSL/DSL. Bargain PC's dropped down in price to $600 before being replaced by netbooks, tablets and smartphones running Facebook/Twitter and Linkedin apps.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Police in some parts of the United States do in fact "have bigger problems going on" with respect to their pursuit of free-range children on trumped-up charges of neglect.
In fact, it took a federal law in January 2016 to keep local authorities from harassing parents of children who walk to school.
I believe we all still think about the dangers of ubiquitous and unlimited information/communication (or at least have someone dear with that opinion, whom we attempt to understand).
I always try to tell myself (and others) that the "AFK", physical, "real world" society we live in is no different than phenomenons like TV, mass media or the internet. This applies equally to whatever mean we use to access it, like the www, because in a way or another, it will be biased (notorious examples are Google/Apple on mobile, or gov'ts, ISPs or even registrars for the web in general).
The major differences that exist in, say, the interactions between 2 human in a room, and 2 billion in a social network or an online game is, well scale obviously, "speed" (or whatever you wanna call the lack of spatial placement no longer having meaning, which makes us all ultra fast communicating), and most of all, the dynamics of that scale and "speed". The dynamics might be the only single thing that has a positive OR negative effect on the interactions, when compared to the 1st scenario, but I believe that, as limited, nature-bred animals we are, these dynamics are what eventually make us human and not irrational beings as opposed to amoebas.
That second guy in a room can be a paid troll. He can be your father. He can be a feminist, a humanist or a neonazi. As much as he can be the best person to talk about any given subject in an assertive, informed way. You never know anyone's opinion, sometimes you don't even know yours until the time comes to act upon it.
You shouldn't really lose your sleep over what you can no longer prevent. The guy made the iphone, but the past is the past, and we no longer need an Einstein to tell us that. If you wanna trouble your mind with the effect of information overload, do it on your radius of action, to those around you you can actually have a positive influence about it (not only your real friends and family, but anyone who takes any shit from you). It's not 100% gonna be useful for everyone, but it sure can't hurt to share some wisdom om how to cope with the modern times.
And it's not just kids. When you developed too much baggage in one place, you could move to a new location, job, etc., and get a fresh start. These days, someone is bound to look up your history, and as we used to joke about, it all goes on your "permanent record", only back then, it was just a joke.
Just another day in Paradise