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A Small But Growing Group Of Silicon Valley Heretics Are Disconnecting Themselves From the Internet (theguardian.com)
The Guardian reports: Decades after he stayed up all night coding a prototype of what was then called an "awesome" button, Rosenstein belongs to a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called "attention economy": an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy. These refuseniks are rarely founders or chief executives, who have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place. Instead, they tend to have worked a rung or two down the corporate ladder: designers, engineers and product managers who, like Rosenstein, several years ago put in place the building blocks of a digital world from which they are now trying to disentangle themselves. "It is very common," Rosenstein says, "for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences." Rosenstein, who also helped create Gchat during a stint at Google, and now leads a San Francisco-based company that improves office productivity, appears most concerned about the psychological effects on people who, research shows, touch, swipe or tap their phone 2,617 times a day. There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called "continuous partial attention", severely limiting people's ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity -- even when the device is turned off. "Everyone is distracted," Rosenstein says. "All of the time."
by turning off the phone, and stop wasting time on /.
Sometimes you have to take responsibility for your actions, regardless of the original intent, even if your efforts are futile.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
technology is contributing toward so-called "continuous partial attention", severely limiting people's ability to focus
Of course, the noisy, crowded, attention-impossible "collaborative" open office trend is just fine.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
technology is contributing toward so-called "continuous partial attention", severely limiting people's ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ.
It's just anecdotal, but I experience not only these symptoms but also increased symptoms of seasonal allergies (year-round) and irritability pretty much in direct proportion to how much I feel like I'm suffering from "continuous partial attention" thought patterns. Disconnecting from the internet usually isn't enough, I try to find an escape from as much of ordinary life's routines as possible to mitigate the effects.
Their history will likely follow the same course. They could always live among the Amish.
Isn't this more a problem with social networks? I know browsing the web more generally can be addictive for some, but I feel like there is a distinction.
I don't do the normal social network, no facebook, no twitter etc, I went down that road for a very short time and found the overall effect fairly negative and attention graby many years before it became news. I don't find my life very distracted as a non-social networker, I don't have a smart phone, and the closest I get to distracted is emails or pull requests on GitHub (which are periodic, not continuous).
Does anyone have examples of "highly distracted" experiences outside of social networking on the web?
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/c...
As usual, the right reaction isn't to shun new things, but to learn how to use them correctly. You can have a phone and not touch, tap and swipe all the time. You can have a Facebook account and not be constantly interrupted by notifications. And if you can't, then that's what you need to fix.
As soon as they stop advertising their personal brand, their employability will die, and with it their chances of ever having income. These big-ego losers will literally die penniless in obscurity as soon as their money runs out.
So non attention seekers, get some attention?
I also can do this through the use of host files.
Still mad bro?
kisses, AF
Ask Ash-Fox about his NDA lie + dns fuckups rotflmao https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11188265&cid=55322595/ as he's a no degree liar.
I have spent decades deciding which technologies I wish to support and which I do not. I support ones that (a) leave control in the hands of users, not $BIGCORP, (b) do not constantly spy and send back every bit of data they can collect to $BIGCORP and $PARTNERCORPS.
Over decades the rest of the world has supported the exact opposite: technologies which leave them powerless, and spy on them constantly.
That would be fine, except in that eventually your ability to interact with other people utterly disappears, because everyone has moved to $EVILTECH and I insist on $NONEVILTECH. Other times $NONEVILTECH simply stops working. (Tried browsing the web without javascript recently?)
So this is a totally self made problem on society's part. We didn't HAVE to put ad agencies in control of everything. We did that because we are bloody unthinking idiots.
How many of us were adults when the Internet was just beginning to be offered to the general public? I helped the company I was working for at the time, back in the 90's, get a page on this newfangled 'world wide web' thing, email, and so on. We did everything on dialup modems because that's all there was. Then there was this new thing called 'broadband', and I had cable or DSL at home. Information was available in ways that it had never been before. Just like everyone else, I thought it was great, and had a bright future. But look at where we are now? The Internet is so toxic and cancerous in one way or another that some of us are in fact thinking about bailing out on it. Fighting SPAM. Fighting intrusive or just plain obnoxious advertising. Everyone trying to find some way to squeeze money out of you. Spreading propaganda and misinformation. Chronic attention whores. People addicted to their smartphones. Cybercrime on a level of endangering the stability of entire countries or causing disasters. Just having a computer connected to the Internet puts it at risk of being infected with malicious code, and if you have a smartphone it's more likely than not that it's infected with something right now that either spies on you, or steals from you. Governments using the Internet as a surveillance tool to the point where they'll commit what for a private citizen would be considered a felony (hacking). The list goes on. Is the living tree that is the Internet rotten at it's core? I'm thinking that it is, and maybe can't be saved at this point, the diseases that it's infected with may be fatal.
I'm a logged-in user but I just don't feel like all the hate and usual Internet bullshit I'll get subjected to if I post this as me, so I'm not going to. Deal with it, this is how I feel about the Internet today, fuck you if you don't like it or don't agree with it. More of you than not are responsible for it being the sewer it is today.
Other reported side effects from smartphones being off include diminished cellular reception, darker display, and a less-responsible touch-screen.
Apk's run you out of your downmod points AshFox and gotten quite a reaction from you. Truth hurt? Yes obviously. Apk's posting it in every article and you have to endure it publicly. How humiliating for you. Hilarious. Priceless.
There's a lot of us who are disengaging from this BS level of connectivity, don't care about smart phones, and refuse to be tethered, tweeted at, and constantly checking our email.
I've had managers who can't put down their phone for two minutes, they call a meeting so we can explain something to them, and check their email so often they keep saying "what? sorry, I missed that" and you have to repeat what you said.
I now have a hard limit of two of those before I leave the meeting. If you aren't capable of listening, then I'm not going to bother trying. If you can put your phone down long enough, great, I'll happily explain it to you .. otherwise I'll send your ADD ass an email and you can stop wasting my time trying to have an in person meeting with you while you're doing everything but paying attention. It's a waste of everybody's time in a meeting when half of the people are looking at 5 other things.
And I'm not wasting my time if you have the attention span of a 6 year old or can only digest information in tweet sized chunks.
Maybe this is an age thing, those of us who remember BBS's, IRC, and usenet are no longer quite so enthralled with the shiny baubles, and we want to get our damned work done.
When work day is done, my phone stays in my laptop bag, or on the desk of my home office. I may periodically bring it with me if something specific is happening, but otherwise I'm not interested in being leashed to my email 24x7, I'm not checking my email constantly once the work day is done. And I sure as hell don't want a twitter feed, and endless stream of texts, or some stupid game which feels it must alert me every two minutes to be sure I'm playing (you know, seeing ads and spending money).
You kids should try it, walking away from technology and not being constantly harassed by beeping phones is much more relaxing, and a whole lot healthier than jumping at your phone in the hopes that something awesome is about to unfold.
People are like crack junkies with their phone, twitching and jonesing for the next time it goes ping. No thanks, not interested.
I'm no luddite, I've been in the tech industry for a few decades, and I'm currently surrounded by 5 LCD displays all over 22", plus two phones. And like most people who have, the immediacy of the cool technology has lost its luster.
But when I walk away from this heap of technology which surrounds me, I don't give it a second thought.
Keep blowing your downmodpoints AshFox. You'll run out soon. It proves apk is getting to your lame lying ass here https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11203031&cid=55324025/
One of my former managers would always say that his plan was to flush all the nonsense and buy a chicken farm. Funny thing, this was the 1970s, so times don't really change.
Excessive smartphone use causes the user to scramble to hit the POST button without proofreading.
I strongly believe that programmer productivity today is less than it was decades ago, partly a result of distraction and the inability to think deeply, and partly due to the poor quality of todayâ(TM)s tools and tool documentation. It is hard to measure programmer productivity, but I recall that when I worked on a DevOps team a few years back, there were things that should have taken minutes to do that I spent days on, âoebanging my head against a wallâ - because the tool did not work as advertised, or the API I wanted to use was poorly documented, and so I had to resort to trial and error. In addition, I recall that while I enjoyed working in an open room, I would often stop thinking and just stare at my screen, waiting for a nearby conversation to conclude. When I had to think deeply, I found that I could not - and so I would go home, do the deep thinking, and then return to the office the next day to code it up. I found that coding did not require deep thinking as long as the problem was "obvious", but if it was complex, I could not do it effectively in the open room. As for email, I learned long ago that I need to close my email program while I am working, and only check it at intervals. As for the phone, I don't use the phone that much - I am in the "older generation" and did not pick up the habit of always looking at it, and I discourage people from texting me, because I find that texting - which is pre-emptive - is very disruptive to deep thought.
I think technology is becoming a crutch for our own thinking. In fact we don't think, we looked to a technology to answer everything. How many can find their way around a map? No they input point A and point B and follow the directions. Of course how many have ended up not where they wanted and never realized it until it was too late? Why? Because they relied on the technology to be right. Never bothered to verify, just believed it was correct. Sadly, we become a technology slave where if our cell phones don't work, internet is down, we can't figure out how to survive.
"their companies are making the world a better place."
Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!
I'm calling BULLSHIT on this claim.
Gee, if only there was a "Do-Not-Disturb" on my phone -- oh wait, there is!
Moreover, just because more and more people can't focus on something longer then 10 seconds doesn't imply _everyone_ is this neurotic.
Hmm, if only there was a word for this ... I guess no one remembers the term: Self-Discipline
> swipe or tap their phone 2,617 times a day.
Holy shit are these people insecure and slaves to their addictions. Let me guess, this is because of "Social Media."
Guess what, you have a CHOICE. Start living your own life instead of following someone's virtual life.
You can still have an "online" presence and live a balanced life.
i.e.
Check your email / facebook / etc. 3 times a day -- morning, noon, and evening.
Anything more then 3-7 times a day and you probably should seek professional help.
Except the button was designed in 2007. You *do* know what the "awesome" button they're referring to is, don't you creimer?
You should try being one of the silicon valley heretics by disconnecting yourself from the internet.
***Pay attention to the Moon update please***
C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!
Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Creimy's "enterprise-level" chair, he talks about it all the time on slashdot:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Creimy's head, while his supervisor was talking to him, not with him, since it is impossible to do with Creimy:
https://school.discoveryeducat...
Creimy acting in educational resource document, he actually confirmed himself on Slashdot that he was handled by Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education! He is really a king Dumpty!:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...
Exactly! We, at Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education, couldn't agree more with you!
For the valuable /. users that might already have read the following, please note that there is an important update.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education has invested money to buy Chris a new chair:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Information about Christopher Dale Reimer and autistic people:
Autistic people have obsessions about things normal people don't care. For example, one of our autistic patient went haywire when he realized that there was a penny missing in his pocket change.
To calm him down, one of our educator pretended to have found it on the floor and gave a penny to him.
The autistic patient condition went even worse because he realized it wasn't the same penny!
Chris has an obsession with budgeting every penny. He doesn't understand that most people do not budget to the penny and have a flexible amount they allow for miscellaneous items.
I am Nancy Guerrero and I am Director of Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We use Chris' (a.k.a. creimer,cdreimer) picture in our document because he is the hardest case we have ever had to handle:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...
Our artists were inspired by the low carb diet that Christopher follows scrupulously for the small lunch box and by the picture linked below for the rest. I am sure that you will notice the similarities such as the bump on the side of his chest and more:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Please be easy on Christopher although, I am aware that some of our staff handling Chris post joke comments here and obvoiusly, the Santa Clara County Office of Education disapprove that behavior vehemently:
https://school.discoveryeducat...
But it isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody.
Thank You dear users,
-Nancy Guerrero
There you are spamming amazon affiliate links with yet another fake account, you revenue stream hogging disgusting fat sexist tube of lard, Christopher Dale Reimer!
I tried to write to you nicely and apologizing but you are still ignoring me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can be sure I will be watching this fake account too. I know this is you because you told me you were working on your freepass 11 file server and you are so dumb that you can't even masquerade yourself properly.
Now, I told you I was out of meds last week and you didn't even care to contact me you lazy fucker.
How many times do I have to express the emergency of the situation??????
The python click script you wrote for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work!!!!!!
You fucking incompetent python script writer!!!
When it works, I get 4000+ clicks a day on my pheromone revenue stream web site but only 5 or 6 without it!!!!
Now, it seems like you dont care and that you have abandoned me you heartless fucking pig!
Bonus:
Here is a story that creimer told me when convincing me what a hard life he had:
The tree was him and the tree knot was his butt hole!
So, his uncle packed his fat ass with lard and with his cock! Not that it makes much of a difference but anyway, there it is!
Signed:
The girl that used to love you and now hates you, burn in hell where you belong you sexist pig!
You jest, but according to research ...
In other words, if you are near your phone, and even if it's off, and especially if you're a slave to your phone ... then it is absolutely damaging to your cognitive ability. It literally makes you dumber, it's like withdrawal.
For those of us who aren't addicted to our phones, we have seen this in action. It's alarming how many people can't put their phone down for even a short period of time -- alarming but not surprising, because we see it all the time.
Learn to put the phone down and walk away.
I do. As far as digital content and connectivity goes, we live in a world of abundance. Today true wealth lies in focus. And today, disconnecting from always-online can provide that to a very high degree, much better than trying to discipline yourself. Every time upgrading my smartphone is due, I think about going back to a feature phone and a paper calendar / filofax.
I never really dug the Internet in whole. This always-online thing was suspicious to me back in the 90ies and - to a certain extent - still is today. I remember the Fidonet and pulling/pushing my stuff once a day. Perfect.
Long story short, disconnecting is a good idea and I understand that for some only a radical move does the trick. I could be that one.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
that someone has the courage to speak up. This addicition to live, real-time information is not healthy psychologically and physiologically. Every time I try to disconnect from the internet, the longest I've ever been able to make it has been 3 days.
We've been living in a world of fossil-fuel powered earth movers instead of shovels. A lot of people are weak and/or fat, but not everybody. Some people hit the gym. For simple jobs some of us still use shovels. Computers can be for the brain what construction equipment is for the muscles. They can help us build things faster and better; but we can't use them as a crutch all the time. We need to hit the *mental* gym sometimes. I'm not sure what that looks like. Maybe it's as simple as reading, playing games like Chess and poker, or working a few math problems in your head once in a while. It's probably more than just turning off the phone for a while. Merely idling a dump truck doesn't give you stronger muscles.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Only to those of us who own such devices. I've never seen the need.
He checked out from tech right before the dot com bubble burst, hasn't touched a computer except for email/web services since, but now since he got a fancy smartphone he spends his time pointedly ignoring people to futz around on it instead.
I appear to be in the minority now in that I use the internet to try and help socialize or socialize with people I can't meet face to face often, whereas many people now use it to avoid socializing instead.
SO please tell me what's up wif this fool and a girl and a phermone clicker script. This sounds hilarious as shit.
Some people just can't seem to do things in moderation
There's another serious unintended consequence that I'm more worried about: Social Cooling. It describes how the reputation scores that databrokers like Equifax make and sell are increasingly influencing your job opportunities and other aspects of your life. As people become aware of this reputation economy they start to self-censor and avoid risk in order to have good scores.
https://www.socialcooling.com/
It will even get some attention in a public hearing on 'horizontal privacy' by the Dutch Government this thursday.
And watch as a group of heretic TV producers disconnects from the medium because it's being used for advertisement instead of the arts...
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
They are probably as annoying as those people who go out of their way to tell you that they don't own a TV.