Digital Obesity

Digital Obesity or Analogue Anorexia? Welcome to the Future (expanded excerpt from “Technology vs Humanity”)

No escape from the data tsunami? Note: this post has ...

Nov 2016

Anticipatory computing: short WSJ video on: Apple, Google: We Know What You Want Before You Do

Read the WSJ piece (if you can make it past ...

Feb 2016

How Facebook Makes Us Dumber – confirmation bias is a huge issue on large social networks

“As Del Vicario and her coauthors put it, “users mostly tend to select and share content according to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest.” On Facebook, the result is the formation of a lot of “homogeneous, polarized clusters.” Within those clusters, new information moves quickly among friends (often in just a few hours).

The consequence is the “proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.””

How Facebook Makes Us Dumber
https://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-08/how-facebook-makes-us-dumber
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

How websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Do we need regulation? M. Schulson via AEON (relates to my digital obesity meme)

Michael Schulson via the great Aeon site

https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it

"In the 2000s, users nicknamed the first mainstream smartphone the crackberry. In conversation, we describe basic tools and apps – Facebook, email, Netflix, Twitter – using terms otherwise reserved for methamphetamine and slot machines"

"So should individuals be blamed for having poor self-control? To a point, yes. Personal responsibility matters. But it’s important to realise that many websites and other digital tools have been engineered specifically to elicit compulsive behaviour"

"Major tech companies, Harris told me, ‘have 100 of the smartest statisticians and computer scientists, who went to top schools, whose job it is to break your willpower"

"As with the pigeons, uncertain reward can lead to obsessive behaviour. The gambling industry has been using these techniques for years, too: as Skinner himself recognised, the classic high-rep, variable-reward device is the slot machine"