Look at this bullshit non-journalism covering some bullshit non-research: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7253493.stm

"Some people are very anxious when they don't have their technological gadgets next to them.

"They might get into trouble with their employers as they spend more and more time checking messages."

Boo hoo.....

The word 'addiction' is totally inappropriate here, as it usually implies severe negative consequences to continued use. Compare these 'negative' consequences to those of, say, heroin addiction, and you'll see what I mean.

They don’t call ‘breathing’ an addiction do they. No, this communications technology It’s just another technological augmentation of the human body – it’s how humans work – how they move forward – do you call ‘getting a bus to work’ every day an ‘addiction’? No you don’t. So what’s the difference here? The difference is that things are accelerating. People are scared, and they’re wasting their lives doing meaningless research - “You would be surprised how many people had their PDA or Blackberry next to their bed heads.” No I wouldn’t! Have you seen kids? Have you seen a mobile phone?!

It makes me sick that we need to a fucking ‘warning’ now because some people might ‘wake up in the night’. The technology is not the problem here – it’s the information people are expecting – if it’s something important, why wouldn’t somebody want to know as soon as possible?

A friend of mine contests that "addiction occurs when you have an inability to stop something, even when you want to. " In response I would say "would you want to stop using a mobile phone?" Not really. Partly because loads of stuff would become really inconvenient, but also because everybody else has one and if you didn’t then you’d be socially disadvantaged. It’s the Red Queen. A fact of life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_queen

Personally I'm pretty excited about the rate of technological change. Maybe I'm angry because so many other people are too scared to embrace it.

Tags: news, technology, thought

I often get into discussions and arguments about technology, its effects on the environment and its effects on privacy, etc...

A lot of people's arguments can be boiled down to a simple fear:

"But what if a bad man uses it?"

This is hardly a problem with the technology itself. If I give a bad man an ashtray and he uses it to smash my head in, should we ban ashtrays?

I believe that the benefits of new technology tend to outweigh the cost. Usually the benefits MASSIVELY outweigh the cost. And as humanity gets more powerful, the new potential badness is usually counteractable by the same technology that made it possible in the first place.

We are living in times of rapidly accelerating change. You really have to look at things in terms of *balance* and step back from the issues themselves when you start to get scared. Game theory shows that social systems, over long timescales, tend towards co-operation, not conflict.

We're not often aware that we are choosing a particular scale on which to perceive a problem. I think your choice of the scale on which to look at things tends to be a factor of your emotional state more than anything else. If you're feeling existentially depressed it's easy to get distracted by the potential heat death of the universe. If you're in a good mood you might just be enjoying the shape of a cloud. When scale gets involved, everything gets intractably subjective. What is it about? My happiness? My future happiness? Your happiness? Your freedom? Your children's freedom? What are we all so afraid of losing?

Tags: technology, thought