While we've been fixated on the point technology overwhelms human strength, we've missed the point when technology undermines human weakness.
That's the true 'singularity'.
Born 15 years ago today: the infinite scroll.
Then-22-year-old Aza Raskin's innovation was spurred by his frustration with Google's multi-page search results.
He now regrets creating the feature and its role in keeping people glued to their phones.
1. Amazon's revenue drops 1% for every 100ms slower their page loads.
2. To influence elections/manipulate belief, the government just needs to lean on a telco to slow down loading times of dissenting sites.
3. The political implications for ending
#NetNeutrality
is terrifying.
As the person who created it… shows the massive hole in our design philosophy: Optimizing for ease-of-use does not mean best for the user or humanity.
UX is locally moral but globally amoral. It asks "how do I make this ergonomic" not "is it ergonomic to our values or society"
Excited to release a collab with singer
@zia_cora
🎉! It's a music video for her new single 'Submarines' that I created with the latest research AI.
I'm still 🤯 by the AI's lyricism & power. The song is dark and tinged with hope, just like this tech.
This is what you get when you type "climate change is" into Google. Three of four results say hoax.
If you can make something trend, you make it true. Algorithmic recommendations become an autocomplete for the human mind.
Google, take responsibility for your tacit endorsements.
@proetrie
As the person who created it… shows the massive hole in our design philosophy: Optimizing for ease-of-use does not mean best for the user or humanity.
UX is locally moral but globally amoral. It asks "how do I make this ergonomic" not "is it ergonomic to our values or society"
#SocialMediaAddiction
The creator of the infinite scrolling feature, Aza Raskin, had a noble intention when he went about designing this feature.
According to Raskin, time worth 200,000 human lifetimes is wasted on a daily basis due to our act of infinite scrolling.
Facebook is aware that foreign state actors are using the Facebook platform to undermine US interest and
@FrancesHaugen
believes their consistent understaffing of counter espionage, information, and terrorism teams is a national security issue.
We need to move away from just Human-centered Design to Human-protection Design.
From: Have a problem? It’s your responsibility to use it differently.
To: It’s our responsibility to design technology in a way that protects people.
Google Duplex. Facebook. I'm looking at you.
.
@TristanHarris
and I joined
@JoeRogan
on his podcast for a dive deep on AI - discussing the immense potential and significant challenges that this technology presents
Listen to our conversation:
To join the movement and learn more, text "AI" to 55444
Something very special...
Over the last few months, we’ve come together as co-creators, drawn in by the magnetism of a project.
Despite myself, I'm very excited. It's an indy/non-profit project that helps people get together in digital space in entirely new fun flexible ways.
Proud to announce:
Today we launched a new org—led by
@tristanharris
—to combat the digital addiction crisis.
And they way technology manipulates and polarizes us as it crawls down our brainstorm to do whatever it can to mine our attention.
“And we need to grow, and grow aggressively” — CEO of 1Password.
Why?!
Growth at all costs is a San Francisco ideology.
We should replace it with humane ideology: bind scale to responsibility.
The societal cost of all-costs growth is everything.
Netflix just released the trailer for the film we've been working on with Chasing Ice's
@jefforlowski
: "The Social Dilemma".
The documentary is like the Silent Spring or Inconvenient Truth of technology.
Give it a watch!
📣 COVID19 DESIGN CHALLENGE. Today we're challenging tech to use their global reach to
#FlattenTheCurve
& save millions of lives.
No one else is positioned to leap ahead and reach 3b ppl before the virus can.
Over the next 72hrs
@HumaneTech_
is hosting a design challenge⬇️🧵
🪁 EXCITING NEWS! 🪁
Three years in the making, the trailer for our new film, "The Social Dilemma" dropped this morning. It pulls back the curtain on how Silicon Valley has been disrupting civilization – from the mental health of kids to democracy to truth.
On Netflix, Sept 9
We tweet, we like, and we share— but what are the consequences of our growing dependence on social media? Silicon Valley insiders reveal how social media is reprogramming civilization.
#TheSocialDilemma
Only on Netflix, September 9th.
ViperCard is an open-source re-imagining and re-creation of 1987 HyperCard. Oh the feels!
And also: who else has incredible memories of playing Glider?
"Every time you hear 'ethics' you should just replace it in your head with the actual negative impact of what you're doing." Relevant to tech, relevant to this moment. Ethical Transformation panel at the Vatican
We are guaranteed the right to freedom of speech. We are not guaranteed the right to freedom of reach.
We need amplification liability for Internet platforms. Facebook, I'm looking directly at you.
Explored by
@CaseyNewton
here:
A huge congrats to the
@firefox
team. I've been using Firefox Quantum the last couple weeks and it has become my main browser again. Super fast and without ulterior motive.
Hello again, old friend.
“It's no longer enough for designers to think of one individual using a product. We have to think the fractal version up to technology/society interaction”.
From an episode of the Netflix doc series Abstract: The Art of Design with
@ianspalter
"I see all the pictures that people like to project about themselves on social media. And I know it’s all a lie. Most people are lying about their lives. Pretending to have it together. Pretending to be more successful and popular than they are."
— GPT3
Congress keeps asking the wrong questions of Zuckerberg.
Facebook doesn't sell your data—that would be against their business interest.
They make $40b a year selling the ability to influence and target you.
Boarding the plane with an accelerated step and heart beat.
SF > Instanbul > Nairobi > Bangui (Central African Republic) > Bayanga > Dzanga Bai (the Congo).
Heading there with Cornell researchers for an expedition to study elephant communication. 🐘🐘🐘
Childhood dream. ✅
Cameras, at the hardware level, need to start signing their content and putting proof of authorship in a block chain.
Make it verifiable that a video or picture was taken, not generated or modified.
People often say that porn pushes the limits of any technology, but when it happens in your field it feels very uncomfortable... Face swapping in adult videos with adversarial deep learning:
“64% of all extremist group joins are due to our [Facebook's] recommendation tools”
“Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”
Internal presentation to exec team at Facebook. Solutions were nixed or weakened.
That Facebook employees don’t find it morally wrong to take full call history w/o clear disclosure is indicative.
Their defense is pretty much: well, you let me into your house, so why are you mad that I dug through your trash and closets for personal stuff?
A Facebook software engineer just emailed me. It's clear even Facebook employees don't understand why people are surprised the company even needs to collect call history and SMS data (mobile friendly version of tweet)
“The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself.”
We need new duty of care/fiduciary laws to protect us individual humans from the accelerating asymmetry of our god-like technological powers.
I made the video in less than 48 hours.
One of the 🤯 things is that the video was made just by describing the sequence of scenes I wanted and in what style.