
Nest Founder:“I Wake Up in Cold Sweats Thinking,What Did We Bring to the World?” - petethomas
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90132364/nest-founder-i-wake-up-in-cold-sweats-thinking-what-did-we-bring-to-the-world
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bdcravens
Couldn't help but think with that headline, maybe he needs a better
thermostat?

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samstave
clam down clam down... no need to roast him over his claims...

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booi
This isn't Reddit.

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alexchantavy
> “A lot of the designers and coders who were in their 20s when we were
> creating these things didn’t have kids. Now they have kids,” he says. “And
> they see what’s going on, and they say, ‘Wait a second.’ And they start to
> rethink their design decisions.”

Consumer tech today is very individual-centric. Game consoles require
individual accounts to log in and track game progress/ownership. If your
family shares a PS4 connected to the internet, you can't just turn it on and
enjoy your game, you have to remember to log out of whichever family member is
currently logged in and then log your own profile in and then get to your
game. Similar idea applies with Steam on PC since each game is DRM'd to
individuals and you have to buy multiple copies of the same game if you want
different people to be able to track their own progress.

I also feel like music services also aren't really meant to be shared in a
family. There could be an opportunity to make these services more group-
centric. Maybe as developers (as according to one of the article's main
points) get older these patterns will change.

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Crespyl
Steam is actually somewhat interesting because they've explicitly added a
"Family Sharing" feature that allows Steam accounts on the same computer to
access each others library of games.

It still requires a relog cycle to switch users, but each user can track their
own progress, cloud saves, achievements, etc. without having to buy multiple
copies of the same game.

Netflix took a slightly different approach, allowing multiple "profiles" under
a single shared login, which works well for the embedded players in set-top-
boxes and consoles.

I'm not aware of anything similar for music services or other content, but it
will be interesting to seem how other companies respond (or fail to).

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dragonwriter
> I'm not aware of anything similar for music services or other content

Google has the “Google Play Family Library” which covers most types of content
in the Play Store (but not all individual pieces of content. of the covered
types), including Apps, Video, and Books, but not Music and Newsstand items.

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7007852?hl=en](https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7007852?hl=en)

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cbanek
I love that it's a "will someone please think of the children" piece, but
really, adults are just as self absorbed. Being able to see how everyone
around you is tuned out to the real world (on their phone, talking to
imaginary bluetooth people) it's hard to ignore (especially when it's the
person in the car next to you).

> “And I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens,” Fadell
> says. “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.”

I mean, you could say the same thing for me and SNES, and that was long before
phones. Or TV.

Go watch the movie Network if you haven't seen it. TV was the Facebook of its
day.

I think the real question is one of human psychology and development. Now that
we have more power, more information at our command, how do we use that? How
does society, psychology and individual action need to change in order to let
humans use the ever increasing power of technology responsibly? Same goes for
climate change, nuclear weapons, poverty, healthcare, etc.

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valuearb
Supposedly the author of "the one device" book heard about Tony Fadell from
his peers at Apple and they said, "don't believe a word he says". Tony just
admitted to making up a huge lie to the author about Apple VP of Marketing
Phil Schiller.

Tony's involvement with the iPhone appears to have been close to zilch. His
iPod group tried to make a iPod with a phone in it using the click wheel as
the user interface. It was terrible, so Jobs went with the Mac team who built
a tiny touchscreen based Nextstep computer that became the iPhone.

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celias
Slightly tangential, but it reminds me a bit of the viva_la_AIsistance episode
of the Partially Derivative podcast (34 minute mark, discussion starting
around 22 minutes in) where they talk about children growing up telling
digital assistants like Alexa and Siri to do things for them.

[http://partiallyderivative.com/podcast/2017/06/20/viva_la_AI...](http://partiallyderivative.com/podcast/2017/06/20/viva_la_AIsistance)

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taurath
Our entire culture has become about self, and individualism. We do not have
the community, historical or racial binds that much of the rest of the world
do, and the culture does not propagate the idea of looking out for each other,
only "your own" be that your immediate family or subgroup. The technology we
develop and trumpet is a bit of an application of Conway's Law.

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mikejmoffitt
Why stick Nest Founder in the headline, when Fadell's involvement in the iPod
and iPhone are more pertinent to the article?

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valuearb
Because the only person who thinks Tony Fadell had any significant involvement
with the iPhone is Tony Fadell.

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Balbazac
The idea that "[a]t its root, this is a design problem" is frankly laughable.

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HillRat
Design, culture, and technology are deeply intertwined; society warps to fit
its tools. As designers (remember, design thinking has antecedentally one foot
in industrial design, one foot in programming functional requirements
gathering), the creators of today's digital tools have essentially abdicated
the responsibility of thinking about how their products change culture and
what effects they have, positive or negative. Instead, we nod towards market
forces and "fail fast" capitalism, which ends up justifying whatever cool toys
we end up wanting to create.

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kwellington
I was disappointed when I realized it didn't say Nestle.

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d0lph
A thermostat?

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SippinLean
Buried deep in the article (subheadline):

>one of the minds behind the iPod and the iPhone

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onetokeoverthe
So he/they did not run any supercomputer simulations of what their product
would do to the world? You can bet their funders did.

