
How Tech Companies Own Your Day - katiey
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-how-tech-owns-your-day/
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paxys
Imagine seeing an article titled "How furniture manufacturers own your day".
It has graphs on how long on average you spend sitting on chairs from each
company. How many companies make desks you use at work as well as beds you
sleep on at night. How these companies make their products work better
together so you have a chance of buying more, and then sell accessories on top
of it. They even fight for your lunch and dinner time, providing dining tables
and chairs and sometimes even utensils.

Probably sounds absurd, but that's essentially what this article is. Tech is
as ubiquitous as furniture, perhaps even more for certain demographics, but
for some reason there is a new article every day which sounds like the author
looked around and was suddenly surprised to see everyone with smartphones and
internet.

~~~
matthewmacleod
The difference seems blatantly obvious to me: once I purchase furniture, my
interaction with the manufacturer is _done_. The manufacturer will not monitor
how I use my furniture. My furniture will not suddenly stop working because
the manufacturer does not want to manufacture it any more. My dining table
will not change into an arbitrary different piece of furniture overnight.
Manufacturers are not competing to see which of my chairs they can make me use
most. Manufacturers compete up until the point of sale, then it's done.

"Tech" in general is probably the industry with which we interact _most_ on a
day-to-day basis. The change from 'no tech' to 'pervasive tech' has been
extremely rapid, and we are starting to understand some of the implications of
that. So it seems only natural to look around and say "hey, maybe this is
different from furniture".

~~~
908087
I fear we'll see this change soon enough, though. Given the rate at which IoT
stupidity has been accelerating, a "smart" couch can't be too far off.

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dustfinger
Who are these people that only work 3.8 hr per day and get 8.8 hr of sleep. I
am lucky to get more than 5.5 hr of sleep and I work far more than 3.8 hr per
day. Sounds like the average joe has it made. Oh where did I go wrong :-P

~~~
leggomylibro
Maybe they live near the families which have 2.5 children, but the article
does cite its sources such as:

[https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm](https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm)

~~~
haZard_OS
This is pretty clearly a case of the mean conveying little useful information.
Children, elderly, and the unemployed skew the data way too much for the
average to be a meaningful summary.

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sbmthakur
I beg to differ. YC owns most of my day. Thanks to HN!

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contextfree
I would say Azure is one of Microsoft's core products at this point (and maybe
Bing as well)

~~~
walrus01
Everything with a monthly recurring subscription revenue stream is now the MS
core product. Office365, etc. This is why windows 10 is effectively free to
license, so you will see it on $85 tablets and ultra low cost PCs.

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zoom6628
They could have written the title as "How smartphone using idiots let
themselves be drawn into mobile addiction machines" but that would be too
close to the truth and scare people off. For my 2c i think the reality is
people want to avoid their issues instead of solving them, and that is a basic
human trait. So they dive into tech solutions mobile and web and desktop for
gratification, importance, friendship, and so on because some clever people
figured out how to take advantage of human weaknesses and embed that in
software.

Am i cynical? Not at all. I just observe people using systems and their
inability to walk away with a sense of ease. Any habitual consumption is bad -
only aware consumption is good, regardless of what you are consuming.

Now, if someone could just write an app that redirected every social media
tool on the planet to the home page of HN we could at least start opening some
minds.

Signed #grumpyoldhackerinasia

~~~
throwaway080383
I don't suppose you're a habitual user of HN?

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obblekk
“How finance companies own your money”

“How transportation companies own your commute”

“How food companies own your meals”

~~~
emodendroket
Uh, yeah. What would be weird or objectionable about any of those premises?

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microcolonel
Only if you sell it to them, bub.

