
Time Well Spent: From attention tech to time well lived tech (Dec 16 Refresh) - balupton
http://www.timewellspent.io
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mikro2nd
Sorry to say, but you lost me when I saw Meetup as one of the exemplars. I
tried to use Meetup a couple of times recently, having never used it before,
and eventually quit in sheer frustration. Seldom have I encountered a worse
UX.

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balupton
I'm super skeptical of this.

They have been around since Jan 2015. And include Google not in attention
companies but in platform companies. This is a strange divide considering
Google makes YouTube, and which business is just to intercept as much
information as possible, to build a profile of you, to target your attention
to advertising and enough value that you don't mind. This is then continued by
their recommendation of AdBlock which blocks ads (but not Google's by default,
because Google pays them), and not tracking.

Their message seems somewhat to what we have already been hearing from Richard
Stallman and Eben Molgen for the past 30 years —
[https://youtu.be/tbcy_ZxXLl8?list=PLYVl5EnzwqsR20nKqwDCSNONs...](https://youtu.be/tbcy_ZxXLl8?list=PLYVl5EnzwqsR20nKqwDCSNONsS6LmclUv)
— Aral Balkan from Indie for the past 5-10 years — [https://ind.ie/ethical-
design/](https://ind.ie/ethical-design/) — but packaged up for consumers,
blaming tech.

However their delivery seems more at targeting consumers, with the illusion of
targeting designers, by blaming those dam malicious tech folk because it is
not the consumer's job to accept responsibility of how they spend their time -
and instead, it is up to companies to stop wasting the irresponsible and
perhaps addicted consumers attention, despite the consumer not wanting to
support non-free business models, probably hence why this movement hasn't
taken off in its 2 years.

The video seems reminiscent of the rap video by another person, who's message
was to consumers, hey there was a time before tech invaded our attention, you
can put your phone away you know, perhaps do that. This version seems to be
perhaps aimed at children who have never experienced an app-less world, so the
expectation of them putting their phone away would perhaps be absurd to them,
so hey, let's blame other people instead.

Snodwen, Richard Stallman, Eben Molgen, and Aral Balkan, seem to be having
more success in changing this industry's practices. With Snowden more so than
anyone else. As with Snowden, it not changing is about the legal and ethical
consequences of invading privacy against the consumers will — whereas where
invading their privacy for the consumers will, as Google does, is totally okay
and sometimes even glorified by consumers.

TimeWellSpent will never solve the Journalism clickbait problem, as the
advertising business model, which is the free business model, does not value
anything but attention and clicks, which promotes clickbait articles, which
promotes shit journalism (publish first, update progressively, and verify at
some very later point if ever). Just because consumers expect things for free
but expect companies to be ethical. They can’t be ethical if consumers don’t
wish to pay for them to be ethical.

It’s kind of like whining that there are no seedless apples, but then when
someone engineers a seedless apple and charges money for it, they say, what
the hell, you should be free, I’m going to use the unethical clone of you that
advertises to me anyway, and screw the R&D you ethical people did.

Thoughts?

~~~
balupton
Got this reply via the YouTube comments:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf9ZhU7zF8s&google_comment_i...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf9ZhU7zF8s&google_comment_id=z13hh1uhiknkfn0lx22dtllixzattpwqu04)

Hey Ben,

Thanks for this incredibly thoughtful comment.

I made this video because I believe in what Time Well Spent is about and
wanted to tell a story that got both consumers and designers excited about the
movement. Excited about designing technology that enhances our humanity. I'm
hoping we start to move towards a world where consumers are willing to pay for
tech that helps us live fuller lives. This movement is not about blame, but
awareness and conversation. Snowden has brought privacy into the tech
conversation, shouldn't the paths designers/developers are leading consumers
down and whether that's in our best interests be a part of that conversation
too?

Re Google, you're right that Youtube and data-profiling/ad models should
perhaps be separated. It's Android and IOS that could be incentivized to adapt
to Time Well Spent if we could stir up enough demand for it. Show me the
seedless apples! I'll pay... but I fear Facebook Google and Apple have such
extensive network effect and access to hardware (the latter two) that we need
to plea for the change to happen there.﻿

