
Technology is Heroin - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is_h.php
======
DanielBMarkham
This is a long article, but I wrote it based on the conclusions from many HN
discussions. I think you guys will like it if you can bear with it, and I'm
also really curious as to what your feedback might be.

I never thought when writing programs that I'd have to ask myself "Am I doing
good or evil in the world here?" After all, it's just so many bytes, right?

But I'm not so sure about that anymore.

~~~
Alex3917
Drugs: The one that makes us feel the best wins.

Music: The one that gets noticed over the clutter wins.

Games: The one that's the best at giving us the illusion of social status and
accomplishment wins.

None of these things are really competing against each other, because the hook
for each is targeting a different need.

And I do think there is a way out. Change our environment so that our lives
aren't so hollow and empty. The reason these addictions take hold is because,
for example, people are accomplishing absolutely zero in their lives so they
need the fake feeling of accomplishment and respect from hitting level 60 in
WoW. If we re-engineer society so that people actually have an opportunity to
make friends, do productive work, get exercise, etc. these things won't be
nearly as dangerous as they are today.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_"Makes us feel best", "Gets noticed over the clutter", "[Gives] us the
illusion of social status"_

Those are the lures that each niche uses, sure, but the result is that we lose
time. The result is the problem, not the drug packaging or delivery mechanism.

If anything, that makes it more disturbing: whatever our psychological needs,
there's electronic joy out there competing for them.

Not sure how it will play out. I'm an optimist, but after I wrote this it's
kind of drug me down. I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow as a species. We
always do.

------
jacquesm
Man that's some excellent writing. I'm seriously jealous at your ability to
write like that, I'll need to practice more :)

I did spot this little HN reference in there:

"Programmers are creating "no procrastinate" options for their web sites in
order to help users not spend so much time there."

thanks for all that work!

I agree with your premise that technology is addictive, I think it somehow
fits in with our fascination with tools in general. After all humans are
'toolmakers' par excellence, tools mean survival, food and progress, no wonder
we should become addicted to them.

Your analog with heroin and the time required to figure out what was happening
reminds me of the old story of the frog and the boiling pot: If you put a frog
in a pot with hot water it will jump out immediately, but if you slowly raise
the temperature the frog won't notice the problem until it is too late to jump
out and it perishes.

Not sure if that's a true story but that's how I remember it.

I'm passing your article on to my 15 year old son to read.

------
unalone
From the comments:

 _I watched the movie Idiocracy with you and it hit me in the face as to one
potential out come for the human race. But talking about the fact that we
don't do physical chores that were done a hundred years ago, doesn't make a
lot of sense. After all, things have changed. Those chores are no longer an
issue._

I just saw Idiocracy yesterday (ironically, I decided it wasn't worth paying
attention to so I played it on the top of the screen and coded on the bottom
of the screen), and I think that assuming it's a plausible outcome is kind of
silly. I doubt Mike Judge, the director, would disagree. Idiocracy is much
more a critique of the present than it is of the future.

This was a terrific article, but there're a few fallacies in your argument.
The one that most stands out to me is how you talk about music switching from
being active to passive, and therefore taking less effort from the listener.
You then bring up rock music as an instance of something that provides a big
hit rather than focusing on intricacy.

The fallacy is that in the past, most people _didn't_ listen to concerts.
There is a long history of minstrel songs: music played in the street, catchy
stuff for the public. The average person wouldn't listen to any concert in
their lifetime. This is not a new thing. Furthermore, if you look at how many
people travel to concert halls to listen to music, I would bet that more
people proportionally listen to great pieces of work like Tchaikovsky or
Mozart than ever have in the past. If anything, the trend is that once you
have _access_ to things easily, you are _more_ willing to put effort into a
viewing than you would be if you'd never been before. (I'm going to the Met to
see a Tchaikovsky opera two weeks from now; I never would have wanted to if I
hadn't torrented 2GB worth of his pieces earlier in the year.)

 _"Don't turn that dial!" has become cliche: whatever you do, keep your eyes
peeled on this station._

That ignores the rise in TV that's actively challenging to watch. To bring up
the two shows I always bring up, _The Wire_ on HBO and BBC's _The Office_.
Neither one is easy and clear-cut. They both attract watchers who are there to
be challenged. I've watched the entire Office straight through three times in
the way that I reread good books. It's not addictive per se, it's _enriching_.

Your argument about video games make me wonder how avid a gamer you are. I'm
not a huge gamer, but the games that I do like are almost always pretty rich
in environment. Portal's the cliche in gaming, and that's a game that's
clever, well-written, and encourages lateral thinking. My 13-year-old brother,
who dislikes most books and isn't a big math kid, got hooked in Portal's
advanced challenges, which really are difficult pieces. Then there're RPGs,
the best of which are superb storytellers, there are real-time strategy games,
there are all sorts of games that encourage you to actively think. You can't
play a game and shut off. You need to focus incredibly. My friends that play
Counterstrike are the best proof of this: you need to be a special sort of
brilliant to play that game well. It's addictive, but only in the way, again,
that challenging books or pieces of music are. It's not a "pop" game.

Of course, I would also argue that VG composers are writing the most
sophisticated orchestral music of the day. Listen to _Roar of the Earth_ by Ko
Otani if you can find sample pieces. It's rich and complex in the way good
classical music is. Plus, it's attached to a video game that's pretty
stimulating in and of itself - ever played Shadow of the Colossus? It's one of
the few video games I will call an exceptional piece of art rather than merely
a game.

(Sidebar: World of Warcraft is an exception in that yes, it's focused on
addiction rather than active focus. But what a piece of art it is in and of
itself! I've never played, I don't want to get hooked, but they made an entire
_world_! This is like Tolkien realized. One of my future plans is to make an
MMORPG in a much more literary sense, and to create an enormous world that
really feels like fantasy - World of Warcraft opened that door for me. It's an
incredible achievement in and of itself.)

The Internet is addictive, yes - but in what way is it addictive? My friend
and I both competed to parody the 25 Things notes on Facebook yesterday - that
requires some thinking and creative prowess. Meanwhile, while I spend hours a
day in front of a computer, I'm constantly reading articles like this one, and
writing answer pieces. I participate in debates. And I've found that as a
result, in debate-focused classes I'm leagues ahead of classmates. It's
entirely because the Internet gets my mind going. The Internet is not passive.
It's not like rock music or TV shows or heroin. It's active. You consciously
focus on what you're doing.

People are less fit because less tasks require physical labor than ever have
before. That's why society is so focused on being thin. Now, staying fit
requires conscious effort. It is no _longer_ a passive task. It doesn't happen
during the day unless you choose it to. So in a way, it's a reversal of the
ideas that you're stating here. (I keep a 30-pound weight on my desk, and I
exercise and have my computer read long posts out loud. It's such a wonderful
system.)

Finally: things have always devoted people's lives like this. If I wasn't
constantly on the Internet, I would be writing in a notebook, or practicing an
instrument. That's not heroin, is it? That's an exercise in creativity. Think
of it like that: anything worth doing is worth devoting time to. And most of
society will always ignore those opportunities for wasted time. That's nothing
new. It's a part of human nature.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Awesome. Thanks for that.

I won't get into a long discussion -- HN seems to frown on these in-depth
things. I'd like to point out that to a casual observer you sound like our
Civil War vet talking about how much better his life is now that he's hooked
on dope.

I did some investigations into MMORPGs a year or so ago. The _average_ WoW
player spends a little more than 35 hours per week online playing the game.
That's about as much as a full-time job. The virtual goods industry alone --
that's goods that are purely digital -- is in the billions.

Perhaps there are these great mental exercises that make us all the equivalent
of digital Mozarts or something. The external evidence is lacking -- there's
not some huge increase in SAT scores or math prodigies among video game
players. At the very least to an outside observer it seems that there is a
huge amount of time and energy being spent in something with no physical
results. Except, of course, the usual results of spending 40 hours a week
sitting on a couch plugged into a LCD eating Fritos. At the very least, it's
completely unprecendented that so many people would spend so much time in
sedentary, er, contemplation.

Great comment.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_The average WoW player spends a little more than 35 hours per week online
playing the game._

Do you have a source for that? According to this article, Nielson has it at
less than 15 hours per week. Still a huge amount of time, mind you.

[http://www.tvturnoff.org/index.php?option=com_content&ta...](http://www.tvturnoff.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=21)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Can't dig it up easily.

Gartner expects 80% of internet users will be involved in an online world by
20011
[http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503861&format=prin...](http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503861&format=print)

Chinese Gold Farmers, a significant population of WoW, play an average of
12-14 hours per day [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/20/virtual-goods-the-
next-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/20/virtual-goods-the-next-big-
business-model/)

I might be able to find the original for the 35-hour quote. If it's bugging
you, email me and I'll take some extra time to dig it up.

~~~
unalone
Gold Farmers are kind of the exception - and they use WoW as a business, so
arguably they're not wasting time.

I would bet against Gartner aggressively. They don't understand the
technologies they're talking about. Virtual worlds have less to offer than
people think.

------
edw519
_But hey -- it's not like TV gave you the shakes, or made you sick or killed
you._

It does, just slower.

(Great essay, Daniel. If you write code as well as you write prose, you are a
hacker's hacker.)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks Edw.

Somebody posted it over on reddit and you should see some of the comments.
Makes me sound like some guy living in a cave eating twigs and berries. I
wonder how much of the response to an article comes from situational cues --
knowing the author, being part of a community and such -- and how much is
actually predicated on how good the article is?

The guy who submitted in on reddit had a really low score. I'm assuming he's
not one of the "in crowd" over there. It would be interesting to wait a month
or two and then have a high-profile person over there submit the same article
to see if the reaction would be different. I'm betting it would be.

Hey. Still working on my hacking skills. Been slinging code for 20 years and I
don't think I'll ever reach uber-coder status like some of the other guys on
here.

~~~
edw519
Negative feedback on reddit is like getting fired by Henry Ford: a badge of
honor.

Not sure if I liked your essay so much because or who you are of if I agreed
with it so much.

More likely, it stands on its own merit. You made an argument, used metaphor
in a way that a fellow hacker could truly appreciate, and while you were at
it, taught a little bit when we weren't looking. People like you, pg, Joel,
etc. are using blog to breathe new life into an old artform, the essay. Keep
up the great work!

------
kragen
The article says: _Help is on the way, however. The American Civil War saw the
first use of morphine for pain relief. It's impossible to overstate what a
difference it made. The opiates were truly miracle drugs._

This is a really remarkable level of historical inaccuracy. To quote from
[http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=46725...](http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=46725&pageindex=1)
:

 _There is general agreement that the Sumerians, who inhabited what is today
Iraq, cultivated poppies and isolated opium from their seed capsules at the
end of the third millenium [sic] B.C. They called opium “gil,” the word for
joy, and the poppy “hul gil,” plant of joy. It appears that opium spread from
Sumeria to the remainder of the old world._

 _At first opium may have been employed as a euphoriant in religious rituals,
taken by mouth or inhaled from heated vessels (4). Knowledge of its use may
initially have been confined to priests representing gods who sealed the sick
and gods of death as well. It was given along with hemlock to put people
quickly and painlessly to death, and it came to be used medicinally. The Ebers
Papyrus (ca. 1500 B.C.), for example, includes the following description of a
“remedy to prevent excessive crying of children" (see ref. 2, p. 35): "Špenn,
the grains of the špenn (poppy)-plant, with excretions of flies found on the
wall, strained to a pulp, passed through a sieve and administered on four
successive days. The crying will stop at once." This remedy and others
containing opium (such as spongia somnifera, sponges soaked in opium used to
relieve pain during surgery) were dangerous because they varied in potency and
rate of absorbance. Consequently, many physicians were wary of using them._

...

 _In 1806, Sertürner (8, 9) isolated the active ingredient in opium and named
it morphine..._

The same paragraph of the "Technology is Heroin" article also makes the error
of calling cocaine an opiate.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
History of Drug Use and Drug Users in the United States.
<http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/gen003.htm> Halfway down the page, the section is
titled "Opiates: The New Nineteenth Century Habit" Also "Opium in the Civil
War: Marching Through the Opium Fog" <http://www.4thus.com/opium>

Obviously opiates were around before then. Geesh. They were natural
substances. The point of that section is about the social evolution of drugs.

And yes, Cocaine is not an opiate. It made a better example -- the available
graphics were better -- so it was used. It was an editorial decision. It's an
essay, not a science book.

The article is about the social parallels that led to drugs being severely
restricted and how it compares/contrasts with modern entertainment technology
taking more and more of our time and energy. Counter-arguments based against
this thesis are welcome. (speaking as the author)

Your comment looks a bit like nit-picking, at least to me.

~~~
kragen
Well, I've read through your essay somewhat more tolerantly. It seems to be a
fairly vague assertion that "addictive" "technology" will have a deleterious
effect on the lives of many people by virtue of taking more and more of their
time and "energy" (I assume you mean attention), wound around with a lot of
nicely-told stories, which (as I noted previously, and you acknowledge above)
are retold there without any concern for accuracy.

It seems that if you were interested in whether "addictive" "technology" would
have a good or bad effect on people's lives, you could start by being more
specific about the technology; there isn't much sensible that you can say
about a category that encompasses the phonograph, Facebook, SMS, and a lot of
etc. Then you could examine what effect it actually has on people's lives:
does it make them more social or less social? Does it make them better
informed or worse informed? Does it make them more or less likely to marry, or
to stay married? Does it make them richer or poorer? Does it make their
governments more or less accountable?

You wouldn't necessarily have to go out and interview people yourself. The Pew
Internet and American Life project has already done quite a bit of
quantitative research along these lines. danah boyd has done a lot of peer-
reviewed qualitative research along these lines. I haven't read it all but the
things I have read don't really seem to support your thesis, although it is
hard to tell because it is so vague.

Nice stories and pictures, though, as long as nobody reads them and thinks
they're true.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm not sure you understand how to critique an essay.

There's a premise, a thesis, and examples. You can take issue with any of
these. For instance, you can claim the examples don't support the thesis. Or
you can say the thesis doesn't follow from the premise. Or you can claim the
premise is incorrect. etc

Instead you seem to make your comment personal "Nice stories and pictures,
though, as long as nobody reads them and thinks they're true." You also assume
the thesis "interested in whether addictive technology would have a good or
bad effect" -- by definition addictive things have a deleterious effect. Then
you run along the lines of the productive, good uses of technology, which was
never in question and doesn't have an impact on the argument in question.

Just to be clear:

Premise: society has a difficult time dealing with technologies that have
mixed effects and can lead to addictive behaviors. Especially when such
conditions have not been seen before

Thesis: Modern technology is evolving to actively take more and more of our
time and make us happy, which to some degree is the same thing that drugs do
(except drugs are inert while technology is ever-evolving)

Examples: (of society having a hard time) drug prohibition in the late 19th
century. (of technology actively competing for time) phonograph, television,
video games, internet, MMORPGS

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate your reading the essay this time instead
of just commenting without reading it. I think we're done here.

------
dejb
> Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read

As far as I am aware measurable intelligence is increasing. I would also think
that the internet has lead to a general increase in reading and intellectual
thought.

------
nazgulnarsil
And what does it matter? If technology manages to solve scarcity people won't
have to do any chores any more. If it doesn't we'll cope or die off. Either
way being a luddite apologist doesn't really help anyone.

~~~
gravitycop
_If technology manages to solve scarcity_

When has it ever failed to do so?
<http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource>

_people won't have to do any chores any more._

<http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm>

 _"So how do I earn the credits?" I asked.

"Earn?" Linda asked back.

"No no no..." said Cynthia.

"Do you give me a job? The reason I am here is because I have no job," I said.

"No. You see, it's all free. By being a shareholder, you already own your
share of the resources. The robots make products from the free resources you
and everyone else already owns. There is no forced labor like there is in
America. You do what you want, and you get 1,000 credits per week. We are all
on an endless vacation."_

------
initself
Wow, now that's a really fantastic post. Make me want to shut down my computer
and do some yoga. I think my computer use is giving me a chronic cough, too. I
don't smoke or drink ever.

------
mhartl
It's not that technology is heroin, it's that _heroin is technology_. And
technology cuts both ways.

------
ajju
Wonder what pg thinks of the article. There are some clear parallels with his
"Disconnecting distraction" (although that was more prescriptive and didn't
indict technology as...directly). Plus the author mentions the "noprocrast"
option on HN.

------
newt0311
False analogy: Heroin does not have significant positive side-effects (at
least not in a monetary sense). Ie. it cannot make you more productive.
Technology on the other hand does.

~~~
silentbicycle
In the article, he mentions examples of positive effects of opiates,
particularly surgical anesthesia (via morphine, although ether and nitrous
oxide were initially used). Heroin was also used as an antitussive, etc. Other
solutions with less serious side-effects were later found, of course, but at
the time, they really saved lives. Major surgery without anesthesia was a
terrifying ordeal, and, before antibiotics, many conditions meant surgery or
death.

Some technology makes me more productive (refrigerators, text editors,
bicycles, vaccines), and some makes me less (Flash games, irc, hacker news).
Others have a mixed effect (cell phones, books). Technology takes many forms,
and it's hard to generalize about them all in any sound way.

~~~
unalone
Does Hacker News absolutely make you less productive? Yeah, you're not getting
work done right now, but you're debating people, you're teaching yourself to
write out good arguments, and you're reading a ton of articles, some of which
are bound to fascinate or teach you.

~~~
silentbicycle
I actually would have put it in the mixed column, but I added that later and
didn't move it. I run across some interesting things on the side, but at the
same time, I have many, many books I've been meaning to read, etc., and I also
know all too well where this comic is coming from: <http://xkcd.com/386/>

------
c00p3r
There are to many words to explain that every attempt to escape from so-called
reality will cause a big problem, and digital illusions produces the same
effect.It seems like the problem is in choosing wrong direction. One probably
should spent ones resources (ones time at first) to discover beauties of this
world. Illusions are very limited because of limits of ones mind. BTW, The
Matrix movie was released almost 10 years ago. =)

------
arjungmenon
All of this begs the question: What is the meaning of life?

If you think of it, everything people do is quite remarkably purposeless.

Why does life exist?

Why do you exist???????

