
Technology Is Heroin - signa11
http://tiny-giant-books.com/Entry1.html?EntryId=recgcpfuOFUesUpRy
======
neoluddite
This is just another generic, pretentious piece warning of the dangers of
technology (is this about video games? the internet? who cares, it's all
technology) that gets even the basic facts wrong.

Some highlights:

\- Physical book sales are up ([https://qz.com/1510303/book-
sales/](https://qz.com/1510303/book-sales/)), not down, as the author claims.

-"World of Warcraft beats Wikipedia hands down." \-- what does this even mean? Wikipedia get billions of page views and has hundreds of millions of unique users every month, while WoW subscribers have been hovering around 10 million for the past few years.

-"Now that sight and sound are covered, new internet appliances promise to offer touch, smell." What website promises to have a smell-o-vision feature?

Overall, lots of fear mongering and little facts, with a click-bait title.

~~~
ravitation
To be fair, physical book sales were down in 2009, when this was written.

Though I wonder how relevant such a statistic is in the context of this
discussion. Is there really a difference between me reading some long-form
piece online (like this one) - in terms of, for example, the concentration
requirement (which this piece seems to care deeply about) - and reading it in
a newspaper (other than probably fewer typos)? The same could be said for
reading a novel I found on
[https://www.gutenberg.org](https://www.gutenberg.org) compared to reading the
equivalent physical book. Except that reading it online is free, and at least
equally (possibly more) accessible.

~~~
neoluddite
There's something to be said about reading focus, with Twitter and online
articles giving us content faster than ever, and finding time and energy to
read takes more effort, but why do we have to discuss it through the lens a
horribly outdated article with no clear thesis?

~~~
ravitation
I understand that. My point is given equivalent pieces of writing (say the
[https://www.gutenberg.org](https://www.gutenberg.org) version of "Pride and
Prejudice" compared to a physical version) what is the difference in terms of
value (in this case, using the author's value-system)? And, if there is a
difference, are they worth the numerous advantages of the online version, such
as its cost and its accessibility? "Technology" has not just given us Twitter,
and to reduce "technology" to Twitter or World of Warcraft is naive at best
(which, I agree, is one of the primary failings of this piece).

~~~
derekp7
I believe that the premise is that when you use a multifunction device it is
too easy for people to get distracted from the task at hand. But in that case,
something like a Kindle would still fit the bill perfectly, as it is a single
purpose device. Well, it can access thousands of other books, so I guess you
could get distracted by constantly going to something else, but you have the
same issue reading at the library.

------
DanielBMarkham
Author here. Previous two discussions on HN:

2009 -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471353)

2013 -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349447)

It's interesting to look at the pushback from my fellow HN'ers when this first
came out. I'm quite interested to know if many of them still feel that way.

The essay does not have any answers. The thesis is that the main problem is
that most people don't understand that there is a problem or why it exists.
That may have changed over the last ten years.

Back then I was quite concerned that I didn't have any good recommendations.
The best I had was some version of "We need to develop a new set of personal
values before they're programmed into us."

I still feel this way. As software continues to eat everything, I feel that
the programming community is going to drug into morals, ethics, law, and
philosophy whether we want to go there or not. We're at the heart of most
everything now.

~~~
guicho271828
First time reader. The definition of technology seems very narrow --- almost
exclusive to the entertainment. I don't think e.g. an optimized GEMM on GPUs
or SQL query would be covered in this article.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
That's a great point. You're absolutely right.

For context, initially HackerNews was a site for startups, so the topics were
generally along the lines of "using tech to make something people want"
(People will debate what the site was about. I came here for startup stuff 2-4
months after it started. Ask PG)

Later on it switched to the more generic "Things hackers are interested in"
(Once again, I'm generalizing)

So at the time, we were all swimming around in the question "How do we build
things that people use a lot?" After a few years of that, I started wondering
what would happen if we got what we wanted -- people using our stuff a lot
without, perhaps, being able to look back years later and feel like they had
spent their time wisely.

------
ubittibu
Some interesting thinking hints, but I believe, as others have pointed out,
that the title and the comparison are quite forced and small talk, with a
uncientific approach. Heroin and technology are different fields with
different benefits and problems. If you take heroin as a metaphor you can
apply it to about everything.

------
ohiovr
Might not be heroin but who can argue addictive technology is bad for the
business that brings it to market. In another lens I see now what it takes to
make profitable technology for entertainment at least.

------
3pt14159
I'm working on an article about neurodiversity and why I think the forces of
capitalism, technology, and complex cascading social dynamics are increasing
its dispersion. I.e., breadth is going up (extremes getting more extreme) and
variance (less of the population is close to the mean).

That "Technology is Heroin" might be true at the immediate level, but the real
question is what are the secondary effects. Evolution doesn't require fitness
in a physical sense, but in an algorithmic (survival and reproduction) sense,
which technology enables if you have the money to pay for it.

If anyone else is looking into this, please reach out.

~~~
nabnob
I am working on something similar using a Marxist analysis. I'm very critical
of the "chemical imbalance" model for analyzing mental health issues. Much of
how we define neurodiversity is related to someone's ability to work, and is
culturally specific. Culture also heavily influences how a neurodivergent
person experiences their symptoms
([https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-
luhrmann...](https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-
luhrmann-071614/)).

There's definitely a lot of different factors in play that are caused by
capitalism - social norms, individualism/isolation, trauma/stress, additional
distractions from technology, etc. I'll shoot you an email, but just in case I
forget mine is fatimaraj@protonmail.com.

------
dschadd
Very poorly written.

------
alanpetrel
What an ignorant article, technology addiction is nothing like heroin or other
drug addiction and does a disservice to those who are actually addicted to
substances.

When was the last time someone died because of technology withdrawals? Please
get a sense of perspective before posting such uninformed drivel.

~~~
superkuh
You're absolutely right. This recent trend of calling everything addictive and
normalizing this misuse is not only stupid but also dangerous to society at
large. Addiction is a serious thing with a well defined meaning. By applying
it to things that are just rewarding, as opposed to things that hijack the
reward system via direct manipulation to skew responses to predicted reward,
it creates a perception of danger.

This perception of danger then allows for the conversation about real issues
that need solutions (usually education) to bottom out and begin calls for the
use of government violence to prevent people from doing what they want.
Encouraging the use of force against people who haven't done any violence or
fraud themselves is a very bad thing.

The circumstances have to justify it. Misuse of the word addiction helps that
false justification.

