They could have shown a message that said "It's Father's Day! Do you want to add a to-do to call your dad or someone you love?" And then you could click "No" or "Yes."
Then it would have been a case of PERMISSION, rather than INVASION.
Emotions matter. With a damaged emotional center in your brain, you cannot make decisions as simple as "which shoes should I put on" -- and thus became utterly paralyzed. To deny that emotions matter is not only inhumane, but extremely illogical in light of all the research that proves otherwise.
And a sense of control is one of the most important feelings in the world. Research has shown that removal of the feeling of control actually causes elderly & sick people to DIE much, much faster and more often. Even in things as significant as being the own caretaker of the plants in their room, or choosing the date & time a student volunteer visits them. And if you give the nursing patients control, and then take it away, they die at a higher rate even than those who never had control to begin with.
Over & over, studies have shown that emotions have great primacy in human life (and power over the so-called logic!).
Google runs roughshod over emotions constantly, and the one of control most egregiously. This is just yet another example. All they had to do was to make it a CHOICE -- and expand "dad" to "someone you love," and they could have avoided hurting people and all this negative PR.
Another aspect of emotions is that people treat everything -- software, computers, animals, other inanimate objects -- as if they have personalities & are alive. That's what we're wired to do: to interact with beings. And so people will hold grudges against faceless companies and even tools.
And yes, it is wrong, if you think that hurting people unnecessarily by being an antisocial oaf is wrong -- when you could, by investing just a little bit of effort, and by respecting SCIENCE, do a vastly superior job.
They could have shown a message that said "It's Father's Day! Do you want to add a to-do to call your dad or someone you love?" And then you could click "No" or "Yes."
Then it would have been a case of PERMISSION, rather than INVASION.
Emotions matter. With a damaged emotional center in your brain, you cannot make decisions as simple as "which shoes should I put on" -- and thus became utterly paralyzed. To deny that emotions matter is not only inhumane, but extremely illogical in light of all the research that proves otherwise.
And a sense of control is one of the most important feelings in the world. Research has shown that removal of the feeling of control actually causes elderly & sick people to DIE much, much faster and more often. Even in things as significant as being the own caretaker of the plants in their room, or choosing the date & time a student volunteer visits them. And if you give the nursing patients control, and then take it away, they die at a higher rate even than those who never had control to begin with.
Over & over, studies have shown that emotions have great primacy in human life (and power over the so-called logic!).
Google runs roughshod over emotions constantly, and the one of control most egregiously. This is just yet another example. All they had to do was to make it a CHOICE -- and expand "dad" to "someone you love," and they could have avoided hurting people and all this negative PR.
Another aspect of emotions is that people treat everything -- software, computers, animals, other inanimate objects -- as if they have personalities & are alive. That's what we're wired to do: to interact with beings. And so people will hold grudges against faceless companies and even tools.
And yes, it is wrong, if you think that hurting people unnecessarily by being an antisocial oaf is wrong -- when you could, by investing just a little bit of effort, and by respecting SCIENCE, do a vastly superior job.