I agree. Technologies have the ability to channel issues in a particular way. As fido_dogstoyevsky (I love that name!) says technology isn't the problem - it's how it's used. I think I'd see that as how 'capitalism' uses it... For me the biggest negative is that I'm really fed up with being treated as a consumer unit - if I'm not following clickbait or watching adverts then I'm useless to 'capitalism'. The internet is turning into nothing more than a great big box of adverts (if you let it be that). I don't watch TV but when I happen to pass my husband watching it I notice that he is being bombarded with daft adverts... The last time I was in the States I was appalled by the advert to program ratio but I'd guess that has been surpassed in the UK now... unless across the pond the number of adverts has increased????

I assume that mobile phones manage to treat users as consumer units as well. I use them so little that it passes me by. Rich Ling used to be the authority on the mobile phone but I have no idea if he's said anything useful recently... What he's said in the past was very very good... Might be worth looking out for something by him. Since I've retired computers are just platforms for games. I avoid phones and steer clear of as much soc tech as possible... The past is indeed another country... but I still think people's obsessions with soc tech is down to a form of escapism. I play Skyrim. I know it's escapism. However, some people think they really are the people portrayed in Facebook, youtube etc etc and their popularity is measured in text messages, followers, hits etc... and I find that both scary and very sad... Escapism (make-believe, pretend) is fine as long as people recognise it as just that.But it looks as if some people see the vids, see the airbrushed images and think that is reality... and the people posting them have started to think it's real too...

^ wise words alround, Tilly.
And thanks for the Rich Ling reference.

Exactly how else are they ever going to use it outside of a rigid, corporate setting?

How is it better? It gives them more control over their lives... Also, I realise that due to the wording of your first paragraph, My reply may actually be better directed to someone else in the thread, but I can't tell who.

Tilly, treating the user/individual as a consumer unit is only part of the problem. The other part is control (behavior modification, addiction, mind control etc...) and also surveillance which one could argue falls under the control part as well. Governments have figured out that most people are willing to subjugate their lives willfully to companies. Not that novel or new, British East India Company was an earlier version as an example.

<facepalm>
Habit forming !== Addiction
Influence !== Control


"A mind convinced against it's will
Remains unconvince-ed still"

Pornography as a legal definition to prohibit usage (of other classes of course) was created by "noblemen" because The Great Unwashed were so primitive an unreasoning that if they saw erotic pictures (they don't actually read, do they?) they were likely to rape noblemen's wives, daughters and possibly mothers and grandmothers just upon viewing a naked ankle. Apparently readers of Catcher in the Rye are even suspect by some government officials. Mein Kampf is verboten in Germany. Whose side are you on? Just how weak do some of you here imagine the human mind and will actually are?

Slightly off-topic:
I just read in a mail order catalogue about a case for your smartphone (costing £23) that absorbs 95% of "harmful RF radiation". Now that's a brilliant idea! It would stop you accessing the Internet and so avoid most of the damage this thread has been discussing.

This is arguing over semantics.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict.../habit-forming
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/habit-forming

"inducing the formation of an addiction"
"tending to cause or encourage addiction, especially through physiological dependence"

Last time I checked, addiction was a disorder of the brain. Which in effect means that not just psychoactive drugs can be addictive. So long as whatever it is leads to stimulation of the reward pathways - releasing dopamine and opioids, it is technically an addiction. So gambling, social networks, computer gaming, etc, can all be addictive. There is a huge difference between that and e.g. heroin addiction, but the seriousness of one, particularly withdrawal or what lengths people will go to to get their "fix", does not simply cancel out the other.

With all due respect cynwulf using a definition that wide and inclusive means food, shelter, balmy temperature, bathing, smiles in fact anything that pleases a person is "addictive". I say the difference between "habit forming" and "addiction" is defined by strong urges for behavior that continues despite proving itself self-destructive, often to the extent of eschewing constructive behavior. It is like the mice or lab rats that choose cocaine over food until they starve to death. It is the difference between instinctive behavior and reason. If anyone chooses to ignore that distinction all I can say is "Good luck".

enorbet, almost anything can be "made" to be addictive. Also, yes to answer your prior post, the human brain (and animals) is highly susceptible to suggestion, modification, alteration and control. I read an article the other day about the "science" of Neurogastronomy: basically they are discovering how they can fool the brain and person into thinking/believing that you are eating something that you are not actually eating. Some thought they were eating a fantastic medium rare steak (mine would have been well done) and it was actually a foam substance with flavor enhancers/aromatics etc... http://isneurogastronomy.org/ and https://www.amazon.com/Neurogastrono.../dp/0231159110. Look at the work they are doing with the "fake meat" industry. So yes, the brain is easily fooled, tricked and compelled. There lies within humans remnants of our ancient past (barbaric/primitive/animalistic) and when that is tapped into all kinds of strange things result. Addiction/compulsion is one result of that part of the brain/nervous system.

Have you ever observed a seagull that develops a taste for ice cream or cigarettes? I have and its not a pretty site, attack you they will. Que the intro to Hitchcocks The Birds.

Further ref:
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/20...hy-it-matters/
https://www.businessinsider.com/neur...-better-2016-5
https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifes...925-story.html

PS: you might enjoy "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence

Whether one calls it 'addiction' or 'dependence' hardly matters. This article https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...016.00597/full puts it pretty succinctly: "Mobile phone overuse, as a disorder, can be considered a behavioral addiction." Decreased gray matter physically correlates to decreased control of emotions, self-control, and sensory perception. Meanwhile, activities like meditation have the opposite effect.

The "behavior" is what people are addicted to, although the device was explicitly devised to induce a dependence on the behavior. What needs to be analyzed more is the interplay in this deceitful dependence concocted by the designers vis a vis both hardware and software. A smartphone by itself is not addicting. Or is it? The software is probably the most addicting, and it's no surprise that 100% of this behavior-altering software is closed-source. But on the other hand, running any Android app on Android-x86 on, say, a desktop computer is hardly "addicting." So surely that sleek device DOES have some role in the addiction.

Chuang all I'm gonna say at this time is that there is a huge difference between fooling the brain and controlling the will. Our brains are rather easily tricked or fooled but our will is not so easily preempted or controlled. Do you have or have you ever had children?

You seem to be using a lot of hyperbole and one anecdote involving laboratory animals to support your own logic, to bolster what is really just an opinion of yours, which so far as I can tell has no basis in proven fact.

Introducing hard drugs into the argument - as the primary example of addiction and citing the severity of withdrawal simply as "addiction" does not simply dismiss any of the arguments being made in the thread regarding addiction, which is a compulsive behaviour in any activity which provides stimulation of the "reward" pathways in the brain. In terms of substances, if you look at tobacco (nicotine) as an example, few are willing to beg, steal, starve or worse for it, but that doesn't make it any less addictive. Though they are proven to be some of the most addictive substances, the most notable difference between the hard drugs and other substances or behaviours, aside from their high cost, health impacts and legality of course, is the severity of withdrawal. Your whole case seems to amount to "no withdrawal, not really addiction".

Addiction is related to "psychological dependence" - and the latter and "withdrawal" are not isolated to substances - pornography is one example, gambling is another - but eating is also another one:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2947358/

(just to give another "lab rat" example)

In my opinion, based on all I have read on the subject and observed:

Simply put: The "brain" of an addict is rewired and it can take a long time, sometimes a year or more to undo that, or it can never be undone. i.e. even after recovery, they have to avoid the source for the rest of the lives, or relapse.

And in smartphone/faecbook/instagrat/etc addictive / dependent behaviours - the brain is also rewired - in particular the still developing brain of children and young adults.

And those big corporate players exploit this, engineer in addictiveness and it appears to be a successful business model

Oh how this takes me back... The general public knew the term 'user friendly'. They could even describe what a 'user friendly' system looked like. They used the word to describe systems (and people) that operated as they hoped; so a shop assistant could be 'user friendly'. Then along came a bunch of experts who decided that 'user friendly' was pointless because it couldn't be defined even though there were many useful definitions. They decided henceforth it should be 'usability' and they jumped on anyone who used the term 'user friendly'. Of course, the inevitable happened and some bright spark objected to 'usability' because they couldn't define that one either... Language is a problem especially where people think they are speaking the same one. Several of my American friends have had red faces in the UK for using the term 'fanny bag'... 'bum bag' is totally lost on them. As long as everyone sort of knows what you mean then the actual, working definition is a consensus... in any case language changes. I'd be quite happy to describe mobile users as 'mobi-holics'; in the UK we use terms like 'chocoholic' and although it is a recognised serious condition it is also used almost in humour to describe someone who is overly partial to chocolate. My husband - a trained clinical hypnotherapist says that he is certain we're talking addiction and dependency with *some* mobile users... This is a serious, interesting thread so really let's not be distracted by semantics... as long as we agree that we all know what we mean - what does it matter???? We're talking about people who would exhibit withdrawal symptoms (however mild) if you took away their phones... If we're not careful we'll end up debating what we're debating about rather than debating about the thing itself.

I agree with what's been said about addictive design. B.J. Fogg (was Stanford) **was** the guy to read over persuasive technology... and it is quite deliberate as others have said... so for me the question wouldn't be: "Are some people 'addicted'?" but "Why aren't all users 'addicted'?" In other words, they have a way to go to get the design as thorough as it needs to be...

Things like "user friendly" and "usability" are continually redefined, because they tend to be all about the marketing of a product and in a consumer driven society, that's what it's all about. In the end if those terms become too tired and overused, then there will simply be new buzzwords to replace them in the short term - even if the buzzwords are not actually equivalent such as "simple", "natural", "seamless", "effortless", "smarter", "intelligent" or "innovative", etc...

In reality "user friendly" boils down to the lowest common denominator combined with how the vendor wants the product to be used.

As with any tech - one has to assume that it will be developed on and the situation will only get worse. My take on smartphones and the social networks is that they are both addictive leading to psychological dependence and that they are a sophisticated means of surveillance and of socially engineering and influencing people - the difference between these platforms and e.g. a news paper is that they are first and foremost interactive and can target any one or any group of people based on their profiling or tracking data with specific tailored propaganda. We now know this went on, not just by covert government intelligence agencies, but by private companies with vested interests, in some cases to seek to influence a given electorate.

Every user is in essence that laboratory rat...

In my experience "user-friendly" always meant "novice-friendly". The idea was to produce an interface that could easily be used by people who didn't really understand what they were doing. For a commercial organisation like Microsoft, that's the growing edge of the market. If it isn't novice-friendly, the fish won't bite.

But most users of a system aren't novices because no one stays a novice for long. Windows was never particularly friendly to long term users. It didn't offer them quicker or easier ways of doing things. You still ended up "faffing about with a mouse" as one of my friends used to put it.