Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I've recently reflected that despite the internet having origins which benefited the military and scientific community, the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album.
You see it as people endlessly scroll their Facebook feed, spending very little time even paying attention to the photos they are viewing. You see it in Snapchat, where users are encouraged to narcissistic-ly document their life every few seconds. It's on Imgur (granted, that's not too surprising), Buzzfeed, and clickbait (25 Unbelievable photos taken by a skydiver). I'm sold that if you want to make a successful app or website (based on number of users, not quality of content), it needs to revolve around users taking photos...
There are basically two kinds of Internet use that young people engage in -- hanging out with friends, and teaching themselves new skills.
The vast majority of young people though are mostly using the Internet to hang out with friends. The exception is apparently affluent white males, who have much higher rates of using the Internet to explore new ideas and teach themselves new skills. This is called the 'participation gap.' (It's perhaps also partly why, for example, there are more male entrepreneurs even though women do better in formal education.)
The important thing to note is that decisions about what to use the Internet for have a lot to do with who you are following in your social networks. E.g. this determines what new interests you're likely to discover, what opportunities are made available to you, etc.
source: http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...
I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed.
I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome.
I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
I read that as decreasing systemic bias in education. At least in law, medicine, and physical sciences.
The article even suggests that the drop started with the boom of the personal computer. That is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that women do better in formal settings, since that inflection point is essentially the moment it became possible for large amounts of people to teach themselves to be a computer programmer. It seems likely that some pre existing bias (either in interest our ability from girls or more likely an interplay of interest and culture) was just amplified when the flood of autodidacts joined the field, not that everyone decided to exclude women just as the field was getting hot.
That's directly on topic. I suppose from an "eating your own (addictive) dogfood" perspective its kinda self inflicted.
It would be interesting to look at male/female relations and ratios for programmers at non-traditional employers, perhaps the government or military or maybe academic. I suspect the lifestyle at a unionized state government office is quite a bit different than "standard" programming environment and theorize almost anything would be an improvement WRT women's interest in that workplace. Perhaps addictive behaviors would vary in those circumstances.
Surely there must be some HR statistics buried somewhere at a giant corporation or government about % of programmers participating in the corporate alcoholism project by decade, or something like that, WRT trends in addictive personality by decade.
I'm calling attention that rhetorical slight of hand. Reducing prejudice overall sounds like a noble goal, and it's one I share. But the stats I'm familiar with suggest that prejudice has decreased.
When prejudice in my favor decreases, it feels a lot like prejudice against me increases, so I can get why he feels that way. But I don't think that personal experience justifies a broad claim of increasing prejudice.
You are leaving out the possibility that real prejudice is decreasing, but that prejudice against males is increasing, just not as much as prejudice against females is decreasing. Not appearance, actual prejudice.
The reason for the slight of hand is that being open about the possibility of prejudice against males increasing tends to get a number of quite negative reactions, from the common (and I'm paraphrasing here) 'you have too much privilege to be able to comment on the matter' to the far less tolerated (at least here) insults.
As for increasing prejudice against males, there is far more evidence than just personal experience that there is real increases, not just perceived. From the negative effects of lacking male role models in grade school (it doesn't matter why this happens, as it does and thus it creates a negative effect by society impacting young boys) to issues such as biased definitions being used in government reports to cover up or down play male victims of crimes.
I'm interested in decreasing total prejudice, and also decreasing the substantial imbalance in net prejudice benefit between groups. I don't think prejudice can be eliminated; System 1 thinking is too practically useful.
I think the reason people react negatively to dudes bringing up a possible increase in anti-male prejudice is that that it's usually brought up as an interruption to discussion of anti-female prejudice. That is, it's not used as a serious participation in a broad discussion of prejudice and how to reduce it, but a way of derailing discussion. And as I said, people are inclined to treat a reduction in pro-them prejudice as an increase in anti-them prejudice. So even sincere attempts can come across as ignorant.
Personally, I suspect anti-male prejudice is actually decreasing as we unwind patriarchy. I think it can be more visible, though, as a) women are more willing to be open about anti-male prejudices they have, and b) as we see women moving toward equality, we reexamine our own position. But I'm personally ok even if it's a temporary increase, as I see it as a backlash against the status quo. Honestly, given the number of women I know who have been sexually assaulted or physically abused, I'm amazed there isn't more anti-male prejudice. As we reduce the number of people who have those experiences, I expect we'll see dramatic drops in anti-male prejudice.
Would this work for anti-female prejudice if the stats were reversed. For example, once you look past how the CDC picks a specific definition of rape that excludes male victims of female rapists, you find that within a given year, men are raped at almost the same rate as women (if memory serves it was a .2% difference).
So given this, why are anti-male prejudice given an explanation based on male behavior while anti-female prejudices are not given an explanation based on female behavior?
As to your question, the short answer is patriarchy. We're slowly emerging from a millennia-long system of male dominance of women. I read a lot of anti-female prejudice as part of that system of control of women. Whereas I read a lot of anti-male prejudice as a) reaction to the experience of patriarchy, b) resistance to the system of patriarchy, or c) part of patriarchy itself. As we eliminate patriarchy and then have a couple of generations of people who haven't experienced it, I expect much of that to fade.
CDC 2010 NISVS. But you can't look at the summary, because they use a definition of rape that doesn't involve most cases of male victims of female perpetrators. You need to read the stats on male victims of contact sexual assault which aren't in the summary.
The experts are making very specific claims based on biased definitions. If we were to use those biased definitions, then their claims are not wrong. The problem is their definitions, and on a deeper level, why they went with such definitions.
Full report:
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a...
From page 20 of the pdf, 10 of the report
>Questions on sexual violence were asked in relation to rape (completed forced penetration, attempted penetration, and alcohol or drugfacilitated completed penetration), being made to penetrate another person, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences.
Notice that being made to penetrate is not listed with the group that includes rape?
Page 27 (17) goes into more details and once again clearly lists that being made to penetrate doesn't count as rape.
On page 28 (18) we see the number of victims for women raped within a 12 month period is 1.27 million.
On page 29 (19) we see the number of victims for men made to penetrate (aka raped) within a 12 month period is 1.267 million.
Pulling out two numbers from a large report and saying, "aha, proof of the grand conspiracy" is not compelling to me. You're claiming that you personally have discovered a major revolution in understanding the nature and impact sexual violence. But the numbers are weird on their own (1-year and lifetime rates are oddly different, apparently no examination of the gender of user of force, no description of what force was used). You claim that the definitions are biased, but you don't demonstrate it. You imply that the levels of trauma are equivalent, but I don't see a reason to believe that. This doesn't seem congruent with other research. And it also doesn't match what direct knowledge I have of the topic. I know a number of women who have been raped, and it was a deeply traumatic experience for them. I've never heard of a woman similarly forcing a guy to penetrate with, say, knife in hand. I'm having trouble even imagining how such a crime would work.
The reason we take rape seriously is not one number in one box somewhere in one PDF. It's the great array of studies and personal narratives demonstrating the crime and the severity of its impact on people's lives. Now it could be that you have uncovered a vast new area of crime that people were somehow unaware of. Or it could be that, as happens all the time in research, a couple of numbers came out odd because they made a mistake, or because subtle implications of study design produced unexpectedly misleading results.
If it's the former, presumably we'd see other evidence besides a couple of odd numbers. After all, this report has been out for years and there's been plenty of time for followup research. Plenty of time for people to come forward with stories of how this crime ruined their lives. Are we seeing that?
If not, then maybe the explanation here is not, "OMG CONSPIRASY AGAINT THE MENZ!" but "anonymous guy on the Internet does not understand a topic as well as a (mixed-gender) array of doctors who have spent years in the field".
Keep in mind that in HS men are discriminated against in terms of their GPA. But then the ones that make it to college get some affirmative action in the admissions process, which partly makes up for it. Though there are still way more women who make it into and through college. But then Ph.D. programs arguably favor men.
I guess my point is that there are lots of different types of participation in the education system, and lots of different types of discrimination. So saying that discrimination has on the whole increased or decreased, even in the limited area of gender issues, is probably difficult.
Twitter has a little value as a live wingman for Google. Parts of reddit were very helpful in some actions (finding missing people), almost self organized .. that was something special IMO. Youtube as sink for forgotten videos too (alternative filming of music events etc etc).
I tend to see the web as a waste of time. Even HN is mostly fancy tech-centered zapping nowadays (I speak for myself). It's also an ever changing market of trends, from socnet websites to some of its technical structure.
That's why nowadays I mostly look at old and limited network medias (ML, IRC). Where the communication is lighter but of higher information content (not always but on average).
[1] I also wonder about the ecological effects of all these website. I hosted a gif on imgur the other day, one hour later it used a few GB of bandwidth I felt crass. Even the social side .. so much waste. Let's all meditate and lower the planet blood pressure.
If that's how you choose to use it, yes. What makes these devices useful to people is that you do get to choose how to use them.
https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-...
(In fact the NYT article looks like it might be plagiarized from this.)
Was also interesting to learn where the game company "Machine Zone" (Game of War) got its name.
BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, etc... you'll find high rates of satisfaction, repeat business, etc, despite rather high rates of unreliable over-engineered components. It's more important to a lot of people to be driving a technologically advanced Tesla with great acceleration, or a differently-advanced sporty BMW that handles like a dream, rather than a more boring, more reliable car that just works. (Or, for a eco-friendly to eco-friendly comparison, the Tesla inspires much more devotion than other electric or hybrid vehicles.)
IMO you don't know if a car is reliable until the kid created in the back seat is old enough to pick up his prom date in it.
I'll also add that there's not a lot of people driving Teslas as their only vehicle year round in salt states and the typical owner is wealthy and can afford to take care of it.
I'm not saying it's not reliable, just that we don't know yet and that they'll never get very hard treatment.
The bottom line is trying to get you to use something everyday.
It'd be nice to see gamification used for good rather than kinda-evil, but the potential users they alienate with these tactics are clearly a minority compared to the ones they manage to attract and keep hooked - or else they wouldn't have managed to stay successful products for as long as they have.
Probably not possible without privacy issues, but if opinions are already being tracked that way for advertising and surveillance purposes anyway, we could get some value out of it...
I safely avoid experiences like this and I don't see the appeal of Instagram. I imagine the feeling is much like eating snack food: you know you're eating too much, you have plenty, and nothing in the moment except shame will stop you from eating it.
The answer is: don't buy snack food ever. Eat hearty meals and leave it at that.
I take that approach to web/app content: read hearty texts, view great images. Switch it off when the quality dips below ambient levels.
I tend to opt not to read or participate in threads based on that though. General rules are: read the headline and the number of points for each item on the home page and the "new" page; if it's interesting pop it into a tab. If the quality of the article is mediocre or bad then it just gets closed.
Then I don't come back for at least two hours.
Not sure this is a great general strategy, I'd be interested to see what other people do.