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Comment by confutio | Hacker News Reader

This is a bizarre review that goes from "fire and brimstone smartphones are causing genocides" to complaining that the back scratches easily. Not really sure what it adds. It also doesn't touch on the new wellness and privacy features that are being added to a lot of modern phones.

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I would say it is not what it adds, but what it expresses without attempting anything else than having those words read. It echoes the disconnect a lot of us feel between the power of a world-changing-device with what is being used for, embodied I think in what I often read here on HN comments: "This era has produced the smartest (or more knowledgeable) and wealthiest people in the history of humanity an what are they doing? trying to make you click on ads."

The smartphone has reached maturity and very little more can be said that hasn't been said about the technology inside of it so maybe it's time we take a step back and rethink the place of it in our society, or maybe not or not yet. The value of at least asking that question is what I took from the article.

In other words, it is more a "review" not of the phone but of the people using it.

> "This era has produced the smartest (or more knowledgeable) and wealthiest people in the history of humanity an what are they doing? trying to make you click on ads."

At first I nodded my head in agreement. Then I paused, pondered a bit, and reworded it a bit:

We are living in a system designed for viewing ads and clicking ads; the scale of this system is creating an unprecedented amount of wealth; the system best rewards those who disregard guilt in order to service it; profits are the new progress; shamelessness the new barometer of success; exploitation the new innovation.

Harsh? Or simply blunt and honest?

Blunt and honest.

But maybe you forgot: a race to the bottom?

I was hoping you'd contrast the world-changing device as seen in ads and how it changed the world in reality, which is what the author did but you put in a nice tag line. Maybe the Internet (from its invention up to a certain point) made thr world a better place, but "Web 2.0" certainly made it a worse planet: like the author wrote; genocide, mass surveillance, the constant expression of rage made worse by anonimity and mob-building (140 characters at a time, excuse me, 280 characters at a time...).

Now I want to do a mock phone ad with all the images of these atrocities and end it with a shot of a shiny phone and the tag line "We make world-changing devices. - Silicon Valley".

There is always a real reason for the rage and immediate communication just exposed it. Building mobs worked before too, it just got cheaper and harder to control by silencing or bribibg mob leaders. Buying out a newspaper or TV or radio station.

Most people never had an outlet for it before not knew about the atrocities done on the world. Or had a comparison to people living in other countries.

Ignorance is bliss, literally. Even when you live in a nasty and deadly neighborhood.

The only thing to avoid is fake outrage and manipulation.

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