The Matt Curve (2019)

Such a weird article. I like the premise of some technologies becoming detrimental over time as they are more adopted, and there are a number of obvious examples that could be talked about:

* Surveillance cameras and storage for footage becoming so cheap as to be everywhere

* Facial recognition, license plate recognition, etc. becoming available, especially when paired with the above (even governments couldn't pay humans to watch all the cameras all the time)

* Social Media

* Cell phones and the expectation of being always available

Etc. Etc. Etc.

.....and then the author chooses to focus on Apple UI?

There are some definite legitimate complaints about overreach of technology and misapplication that causes societal problems, but also it seems intertwined with the "grumpy old man who thinks these newfangled changes are bad".

Speaking to the second, I think everyone has their own Matt Curve on specific things - given the Apple example, IMO the start of the "good" peak was 2005 - MacOS 10.4, and kept getting better through 2011, until the release of 10.7, which started pulling things from iOS (contacts and calendar suck now, but at least they have woodgrain?) and a general dumbing down of the platform. They also started pulling features and generally slowly killing their Server platform, which was a compelling offering at the time. But the iPhone money printing machine changed the company, and in ways that were unfortunate for Mac users for a decade or more.

You should read this if you’re a programmer or someone who makes things. It’s fun and silly, but also makes an important point - the stuff you build is giving somebody power, and if that somebody isn’t some form of everybody, then maybe you’re not doing more good than harm.

This reads like a parody of the argument, especially with the pictures. Curve good, another curve bad

The problem with rolling back tech use is that it's very hard to do incrementally in an individual person's life, without giving up a lot, and losses tend to sting way more than equivalent gains make us happy. So sure, I can do regular tech sabbaths, or spend time on true vacation, and that helps my sanity. But every time I try and do something like remove email from my phone (and I hate having email on my phone), something comes up where I don't have my computer and I'd really like to send an email, or someone uses email instead of a text for something time sensitive, and I end up re-installing it.

I really wish there were intentional low-tech communities besides the Amish. I would happy reduce my tech use by 9/10ths if that lifestyle was supported by the people around me.

Dumbest stuff I've read this month

Confuses quantity with quality, focus on irrelevant details, and the always present unwarranted certainty.

The article has a point. It's a well known one, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it every once in a while. But the entire article detracts from the point, confuses the discourse, and inflames people on useless and harmful directions.

I'd say it's a bad article. The point is good, but this is not enough.

My chief grief with all of this is the vertical axis.

"Society" asserts a monolithic aggregation of humanity that just isn't in view, sorry.

I don't understand how Apple of 2023 is bad for society as a whole; how is the world better without them as they currently are?

The Matt Curve is not dissimilar to Ivan Illich's concept of "two watersheds" for a given technology:

The first threshold occurs when a tool (be it something straightforwardly technological like the car, or institutional like formal education or professional healthcare) surpasses the costs required to maintain or use it. At this point, the tool is a net benefit to people.

However, "When a tool-based activity exceeds a threshold defined by the ad hoc scale, it first turns against its end, then threatens to destroy the entire social body... Reaching a certain threshold, the tool, from servant, becomes despot.”[1]

For example, the car goes from something that enables individual freedom, to a basic necessity in a car-dependent society. At this point, the technology has a "radical monopoly"[2], and those without access to it are excluded or no longer able to fully participate in society.

Perhaps this maps to Matt's distinction of "personal" and "social" technology. Supposedly Illich's work was very influential on the early development of personal computers.

So what to do about this?

Illich proposed a reorientation towards "conviviality":

> People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. Prisoners in rich countries often have access to more things and services than members of their families, but they have no say in how things are to be made and cannot decide what to do with them. Their punishment consists in being deprived of what I shall call “conviviality.” They are degraded to the status of mere consumers.

> I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_monopoly

Matt.sh bad, Apple good