- Oct 2021
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www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
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Time Well Spent
Tristan Harris’ first big idea for the tech industry, the Time Well Spent movement, was an outsized success.
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He gave a TED talk about how tech companies could protect us from distractions, and formed the Center for Humane Technology with some friends to lobby them to do better.
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- May 2021
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librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com
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A strong and cogent argument for why we should not be listening to the overly loud cries from Tristan Harris and the Center for Human Technology. The boundary of criticism they're setting is not extreme enough to make the situation significantly better.
It's also a strong argument for who to allow at the table or not when making decisions and evaluating criticism.
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But “humane technology” is precisely the sort of pleasant sounding but ultimately meaningless idea that we must be watchful for at all times. To be clear, Harris is hardly the first critic to argue for some alternative type of technology, past critics have argued for: “democratic technics,” “appropriate technology,” “convivial tools,” “liberatory technology,” “holistic technology,” and the list could go on.
A reasonable summary list of alternatives. Note how dreadful and unmemorable most of these names are. Most noticeable in this list is that I don't think that anyone actually built any actual tools that accomplish any of these theoretical things.
It also makes more noticeable that the Center for Humane Technology seems to be theoretically arguing against something instead of "for" something.
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Big tech can patiently sit through some zingers about their business model, as long as the person delivering those one-liners comes around to repeating big tech’s latest Sinophobic talking point while repeating the “they meant well” myth.
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