Below is an excellent article on the thief of time sitting in your pocket.
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
I'm so tired of people saying, "no one's making you" which always comes from someone mired in - like getting diet advice from an obese person.
Humans only have so much will power. Ignoring interruptions requires willpower. Sure, I could get a flip phone but an iPhone is actually quite useful, I just need to manage it as an interruption machine and I have full rights to complain about its shortcomings.
Sadly the only way to defeat this monster is to turn things off beforehand - don't make it a matter of willpower.
My phone is in low power mode all the time. (Apple please respect this setting instead of constantly turning everything back on.) I've taken the additional steps of allowing no apps, not even email or calendar to interrupt me.
The only things that can buzz my phone are calls and texts. That's quite enough to handle.
From a human interface standpoint, Apple's main goal is to task you not help you. The iPhone is an interruption machine in its spinal code and brain stem. Anything Google does is just a copy, so its all the same stuff.
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I've been worried about many of the same issues discussed in the article as relates to games. Most of the revenue from the app stores is from games and from ones that are free initially and then charge fees along the way. The insidious thing in the case of games is that they are not just stealing your time they are taking your money.
Apple came up with a fairly evil slight of hand when they created the app store by allowing users to buy game company scrip with real money.
We all know the drill, you've invested time to make some sort of progress, but you get stuck (because the game is rigged to work that way) and then you are given a choice - lose your time investment and start over or pay money for a wildly variable reward. You can pay your way to the next level, or buy a few turns, or get a power up to defeat whatever your fighting.
Its just another slot machine. You pay real money to get tokens and then your brain forgets that money was once real money.
But you can earn tokens in most games, one might argue. Sure you can. You can spend a week slaving to earn enough to pay a few more seconds that one time. We all know how that works too.
Following the logic of the article, what if each of these gates was required to be presented with a real world price? Would you really pay $2 for 5 more turns which is usually just a few seconds of game play?
Slots machines are tuned to make sure you almost win, all the time. All these games with cards and whatnot work the same way. Need a card out of a set of four? You might assume your chances are 25% if you give over some tokens. But they aren't of course. The game is tuned to make you're chances slightly worse, so most of the time your right but often you've got to keep paying to keep playing.
Then of course, there is the topper of all arguments that many of these are games of skill. OK, then how come in so many of these games you can just pay to win?
Sports betting and card playing all involve a huge factor of chance - that's why they are called gambling.
Apple has set up rules for all the same things to happen in the app store and happen in a casino or at a race track. You walk into a luxurious place that's free to enter. To play you exchange real money for chips. Then you play games that are designed for you to gently lose over time.
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
I'm so tired of people saying, "no one's making you" which always comes from someone mired in - like getting diet advice from an obese person.
Humans only have so much will power. Ignoring interruptions requires willpower. Sure, I could get a flip phone but an iPhone is actually quite useful, I just need to manage it as an interruption machine and I have full rights to complain about its shortcomings.
Sadly the only way to defeat this monster is to turn things off beforehand - don't make it a matter of willpower.
My phone is in low power mode all the time. (Apple please respect this setting instead of constantly turning everything back on.) I've taken the additional steps of allowing no apps, not even email or calendar to interrupt me.
The only things that can buzz my phone are calls and texts. That's quite enough to handle.
From a human interface standpoint, Apple's main goal is to task you not help you. The iPhone is an interruption machine in its spinal code and brain stem. Anything Google does is just a copy, so its all the same stuff.
--
I've been worried about many of the same issues discussed in the article as relates to games. Most of the revenue from the app stores is from games and from ones that are free initially and then charge fees along the way. The insidious thing in the case of games is that they are not just stealing your time they are taking your money.
Apple came up with a fairly evil slight of hand when they created the app store by allowing users to buy game company scrip with real money.
We all know the drill, you've invested time to make some sort of progress, but you get stuck (because the game is rigged to work that way) and then you are given a choice - lose your time investment and start over or pay money for a wildly variable reward. You can pay your way to the next level, or buy a few turns, or get a power up to defeat whatever your fighting.
Its just another slot machine. You pay real money to get tokens and then your brain forgets that money was once real money.
But you can earn tokens in most games, one might argue. Sure you can. You can spend a week slaving to earn enough to pay a few more seconds that one time. We all know how that works too.
Following the logic of the article, what if each of these gates was required to be presented with a real world price? Would you really pay $2 for 5 more turns which is usually just a few seconds of game play?
Slots machines are tuned to make sure you almost win, all the time. All these games with cards and whatnot work the same way. Need a card out of a set of four? You might assume your chances are 25% if you give over some tokens. But they aren't of course. The game is tuned to make you're chances slightly worse, so most of the time your right but often you've got to keep paying to keep playing.
Then of course, there is the topper of all arguments that many of these are games of skill. OK, then how come in so many of these games you can just pay to win?
Sports betting and card playing all involve a huge factor of chance - that's why they are called gambling.
Apple has set up rules for all the same things to happen in the app store and happen in a casino or at a race track. You walk into a luxurious place that's free to enter. To play you exchange real money for chips. Then you play games that are designed for you to gently lose over time.
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