This may sound strange to some, but I think if there was a single invention that I could un-invent to improve society, it would have to be the smartphone. I don’t think constant connectivity has been good for society or for individuals, compared to Internet on a computer screen.

I’ve been highly influenced by Ed and Jathan on @machinekillspod talking up the Luddite movement ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite ), who destroyed textile machinery to protest the dehumanizing effect it was having on workers. They weren’t against technology per se, like people now think.

Since we can’t un-invent the technologies that make up a smartphone, perhaps we can reconceptualize how those technologies could be put together to make a more, rather than less, humanizing experience.

Right now, it’s all surveillance capitalism and behavioralism.

Specifically, the capitalists use smartphones and other technologies to put us all in individual Skinner boxes that they can manipulate us with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

That’s a bleak thought for a Sunday, isn’t it?

I just remembered that this “operant conditioning” game plan was even more apparent to me while I was still working at Google, but I suppressed the realization at the time. They’d launched something called Google Now in 2012 that was supposed to tell users what to do next.

They didn’t phrase it in those terms, but Google Now “proactively delivered information to users to predict (based on search habits and other factors) information they may need in the form of informational cards.”

Google motto: “get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

Eric Schmidt made the “get right up to the creepy line and not cross it” comment in a public interview back in 2010. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eric-schmidt-google-creepy_n_748915

I honestly don’t think the people in charge of Google even know where the creepy line is, because they crossed it many years ago.