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‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It – NYTimes.com

“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Evan Williams says. “I was wrong about that.”

The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.

Mr. Williams’s mistake was expecting the internet to resemble the person he saw in the mirror: serious, high-minded. … It was just another Utopian dream, Mr. Williams says. “The problem is that not everyone is going to be cool, because humans are humans,” he says. “There’s a lock on our office door and our homes at night. The internet was started without the expectation that we’d have to do that online.”

“I think we will fix these things,” Mr. Williams says. Just don’t hold your breath. The work has barely begun, he says. “Twenty years isn’t very long to change how society works.”

Source: ‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It – NYTimes.com, by @DavidStreitfeld

David Byrne | Journal | ELIMINATING THE HUMAN

I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has had an unspoken overarching agenda—it has been about facilitating the need for LESS human interaction. It’s not a bug—it’s a feature. … The tech doesn’t claim or acknowledge this as its primary goal, but it seems to often be the consequence.

I suspect that we almost don’t notice this pattern because it’s hard to imagine what an alternative focus of tech development might be.

I am not saying these developments are not efficient and convenient; this is not a judgement regarding the services and technology. I am simply noticing a pattern and wondering if that pattern means there are other possible roads we could be going down, and that the way we’re going is not in fact inevitable, but is (possibly unconsciously) chosen.

I’m also not saying that any of these apps and tech are not hugely convenient, clever or efficient. I use many of them. But from the automated checkout lines to self-driving cars, I see a trend that is accelerating, and I sense that as it does, human interaction will become rarer and therefore increasingly more difficult for people

Is there a downside?

There are arguments on both sides—some claim that jobs will arise for the technically unemployed, others say that they won’t.

The point is not that making a world to accommodate oneself is bad, but that when one has as much power over the rest of the world as the tech sector does, over folks who don’t naturally share its worldview, then there is a risk of a strange imbalance.

It’s a small step then from a worker that doesn’t care to a robot.

Source: David Byrne | Journal | ELIMINATING THE HUMAN

Overachieving Ivy League students are learning the wrong lesson about what it takes to be successful — Quartz

I later learned that the quality I was observing was a form of grit: The ability to keep going, no matter what, in the name of achievement. But we had not understood how to apply it properly.

Should we encourage our children to work hard? Absolutely. But young people need to learn that grit is only effective when coupled with restorative activities like sufficient sleep, exercise, a well-balanced diet, meditation, walks in nature, and time off. Research shows that these basic yet essential self-care habits result in greater focus and productivity, not to mention increased creativity, better decision-making, and stronger emotional intelligence.

Source: Overachieving Ivy League students are learning the wrong lesson about what it takes to be successful — Quartz

America has become so anti-innovation – it’s economic suicide | Technology | The Guardian

Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs typically make terrible innovators. Left to its own devices, the private sector is far more likely to impede technological progress than to advance it. That’s because real innovation is very expensive to produce: it involves pouring extravagant sums of money into research projects that may fail, or at the very least may never yield a commercially viable product. In other words, it requires a lot of risk – something that, mythmaking aside, capitalist firms have little appetite for.

Source: America has become so anti-innovation – it’s economic suicide | Technology | The Guardian