November 8, 2024 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Technology Fears
November 8, 2024 at 9:32 am
I had a bad experience with an app for theatre tickets. It required mobile data even to display tickets I had already bought and the theatre was in a bad reception area. The app required an 8 character ticket token to be typed in to retrieve the tickets which I had on email. If I accessed my email the app logged out and when logged in wouldn't allow the token to be pasted in.
Got to admit, I still I screenshot purchase screens since then. I've got two fears.
I'm deaf so a problem with an online service with a helpline number if next to useless. Calling customer support is a bit like reverse Russian Roulette. Will I be able to hear the support person? Will I be able to understand their accent?
My other fear is that a mobile is attractive to thieves. I'm unlikely to have a paper ticket stolen but losing the mobile, whether to theft, loss or damage, takes a lot more than just a ticket.
November 8, 2024 at 10:24 am
Let's see what Elon does within now and a couple of weeks or months.
I fear, technology fears will be fed and strengthend by all abuse of size/scale and the impact of AI on this matter
Big brother is watching you is real now.
Johan
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November 8, 2024 at 11:03 am
I had a bad experience with an app for theatre tickets. It required mobile data even to display tickets I had already bought and the theatre was in a bad reception area.
I attend a lot of gigs with a friend and this is one of his perennial fears. Even the smallest venues now use online tickets rather than paper and taking a screen-shot doesn't work in most cases because the anti-tout measures mean that the ticket has a QR code that is constantly changing. I'm not sure what the venue would do if we simply couldn't connect to the app to show the ticket; it's not happened yet, but I'm sure it will at some point.
November 8, 2024 at 11:04 am
I had a bad experience with an app for theatre tickets. It required mobile data even to display tickets I had already bought and the theatre was in a bad reception area.
I attend a lot of gigs with a friend and this is one of his perennial fears. Even the smallest venues now use online tickets rather than paper and taking a screen-shot doesn't work in most cases because the anti-tout measures mean that the ticket has a QR code that is constantly changing. I'm not sure what the venue would do if we simply couldn't connect to the app to show the ticket; it's not happened yet, but I'm sure it will at some point.
November 8, 2024 at 2:20 pm
What I fear the most is TurboTax. The instructions on TurboTax is sometime ambivalent. It normally takes me a month to finish doing my income taxes, because I have to ask so many clarify questions. And the consequences of getting it wrong or misunderstanding it, are significant.
Rod
November 10, 2024 at 12:25 pm
Let's see what Elon does within now and a couple of weeks or months.
I fear, technology fears will be fed and strengthend by all abuse of size/scale and the impact of AI on this matter
Big brother is watching you is real now.
Hate to tell you this, but Big Brother has been watching almost since the first smart phone. Much as I enjoy having a mini computer in my pocket, sometimes knowing that this little device is in contact with its' mothership, telling them where I am at any given time, what I'm currently using the device for (ex, what app or apps do I have open,) etc, can be concerning.
Yes, such features can be disabled / turned off with the obvious cost to me of the convenience of being able to pull up the map and see where I can go to eat, which way to go to get to my hotel...
And even if you do turn off location services on your cell phone, guess what, the phone company (and, at least so far) and the law with a warrant can still at least generalize your location from cell tower data and triangulation.
Speaking for myself on the topic of the editorial, though, I think I've moved on from being "afraid" or "fearing" tech and into perhaps "cynicism" about any whiz-bang new tech. I may not TRUST some tech (I still feel self-drive, TRUE self drive is a pipe dream,) but I don't fear it.
Using FSD as the example, I don't think we'll ever have the magical utopia the FSD-proponents have in their head of climbing in your car, punching in your destination, and the only thing you'll have to do from there is decide if you're going to have a bite of your cinnamon roll first, or your coffee because you won't need to do anything. The world is infinitely messy and unless there's a quantum shift in computing, perhaps even several, the processing power just isn't there to cover the inevitable edge cases.
Swinging around into SQL, I was (and still am, honestly) cynical about the usefulness of "AI" like CoPilot for use with SQL Server / Azure, but after this past week (BTW, Summit Seattle was a BLAST) I can see where some people will find it useful. At least for now, it's a "better" search engine, one that allows natural-language (or will, soon-ish) questions to be asked. But it will still require a level of "verify then trust" with the answers it gives (which makes my inner cynicism of new tech happy)
Now, if some research lab rolls out (walks out, perhaps) a "personal help-bot" that looks like the T-800 from the Terminator franchise? Yeah, I ain't trusting that any further than I could throw Steve's Tesla with one arm...
November 11, 2024 at 8:36 pm
The issues Johan Bijnens brought up are #2 on my list of concerns about tech. It's interesting to read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and think about whether our current state of technology would make that scenario more or less likely to occur here in the US. On one hand, the government would have a much easier job of tracking dissent. On the other hand, we are more informed about what is really going on around us, instead of having our news filtered by the media and its controllers.
However, the #1 concern on my list is how reliant on and absorbed into technology. I fear a world where people are incapable of basic arithmetic without a calculator or where people can't write coherent thoughts without an app. Technology also seems to sap us of downtime, which destroys our creativity. It may just be correlation and not causation, but it seems our rise in smartphones and social media has killed our ability to create real art. It feels like our culture is turning into grey mush.
Be still, and know that I am God - Psalm 46:10
November 12, 2024 at 6:39 pm
I had a bad experience with an app for theatre tickets.
...
My other fear is that a mobile is attractive to thieves. I'm unlikely to have a paper ticket stolen but losing the mobile, whether to theft, loss or damage, takes a lot more than just a ticket.
I've had similar issues with various concert/theater/sport tickets. Their systems don't feel completely trustworthy or reliable. I too screenshot.
Paper is mostly gone, and I'd say it's easy to lose paper tickets. A mobile ticket is always there (ish). I have my images/screenshots saved to onedrive, so I can always get them on another device.
November 12, 2024 at 6:42 pm
What I fear the most is TurboTax. The instructions on TurboTax is sometime ambivalent. It normally takes me a month to finish doing my income taxes, because I have to ask so many clarify questions. And the consequences of getting it wrong or misunderstanding it, are significant.
We bailed on Turbotax a few years back. Not because of the software, but the IRS rules are ambiguous and hard to understand. Most of the time TT just shows what the IRS publishes. With our taxes now in the 50+ page range, I'm happy to pay someone to figure that out
November 12, 2024 at 6:57 pm
Hate to tell you this, but Big Brother has been watching almost since the first smart phone.
...
Using FSD as the example, I don't think we'll ever have the magical utopia the FSD-proponents have in their head of climbing in your car, punching in your destination, and the only thing you'll have to do from there is decide if you're going to have a bite of your cinnamon roll first, or your coffee because you won't need to do anything. The world is infinitely messy and unless there's a quantum shift in computing, perhaps even several, the processing power just isn't there to cover the inevitable edge cases.
Swinging around into SQL, I was (and still am, honestly) cynical about the usefulness of "AI" like CoPilot for use with SQL Server / Azure, but after this past week (BTW, Summit Seattle was a BLAST) I can see where some people will find it useful. At least for now, it's a "better" search engine, one that allows natural-language (or will, soon-ish) questions to be asked. But it will still require a level of "verify then trust" with the answers it gives (which makes my inner cynicism of new tech happy)
Now, if some research lab rolls out (walks out, perhaps) a "personal help-bot" that looks like the T-800 from the Terminator franchise? Yeah, I ain't trusting that any further than I could throw Steve's Tesla with one arm...
From the FSD/self-driving area, I'm a bit torn. I think the Tesla FSD is really good, but not amazing. It's a L3 system, better than L2, but definitely not L4 in my experience/opinion.
Waymo is L4, but geo-fenced in certain places. I think L4 is the most likely scenario for most vehicles, which can work for private vehicles, allowing for self-driving in certain places, but not others.
In terms of Copilot/AI, the intention is it's an assistant. If you look at it like asking a junior level person to do a task for you, you'll have to build trust and learn where they help and where they don't. That's what you get with Copilot. If you think it can just do tasks, well, you'll be as disappointed as you are with some people you hire.
November 12, 2024 at 7:08 pm
The issues Johan Bijnens brought up are #2 on my list of concerns about tech. It's interesting to read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and think about whether our current state of technology would make that scenario more or less likely to occur here in the US. On one hand, the government would have a much easier job of tracking dissent. On the other hand, we are more informed about what is really going on around us, instead of having our news filtered by the media and its controllers.
However, the #1 concern on my list is how reliant on and absorbed into technology. I fear a world where people are incapable of basic arithmetic without a calculator or where people can't write coherent thoughts without an app. Technology also seems to sap us of downtime, which destroys our creativity. It may just be correlation and not causation, but it seems our rise in smartphones and social media has killed our ability to create real art. It feels like our culture is turning into grey mush.
That's an interesting view. If you look at mass-media, I think that can be true. However, if you look at music/art/comedy in less known ways, I am actually constantly surprised by the amount of creativity shown by many individuals. The tools have made some incredible video/musical/comedic things that I think would never have seen more the light of day without democratized tooling.
I do think lots of people are more lazy, and certainly basic math skills aren't great, but I'm not sure they're worse. I don't need to know 14% of $59, or 25*13, but I do think I ought to be able to estimate quickly to double check I've typed something correctly. Or maybe not. Most of the calcs show what you typed, so you can check.
The goal isn't that people can do these basic skills, but they know how and why to use a computer to do them. I think memorizing times tables isn't a good use of school time anymore as calculators are ubiquitous. What is important is that you know that 14% off is a discount requiring some subtraction of $59 minus some calculation.
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