Linus Torvalds at the 2024 Open Source Summit North America 2024 said about GenAI “Let’s wait 10 years and see where it actually goes before we make all these crazy announcements.”
Similarly, with tech companies the default approach should be skepticism. Let’s start with smartphones. On a recent trip to Seattle I did a three-hour walk on the waterfront near Pike Place Market.
By Daniel Schwen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
The July day was amazingly beautiful with 70 degree weather and clear skies. Over the course of this walk nearly everyone alone was staring at a screen. Even joggers had devices for music and would pull out their smartphones. Clearly there is problem with screen addiction, and most people admit they have little time without devices in their day. It is unusual to walk outside in a park for three hours without a bidirectional interruption of notifications, messages, and distractions.
In the book “The Anxious Generation”, Haidt mentions the four foundational harms are social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. How did we get here? We trusted blindly in American technology companies that said “we are not the product” like Apple, but of course, they lied and made us the product.
Similarly, are smartphones apps even that useful? Airbnb is linked to many social blights including making cities uninhabitable for locals and spycams. Uber costs 80 dollars to go from the Seattle airport to downtown, but the train costs three dollars, is simple to use, requires no smartphone and is arguably a better service despite costing about 25 times less.
A great example of an anti-product is the lightphone in which the entire premise is to remove apps, smartphone features and addiction. The entire premise of most of what the bay area has built from 2000-2025 should be viewed with an eye of extreme skepticism. The proper approach is to assume malice by all tech companies, and only accept their claims after extensive proof of benefit. We can look at previous technology waves for evidence of harm, from American Tobacco companies, to the American fast food industry, to the automobile companies.