Digital Dilemma, Social Media

The Attention Hijack

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I recently read an article about a famous children’s book author being critical of children watching screens too much. His position was that the children are reflecting the world we’ve created for them. The fix is to read to them more. Likely he meant read more paper books to children. While I agree with this, especially being a librarian, I think the solution is not as easy as he makes it seem.

When considering the state we’re in, most of us with a unhealthy addiction to our screens, it’s not so easy to disengage. Many services and communications are also only possible with our smartphones. I went to a new exercise studio this past weekend and the only way to register and pay for classes is through an app! Without a phone, there would be no way to participate. Even with my gym, I need the app on my phone to scan in at the front desk.

Technology companies also pay lots of money in research to keep us engaged and addicted to our phones. I’ve heard descriptions of these technologies as being as addictive as slot machines. Our attention, along with our data, is the most valuable commodity to these companies. With social media sites, everything about how they design them is geared towards capturing and keeping our attention. Some of the strategies include features such as a continuous scroll. This allows us to keep going and going, further and further down the rabbit hole.

Another feature is when videos auto-play continuously with barely a gap in between. The videos don’t stop at the end providing us with a moment of pause, and maybe reflection, to consciously decide if we want to play another video, or maybe go do something else. It also takes away our choice of what video we might want to play next. The next video plays automatically. It’s something determined by an algorithm to give us more of the same, based on past choices and perceived preferences.

Back to the children author’s remark, it’s not that easy for us to fight against the effort and manipulations of these powerful companies. These companies hire the best researchers and throw obscene amounts of money in a calculated effort to hijack our attention. Everything about it creates a dependency on these technologies, one that’s not so easy to prevent children from interacting with.

Human Archives

Getting Your Feet Wet

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Yesterday, while strolling next to the lake, we had the good fortune to see three geese families and their little goslings. It was one of the first nice days we’ve had since winter ended. My heart rejoiced to feel warmth and see so much activity, both human and animal. We stopped to watch the geese eating. They were munching in the grass fields with focus and purpose. Counting the goslings was hard since they were scampering around, resting, eating, and trying to keep up. However, I would estimate there were around twenty.

We continued our walk. After a few minutes I turned back to check on the geese. We spotted them crossing the promenade to reach the lake. Though some of the promenade is closer to the lake, the geese picked one of the highest. We backtracked to watch since I couldn’t imagine how all those tiny, cute, fuzzy, golden goslings would make their way into the lake.

Without too much hesitation, we watched the first family all jump right off the promenade directly into the lake. These goslings were a bit older judging by their size and color of their down. However, there were still at least a dozen small goslings all pipping and squeaking at the edge. The parents tried to usher the goslings in, but didn’t have much luck. Then they just jumped in the water and waited. All the goslings crowded and jostled at the edge watching their parents.

I watched in amazement as those tiny creatures mustered up the courage to fling themselves right into the water. I’m sure the water was also freezing cold, even though it was hot out. At one point, we thought there was only one left. But she started pipping and ran to the side. She came back with one other gosling. One of them jumped in and then only one remained. The last gosling kept squeaking, starting and stopping to take this giant leap of faith. Going to the edge, looking over and then backtracking.

Meanwhile, the geese were starting to drift off, but also keeping a watchful eye on the last gosling. By this point, there was a quite a crowd gathered around to watch the spectacle. Then the gosling jumped, landing with a splash. Everybody clapped and cheered.

One of the parents swam over to collect her into the fold, embracing her into their supportive community.

Digital Dilemma

The Power of Seeing “Eye to Eye”

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I feel that the power of seeing “eye to eye” is even more meaningful with AI lurking around. It seems many headlines focus these days on AI taking over jobs. Or major companies announcing mass layoffs. Although we can’t know the exact reason behind some of these layoffs, I think AI is one possible consideration. This all results in some of us, with decades of working years left in our careers, to contemplate what AI-proof skills can we develop to avoid obsoletion.

Naturally some skills that keep coming up are the ones that require human-to-human interaction. This includes things such as presentation, persuasion, communicating, influencing, and negotiating. All of these kinds of activities require humans to talk to other humans. This is the case even if AI is preparing all of the materials, arguments, rationales, and graphics. For some situations, it requires a human to interact with another human for that special, delicate touch. Learning how to persuade people and get buy in can be challenging. There is a lot of nuance and preparation involved to know how to handle each scenario. Though I’m sure an AI agent can learn to do these things, probably in mere minutes, some people may prefer to interact with another person.

On the flip side, opportunities to develop these skills may also become harder to find. With so much of our communication happening without face-to-face interaction, even practicing the most basic courtesies is not happening. For the younger generation, some of these basic skills may not even be learned. Digital communication through text and chat could also be happening with a machine on the other side. Unless a company discloses that you’re interacting with a chatbot, you might not always realize. I find most of the time it’s pretty easy to tell when I’m dealing with a chatbot, but the technology is improving all the time. I’m sure in a couple of years, I’ll be having conversations with automated agents and not even realize it’s not a human on the other end.

I’m sure the agent replacement is coming, but for the moment let’s hope that at least some interactions still rely on humans.

Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

The AI Doubt

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I find lately that I can’t trust anything I see, read, or hear. Now when I read something, or view a video, there are doubts in my mind. I can’t help but think, did AI create this? Did AI help create this? How much? At what point in the process?

Using AI for our work, or creative efforts, raises new questions about transparency and ownership. For example, if AI generates a first draft of a novel based on imaginative prompts from the author, who gets the credit? Presumably a draft requires rewrites and edits. Does it matter if a human is doing them? Or if a human is prompting the AI to do specific things instead?

What about scenarios when AI and humans work together collaboratively. This was described in “Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)” by Sal Khan. He’s the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit service providing educational resources to children. In his book, he describes the experience of his daughter co-writing a story with an AI bot. Both prompted each other to create and complete the story. Is this any different from two people working together collaboratively bouncing ideas off of each other?

While I can definitely understand the benefits of using AI in these scenarios, I feel without any consistency of application it leaves too many doubts in my mind. Some authors might use AI for edits, or to suggest revisions for clarity. I tend to use AI on my formal work documents to provide executive summary and conclusion sections based on what I’ve already written. AI is also useful for reviewing documents to identify areas that are unclear or underdeveloped. However, others may use AI to generate the entire document or story. Then simply make a few tweaks, add their name on the title page and submit it as theirs. The point is, there’s no easy way to determine AI’s involvement and to what extent.

I have to confess, some weeks the temptation to use generative AI to whip up a blog post for me is real. However, I always resist the urge because I feel committed to the first rule of my blog post that I’ve followed for almost 13 years. The rule: The Deletist is my creative space and I’m not allowed to be judgmental with myself. Let’s hope I can continue to resist.

True Confessions

The Disservice Experience

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My customer service saga with my new (refurbished) Pixel replacement is finally over. I blogged about this some weeks ago in “Customer Service Woes.” At the time of this last post, I had finally received the replacement for the defective device. This was after 6-7 weeks of repeated follow ups with customer service.

I transferred the data from one device to another without incident. From there, the story takes yet another twist with lots of drawn out customer (dis)service engagement. In order to receive the replacement, I had to provide my credit card to place a hold of around ~$1600. If Google didn’t receive my old phone within 21 days, the charge would go through. Much to my surprise, after sending the phone back before the deadline, I received an email informing me the phone wasn’t received. Consequently, I was being charged the full amount for my refurbished replacement.

Here’s a brief summary of what happened. The box I received the replacement in contained instructions. The instructions were to reuse the box to ship back my phone. A url was provided to print out a return label. I printed the label, attached it to the box, packed my phone, and dropped it off at the post office. At the time, I didn’t realize return shipping labels were in a previous email from before the replacement. The reminder emails didn’t include the labels. Rather, I would have had to click into “additional details” to discover this hidden information.

Upon receiving the charge, I called customer service. Despite submitting a lot of documentary evidence about the delivery, Google insisted they had to do a “deep dive” investigation to confirm receipt. Based on my understanding, this consisted of a specialist team manually reviewing tracking logs at the warehouse where my phone arrived. I honestly felt shocked that a company like Google needed to do a manual reconciliation of shipping and tracking logs. They took this action even after receiving from my end, sometimes more than once:

the shipping label

photos of the phone in the box with the shipping label

receipt from the post office with the tracking number on it

Screenshot from the post office of the tracking number delivery

email header from Google that generated the shipping labels

Somehow they figured it out and issued the refund. It was a terrible customer (dis)service experience.

Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

The Lost Art of Telling Time

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While watching a show about some cops the other day, one said “Watch my six,” to the other. I instinctively understood this to mean “watch my back.” The six, in this case, clearly a reference to a clock face. In fact, the clock face is used for many types of references. However, it relies on the analog clock face, something not taught consistently to younger generations.

Throughout my life, the clock face reference has been useful in many scenarios. On trips or hikes it’s a great way to describe to others where something, such as a bird, is located. It’s easy to use the numbers on a clock face to give the other person a general idea about the direction. This is common with others as well, almost a universally accepted method. I’ve also read that being able to draw a certain time on a clock is used as one question when testing for dementia. Or for helping to assess other cognitive challenges.

Growing up, I had a mix of analog and digital time telling options. Wall clocks were always analog. I had both digital and analog watches. However, they all had basic functionality. None of them could answer phone calls, send messages, or provide notifications. There also weren’t a lot of other devices, or equipment, displaying the time. If I wanted to know the time whenever I wanted, I basically had to wear a watch. Point being, I learned how to read a clock.

Even before the invention of the clock, humans devised a number of ways to keep track of time, including days, seasons, years. Some of these methods include sundials, obelisks, and tracking occurences in nature. Each one of these methods relied on observation, teaching skills to others, general awareness, and learning how to do something. Point being, we weren’t spoonfed a digitized number. Consequently, we incorporated this information into other useful areas of our life, such as a location reference.

In a world surrounded by digital clocks and times that automatically sync, will the younger generation understand these references to an analog clock face? Or is this another dying skill for future generations, one replaced with technology, automation, and easily read digital numbers?