Why can’t Silicon Valley solve its challenges?

After many years of initial formation, Silicon Valley still faces challenges that cannot be solved due to its high complexity.

Big tech companies today apologize to users. Silicon Valley has not apologized or apologized for decades; now, tech giants have suddenly changed their minds and apologized for almost anything. They are upset because of offensive content, annoying robots, fake news, government influence on technology and even cartoons harmful to children. In the meantime, they should, most of all, feel sorry for our brains.

Sean Parker, once a Facebook executive, publicly regretted the inevitable consequences of the platform he managed. “Only God knows what this platform brings to our children’s brains,” he says. Justin Rosenstein was once a member of the Facebook development team and was involve in the design of the Like button. He regrets his role in developing a platform that is psychologically traumatic. Justin believes that today’s social networks are distracting; this distraction happens almost all the time.

Since the development of the Internet in the 1980s, users have been warned of its bad consequences.

In the early years of the advent of the Internet, many commentators saw cyberspace as a parallel world capable of devouring all its fans. The media at that time warned everyone that inappropriate use of the Internet by children would have very worrying consequences. In year 4, an important study was conducted by Carnegie Mellon University that found excessive use of the Internet increased loneliness, depression , and antisocial behavior.

social network

In the mid-1990s, the Internet was increasingly coming into the mobile world. As a result, the boundary between real life and physical life has gradually disappeared. Proponents of technology development were celebrating its many uses at the time, but there were still warnings about the consequences of inappropriate use. Some articles and media content found overuse of search engines to distract people. Some algorithms cited human isolation because they only display the content we are interested in.

In other cases, there was a constant connection to the Internet world that made meaningful communication impossible.

Despite much criticism of the performance and consequences of technology, its enthusiasts and activists within the system have always favored its benefits. They have always believed that their achievements are useful to all people, and opponents of technology development somehow express their utter hostility and hostility. Of course, since the year 2008, and with increasing criticism of the impact of social media on the US election results, faith in the benefits of the technology world has also been eroding. In fact, industry activists are increasingly realizing that their products are likely to have a negative impact on society.

People are losing faith in the benefits of the technology world

Anxiety about the consequences of the development of the Internet is not a new phenomenon; however, at no point in time have many of those in the industry expressed concern about the consequences of their own making. The comments by Parker, Rosenstein, and others on criticizing the consequences of technology development point to a new wave of internal criticism of the system. Such domestic critics can be referred to as the term “technological humanists.” Such people, in addition to expressing concern about the growing power of the industry, point to its negative impact on health and humanity.

A simple glance at Internet technology products can understand their addictive nature. In fact, companies have designed products to maximize our attention. Humanists believe that such an income model is unhealthy and inhumane.

Their main solution is to change the design of products. They say that by redesigning technology and trying to reduce its addiction, we can provide healthier products to society;

in fact, technology can be directed at a way that is in harmony with humanity and not steal our minds and attention.

Tristan Harris

The humanities of the technology world are gathering to discuss technologies at a center called the Center for Humane Technology in San Francisco. The organization was established earlier this year and has consultants on its side. Among them are Roger McNamee, technology investor, John Zimmer, Lift Manager and Rosenstein. Tristan Harris is the principal spokesman for the center, which was once part of Google’s ethical design department. The Atlantic Magazine once called him the closest Silicon Valley person to moral nature. Harris has worked for many years to make people aware of the dangers of addiction to the tech world.

EBay billionaire founder Pierre Omidyar also set up a similar center in February of this year to address human-related issues in the tech world. Its center is called Tech and Society Lab, which expresses its primary goal of maximizing the impact of the technology industry on healthy community development.

With growing public concern about the technology world, industry humanists are trying to play the role of opposition as technology-loyal members. They use their past experience and approaches to point out mistakes made in technology development and to suggest alternative solutions.

Their approach has been somewhat positive so far. With the rise of attacks on the tech world, there are more such people. The Center for Human Development has done well and has been praised by major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired and others.

The impact of humanitarian activity cannot be measured only by news coverage and media acclaim. The main reason for such activities is that the industry’s biggest players are talking about their activities.

For example, Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel has warned of the negative impact of social media and considers their role in users’ distracting and distracting activities to be worrying.

The Twitter CEO also recently said that he is determined to improve the health of conversations on his platform.

Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most controversial executives in the tech world. Even he is moving toward more positive moves to make technology more humane. The CEO of Facebook announced in January this year that he is trying to maximize the useful use of social media by a new approach.

Zuckerberg’s point is to spend time usefully when spending time with friends instead of interacting with businesses and brands. At the same time, he claimed that the Facebook news feed was moving towards developing this approach for some time.

Zuckerberg is very careful in choosing words to represent his positive goals. He describes the useful use of the term Time Well Spent, which was the name of an active social group. Harris had set up that group before the Center for Humane Technology was founded.

The term came up last April when the Facebook CEO was preparing for a congressional hearing.

At the time, a photographer recorded branded notes for the meeting that noted in the Wellbeing section of notes based on the company’s new plan to increase the useful use of users.

Mark Zuckerberg

The Facebook CEO’s concern for a debate on health is likely to be attractive and positive for critics. Technology executives have started accepting issues and challenges after years of criticizing them.

In the meantime, humanitarian activists in the tech world have played an important role. They drew the attention of industry leaders to one of the most important problems today, namely designing to manipulate user decisions.

Former Technology Activist Plans to Make Designs More Human

The problem we mentioned above is a symbol of a wider challenge in the tech world: the digital infrastructure that shapes our personal, social and civic lives is owned and controlled by a few billionaires of technology.

In the meantime, the humanistic activities and theories of the tech world seem to be somewhat flawed, since there is no questioning the questioning of control power.

However, such an approach may also prevent a proper move towards a fundamental change in the industry. Ultimately, if the current path continues and leaders such as Zuckerberg enter it, technological humanism will only lead to superficial changes. Such changes do not address the key challenges of the technology world and may even make silicon wool more powerful.

Design alignment with human concepts

The Center for Human Technologies believes that technology must be aligned with human nature. There is no better way to achieve this than a better design. The center’s website has a section called The Way Forward, which uses the famous monkey evolution image.

At the end of the picture, an evolved human is shown in thought. At the top of that section of the website we read, “In the future we look at today and remember it as an important turning point in human design.”

Humanitarian activists at the Center for Human Technologies in the development section of their website have numerous references to improving human design. They cite today’s technology as an element of attention-grabbing and destructive society.

In the next section, referring to the concept of “design thinking”, human design is defined in a way that starts from the understanding of vulnerable human instincts and leads to more compassionate design.

Steve Jobs

The concept of technology humanism has well penetrated the minds of big industry activists.

The reason is also the closeness of the concept to the definitions of silicon wool.

The humanization of technology from the beginning was the main motivation for silicon wool and its source of power. Indeed, entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs have added a human-like form of processing to the daily lives of millions of users. Their success also transformed the San Francisco Bay Area into a global powerhouse that eventually became a digital world. The digital world is now the subject of serious criticism by humanitarian activists in the tech world.

The story of digitizing the world begins in the eighties. At the time, Silicon Valley hosted a limited number of electronics companies. Computers were produced in the mainstream and in large dimensions.

It was not possible for everyone to use computers, and only sophisticated applications such as rocket computing were extracted from government agencies, universities, and research centers.

Restricting computer usage was a serious threat to silicon. Only wealthy government agencies were able to buy silicon wool products, which were cut off from computer companies by budget cuts. Of course, reducing government purchases was not the only functional challenge of Silicon Valley in the middle of the last century.

Silicon Valley was born from the very beginning with the claim to make technology more human

Mainframe computers also had an identity challenge. They symbolized war and inhumane activities. In addition, it was not possible for everyone to access such computers, and even if they did, the charge against humanity would be raised.

In the 1980s and 1970s, activities were being carried out in Northern California that overcame both computer challenges. New phenomena, such as graphical interfaces, mouse and microprocessors, were shaping the revolution of the processing world. Computers have become smaller in size and have become more user-friendly in addition to reducing silicon wax dependence on limited buyers.

The pioneers of high motion believed that they made the computer and processing more human. They were moving in an anti-cultural way, developing a more humane model of life. The goal of such entrepreneurs was to flourish human talent rather than to suppress it. However, the same anti-cultural advocates have added dramatic changes to the technology world over and over.

At the center of those activities was a man named Stuart Brand, who was known as the founder of the anti-culture and co-founder of the Whole Earth Catalog.

 In an article in the Rolling Stones, he put forward a new model of processing that would help humans instead of serving machines.

Steve Jobs

Following his teachings, Brand’s students changed the design of computers to the way they are today. In addition, they developed a new way of thinking about computers that transformed them from rugged machine products to tools for the flourishing of human talent. Of the entrepreneurs of that time, no one more than Steve Jobs was involved in the fundamental evolution of thinking. Jobs was a fan of his brand and magazine and expanded his vision globally.

The heyday of personal computers began in the 1980s with the introduction of the Macintosh. Two decades later, Jobs and his company began the era of universal smartphone development with the iPhone .

 Brand later said that Jobs had a good understanding of the concepts he was considering and knew how to build tools to help people.

Developing tools to help people, both in terms of revenue and business, has been useful for Silicon Valley. Companies in that area have embraced almost every part of our lives with this approach. Today we are all surrounded by tools that shout out the concept of all-encompassing digital connectivity. Take a look at a simple example of your smartphone that provides you with a variety of media and content connections with a variety of people.

In a nutshell, the effort made at one point to make the process more human is nowadays the most inhumane tool in the world. In fact, the same approach is now heavily criticized as it has led to the birth of a wide variety of digital tools in human life that follow them in all their forms. Technology humanists believe that product design can still be improved to serve human nature more than ever. This approach, of course, was born decades ago, with no results other than the current state of technology.

The misconception of humanizing technology

Technology humanists define their movement in the alignment of humanity and technology. Their project, meanwhile, can be attributed to a deep misunderstanding that does not understand the relationship between humanity and technology. Imagining human beings without technology today is almost impossible.

The story of mankind began when the first tools were made. The first tools were sharp stones used for hunting. They have found more and more applications in human life, and so has human civilization.

Silicon Valley

Studying the story of human beings and tools, we come to the conclusion that technology and humanity are not only interconnecting, but are changing at the same time. Such a conclusion is not only metaphorical, and there is scientific evidence for it. Some evolutionary studies claim that the human hand has evolved over time to make better stone tools.

Our bodies and minds change in relation to and coexist with tools.

These changes cause concern that we may be losing essential personal qualities; for example, in ancient times, even writing was perceive as a threat to human memory. At another time, copying texts raised concerns, and teachers thought that not writing lessons would make students lazy.

Certainly we lose some of our capacity with the tools, but we also gain new capabilities and capabilities. The same people who once used stars to navigate the sea today run the ships with computer programming. Perhaps our ancestors had better handwriting in writing, but today man is typing and writing more quickly.

Human nature cannot be separate from technology and tools

Human nature is intertwine with change; therefore, it cannot be regard as a fix criterion for evaluating the impact of technology. In the meantime, some people think of human nature as fixed, and thus position themselves in power. In other words, they tell us how we should be by fixing human nature.

Such an approach is deliberately or inadvertently adopted by proponents of technological humanism. They see technology as a threat to humanity by assuming that human nature is static.

When we separate human beings from technology, some people will be able to comment and provide a path and bridge for communication between them. As a result, although technology humanists see themselves as on the path to better humanity, they somehow try to steer it from above.

This approach makes Tristan Harris say of his work and that of his group, “We have a moral duty to change human thinking to a more ethical direction.”

Harris and many other humanitarian technology activists have been using the term public health for many years. Roger McNamee is one of those who considers the concept of public health to be the root of all. Such comments by them may, at times, slightly alter their approach to dictating methods to society. However, public health is not an issue that can be easily commented on.

HP / HP

The famous HP garage known as Silicon Valley’s birthplace

The patriarchal process of technology humanitarian activists sometimes makes inhumane definitions of people; in fact, they use such definitions to exacerbate the effects of technology.

The Human Resources Center website has apps to improve users’ connectivity with smartphones. Suggestions such as switching the screen to black and white, turning off app notifications, charging the phone out of the bedroom, and more are recommended in the center’s apps.

In addition, a public campaign is being running by the center, which focuses on raising public awareness of the technological uses of youth. The campaign highlights the many health effects of various technologies to drive engineers to design better products.

The above apps may reduce some people’s smartphone usage. On the one hand, such an approach may not be the goal of some other people and does not necessarily have to be a threat to their smartphone; for example, some people use the Internet to achieve empathy.

Examples include a child with autism who, by staring at the screen, faces the challenge of being in the crowd. His continued use of technology may not only be harmful, but also relaxed.

Permanent interaction with technology may also be useful to some people

Organizations such as the Human Resource Center have other functional challenges besides misdiagnosing some of the behavior of users. They are more focused on individual concepts of interaction with technology and generally forget about its infrastructure problems.

They cannot understand the root cause of the technology crisis. The root of the problem can be meet as a situation in which a limits number of technology-base companies control our data and our digital lives and use it to their advantage.

Such a problem can be consider basic, comprehensive and even political. Meanwhile, humanitarian technology activists describe the problem in a personal and non-political way by structuring the problem in the field of health and humanity and presenting solutions as design changes.

The functional problem of current technology humanitarian organizations can be attribute to their popularity with the technology industry.

Of course,

there is no doubt in the human goals and plans of such organizations and their programs are aim at identifying the cause of the strong response to technology; this approach probably provides a powerful tool for Silicon Valley companies to cause problems.

Technological humanism, instead of posing a challenge to Silicon Valley, allows its activists to calm public concern without giving up any part of their power and weapons. In fact, existing organizations are pushing public anger toward health and humanity, which ultimately paves the way for companies like Facebook to escape the challenge of public control.

Even in times of crisis, such an approach provides companies with a way to maintain revenue and profitability.

Amazon Google Facebook

Easy way for tech giants

Facebook can easily take a tech-savvy approach and continue its money-making dominance over the tech world. In fact, such things might even make Facebook even more powerful and richer.

New business opportunities are building on that for Facebook and its subsidiaries, and perhaps the social networking giant will pursue the same goal with existing discourse.

Zuckerberg expressed the concept of time of useful use close to the fourth quarter performance report of his company. He cited a decrease in platform usage time due to the same optimizations implemented in the news feed that seek to increase the time that users and acquaintances view content.

In his view,

these changes show that Facebook is not just for fun but also for the health of people. In a subsequent comment, the CEO of Facebook saw the decline in the use of his platform as one of the results of the changes, but claims that the use of time would be more useful and would ultimately help to form a more cohesive community.

Cheryl Sandberg acknowledged Zuckerberg’s view that changes to the news feed created new revenue opportunities, despite the decline in Facebook use.

As we know, data is the most valuable raw material of Facebook. By increasing the person-to-person communications of users in the system, useful personal data will be increased; thus, practical analytics will increase user behavior. Using these same analytics, Facebook changes to be closer to the user’s interests.

Over time,

the content and type of display will vary for each user. Next, you can target ads with a better focus, for example, making friends easier to identify and showing your favorite ads at a higher success rate.

As a result of the above interpretations, Mark Zuckerberg’s suggestion that increasing meaningful communication is an attempt to improve performance, or monetization, can be considered. In fact, he has no plans to improve user-related processes and only seeks to increase the application data for his analytical system.

The ultimate goal will be to increase the usefulness and individual involvement of the social network that produces more useful data. In other words, “more useful use of time” would mean more and better revenue for Facebook.

Silicon Valley

Facebook and Zuckerberg have escaped the pressures of the term “useful use of time” and have found a way to increase their income. They did so with the limitations of their income model.

In fact,

no social network can extend the time available to the user for up to six hours, but by making it more useful and more targeted at producing valuable data at the same time, the business model can be improved.

Facebook’s current approach to increasing the efficiency of time spent on the platform is similar to what happened in the 9th century and the rise of capitalism. At the time, business owners were looking for a way to raise revenue and, after several hours of work hours, had no choice but to optimize workers ‘operating time; as a result, technologies were introduce to factories that increases the efficiency of workers’ working time and make the most value out of time.

Technology giants are also exploiting this claim to make them more human

Worker time optimization was implements today in a different way to social network users. They increases the value of users’ attention, and the concepts and discourse of technology humanism were apply along that path. Ultimately, this approach resulted in the financial reporting of the first quarter of the social networking giant (despite reducing overall platform time spent) to $ 1.2 billion. That figure surpassed Wall Street’s estimates of $ 5 million.

Democracy in technology

The current humanists in the tech world take an approach rooted in Silicon Valley many years ago. As we said, the first entrepreneurs, with the goal of bringing people and technology closer together with human approaches, have made changes in the world that brought the infinite power of today’s industry.

Such an approach today allows Silicon Valley to insure itself against harsh public reactions. In addition, existing approaches also create new opportunities for companies active in the industry, ultimately leading to their empowerment.

Privacy / privacy

Fortunately, there is another way to think and think about life besides technology, the way our ancestors used tools for years and helped build a more democratic future.

This approach views humanity as a combination of animals and machines whose capacities are define alongside tools.

The combination of human and technology (tools) does not mean that all technologies are useful to us or that we should commend any new innovation. In fact, such thinking suggests that a good life with technology has nothing to do with making it more human.

On the one hand, the notion of being more humane, besides being impossible, has its dangers; it would be great for professionals who are trying to dictate how we are human.

As we advance the notion of the combination of human and instrument,

we also understand the technological nature of man, which evolves as instruments change and are influence by it.

Of course, although our shared evolution with machines is inevitable, evolution can be guided. In fact, orientation is doing by people who own and control cars. Here is the concept and concern for his power.

Today,

power is in the hands of companies that own technology and use it to make more money. All the crises that have caused technology to react in recent years come from the same source of revenue. Things like public surveillance, fake news, and even bad working conditions for Amazon warehouse workers are all profitable.

If such phenomena were not profitable, they would not exist in the technology world. They are all symbols of a system that,

because of the lack of democracy,

places the wealth of limited individuals at a higher priority than the demands

and needs of the majority of society.

There are definitely ways to deal with the challenge. If human and technology coexist as a function of human nature,

then the ability to control how technology lives can be recognize as human rights.

In fact,

the choices that have a profound impact on our technological lives are so significant that they cannot be placed in the hands of individuals like Mark Zuckerberg, wealthy investors or a limited number of humanist designers. Such decisions must be make by all people in common.

GDPR Act

Finally, we need to make it more democratic, rather than trying to make technology more human. We need to look at how society, as a whole, conceptualizes how technology lives. As a result, the limited group that holds the wealth of society will not be the decision-makers of people’s lifestyles.

Several steps must be take to implement the above solution. Silicone power must first be limit and even eliminate.

 For example,

anti-monopoly and tax laws can take public wealth out of the hands of tech giants. Ultimately, silicon wool will no longer exist today with the capital of the people. In addition, the large amount of information given for free also vanishes over time.

To understand the value of your information you need to know that Facebook,

with 1.5 billion users, has a market value of $ 5 billion. With a little computation we can find the average value of every minute spent on social networks. The same approach can be apply to other social networks and any services that track us.

To tackle the challenges ahead, stricter rules must be enforce for tech giants to operate

In addition to enforcing anti-monopoly laws and raising taxes, governments must also enforce stricter rules for technology companies. New rules should limit how companies operate. A good example of such laws is the GDPR, which will be implemented in the European Union next month .

Of course, such approaches are not enough either,

and serious measures must be take to take ownership of personal content from tech giants.

To implement the above changes,

alternative public companies can beplace to determine how their employees, users and citizens will behave.

Such a democratic infrastructure in the digital world,

instead of trying to increase the wealth of a limited number, works to meet the needs of all people.

With the implementation of these models may one day see Hubert that the driver is located and staff.

Maybe one day Facebook will be own by users.

An example of an evolving smart city in Barcelona would be an example of a community owned by residents.

Another practical approach facing technology companies would be to charge for the use of personal data. As a result, we may also be able to make money from our own resources.

However, there are several practical ways to advance these goals. But we must put democracy at the heart of it all.

The chances of such methods are high because now more than ever people are confronted with technological challenges and the negative effects of their giant’s misbehavior. 

Reactions to today’s technology are meeting as a great opportunity that we may never see again.

Traditional optimism about the technology world is about to disappear

. What will replace it? Silicon Valley claims it will make the world a better place. Making such a claim would certainly require a breakdown of the current situation of companies in the area.

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