Addictive Quality of Technology to Evolve, Scientist Predicts

A video on BigThink.com explains how obsession with new technology begins to diminish with time, as explained by cognitive scientist Joscha Bach, author of “Principles of Synthetic Intelligence PSI: An Architecture of Motivated Cognition.”

Framed as either being at the mercy of machines or in control of our own destiny, Bach compared the battle of the search engines and how that affected behavior.

In the late 1990s, AltaVista was one of the world’s most used search engines—at least until a “small and inconsequential” startup called Google came along. AltaVista served ads, and Google didn’t (not back then). For the public, the choice was easy; there’s a reason you “Google” the weather rather than “AltaVista” it. We face the same decision now: will we choose tech that harvests our attention and sells it, like highly addictive social media apps; or will we choose tech that is useful to us—products that help us achieve our own goals?

Eventually, technology that aligns with what users ultimately want will “win,” Bach asserts.

read more at bigthink.com