The new generation on social media

 The new generation on social media; technology to stimulate people's needs, the people-oriented design is no longer perfect

In the true sense, the first generation of digital aborigines, their self-image is built on the social media "disguise dress up", or the real self after taking off the filter, or the two have long been inseparable? Don Norman, the interactive design master who puts forward "people-oriented", calls for design to be rejected by technology. Human beings are the most important thing, but another voice says: This concept is outdated. Looking back at the history of computer science, the earliest traceable is the logic in the composition of human thought and essence... Here is the seventeenth issue of TechBoard. TechBoard is a global perspective that selects weekly important technology reviews. We will introduce technical review articles worth reading in the form of abstracts and encourage readers to read the original text.

Instagram generation

? "Media is information", this is the most widely known word of communication scholar Marshall McLuhan. He defines the medium as "the extension of man."

 The media itself changes the way humans perceive the world and act, and the information conveyed by the media is relatively secondary to the media itself. Just like the appearance of a mobile phone, it is possible to send a text message to answer a call. It does not matter whether the car accident and the specific content of the text message are related, but it is closely related to the behavior of using the mobile phone while driving.

McLuhan believes that all technologies have the characteristics of “pointing stone into gold”. When an emerging technology penetrates into society, other functions of the whole society will be transformed accordingly to adapt to this new form.

There is no doubt that the medium that is now "spotting into gold" is the combination of smartphones and the Internet or both.

The author of this paper believes that the product produced by the new media, that is, the information conveyed by the media, McLuhan thinks that it is secondary to the media itself, but in the present, his views should make new judgments in a timely manner.

Around the world, 00 should be the first generation of “native-born” digital aborigines in the smartphone and Internet environment, but for the “before 00” generation, in the growing environment where they have not been wrapped by the Internet, the whole The attitude of the social environment to the Internet is more "neutral" or even "negative". The author of the 23-year-old article recalls his impression of the Internet when he was a child: spam, scams, viruses, various links on the web, chat rooms, and regular lectures in schools. Students should avoid pornography and chat. The danger of the room, the disadvantages of Internet addiction.

 In short, the attitude towards the Internet is "if necessary, avoid it as much as possible", but in less than ten years, the attitude of the whole society to the network has been adjusted, from "try to avoid" to " How to play around, people began to take pride in "playing the Internet," and see it as a necessary existence like water, not the past. Behind this phenomenon, in the author's view, is a kind of ironic falsehood, which reflects that the generation of their own self-image will be based on their own image rather than the real self, he said It's the Instagram generation.


In modern society, depicting the self is an inevitable behavior. This is a social activity based on human nature. It is inevitable that people will present themselves in various ways in daily life, such as going to a third world country during the holidays. Volunteers, to write a more beautiful university application. But in the author's opinion, the emergence of Instagram and similar social media has made this "disguise" even worse, even to an unnatural level. It makes us irresistible and wants to paint a "self" that is better and fuller than reality.

Its popularity does not lead the social trend, but it conforms to and enlarges the "disguise" side of human society. It turns "disguise to what you can really do" into "disguise to death", it becomes this favorite In the society of "disguise", the media of the ruling class devours authenticity by escaping or even forging reality. The truth is hidden in the constantly changing and updated photos and # topics become instantly evanescent, everyone knows Addicted or disguised.

Social media is not real, but it is difficult to get rid of this addictive pleasure.

Just as McLuhan’s “message is information” has been misprinted as a massage, he feels that this metaphor is equally clever. Today’s media and its contents are infiltrating into society, infiltrating. In everyone's life, it "massages" the society and you and me, then do we still have to pursue the truth, or the true signal is enough to be "real", or, in the virtual reality and augmented reality, there is no such thing as possible. Do we have to redefine what is real and how to face ourselves and reality? Learning to self-examine may be more important than refusing social media.

Extended reading and reference:

We once recommended in TechBoard #8 "How does technology move into our bodies?" What is the point of the Internet's redrawing of society when the current mobile phone tool is quickly becoming part of the body? And is the definition of human beings still the same as in the past?

The article "Technology Industry for Children" examines the "abuse" of mobile phones by children and adolescents who grew up in the digital aboriginal generation.

Viewpoint game: the myth of people-oriented design

Don Norman, the author of Design Psychology, published an article in Fast Company two weeks ago, emphasizing his philosophy of designing people-oriented and emphasizing user experience for many years. In that article, Norman reveals his regret that this design philosophy has not been well implemented in the present: not only is it not people-oriented, but people are turning around the machine.

Norman believes that society requires people to do tedious and repetitive work while maintaining long-term vigilance and concentration. When the inevitable mistakes occur, the "pot" has to be backed up, but never thought about it. Excessive demands on technology have spawned these insane errors. Take driving behavior as an example. After a driving accident, most of the blame is "distraction" and "disregard", but Norman believes that from a scientific point of view, the human nervous system is inherently sensitive to environmental changes. This should be seen as a virtue rather than an "original sin." But today's designs don't tend to develop people's potential. Instead, they use their biology to design products that can make people "self-harming", such as casinos and applications that send notifications. Norman urges everyone to be aware of the status quo of "the status of technology leaders" and advocates anti-customer-oriented, design to return to the core of people-oriented, aimed at solving problems rather than creating more problems.

However, this week, Mark Rolston also wrote an article to question Norman's "people-oriented" design philosophy. He believes that the ideas advocated by Norman will lead to even worse designs.

Rolston pointed out that the implicit premise that Norman mentioned "technology should follow people" is that people's needs are absolute and pure in a sense, and they should be identified by external forces. Designers should identify this need and then Designed to fit it even to its products. But Rolston believes that human needs are not born out of thin air, but are shaped by years of experience, which complements and even promotes the development of technology. For example, many software designs in PCs refer to the historical office supplies that have continued to this day, such as folders, notebooks, trash cans... jumping out of vertical technology fields, such as motorcycles and engines, the noise emitted by engines when people start motorcycles. It is regarded as a kind of "good performance" signal, and this is definitely not the intention of the designer when designing the motorcycle. On the contrary, the noise is caused by the technical limitations, but after people turn this feedback into the experience over time, it becomes a The kind of "signal" is even "demand."

People-oriented may give birth to "good design," but "great design" should shape user expectations on the boundaries of technology. It does not cater to what users call "pure demand," but creates new experiences. People-oriented design is not wrong, but it should be worthy of deeper thinking because the simple narrative of "technology should be around people" is difficult to cover up the profound changes that current technology gives to society as a whole.

What's more, at the moment, human beings are on the journey of re-understanding and even defining "human beings" through technology. The core theme of this era is "We are eager to use technology to create an unprecedented experience." In other words, technology and our Demand has long been inseparable.

Good equipment is thrown life?

Baudrillard once mentioned "fashion" in the "Consumer Society" published in 1970, saying that fashion is a guided and abandoned game: the production of goods is to make it die soon. "Immatureness" is the manufacturing rule of consumables, and the perfect model is hard to create an impulse to update. Now, is the replacement of electronic products necessary or has it become a "guided abandoned game"?

In 2016, 1.5 billion smartphones were sold. In the same year, there were 2.1 billion smartphone users worldwide, and many users had more than one mobile phone, and they would also discard billions of mobile phones. Once upon a time, the replacement of electronic devices was based on whether they were "can be used" and the level of consumption of users. Nowadays, "can still be used" is no longer the main reason for users to abandon the old ones. On the other hand, in the era of the former smartphone, or PC era, various problems on various parts of the computer can be used as a used car, and the problem is repaired. As the price of the whole machine is getting higher and higher, this makes the user consider "not as good as the new one." More often, for smartphones, tablets and other devices, it is often eliminated because it has a problem. It is because it "runs too slowly."


It's getting harder and harder to treat an electronic device as a separate hardware device, but it's an entry point into the software world. When the world of software is increasingly updated, the hardware devices that are fixed from the factory are only "selected". But this also extends another problem: under the trend of the Internet of Things and smart home, voice assistants, thermostats, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, home control systems, TVs are all starting or will be connected to the Internet, these home appliances are still Will it be "bad" in the past, or will it be like a mobile phone?

Conclusion

On the one hand, technology companies have absolute control over their products and product cycles, from product pricing to repair prices and even to repair time. On the other hand, today's consumer-grade electronic devices are true "consumer-grade" pricing, even if they follow the technology company's product cycle to update, users can psychologically accept. But what is the concern of the entire "by-product" of the entire chain from the user to the hardware manufacturer - e-waste?