Are we relying too heavily on apps?
Carla Kargaard
53 replies
This is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek question 😜 Our generation (and the next) seems to rely heavily on apps for, well, just about everything. We need an app to switch on the lights and open the blinds, one to tell us if we slept well (including if we snored and spoke in our sleep), one to check if the sun is shining outside, one to help us choose an outfit, one to tell us what's available in our fridge for breakfast, one for counting the calories in said breakfast, one to time how long we brush our teeth for, one to track our morning jog, one to heat the car...And all of this before we leave the house in the mornings!
Yes, yes, I know, the above description is a bit of an exaggeration, but are we using apps to "mother" us? And what would happen if we suddenly had to do without our handy little digital helpers? Would the modern human be able to cope? 😅
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Adrian Steriopol@adriansteriopol
Such a heavy question! I agree and that's why I use apps only when it's necessary. I love those weekends when I throw my mobile in a corner and just enjoy life's simplicity.
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I'm an AI enthusiast, and my career is heavily linked to the tech world.
Also, I grew up reading the great Isaac Asimov and fell in love with his "Robot series"
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro... ).
I firmly believe that apps, robots, or AI can improve human life. All we have to do is to make sure that we avoid, at all costs, the singularity.
Do you believe the singularity is inevitable?
@arthur_flowos, I'm also a huge Asimov fan. Besides that, yeah, I think the singularity is inevitable. As for @carla_kargaard's question, getting lost down the rabbit hole is easy. There is simply too much noise created by these apps. I struggle to eliminate as many as possible while still being productive. How do you manage to cope with them?
@arthur_flowos Same here, and I enjoyed Asimov as well. As for the singularity, I'm not sure at all, but I think OpenAI's GPT-4 that's coming up could be pretty close.
@arthur_flowos As long as the robots don't get too clever ;)
@arthur_flowos “We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us”
I use very few carefully selected apps. Besides social media, ofc :))
@amalia_ghenescu, haha, yes, social media kills productivity like nothing before.
@amalia_ghenescu Haha, don't get me started on SM 🙈 When my brain gets tired and I need an escape, I grab my phone. Probably the worst kind of break a person can take.
@amalia_ghenescu Recently, I have deleted all unnecessary apps and often spend time on social media only 1-2 hours/day but I am still interrupted with notifications from Slack/Telegram in working time.
To me this whole ... zeitgeist feels like the general enthusiasm one gets when discovering or inventing something new. That how's it looks to me, this new-found obsession with convenience and productivity apps and services that started popping up in the last decade or so.
My guess is that when people started developing apps and tech to reduce some of friction of day-to-day life, the question of "what else can we streamline or optimize through apps?" started popping up more and more often.
I imagine it will grow as much as it can, until the whole enthusiasm dies off naturally or some sort of push back begins to form. For example, this year I started seeing video essays by creators on Youtube asking themselves "Are we burning out by trying to be too productive?". I think my opinion on this topic echoes this feeling, too much of anything can't be good in the long run.
I think it's true that we rely heavily on apps, but I think it's a natural consequence of growing up in a technological age. People are "hyper optimzing" every part of their day.
@philipsnyder agreed. In a world where so much more is expected of us, we outsource as much of the mundane thinking and boring research as possible. We are also, at the end of the day, slowly losing skillsets that everyone needed to have not so long ago. Perhaps, this is all part of evolution and moving forward.
@philipsnyder @matt_bilardo I think we become smart in "new" areas of life. I often think of how my granny grew up on a farm without electricity and running water, and I wonder what would happen to me (and her) if we suddenly had to swap places. Chaos!
We live in an age where we are bombarded with data and we need to make sense of it. Because of that, we need to augment ourselves with apps to help us go trough a "normal" day 😅 We need a weather app to know what clothes to use, and app to notify us if there any road restrictions to adjust our route to work/school, a scheduling app to let us know what bills we have to pay and the examples can go on... We live a complicated life and without apps to make it just a little bit easier for us, we would just get overwhelmed.
@ictoba Yep, I agree; sometimes technology makes life easier. But sometimes I'm not so sure. After my man has told Alexa to dim the lights 300 times, and she still doesn't get it, I wonder why he couldn't just stop shouting in my ears, walk the three steps to the light switch and dim it himself 🤣
While apps have become more popular and many people rely on them heavily for their day-to-day activities, they are not the only way to reach digital consumers. Web-based experiences, content marketing, and even physical experiences, such as retail stores, can all be important channels to reach new customers.
I struggle with this as well. It seems like there is always a new app coming onto the market that fills some gap or solves a problem that I wasn't even fully aware of to begin with. I try to make a deliberate effort to make sure the marginal lift in productivity from a new app is worth effort (and cost) of adding a new one to the repertoire!
I think we'll probably have one app do most of these. This could be bad in a different way (monopoly).
However, I think that if a major app goes down, there will always be more to take its place. The open source community has always existed in many software spaces, so I think even if we rely heavily on apps, nothing short of a solar storm or nuclear apocalypse would cause too many issues.
And if those happen, we'd surely have more issues than not being able to use our apps!
@richard_gao2 True, the competition is rife. And about the solar storm...yikes! Major problems paired with no-phone-anxiety, it's not going to be pretty😱
Such complicated question with too much dimensions
But i would say an yes to that.
@joshin_varghese Yeah, I guess it can get pretty complicated. The easier you try and make things, the more complex they get 😅
I totally agree with you. I'm seeing a time where it will all become a burden. Like TAX. Maybe we all need a clean up drive.
@alessandro_canella Totally agree! A good spring clean is in order. Also because you rely on different apps during different life stages...and then they just keep lingering :)
sounds true, today's generation uses this more. But using as only necessary or considering other things can reduce the use of apps.
@anfas_ashrf Yeah, maybe it would be best to use truly useful apps for things that really require it.
Yes sure ,Our generation seems to rely heavily on apps for, well, just about everything.
@nancy_nishi I really sometimes think we're just missing Mom telling us what to do, so we need to fill the gap.😅 Put on your jacket, it's cold outside!...It's getting late, go to bed!....That chocolate is not good for you!
I feel there are three main issues:
🧰 An overstocked toolbox: The last few years have seen an explosion in productivity tools - making work more complicated. Zoom calls now frequently involve users just switching screens from Notion to PowerPoint to Figma to some form of a spreadsheet. And this has accelerated during the pandemic.
😫 Apps that don’t play well together: Yes, you can embed a Miro board in Notion but the experience is subpar. It seems like an afterthought and not a core experience.
💸 Piling costs: An Okta report found that the average customer in 2018 had 80 installed work apps, an increase from ~50 apps in 2015. Of Okta’s Office 365 customers, 76% had one or more apps that are duplicative of a Microsoft app. While the Google/Microsoft suite is priced at $10-15/user/month, a stack comprised of Notion, Airtable, Figma (including Figjam), Slack can cost $40+/user/month on top.
The unbundling of work, which led to an explosion of disparate apps, created the need for products to find a way to ‘rebundle’. The focus is on convenience, organization, and focus.
This means all-in-one workspaces like Notion and Clover, window-into-your-work apps like Chronicle, and universal (smart) search tools like Raycast are emerging.
Here's a quote from Marc Andreessen to conclude this:
My old boss, Jim Barksdale, used to say there’s only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle.
…and so, ironically, even the people who take down an incumbent through unbundling then come back and try to do the rebundle.
yes...it's true that we rely heavily on apps...and It has many adverse effects on our daily life... destroying our skills and memories.....
Totally agree with your opinions! We seem to stick with tech devices all day and night. Sometimes, I wonder how much time in a day we truly enjoy real life. That's why I always try to spend at least 1-2 hours running around nearby park.
The more app we create, the more we rely on it. We are getting busier and busier.
Yes, we are definitely relying too heavily on apps. In fact, it is estimated that 80% of our daily activities take place through apps or websites. This includes things like checking email, accessing social media, and using various other utilities. And while these apps are convenient and easy to use, they may not be the best choice for our health in the long run.
There are a number of reasons why this might be the case. For starters, many of these apps rely on GPS tracking which can lead to increased exposure to radiation and electromagnetic fields (EMFs). These exposures have been shown to cause negative impacts on mental health as well as physical health over time. Additionally, many apps track our location continuously even when we're not using them which can also expose us to privacy violations and data breaches.
If you aren't absolutely sure that an app is safe for your own safety and wellbeing, then it's probably best not to use it! Instead,. try downloading some different free applications that offer more comprehensive coverage than most mobile devices do currently..
There're dozens of apps in my smartphone. Interestingly, some of them prove to be useful during the day while others (social media ofc :) ) cause the biggest distraction.