Products that we enjoy continue to create privacy, misinformation and workplace issues. We can do better at getting the industry to do better.
Via NYTimes, By Brian X. Chen
It has never felt worse to be a technology consumer. So what can you do about it?
That’s the question of the year after many of the biggest tech companies were mired in scandal after scandal or exposed as having committed necessary evils to offer the products and services that we have so blissfully enjoyed.
Those instant Amazon deliveries? They sure are convenient, but Amazon warehouse workers in Europe protested the company during Black Friday, describing their working conditions as inhuman.
You might have considered deleting Facebook after the social network confessed that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, had improperly obtained the data of millions of users. If that didn’t convince you, maybe the security breach exposing the data of 30 million Facebook accounts did.
All of this bad behavior circles back to you. We are the buyers, users and supporters of the products and services that help Big Tech thrive.
So what do we do at this point to become more ethical consumers?
“I think this is an incredibly powerful question to ask,” said Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that focuses on technology’s impact on families. “It’s a very important moment where consumer behavior can have a transformational impact.”
I talked to a broad range of people — ethicists, activists, environmentalists and others — about how to become a more empowered, socially responsible tech consumer. Here’s what they agreed on.
Boycott and Shame
First and foremost, when tech does you wrong, one of the most powerful ways to protest is to take your business elsewhere and ask your friends and family to go along.
Last year, hundreds of thousands of customers abandoned Uber in favor of alternatives like Lyft after the ride-hailing company’s many scandals, including repeated accusations that it turned a blind eye to sexual harassment. That choice became a movement known as #DeleteUber. This year, people frustrated with Facebook took part in a #DeleteFacebook campaign.
The financial impact of these actions may not have been huge. Uber continues to grow (while still losing money) as it marches toward an initial public offering. Facebook has reported increased profits, though its user growth has slowed.
Even so, damage to a brand may have plenty of repercussions because it motivates the company to change its behavior, Mr. Steyer said. Both Uber and Facebook, facing enormous pressure, have modified some of their practices and committed to improvements.
“Sometimes shame is one of the most important arrows in your quiver,” Mr. Steyer said.
Give Up Convenience for Independence
We can also take the path less traveled — that is, take our data and money to products made by more ethical vendors.
Many people have hesitated to delete Facebook because doing so felt futile. Facebook is an all-in-one place for discovering local events, reading news, watching videos and staying connected to friends and family. The company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, two of the largest photo-sharing and messaging services.
Pulling the plug on Facebook is a hassle, but not impossible. Taking on the challenge of finding alternatives is an example of how people can give up some convenience in exchange for individual empowerment, said Shahid Buttar, a director of grass-roots advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit.
There is no direct replacement for something as convenient as Facebook. But if you go piecemeal, Mr. Buttar said, there are options. These include using an RSS reader, a software tool for getting a comprehensive feed of news sources that are self-curated; messaging people with a service like Signal, which is open-source software; and looking up events on organizing services like Meetup.
The same approach can be applied to Google if you take issue with its behavior. While Google offers a comprehensive suite of web services, including news, email and maps, you could switch to an alternative for each of those products.
A chief example: When ordering from Amazon or other online retailers, think twice before you opt for same-day or overnight delivery, even if it’s free. Other than the human toll of fast service, which has included miscarriages by pregnant workers at Verizon warehouses, there is an environmental impact.
A rush shipment could involve multiple vehicles and various facilities before it gets to your door. So pause and ask yourself if you actually need that smartphone or scented candle tomorrow. If you can wait, choose no-rush delivery, which could take about a week.
You can reduce your environmental impact further by delaying how often you upgrade technology. That can be achieved by regular maintenance of devices, including smartphones, laptops and tablets.
Vincent Lai, who works for the Fixers’ Collective, a social club in New York that repairs aging devices, said people could become more empowered by repairing, maintaining and modifying products to escape the upgrade cycle that tech companies impose.
When your smartphone seems to be slowing down, for instance, take steps to speed it back up by purging some photos and apps to clear storage, replacing an aging battery or reinstalling the operating system.
“One of the things you can do to be more responsible is to take greater ownership of your stuff,” Mr. Lai said.
Think About Your Friends
The Cambridge Analytica scandal this year illustrates our responsibility to think about others, not just ourselves, when using technology.
When Cambridge Analytica worked with a researcher who distributed a questionnaire app on Facebook to about 270,000 Americans, people who responded to the questions unwittingly shared data about their Facebook friends. As a result, the personal information of 87 million people was harvested to create voter profiles and to target political messages.
The sharing of friends’ data might have been prevented if Facebook users had been aware of their privacy settings. One now-defunct setting was called Apps Others Use, which controlled the information that your friends shared about you when they used apps, including your birthday or hometown.
In other words, if people had disabled Apps Others Use, Cambridge Analytica most likely couldn’t have collected the data of their friends. More important, if those who took the quiz were aware of the potential of sharing information about their friends, they might have opted not to participate.
But how can you be more conscious of your actions when technology is so confusing in the first place?
Education is key. Mr. Buttar said a network of 85 groups that make up the Electronic Frontier Foundation Alliance hosted workshops across the United States that taught people more about issues like digital privacy and data protection. And many online forums and publications track these issues closely.
The bottom line is that you are not alone. And if a company makes it too difficult for you and your friends to stay safe while staying connected, you can leave.
“If you’re really uncomfortable with the values of a company, don’t use their product,” Mr. Steyer said.
Read more about how to keep yourself safe and be less wasteful with technology.
Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer. He reviews products and writes Tech Fix, a column about solving tech-related problems.
I have to say, that growing up, I felt really unattached to the smarty nerds in my classes. all through grade school, junior and high school and through college. Maybe I just didn’t connect with any of them as role models. Fair enough, and I did get into trouble instead of make it through higher ed unscathed. Not by a long shot. So there is that. But, still, I found most of them remote, far too cloistered in study, study, study, books, books, books, and well, just boring. What they ended up doing, I have no idea. Sure there were/are gifted ones that glided through and still managed to have fun and live a balance life growing up, I had a few of my own gifts for subjects here and there. But, I’m not talking about those exceptions. I’m talking about teeth to the grindstone nerdiness-gotta get my 4.0 types.
The article below takes my shallow observations steps deeper into the future of the young adults and beyond,as they grow up.
I think this article is excellent, and on target. Have a read!
What Straight-A Students Get Wrong
If you always succeed in school, you’re not setting yourself up for success in life.
By Adam Grant, NYTimes
Dr. Grant is an organizational psychologist and a contributing opinion writer.
A decade ago, at the end of my first semester teaching at Wharton, a student stopped by for office hours. He sat down and burst into tears. My mind started cycling through a list of events that could make a college junior cry: His girlfriend had dumped him; he had been accused of plagiarism. “I just got my first A-minus,” he said, his voice shaking.
Year after year, I watch in dismay as students obsess over getting straight A’s. Some sacrifice their health; a few have even tried to sue their school after falling short. All have joined the cult of perfectionism out of a conviction that top marks are a ticket to elite graduate schools and lucrative job offers.
I was one of them. I started college with the goal of graduating with a 4.0. It would be a reflection of my brainpower and willpower, revealing that I had the right stuff to succeed. But I was wrong.
The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance. (Of course, it must be said that if you got D’s, you probably didn’t end up at Google.)
Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem — it’s more about finding the right problem to solve.
In a classic 1962 study, a team of psychologists tracked down America’s most creative architects and compared them with their technically skilled but less original peers. One of the factors that distinguished the creative architects was a record of spiky grades. “In college our creative architects earned about a B average,” Donald MacKinnon wrote. “In work and courses which caught their interest they could turn in an A performance, but in courses that failed to strike their imagination, they were quite willing to do no work at all.” They paid attention to their curiosity and prioritized activities that they found intrinsically motivating — which ultimately served them well in their careers.
Getting straight A’s requires conformity. Having an influential career demands originality. In a study of students who graduated at the top of their class, the education researcher Karen Arnold found that although they usually had successful careers, they rarely reached the upper echelons. “Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,” Dr. Arnold explained. “They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”
This might explain why Steve Jobs finished high school with a 2.65 G.P.A., J.K. Rowling graduated from the University of Exeter with roughly a C average, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got only one A in his four years at Morehouse.
If your goal is to graduate without a blemish on your transcript, you end up taking easier classes and staying within your comfort zone. If you’re willing to tolerate the occasional B, you can learn to program in Python while struggling to decipher “Finnegans Wake.” You gain experience coping with failures and setbacks, which builds resilience.
Straight-A students also miss out socially. More time studying in the library means less time to start lifelong friendships, join new clubs or volunteer. I know from experience. I didn’t meet my 4.0 goal; I graduated with a 3.78. (This is the first time I’ve shared my G.P.A. since applying to graduate school 16 years ago. Really, no one cares.) Looking back, I don’t wish my grades had been higher. If I could do it over again, I’d study less. The hours I wasted memorizing the inner workings of the eye would have been better spent trying out improv comedy and having more midnight conversations about the meaning of life.
So universities: Make it easier for students to take some intellectual risks. Graduate schools can be clear that they don’t care about the difference between a 3.7 and a 3.9. Colleges could just report letter grades without pluses and minuses, so that any G.P.A. above a 3.7 appears on transcripts as an A. It might also help to stop the madness of grade inflation, which creates an academic arms race that encourages too many students to strive for meaningless perfection. And why not let students wait until the end of the semester to declare a class pass-fail, instead of forcing them to decide in the first month?
Employers: Make it clear you value skills over straight A’s. Some recruiters are already on board: In a 2003 study of over 500 job postings, nearly 15 percent of recruiters actively selected against students with high G.P.A.s (perhaps questioning their priorities and life skills), while more than 40 percent put no weight on grades in initial screening.
Straight-A students: Recognize that underachieving in school can prepare you to overachieve in life. So maybe it’s time to apply your grit to a new goal — getting at least one B before you graduate.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton and contributing opinion writer, is the author of “Originals” and “Give and Take” and is the host of the podcast “WorkLife.”
As good a read as it is difficult to execute. Take the headline itself, which contains the word, if not offered remedy, contentment. Well, that’s not loaded. Is it? Thing is, its a tough proposition for most (not all) people, at any age, say…over…50? Give or take? Why? Number of reasons. may justified. Really.
Why are they justified? Because life is just hard-ER, without certain things in our lives. Those “things” are another article, another essay. Lets just say, when it comes to these things, where there is more agreement, than disagreement, among rationally, realistically thinking human beings, there’s more truth, than fabrication.
With that, comes the real challenge. Its not going to be the pursuit of a spiritual zen-like stance that magically overcomes the lack of these things, but, a deliberate, almost forced acceptance, and yes, begrudging, acceptance of the particular, but common shortcomings any one of us may feel slighted from. This includes the wealthy, who are not immune to feeling the lack of things beyond the grasp of what money can buy.
Finally, the idea of rising above health problems has always been its own thing. To fight that adversity off even as we age into more physical frustrations and battles is, ironically, easier to do than most of us, or others think. Why? Because its not really in our control. at least, not once it happens. At that point, its in medicine’s hands, doctors, hospitals, viatical oddsmakers, and fate. Where do we go from there? Contentment? Hmmm. Not sure I can work with the one word alone. Too tidy. If only…
The body text is helpful, just not, the quick fix hook in the headline. Look for kinship among positive leaning souls of a like mind. A full sentence that says more to me.
The Secret to Aging Well? Contentment
“Despite having many friends in their 70s, 80s and 90s, I’ve been far too slow to realize that how we respond to aging is a choice made in the mind, not in the gym.”
By Robert W. Goldfarb, NYTimes
At 88, I remain a competitive runner, always sprinting the last hundred yards of a race to cross the finish line with nothing left to give. The finish line of my life is drawing close, and I hope to reach it having given the best of myself along the way. I’ve been training my body to meet the demands of this final stretch. But, I wonder, should I have asked more of my mind?
I have no trouble taking my body to a gym or starting line. I’ve done a good job convincing myself that if I didn’t exercise, I would unleash the many predators that seek their elderly prey on couches, but not on treadmills. The more I sweated, the more likely it was my internist would continue to exclaim, “Keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll see you next year.” It was my way of keeping at bay the dreaded: “Mr. Goldfarb, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
My mind, on the other hand, seems less willing to yield to discipline, behaving as though it has a mind of its own. I have dabbled in internet “brain games,” solving algebraic problems flashing past and rerouting virtual trains to avoid crashes. I’ve audited classes at a university, and participated in a neurofeedback assessment of my brain’s electrical impulses. But these are only occasional diversions, never approaching my determination to remain physically fit as I move deeper into old age.
Despite having many friends in their 70s, 80s and 90s, I’ve been far too slow to realize that how we respond to aging is a choice made in the mind, not in the gym.
Some of my healthiest friends carry themselves as victims abused by time. They see life as a parade of disappointments: aches and ailments, confusing technology, children who don’t visit, hurried doctors.
Other friends, many whose aching knees and hips are the least of their physical problems, find comfort in their ability to accept old age as just another stage of life to deal with. I would use the word “heroic” to describe the way they cope with aging as it drains strength from their minds and bodies, though they would quickly dismiss such a term as overstatement.
One such friend recently called from a hospital to tell me a sudden brain seizure had rendered him legally blind. He interrupted me as I began telling him how terribly sorry I was: “Bob, it could have been worse. I could have become deaf instead of blind.”
Despite all the time I spend lifting weights and exercising, I realized I lack the strength to have said those words. It suddenly struck me I’ve paid a price for being a “gym rat.”
If there is one characteristic common to friends who are aging with a graceful acceptance of life’s assaults, it is contentment. Some with life-altering disabilities — my blind friend, another with two prosthetic legs — are more serene and complain less than those with minor ailments. They accept the uncertainties of old age without surrendering to them. A few have told me that the wisdom they’ve acquired over the years has made aging easier to navigate than the chaos of adolescence.
It was clear I lacked, and had to find, the contentment those friends had attained. The hours I spent exercising had given me confidence, but not contentment.
The 30-pound weight I no longer attempt to lift reminds me that not far off is the day when lifting anything, or running anywhere, will be asking too much of my body. My brain would have to become the muscle I counted on to carry me through these final years with the peace and purpose others had found. Aging had to be more than what I saw in a mirror.
But rather than overhauling my life completely in the hopes of undertaking a fundamental change in the way I confronted aging, I felt the place to begin would be to start small, adopting a new approach to situations I encountered every day. A recent lunch provided a perfect example.
I’ve always found it extremely difficult to concentrate when I’m in a noisy setting. At this lunch with a friend in an outdoor restaurant, a landscaper began blowing leaves from underneath the bushes surrounding our table.
Typically, after such a noisy interruption, I would have snapped, “Let’s wait until he’s finished!” then fallen silent. When the roar eventually subsided, my irritation would have drained the conversation of any warmth. The lunch would be remembered for my angry reaction to the clamor, and not for any pleasure it gave the two of us.
It troubled me that even a passing distraction could so easily take me from enjoying lunch with a good friend to a place that gave me no pleasure at all. I wanted this meal to be different and decided to follow the example of friends my age who know they are running out of joyous moments and will let nothing interfere with them. They simply speak louder, accepting the noise for what it is, a temporary irritant.
My years in gyms had taught me to shake off twinges and other distractions, never permitting them to stop my workout or run. I decided to treat the noise as though it were a cramp experienced while doing crunches. I would shake it off instead of allowing it to end our conversation.
I continued talking with my friend, challenging myself to hear the noise, but to hold it at a distance. The discipline so familiar to me in the gym — this time applied to my mind — proved equally effective in the restaurant. It was as though I had taken my brain to a mental fitness center.
Learning to ignore a leaf blower’s roar hardly equips me to find contentment during my passage into ever-deeper old age. But I left the lunch feeling I had at least taken a small first step in changing behavior that stood in the way of that contentment.
Could I employ that same discipline to accept with dignity the inevitable decline awaiting me: frailty, memory lapses, dimming sound and sight, the passing of friends and the looming finish line? Churning legs and a pounding heart had taken me part of the way. But now the challenge was to find that contentment within me. Hoping that contentment will guide me as I make my way along the path yet to be traveled.
Robert W. Goldfarb is a management consultant and the author of “What’s Stopping Me From Getting Ahead?”
People who ask more questions are better liked by their conversation partners, researchers say.
Many people I have known don’t ask lots of questions in social conversations. Its as if they don’t see the value or potential in attempting to learn something of their conversational partner beyond small time banter. I wonder if they are just self centered, and not really curious about anything or anyone. Personally, I go by the following mantras. 1) Be curious, or be dead; 2) Ask questions, or learn nothing.
For many of us, meeting new people can be an anxiety-inducing affair.
Am I talking too much? Was my handshake too weak? Did I make too much eye contact? Too little? Am I boring? Are they boring, but they’re boring because I’m boring?
It can be a mess! All of our worst social paranoias contained in a single interaction.
But there’s an easy way to get around this, simultaneously coming off as more likable while working to build a deeper, more genuine connection with someone: Ask questions.
A study published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology analyzed getting-to-know-you conversations between platonic conversation partners, along with face-to-face speed-dating conversations, and found that in both settings “people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners.” (It even led to an increase in second dates among the speed-daters.)
Those follow-up questions, the study found, are especially helpful to increase how much we are liked because they show that we are listening sincerely and trying to show we care.
Imagine that! Being a genuine, sincere conversation partner makes people like you more. What a world.
Even more good news: Although people generally tend to reflect on an initial conversation with someone as a negative experience — like ruminating on those “Did I make enough eye contact?” type of questions — it’s thankfully all in our heads, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.
A team of researchers from Yale, Harvard, Cornell and the University of Essex found that after initial interactions “people systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company.”
This is called the liking gap, or the difference between how much we think people like us and how much people actually like us.
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The study looked at how relationships evolved between new acquaintances and found that the anxiety and self-doubt of meeting someone new can pervade in any type of relationship, sometimes lasting for months.
“People are often biased by their own internal monologues, which, after social interactions, can be remarkably self-critical and negative,” the authors wrote. They added that people “tend to compare themselves unfavorably with their ideal version of themselves,” torturing themselves with worst-case scenarios and obsessing about how to make things better — even though there’s nothing to make better because it’s all in our heads.
“People can be their own greatest critic, but what is hard for people to see is that others do not have this same perspective on their faults,” the authors wrote.
The lesson: Remember that it’s all in your head. Simply having the knowledge that any self-doubt about an interaction with a new person is unwarranted is a powerful shift in the way we approach new connections. If you feel like someone dislikes you based on a single meeting, odds are that’s just not the case (and they’re probably thinking the same thing).
Just keep asking those questions, listening to the answers and being as genuine as possible. Yes, it’s that easy.
Be genuine. Be interested. And stop hogging the conversation.
Don’t enter a conversation with the intent of leaving everyone in stitches, unless you’re a professional comedian.
Recognizing a person who practices conversation etiquette is often as simple as noticing just one or two things. They listen, and pay attention. Not so easy to find, and all the more reason it is so precious to meet those who do.
We all want to be charming, witty conversationalists who can work a room and give people the comfort that they’ve been truly listened to.
But how?
Jen Doll, friend of S.L. and one of my absolute favorite writers, wrote this guide that has everything you’ve ever wanted to know about being better at parties. In it is some of the wisest advice on being an engaged conversation partner you’ll find anywhere.
Being someone people enjoy talking with really boils down to being genuine and being genuinely interested. But that’s much easier said than done, so here are three concrete tips from Jen that will help you become a more engaged — and enjoyable — conversation partner.
1. Know the three tiers of conversations
Tier one is safe territory: sports, the weather, pop culture, local celebrities and any immediate shared experience.
Tier two is potentially controversial: religion, politics, dating and love lives. “Test the waters, and back away if they’re not interested,” one expert told Jen.
Tier three includes the most intimate topics: family, finance, health and work life. “Some people love to talk about what they do and their kids, but don’t ask a probing question until the door has been opened,” said Daniel Post Senning, an etiquette expert and the great-great-grandson of Emily Post.
Note also that while “So, what do you do?” is a pretty common and acceptable question in America, in Europe it’s as banal as watching paint dry. Instead, ask “What keeps you busy?”
Debra Fine, a speaker and the author of “The Fine Art of Small Talk,” has another basic rule: “Don’t ask a question that could put somebody in a bad spot: ‘Is your boyfriend here?’ ‘Did you get into that M.B.A. program?’” Instead try: “Catch me up on your life” or “What’s going on with work for you?”
2. Be more interested to be more interesting
Don’t enter a conversation with the intent of leaving everyone in stitches, unless perhaps you’re a professional comedian.
“If you just talk a lot you might get exhausted, but if you ask questions and listen and draw people out, they’ll think you’re a great conversationalist,” she said.
“For me it comes down to being aware that I should be more interested than I should be interesting,” said Akash Karia, a speaker and performance coach who has written books including “Small Talk Hacks: The People Skills & Communication Skills You Need to Talk to Anyone & Be Instantly Likeable.”
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He brought up a study in which two researchers from the psychology department at Harvard found that talking about yourself triggers the same pleasure sensation in the brain as food. “People would forgo money in order to talk about themselves,” he said. You can use this to your advantage simply by listening.
3. Don’t be a conversation hog
We’ve all been involved in those irritating conversations where we can never get a word in edgewise. Unfortunately, we may have been on the other side, too. Mr. Post Senning said it was crucial to “share the conversation pie. Share half if there are two of you, a quarter if there are four. The share of the pie is never as large as what involves you listening.”
To be a true conversation superstar, try these tips:
Be attentive and give eye contact.
Make active and engaged expressions.
Repeat back what you’ve heard, and follow up with questions.
If you notice something you want to say, don’t say it. Challenge it and go back to listening.
For bonus points, wait an hour to bring up that thing you didn’t say earlier.
And keep in mind that when you say something declarative, seek out the other person’s opinion as well.
“If I say, ‘The Jets don’t stand a chance,’ I’m entitled to my opinion, but I have to say, ‘What do you think?’ afterward,” Ms. Fine said. “You don’t want to be a conversational bully.”
Listen to each other. Each other. Who woulda thought??!!
Solid advice on how loving partners survive conflict, and grow together.
If you find you can’t do this, nor consider it a priority above all else, or just feel put upon to do it, you really don’t belong in the relationship you’re in.
“Give up what you have to give up today, so tomorrow can be better.”
