Technology is not evil in and of itself. It is the people who twist it to destructive purposes that are evil. One example is the gaming industry where some of the companies have done research on addictive behavior. They intentionally design the games to capitalize on those behavior patterns. When they are marketing to kids, that is evil because they are promoting addictive behaviors which may re-emerge in spousal, or chemical abuse.
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Technology is a tool, it allows great multiplier effects and efficiencies.
Applying technology to sell itself is obviously a no brainer.
Biologically we still operate under scarcity principles, which make us think hoarding tools is a great strategy, you never know when you might need them right? But what our brain consistently overlooks is the cost over the life of the tool, in various ways, to own and maintain it. If you had a few stone axes you needed daily, that was OK, nowadays though...
Marketing has since a few decades figured out these blind spots in our brains and is exploiting them for all they can.
A great example is the whole subscription service, etc.
You will note everyone (like Micro$!$!@FT )wants to switch to a monthly "low" subscription fee. If you start to look what that costs you over 3 years say, that is HUGELY EXPENSIVE, much more than you would pay for any product.
And technology marketing definitely knows how to push our buttons.
Is it evil? Of course not, but like any complex system, a lot of people merely responding to incentives can as an unintended consequence definitely produce evil outcomes.
The whole production model of electronics for instance is clearly insane from a resource perspective.
I agree with this. I don't want to be apart of the mobile game business. That is usually all about getting people to play your game. They call addicting the player as making the user experience better, since the player is so engaged. They use such things as click this a hundred times and you'll receive something, and each time you press it you hear this sound which is like "ca-ching!" and you start drooling like a Pavlov's dog each time you hear the bell.
Hi Tex!
Yes and I would not be surprised if other games and app developers are very aware of which buttons to push.
Specifically these free to play games can end up 5 -6 times what a normal storebought game would cost. They hook you with great gameplay just enough so you get into it and then you hit a wall where you have to pay to pay. Things can get out of hand. (so I've heard ...) EDIT was viewing this post in Busy.org not immeadiately visible I already answered this post.