In Warcraft III, there is a secret phrase greedisgood XXXX, where you can enter Greedisgood 10000 for cash and wood. The source of Greed is the famous sentence “Greed is good” in the famous movie Wall Street in 1987. Greed is the original power that drives people to explore continuously.
Internet allows messages quickly endlessly, data in the optical cable and radio waves to the fastest speed, it is itself the product of human communication demands, also for human civilization has brought a huge change, its value as the axial age, as the Renaissance, like a big sailing, as the industrial revolution, like world war ii. But it’s the same as every great human revolution, the same mistakes that we make over and over again, each sealed into history to remind future generations, each repeated. Greed, the Internet as a medium of information communication, indulge greed.
Instant Messaging
No one can escape wechat’s “magic grip”
From my junior year to one year after my graduate school graduation, I was so afraid of flying that I once cried before boarding the plane. But ever since I’ve been busy at work, I’ve treasured my time on the plane because, for a few hours on the plane, I can finally go without Internet access (thankfully, wi-fi isn’t universal yet), which means no one can find me. Wechat, almost the most successful Internet product in Chinese history, has entered our lives like a monster. Every time I think of his cue, I feel uneasy.
The Internet has completely changed the way people communicate with each other, and mobile instant messaging tools like wechat, Messenger and WhatsApp have basically become the basic tools on which we live and work. Tencent has been criticized for “being the water and electricity in the Internet” for several times, but the success of wechat has been “vindicted”, but when it is as closely linked to the digital world we live in as water and electricity, the original sin absorbed on greed can not be ignored.
Every time you send an INSTANT message to a person, you greedily expect them to read it and respond as soon as possible
Because people have muscle memory, many times your hands work faster than your brain, and the medium of instant messaging has changed the logic of how people communicate through long text messages. Amusing Ourselves to Death makes a central point: “Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; They argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials. “In the book, American TV in the 1980s was a new medium for information transmission, which defined that the content in the medium would be oriented to entertainment. Although the book has been famous for a long time, its ideas can also be applied today, and prove why Douyin is irresistible to anyone. A messaging medium defines the messages that are transmitted through that medium, as does instant messaging.
Wechat and other instant messaging software are the main media for our daily communication, and its evolution of discussion groups, acquaintance circles, take a look at the promotion of information are also the media of information consumption. It is gradually changing our language and communication habits, and slowly changing the way we consume content and even content itself. Give specific examples:
- When I send a message to a person on wechat asking for information, THERE is a limit to how long I can tolerate a reply, and that limit is defined by the instant messaging product itself. What’s more, in addition to the red dot that keeps the recipient thinking about replying, the sender also needs to be thinking about waiting for a response. Before long, you, the sender, cannot accept the wait and send a message urging the recipient to continue to increase the reply cost.
- We often acquire information with a need to communicate or perform guidance. The former needs to occupy a relatively continuous period of time to implement, while the latter needs to collect requirements and complete them one by one according to their own time schedule. But neither side of technological communication waits for the other, and a person’s actions of processing information, completing tasks, and responding are forced into a priority under technological communication. Add to this the problem of unwaitable responses mentioned in 1, and you have a huge incentive for information overload.
- However, the formation of groups increases the cost of segmentation between important information processing and weak information processing. Whether to read the contents of the group, one by one or all together, whether someone @ me as a special communication information to enter their task list, or integrated into the group communication information as a whole.
Of course, there are many more examples of how instant communication has had a huge impact on the way people process information. In the abstract:
- Shortening of time series requirements
- Priority allocation costs increase
- Information overload
It is the greed of human nature that makes such a situation happen. If I can only handle the communication of 20 groups that are more active and concerned, why not quit the other groups? You might say, maybe there’s some important information in there? So when do you deal with groups that might be important, and when do you deal with groups that are not important at all, and then on top of that you deal with groups that you do care about?
Digitalization eliminates the cost and weight of information that needs to be processed, while the Internet eliminates the cost and weight of information transmission and communication. Will intelligence eliminate the cost and weight of information processing in the future?
As greed continues to drive human beings into the abyss of desire, intelligent Killer App may actually stop people from thinking how to think. It’s like, the person I hate most asks me, “Are you there?” , at that time, and I communication of intelligent system intelligent system should all know each other and I find I want to do, if it is a complete information system can solve the problem of and communication, may be the last to me is: the hope and you borrow money to “1000”, your WeChat payment account balance and the “2531.9”, could you tell me whether agreed to lend to each other? The loan has been automatically generated and stored in the individual credit system of the other side, if the repayment is not made within 30 days according to the scheduled time, it will be automatically recorded and put on record. After I clicked yes, an AD popped up saying, “Want to insure your relationship with your best friend? Only 10 yuan, friends do not return your money, we return!”
Greed will eventually become a chain!