#Technology. Phone, cigarette XXI century – Express

Can you remember the last time I was at a dinner with friends, a meeting or a show without someone took the phone to see Facebook or put another picture on Instagram? If you were born after April 25, 74 and does not belong to any one infoexcluídos group knows of what I’m talking about. We no longer live without throwing an eye to technology, even if it often bother who is with us.

In a way, writes Nir Eyal, author of “Hooked” (Addicted) technology is the cigarette of the century, indispensable for many, but look with suspicion by others, particularly in social contexts. “Check the email or visit Facebook can be toxic and disorienting. Technology manufacturers conceive these products using the same psychology that makes machines addictive slots,” the authors wrote in a post on his blog, also published on the magazine’s website “Psychology Today. ”

Eyal know what you’re talking. Your book is a guide for those who want to create products that create habits as achieved by the most popular social networks. But the problem of developing better technology, admits the author, is that then becomes more difficult for people to put it aside. And without “social antibodies,” in the words of Paul Graham, one of the most famous investors from Silicon Valley, these evil ways technology can become the norm.

Many people already know that always be to consult your phone in social moments can be seen as bad education, but there are always those who do not care much about it, just as before happened with tobacco. How then solve this situation? There is a solution for all situations, consider Eyal, who also writes for publications like “Forbes” and “TechCrunch”. If a more explicit approach, such as banning mobile phones in working meetings can be productive for companies, between friends conflict management to advise more caution. “Unlike the business environment, no one at dinner is the boss, so no one has the right to impose a free meal of devices.”

Scold the transgressor, embarrassing him in front of friends, it is not a great idea, assuming you want to remain friends. The author proposes a more subtle approach: put you a question, any, the “away” from the phone and then do not to understand, “Oh, sorry, you were on the phone’s okay.?”. The technique works perfectly, it says. If the matter is not really important in most cases “it will keep the phone in your pocket and enjoy the night.”

The better realize the psychology behind the technology, the better we can defend. This is not diabolizá it, but to make the best of it. Not let them make us increasingly alienated. In short, we conclude Eyal, we serve in it, and not serve it.