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Is Technology Turning Us Into Horned Monsters? Not Exactly

Are young human beings without a doubt growing horns from using their smart telephones? The short answer isn’t any; however, media insurance appeared to suggest in any other case for a while. And now a public provider announcement. Contrary to what you can have heard on social media, the dangers of cellphone use do now not consist of growing horns. Now, some listeners may be completely baffled that we are pronouncing this, but others, you may have visible the Photoshopped pics on social media – the tech-addicted humans with, yes, horns. And you may have heard the TV anchors chatter.

New research out of Australia suggests human beings are growing horn-like spikes behind their skulls – come on – as visible in those X-rays. And you comprehend it’s authentic because we are displaying it on tv. SHAPIRO: All of this inspired through an Australian study posted final 12 months in scientific reviews. News outlets picked it up this week. And the take a look at say changes in posture, like constantly looking down at your cellphone display screen, can be connected to bone spurs that form behind the skull. KELLY: Now, this was also given the attention of individuals who look at the evolution of human bones, like paleoanthropologist John Hawks. He took a better observe the take look.

Is Technology Turning Us Into Horned Monsters? Not Exactly 127

JOHN HAWKS: Actually, the statistics did not back it up. When I checked out the information of this examines, I idea, oh, wait. The results of the reporting do not shape the text that they have written. It’s simply – it’s a total mess.
SHAPIRO: There become also no manipulate institution, and the human beings studied already had signs and symptoms of neck issues, so Hawks says this look at does not show purpose and impact. KELLY: OK, so perhaps our phones are not giving us horns but, but tension approximately how tech is converting our lives, that is real.

This article becomes written from the potential of an end client. From a developer/designer viewpoint, things get murkier. The similarly one is eliminated from the era, the much less applicable it turns into. To a developer, technology can seem like a product. However, an allowing product is a product, and for this reason, it is highly applicable. Bose makes use of a proprietary sign processing era to enable products that meet a hard and fast of marketplace requirements and as a consequence, the era and what it enables is applicable to them. Their customers are more worried about how it sounds, what the charge is, what is the satisfactory, etc., and not a lot with how it’s far performed, as a consequence the generation used is a whole lot much less relevant to them.

Recently, I changed into involved in a discussion on Google+ about the brand new Motorola X smartphone. Many humans on those posts slammed the phone for various reasons – fee, locked boot loader, etc. There have been adding lots of knocks because it did not have a quad-center processor, just like the S4 or HTC One, which have also been priced.  What they failed to grasp is that whether or not the manufacturer used 1, 2, 4, or 8 cores, in the end, makes no difference so long as the telephone can supply an aggressive (or even high-quality of class) feature set, functionality, price, and user experience. The iPhone is one of the most successful phones ever produced, and yet it runs on a dual-core processor. It still gives you one of the exceptional user reports in the marketplace. The capabilities that might be enabled using the generation are relevant to the patron, not the technology itself.

Therefore, the relevance of the era is as an enabler, not as a product function or an aggressive gain, or any myriad of other matters – an enabler. Looking at the Android working system, it is an outstanding software era, yet Google offers it away. Why? Because standalone, it does not mean anything for Google. Giving it away lets in other groups to use their know-how to build services and products which then act as enablers for Google’s services and products. To Google, that’s where the real value is.

Deborah Williams
Snowboarder, foodie, ukulelist, vintage furniture lover and identity designer. Making at the intersection of minimalism and mathematics to create strong, lasting and remarkable design. I work with Fortune 500 companies and startups. Award-winning beer geek. Twitter fan. Social media scholar. Incurable travel advocate. Alcohol expert.