Category Archives: Technology

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Purging inefficiencies

 

The availability of data and memory on multiple devices from on board memory to cloud makes us sloppy managers of our data and storage areas. The seeming limitless capacity allows for things to hoard making it more difficult to find things and is ultimately time wasters.

Today I scheduled time to delete accounts I was no longer using. I deleted all those WhatsApp videos and photos that accumulates at a merciless rate on my smartphone. I hope that WhatsApp will enable a feature that simply request you to ask if you want to keep a video rather than having a save option as a default. Maybe that function is there and I ahve not discovered it yet. The point is that I have many time wasters build into my use of technology simply because of my own laxed attitude. I am subscribed to emails I never read that I took the time now to unsubscribe from.  Firstly it makes it more difficult to get to mail I actually need and secondely it wastes energy and time at some level. Maybe a single email’s contribution is minuscule but if one look at all the data centres running to shift and store useless emails and data then we each have a responsibility to look into how we manage data. Data seems like nothing in the vastness we perceive but as responsible citizens of this world we need to understand that we are wasting resources even if those resources seems unlimitted and expanding at Moore’s law.

So in the spirit of living a quality life I have embarked on a mission to delete all unused technology, all unused data or all things that does not seem to be adding any value to my life. We own it to ourselves as masters of our own destiny to take stock and simply account for how we deal with our lives, information and technology. We should be using technology, and not become the slaves of technology. Switch of allerts that keep calling us into frivoulous activities and find connections that are truly empowering of living life fully and with the full aim to optimise our lives.

Technology of all kind, including social media tools are really helpful and we will probably never be able to fully excavate the full value of these but we must also realise that they can improson our time and attention from more important things, cutting us of from opportunities. So my plea to myself today is to simplify my technology use like a good martial artist will do with his fighting style. Eliminate all waste and keep the core that is strong, agile and useful. So let’s not be wasteful with our time and resources but work at living lives with purpose.

Some other blogs on the theme of being wasteful:

 

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Youper – your AI assistant

Will you trust you heatlth and psycological well being in the heands of and artificial intelligence psycologist? The knee jerk reaction might be to say no, definitely not. I had been playing around with a app called Youper which claims to assist you to become the best version of yourself.

Youper is always learning from scientists who study the mind and the brain to help people live happier lives. Apparently Youper is based on artificial intelligence and it continues to evolve and learn from you the longer you use it.

This fancy little programming helps you by entering into a conversation with you. Unfortunately the dialog is more scripting than intelligent. I would have liked a variety of responses rather than the same boring conversation. However Youper has some interesting conceps. It helps you to become aware of your daily moods, very much like Daylio but it does a bit further in helping you to connect your emotions to one of eighteen emotions and then guide you to a mindfullness technique based on the emotion you identify with and to note the factors that contribute to your emotion.

The mindfulness techique good because it either enforces a positive emotion or assist you to deal with a negative emotion. Youper will also encourage you to say what your intentions are and what you are grateful for. I have not seen yet that it is actively using this information or whether it is just assisting you to think through the process. Unfortunately each discussion ends up in the same questions. Youper also has the ability to draw up a personality profile that seems to be fairly accurate as well as see a summary of factors that influence different emotions, equiping you to deal more effectively with some life areas. In the end it gives you a nice diary that can remind you of what feelings you had over time and what factors you associated with it.

Youper might still be clanky but it is the first steps in a new way of dealing with information. Youper certainly can help you to deal with negative emotions by guiding you to an appropriate mindfulness technique. I think in future apps like Youper will become more flexible in greeting you based on your typical pattern of behaviour, it will do information discovery to talk to you about the things that interest you. Off course somewhere there will be a marketing strategy to sell you a product or service that is just right for you based on these artificial conversations.

I see a time when we do not read books or search the internet but where we talk about our daily lifes and we are fed information that we need in the instant. It will teach us how to behave what to do to live a better life but it might also put inadvertably blinkers on our eyes to see only that which appeals to us directly. Artificial intelligence will develop a whole new way in which information is treated.

Will you trust you heatlth and psycological well being in the heands of and artificial intelligence psycologist?

Read some more:

  1. What is artificial intelligence?