Technology Choices

• Reddit.com

• Lightbulbs

These tools are not necessarily bad for humans. On the one hand, lightbulbs were created to illuminate the world, but at the same time, they consume electricity, often formed in ways that harm the environment. That being said, lightbulbs are also one of the most important creations to have come from mankind.

Reddit

Reddit exists as a sort of social media, popular with a forum style of pages known as subreddits. These subreddits vary greatly in topic, with some being about cute pictures of puppies while others are for the spreading of gorry pictures or videos of people dying.

This being said, Reddit is a source of both provocative and important conversations that go on between people all over the world, while it also can lead to a mob mentality that has lead many to hate and depression. Like most tools, Reddit is only as useful as the user makes it. If you swing a hammer at a nail, while holding the head, you’re not going to get very far.

Harms

• Attention – One can easily fall into a Reddit trap for hours, scrolling endlessly through opinions and posts going back over a decade.
• Mental Health – It is easy to see that all social media can cause an individual to have mental health changes as an effect of constant connectivity to unlimited information and opinions.
• Relationships – Reddit actually does a pretty good job of building relationships between people with common interests (this actually can be quite cool as these interests can be pretty specific. See Smoking Crabs )
• Democracy – Reddit is very passionate about freedom of speech, largely giving way to productive and often argumentative back and forths.
• Children – This tends to not be as big of an issue with kids, as Reddit is var less instantly gratifying as a site like Instagram might be.
• Do Unto Others – Reddit has restrictions for NSFW pages.

Reddit as an anti-depressant is something of a craps-shoot. While Reddit often leads to a feeling of belonging in a community tailor-made for sometimes as little as a hand full of people. With that, you can feel quite accepted through Reddit.

To be honest, after seeing all of this evidence, I don’t feel that Reddit has a problem to tackle like many other, more toxic social media accounts. Reddit employs a system that encourages cooperation between people, and for many is the most reliable source of news. With human-centric design in mind, Reddit has got it more or less nailed.

Lightbulbs

Lightbulbs are a piece of tech that is so common these days that most people don’t even consider it tech. Lighting up our homes, and the world, light bulbs have evolved greatly over the years, but the primary purpose has never changed – to show what is not easy to see.

However, lightbulbs have been notoriously inefficient, often releasing more energy in the form of heat than light. Making these bulbs better at just releasing light is the key to a more human-focused design. Not consuming as much energy will always lead to a better-off world.

Harms

• Attention – Some lightbulbs can be very bright and lead to eye damage if looked at too long.
• Mental Health – Not much to say here. Reliance on lightbulbs isn’t something we need to worry about.
• Relationships – People are allowed to socialize in public settings long into the night thanks to the light of bulbs.
• Democracy – This does not really apply. Light bulbs are a utility as basic these days as a hammer.
• Children – Learning about the nature of lightbulbs can help kids get an interest in electronics from a very early age
• Do Unto Others – Lightbulbs should not be accessible to children as many newer ones contain chemicals like mercury.

Lights, expecially warm ones an actually do wonders for depressions. It can give comfort from the harsh light of the sun and the outside world.

Really, I think that the only way to improve the ligthbulb at theis point is to make them more efficient. Besides that, its purpose is so basic, changing anything would make it a totally different device.