Hmm, I think the reason this app seems weird is because it's tricking the user at the other end when what she wants to see is her SO more engaged. I can see this app as actually being useful if it merely serves as a prompt to have a short conversation at reasonable intervals if you haven't texted in the last day or two.
I think what the author was getting as was that apps like this turn normal human interactions, complete with nuance and imperfection, into systematic conversation streams which can be optimized. One is like more efficient, but it raises the question of whether this theoretical human interaction optimum is a good thing.
I think their point was valid, but they didn't think it through enough. It's good to make things you don't want to do or need to do a lot of efficient in the sense of optimizing away time, energy, or money. It's bad to optimize away things that you actually like to do.
I think an app like this could optimize away a weak link to arriving a place you want to be. That is, deciding when to initiate a conversation and coming up with an opening. The conversation itself is the valuable thing you want to spend time in. The opening of a comm channel is, in some conceptions, simply protocol.
Of course, it does take away the choice of thinking that you want to communicate at that moment, which can start to make it seem like an intrusion into your time and change the way you regard the conversation. I think it depends on the person and their evolving circumstances as to whether the removal of choice in this regard is advantageous.
"Today's Apps" is a strong headline when there is only one app actually being discussed, and even the author acknowledges the strong probability that the app itself is meant to be satirical.
Also, "sociopath"[1] is a pretty strong term for a guy who sends automated texts in a clumsy attempt to deceive his girlfriend that he's thinking about her. (I'd call him immature, and certainly shortsighted - it should be obvious how the scheme could backfire, leading to a permanent loss of trust.) And if you're not already a sociopath, it's unlike that using an app will turn you into one.
I wonder if he even wrote the headline, or if an editor did. The contents of the article don't make reference to sociopathy or claim that the app is serious or indicative of a current trend. He just uses that particular app, which could be a joke, to explore something that very well could become prevalent in the near future. He's an ethicist, so that's his job. I thought it was a good article if you ignore the headline.
I think the author is reading way too much into BroApp. I've used BroApp for a few weeks. I thought it was funny, I liked the design and I was looking forward to the day my girlfriend found out. She finally figured it out around Christmas where we were both at my parents place and I neglected to setup my parent's wifi address as a "No Bro Zone". She asked me why I had texted her and I spilled the beans. She got a kick out of the app and tells the story to others.
Don't know if this is the typical experience but if you look at the app, it does not provide enough customization to trick someone for long (my girlfriend told me she was suspicious for some time). It offered to send one of 5 texts at a set time (plus or minus a few minutes). If someone were really intent on tricking their significant other, they would use something like IFTTT (If This Than That).
Just the design and feel of the app has me believe that it was made as more of a satire of bro culture and the hyper interconnectedness that modern relationships now require.
Let's see: I tell everybody I'm broke. I caught up on ten years of back due tax paperwork. I'm clean, sober and have been for months...just launched free, open source no strings software to end $5 billion in annual American wasted spend on Facebook, Twitter and SEO tools that are mostly junk.
Yep, zero people care. They didn't get a push notification from Google Now, telling them to put down the phone and give to hookupJS. They didn't see Jeff Weiner tweet, "Jeremy, you haven't sent me an SEO weekly report since Yahoo, 2005 - what are the latest numbers?"
Automattic, makers of the best content management software in the world, have a similar philosophy as we do - give it away, free and open source, then chase the value that the open ecosystem creates. Alongside WordPress, hookupJS is designed to be a secure, open source marketing Saas - self hosted, no data leaks and 100% private for business data.
However, the crowd funding yeilded only spam, private comments so far. The LinkedIn messages have been well meaning, but, zero text lines read. The single, solitary fork we got on our repo (software is live, functional and free - on github) practically made me cry.
I don't get it. For some reason, I agree, the feeling in my gut says, "Nobody cares." When I was drinking, I checked into a mental hospital for a few days because I was going nuts, getting stolen from by my former employer and worse.
It is an excellent article. Ignore me, just go read it. Then take a walk, smell the fresh air, and for once in the week, try to figure out if you are inside the Matrix, or if the mesh layer is already controlling you. Put down the hololens, the nerd helmets and the Occulus. Take a look at real life, in 3d. It's awesome.
