The NBA-Playoffs, the most exiting period in the sport of basketball every year. Currently the Conference finals are being played, so only the best four teams of the season are left to compete for this year’s championship. In best of seven series two teams usually play home- and away games against each other, this year all games will be played in the ‘bubble’ in Orlando due to the pandemic. Besides the amazing performance of the world’s best players, the thing that makes the playoffs so exiting is the huge roar of the fans in the crowd. Every highlight gains some extra dimension during playoffs thanks to the chants of all fans.

To try to replicate this regular atmosphere the NBA started a cooperation with Microsoft, in which fans are in the ‘Together mode’ on Teams. This function brings uses AI to bring people together on 5-meter-tall screens on the sidelines in the arena. It’s obviously a way different experience for the players, the home court advantage kind of disappears and for people watching from home the experience is also very different in contrast to all previous editions of the NBA Playoffs. This year, fans do have a ‘tap to cheer’ option, the amount of cheers for every team will be tallied up and shown on the screen at the end of the game to show the players how much support they received from the fans during the game. Sara Zuckert, head of Next Gen Telecast at NBA says the following: ‘’This unique live game experience will allow fans to maintain a sense of community as they watch their favorite teams and players.“

Overall, the whole experience and atmosphere of the NBA Playoffs is a bit strange this year. Anyway, the creativeness as well as the possibilities technology created to adapt to the current situation are worth mentioning and receive sincere appreciation. For the supporters at home as well as the loyal arena supporter this years Playoffs are historical and therefore we should focus on the beauty of the game.

References:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/07/24/reimagining-teams-experience-basketball-microsoft-teams/

It’s a phenomenon we’re probably all familiar with, time we are supposed to be spending productively on either study, work, social or sports activities is filled in with social media. After spending an hour on our Instagram timeline or Twitter feed, we usually blame ourselves for wasting our time, but what causes us to spend time like we do and is it reasonable to blame ourselves?

The quality of a magician which enables him/her to trick children, surgeons, lawyers as well as professors is their knowledge about this minor weakness in the human brain they can perform tricks on to confuse us. Algorithm developers have comparable knowledge, which as a result leads to platforms which draw our attention for more and more minutes a day and we really desire to fill our empty time by returning to the highly addictive social media platforms. The problem is that the business model of companies drawing our attention is to demand as much time as possible from us on their websites and therefore train the algorithms to gain advantage of our weak spot in the brain.

As social media platforms were originally created for connecting human and enabling tighter connections with people all around the world, the negative impact on our attention and cognition are becoming increasingly clear. According to Pang (2013) the average American citizen spends 1 hour per day dealing with distraction and then getting back to work again, which is equal to 5 entire weeks per year! Another experimental study showed that the ability to solve new problems as well working memory drastically reduced when phones were on their desk but turned off compared to being in another room. Even the smartphone itself acts as a high priority stimuli which unconsciously drains significant attention when we’re ignoring it consciously (Adrian F. Ward, 2017). Another study shows that 75% of the screen content we consume is viewed for less than a minute. Biological analysis on this study showed that participant experienced a neurological ‘high’ when switching content. This explains why we feel urged to switch content and underscores how easy we are to be manipulated by attention-demanding economies (Leo Yeykelis, 2014).

Ironically, several former early stage-employees, board members of firms like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Google, including Tristan Harris, former design ethicus at Google feel concerned about the negative effects of algorithms. After his period at Google, Tristan founded the Center of Humane Technology where he tries to raise awareness and drive change by reaching millions of people using campaigns, presentations and public testimony to policy makers. The goal is to shift the mindset from which persuasive technologies are built and use it to support parallel shifts in our larger social system. Another example is the Tim Kendall, former president of Pinterest who caught himself using Pinterest after a long day of working and feeling unable to prevent him doing this instead of time with his family purely on willpower. Therefore he founded the application Moment which helps to break screen and social media addiction through several tweaks in your habits.

After seeing all these initiatives come from the ground by former contributors of the platforms it made me think a lot. I noticed that it worked the same for me, when distracted in my mind I could just open Facebook, scroll for a minute or so and get back to work. It took me three days to decide to just delete my Facebook profile, which might be the extreme solution. But the point I’m trying to make is the importance to protect our brains from losing our attention and cognitive capabilities we developed and to be aware of how social media algorithms affect us and find a way to deal with it.

References

Adrian F. Ward, K. D. (2017). Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research Volume 2, Number 2, 140-154.

Leo Yeykelis, J. J. (2014). Multitasking on a Single Device: Arousal and the Frequency, Anticipation, and Prediction of Switching Between Media Content on a Computer. Journal of Communication, Volume 64, Issue 1, 167–192.

Pang, A. S.-K., 2013. The Distraction Addiction