Overload is the term which comes to mind.
I officially have too many health applications. I admit devices as "health prevention" tools are something I have been following pretty much since hearing that Tim Cook has an Apple Watch prototype with (external) sugar tracker.
Add to that the CPU prowess and neural learning and we have a future health optimization on our wrist. Beyond nagging fitness apps, nagging to be more active.
The key to most apps becoming successful, useful even is that they run in the background and require no interaction. While they do their magic.
Magic is obviously different for any user. To some that may be beautiful weekly and monthly stats, to others that may be the advanced features that come with the most recent Apple Watch, and to people like me it's probably the next generation of smart devices.
When, hopefully, investing in them becomes a worthy investment even if only it can give the recipients medical scares, warnings sufficient to get them to ER and have them checked for irregularities monitored by their new devices. Complete with follow-on activity plans and continued monitoring.
And for others it means a peer pressure focused feed where every friend - real or virtual - shows off their active prowess.
Because most of those apps do their magic as a silent daemon, obviously I did install too many of them. Luckily I'm a stats nerd and comparing their output, output beyond dopamine feeds, is an interesting exercise.
And also an absolute and utter time sink. Time I could have spent reading a book or do something useful with like... 🤔
I'm still enjoying the eSteem V2 app. There's still a long way to go but, despite small fonts, it's an absolute beaut. Yet, the introduction of points also made me realize that we are still the product.
Think about that next time you collect your tokens and wonder what the use case for them could be.
Or have a look at the newest app released by Partiko Inc.
The only difference is that the attention economy will share crumbs with you but you are still the product.
