Few inventions affected our relationship with technology as much as push notifications have.
After all, not all notifications are created equal.
Before his invention, messages could only be sent to users who had their accounts on the same computer.
This changed when Tomlinson added the now ubiquitous @ symbol.
This ingenious addition allowed users to separate the recipients name from the name of the machine they were using.
One of the first users of this new system famously described it as a nice hack.
This hack stayed and soon led email to make up 75 percent of all early internet traffic.
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Surprisingly enough, SMTP already had push-style networking baked into it.
But it wasnt used widely because so few users were permanently connected to the internet at the time.
This changed when the first internet-capable phones, aka smartphones, reached the market.
This wasnt just a handy featureit became a critical reason for BlackBerrys mass adoption in the business world.
This was one of the most significant changes to mobile operating systems since the iPhone itself.
Notifications didnt just become an essential part of the phone.
The infamous bell icon soon appeared everywhere: from operating systems to apps and, ultimately, websites themselves.
You coupled with the notion of new made one of the most potent dopamine cocktails in techs history.
Unsurprisingly, users were exhilarated.
Soon, everyone wanted to be in our information streams.
Today, the most random websites ask us for permission to bombard us with content.
The amount of incoming information left many people frustrated and overwhelmed.
It wasnt just the fault of the companies generating the notifications though.
People had an inability to say no.
Then a new throw in of notification entered the scene.
We ignore a shepherd who always sows panic just like we ignore a bell that always rings.
They arent meant for you; theyre meant for everybody else.
Their sole purpose isnt increasing value, but optimizing for short-term engagement.
Through variable rewards, notifications became one of the most potent ways to keep people hooked.
There is an end in sight.
The moment we become aware of how increasingly noisy notifications are, theyll lose their efficacy.
When a wolf finallydidappear, the boy desperately tried to warn everyone, but no one listened.
Needless to say, it didnt end well for the sheep.
We ignore a shepherd who always sows panic just like we ignore a bell that always rings.
Anti-notifications that solely aim at increasing engagement without providing personal value work the same way.
And well probably hear about it through the sound of a notification popping up on our screens.
This article was published byAdrian Zumbrunnen, a designer at Google.
you could read the original articlehere.
