14 ms·

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide

I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. [0] C'mon folks, this is stuff you might otherwise seek for years in bookstores or never even hear of. Thanks to the Internet and powerful phones you can pop up the link below and read it in bed. The information is within reach of anyone with a decent cell phone. The effects of the Internet on human society have been profound but the ultimate outcome is not foreordained. Humans have survived some pretty nasty stuff over the millennia and we'll no doubt get through this as well. It's time to stop the hand-wringing and focus on making the Internet help humans in the way many of its original founders conceived. [1] [0] Gaufredus Malaterra, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/malaterra.html http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/malaterra.html [1] https://webfoundation.org/2014/12/recognise-the-internet-as-a-human-right-says-sir-tim-berners-lee-as-he-launches-annual-web-index/ https://webfoundation.org/2014/12/recognise-the-internet-as-...

eradicatethots 9y ago
The human species has survived, but not all of us are among the lucky.
apatters 9y ago
Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GUIs) were exotic: the first Mac had launched only a year ago. By the time I first heard of Stallman's ideas in the '90s, I was surrounded by PCs with GUIs, but still didn't get it. Now here we are, 30 years later. The first thing most of us do when we wake up is roll over, grab our phone, and look at some software. The existential costs of the non-free software are so high that we read new stories about them in the media every week, and the tech revolution's architects are banning the products they built from their own homes. For the less frequently cited ending to Stallman's quote is this: "...If the program controls the users, and the developer controls the program, then the program is an instrument of unjust power."
- andrei_says_ 9y ago
  Thank you for this. Putting Stallman’s quote in context helps me see how forward his thinking is and how important the distribution of power and consent can be in software. I see a parallel with food companies spending money on researching and marketing foods that are more addictive and more profitable. Yes, people do “want” addictive foods, but that’s not the type of want we want empowered; rather it is a hook into addiction and transfer of power by inducing an addiction.
  - BoiledCabbage 9y ago
    I was one who thought Stallman was just weird and obsessive way back when. I can't same I'm a devout follower, but I admit I was wrong about him. He had incredible foresight and was absolutely, insanely ahead of his time. He was providing solutions for problems 30 years before we could even realize we had them.
    - intended 9y ago
      I disagree with the insanely/adjectives. This makes it seem that the current problems are greater than they are, beyond the ken of mortal humans.
  - endgame 9y ago
    Junk food messes with what you want, despite you wanting to want different things.
- yoz-y 9y ago
  I don’t know. I think the Stallman quote can be read in two ways. Either the control is about free software (which is what I suppose he meant). In this case it would mean that if you can not read and modify the source code of your program then you are its instrument. I can't agree with this. For me there is little difference in end result for most users between not being able and not being capable of modifying the software. The other way to read this would be about how the program is used. If my morning starts with my phone telling me it is not going to rain and i go out into a downpour without an umbrella then I put too much confidence into the algorithm. This could get much worse though.
firebones 9y ago
How many wikipedia articles have you read on your smartphone vs. ones you've read on your laptop/desktop? "In your pocket" represents a world of difference.
- hodgesrm 9y ago
  More on my laptop but that's only because I work on a laptop and have to look up (mostly) work-related stuff. I read a lot of 18th/19th century lit. Wikipedia is like having footnotes for anything you are reading. I use it regularly, almost exclusively on my iPhone.
  - nicolimo86 9y ago
    The thing is that people like you are just a little minority respect to the whole. The vastly majority is destroing their screens by tapping here and there on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat....
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      If you looked a bit closer on their screens (easy to do in public transit), you'd see that they're mostly a) reading stuff, b) talking with friends, c) sending cool stuff to their friends. All standard ways of spending time with other people, except with the constraints of time and space lifted.
      - folksinger 9y ago
        Do you work for Facebook? It's OK if you do. It's OK if you don't accept what they do. It's OK if you don't love your job. We need to go out into the world and destroy parts of it just to survive. From 'The Way I Am', sung by Merle Haggard and many more: I wish I enjoyed how I made my living, Did what I do with a willing hand. Some may run but that ain't like me, So I just dream, keep on being the way that I am.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
amazingman 9y ago
Your comment contains great content, but it’s also fairly non sequitur. It appears that you didn’t read the article, and instead are responding to the (silly/stupid) headline. The concerns addressed in the article make it much more difficult to take the posture you’re taking here.
- hodgesrm 9y ago
  Thanks. I just want to say I did read it. It has a number of concerns that are mixed together in a way that's not entirely consistent, compelling, or even especially new. Consider the idea that democracy is being destroyed because people are helpless addicts of social media. You can make a plausible argument that American society and democracy are going through a troubled spell. But it's a big step to say that's all or even largely the fault of social media. It's true that Facebook makes it easier to develop echo chambers that group people by political persuasion. But hey, there's emerging poll evidence that American conservatives and liberals don't even want to marry each other. [0] There are many other causes at work here like failing education systems, economic dislocation, the capturing of the the political system by moneyed interests, etc. That's not even considering real political disputes over things like health care, immigration, and crime. Plus many of the disturbing trends we see now predate social media. Also, the article essentially dismisses fake news and trolls ("symptoms of a deeper problem"). The fact that you can't verify sources easily is not a symptom. It's a fundamental problem with the Internet today that is not all that different from the dark money problem in American politics. Overall this article reads like a variation of Nick Carr's "The Shallows" which I read and quite enjoyed. However, I don't think the threat to our intellects is as dire as he says. In the current article it's even a little surprising to me that tech people discount the possibility that something will come along that really upsets the apple cart at Facebook and Google. These are pretty new companies after all and they were the first to get really big on the Internet. This is not the end of the story, especially if the Internet breaks up into essentially national blocks. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/upshot/are-you-married-to-your-party.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/upshot/are-you-married-to...
  - ivanhoe 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
- hk__2 9y ago
  There’s no evidence Einstein ever said that: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/02/know-where-to-find/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/02/know-where-to-find/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
jansho 9y ago
> But they also provide access to Wikipedia [etc] But let's be honest, most smartphone users spend their time confined in a limited number of domains: social media, games, shopping etc. In that sense, we can be called a bit zombie in the head.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family. Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do. And it is also critical to doing anything together with other people. The Internet has lifted constraints of time and geography from communication - which is why you see people on IM in situations where, without the phone, the time would be wasted. They're making more efficient use of their time. As for shopping, I don't see anything wrong with acquiring resources needed for various things in your life.
  - jononor 9y ago
    Social media is both 'talking to friends and family', and 'posturing in front of near-strangers'. The latter might also be a latent human thing, but overall I don't it contributes as much to wellbeing as the first.
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    > If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family. Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do. I disagree. Pre-social media, people would talk with friends and family using e-mail and programs like AIM, and there would actually be deep and meaningful conversations. This has been supplanted by social media, which is often simple banal comments on an article/rant that someone threw up for everyone to see. If someone told you 15 years ago that people would stop having conversations by e-mail and communicate by LiveJournal posts/comments instead, it would have seemed like a hilariously terrible idea, but that's more or less where we are.
    - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 9y ago
>I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. That's might be because of thinking of first order effects only. >Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. Well, who said access to Wikipedia is something good in itself? For one, it might (and I say it does) reduce the number of deeper study on a subject, because of "I can look it up in Wikipedia". So, people that get interested in something don't need to build a deeper connection with their subject, buy books, follow it over time, connect with other people studying it, as a basic (and often crude) summary is always at small distance, and is perceived as enough. What's worse, there's a whole new entitlement and arrogance about topics, from people who have just cursory experience with them from Wikipedia or some other such source, and feed as qualified on them as actual people who've studied them/experts. Wikipedia feeds the "Read 1 lemma for 5 minutes expert". It's even worse when the source of their knowledge is not Wikipedia, but random web BS pages -- from conspiracy theories to homeopathy pages to alternative diets, to plain old bad journalist/click-baits. >They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. Both quite irrelevant to the discussion (which is about mass effects), as only a tiny outlier group will ever read those anyway. It's not the internet/smartphone that is the real problem though. It's that as a civilization we've relinquished control to structures whose only motives are profit-making. Their "we're changing the world" lip-service always has that ("to make more money") proviso -- not "for the better".
- VOBOSHI 9y ago
  Access to all kinds of information is good. It will always be up to the individual to investigate and draw up conclusions. People who state that they can just look something up on Wiki and be knowledgeable (or gasp experts!) will have been ignorant 10 years ago, 100 years ago etc. If they wouldn't have had Wikipedia or a newspaper, they'd have had religion (or anything else) to allow feeling knowledgeable. Also, I disagree that reading a book is a REQUIREMENT for study. It can be beneficial, but it's just another tool. There are a lot of wrongs on this planet, unfortunately.
  - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Grustaf 9y ago
"I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans." This is not really a valid argument. The mere _potential_ to read medieval Latin, or even classical Greek, on your smartphone says very little about the actual overall effect of people having smartphones. I suspect a lot more smartphone time is spent on Snapchat filters than Homer.

eradicatethots 9y ago

The human species has survived, but not all of us are among the lucky.

apatters 9y ago

Well, it's not the smartphone that's the problem. The smartphone is just the delivery system. It's remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman's quotes have aged. "With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users..." The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GUIs) were exotic: the first Mac had launched only a year ago. By the time I first heard of Stallman's ideas in the '90s, I was surrounded by PCs with GUIs, but still didn't get it. Now here we are, 30 years later. The first thing most of us do when we wake up is roll over, grab our phone, and look at some software. The existential costs of the non-free software are so high that we read new stories about them in the media every week, and the tech revolution's architects are banning the products they built from their own homes. For the less frequently cited ending to Stallman's quote is this: "...If the program controls the users, and the developer controls the program, then the program is an instrument of unjust power."

andrei_says_ 9y ago
Thank you for this. Putting Stallman’s quote in context helps me see how forward his thinking is and how important the distribution of power and consent can be in software. I see a parallel with food companies spending money on researching and marketing foods that are more addictive and more profitable. Yes, people do “want” addictive foods, but that’s not the type of want we want empowered; rather it is a hook into addiction and transfer of power by inducing an addiction.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  I was one who thought Stallman was just weird and obsessive way back when. I can't same I'm a devout follower, but I admit I was wrong about him. He had incredible foresight and was absolutely, insanely ahead of his time. He was providing solutions for problems 30 years before we could even realize we had them.
  - intended 9y ago
    I disagree with the insanely/adjectives. This makes it seem that the current problems are greater than they are, beyond the ken of mortal humans.
- endgame 9y ago
  Junk food messes with what you want, despite you wanting to want different things.
yoz-y 9y ago
I don’t know. I think the Stallman quote can be read in two ways. Either the control is about free software (which is what I suppose he meant). In this case it would mean that if you can not read and modify the source code of your program then you are its instrument. I can't agree with this. For me there is little difference in end result for most users between not being able and not being capable of modifying the software. The other way to read this would be about how the program is used. If my morning starts with my phone telling me it is not going to rain and i go out into a downpour without an umbrella then I put too much confidence into the algorithm. This could get much worse though.

firebones 9y ago

How many wikipedia articles have you read on your smartphone vs. ones you've read on your laptop/desktop? "In your pocket" represents a world of difference.

hodgesrm 9y ago
More on my laptop but that's only because I work on a laptop and have to look up (mostly) work-related stuff. I read a lot of 18th/19th century lit. Wikipedia is like having footnotes for anything you are reading. I use it regularly, almost exclusively on my iPhone.
- nicolimo86 9y ago
  The thing is that people like you are just a little minority respect to the whole. The vastly majority is destroing their screens by tapping here and there on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat....
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    If you looked a bit closer on their screens (easy to do in public transit), you'd see that they're mostly a) reading stuff, b) talking with friends, c) sending cool stuff to their friends. All standard ways of spending time with other people, except with the constraints of time and space lifted.
    - folksinger 9y ago
      Do you work for Facebook? It's OK if you do. It's OK if you don't accept what they do. It's OK if you don't love your job. We need to go out into the world and destroy parts of it just to survive. From 'The Way I Am', sung by Merle Haggard and many more: I wish I enjoyed how I made my living, Did what I do with a willing hand. Some may run but that ain't like me, So I just dream, keep on being the way that I am.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago

amazingman 9y ago

Your comment contains great content, but it’s also fairly non sequitur. It appears that you didn’t read the article, and instead are responding to the (silly/stupid) headline. The concerns addressed in the article make it much more difficult to take the posture you’re taking here.

hodgesrm 9y ago
Thanks. I just want to say I did read it. It has a number of concerns that are mixed together in a way that's not entirely consistent, compelling, or even especially new. Consider the idea that democracy is being destroyed because people are helpless addicts of social media. You can make a plausible argument that American society and democracy are going through a troubled spell. But it's a big step to say that's all or even largely the fault of social media. It's true that Facebook makes it easier to develop echo chambers that group people by political persuasion. But hey, there's emerging poll evidence that American conservatives and liberals don't even want to marry each other. [0] There are many other causes at work here like failing education systems, economic dislocation, the capturing of the the political system by moneyed interests, etc. That's not even considering real political disputes over things like health care, immigration, and crime. Plus many of the disturbing trends we see now predate social media. Also, the article essentially dismisses fake news and trolls ("symptoms of a deeper problem"). The fact that you can't verify sources easily is not a symptom. It's a fundamental problem with the Internet today that is not all that different from the dark money problem in American politics. Overall this article reads like a variation of Nick Carr's "The Shallows" which I read and quite enjoyed. However, I don't think the threat to our intellects is as dire as he says. In the current article it's even a little surprising to me that tech people discount the possibility that something will come along that really upsets the apple cart at Facebook and Google. These are pretty new companies after all and they were the first to get really big on the Internet. This is not the end of the story, especially if the Internet breaks up into essentially national blocks. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/upshot/are-you-married-to-your-party.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/upshot/are-you-married-to...
- ivanhoe 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hk__2 9y ago
There’s no evidence Einstein ever said that: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/02/know-where-to-find/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/02/know-where-to-find/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

jansho 9y ago

> But they also provide access to Wikipedia [etc] But let's be honest, most smartphone users spend their time confined in a limited number of domains: social media, games, shopping etc. In that sense, we can be called a bit zombie in the head.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family. Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do. And it is also critical to doing anything together with other people. The Internet has lifted constraints of time and geography from communication - which is why you see people on IM in situations where, without the phone, the time would be wasted. They're making more efficient use of their time. As for shopping, I don't see anything wrong with acquiring resources needed for various things in your life.
- jononor 9y ago
  Social media is both 'talking to friends and family', and 'posturing in front of near-strangers'. The latter might also be a latent human thing, but overall I don't it contributes as much to wellbeing as the first.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  > If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family. Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do. I disagree. Pre-social media, people would talk with friends and family using e-mail and programs like AIM, and there would actually be deep and meaningful conversations. This has been supplanted by social media, which is often simple banal comments on an article/rant that someone threw up for everyone to see. If someone told you 15 years ago that people would stop having conversations by e-mail and communicate by LiveJournal posts/comments instead, it would have seemed like a hilariously terrible idea, but that's more or less where we are.
  - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 9y ago

>I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. That's might be because of thinking of first order effects only. >Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans. Well, who said access to Wikipedia is something good in itself? For one, it might (and I say it does) reduce the number of deeper study on a subject, because of "I can look it up in Wikipedia". So, people that get interested in something don't need to build a deeper connection with their subject, buy books, follow it over time, connect with other people studying it, as a basic (and often crude) summary is always at small distance, and is perceived as enough. What's worse, there's a whole new entitlement and arrogance about topics, from people who have just cursory experience with them from Wikipedia or some other such source, and feed as qualified on them as actual people who've studied them/experts. Wikipedia feeds the "Read 1 lemma for 5 minutes expert". It's even worse when the source of their knowledge is not Wikipedia, but random web BS pages -- from conspiracy theories to homeopathy pages to alternative diets, to plain old bad journalist/click-baits. >They can show you newspapers from across the planet. They let you read Latin histories of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the middle ages. Both quite irrelevant to the discussion (which is about mass effects), as only a tiny outlier group will ever read those anyway. It's not the internet/smartphone that is the real problem though. It's that as a civilization we've relinquished control to structures whose only motives are profit-making. Their "we're changing the world" lip-service always has that ("to make more money") proviso -- not "for the better".

VOBOSHI 9y ago
Access to all kinds of information is good. It will always be up to the individual to investigate and draw up conclusions. People who state that they can just look something up on Wiki and be knowledgeable (or gasp experts!) will have been ignorant 10 years ago, 100 years ago etc. If they wouldn't have had Wikipedia or a newspaper, they'd have had religion (or anything else) to allow feeling knowledgeable. Also, I disagree that reading a book is a REQUIREMENT for study. It can be beneficial, but it's just another tool. There are a lot of wrongs on this planet, unfortunately.
- 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Grustaf 9y ago

"I don't buy the idea that smartphones are extinguishing the life of the mind. Sure, smartphones provide access to almost unlimited trash. But they also provide access to Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful encyclopedia ever developed by humans." This is not really a valid argument. The mere _potential_ to read medieval Latin, or even classical Greek, on your smartphone says very little about the actual overall effect of people having smartphones. I suspect a lot more smartphone time is spent on Snapchat filters than Homer.