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I know lots of people will roll their eyes at the old man who complains and shakes his cane about the decline of long-form communication and the thoughtfulness

I know lots of people will roll their eyes at the old man who complains and shakes his cane about the decline of long-form communication and the thoughtfulness of written correspondence. But I don't care if they think I'm paranoid and silly. I think it's a damn shame to replace common literacy and writing with tweets and autocomplete that eventually just takes over for you entirely. Here's the thing about these little conveniences and timesavers they're building. I think it's a sliding scale. Now we think it's inconvenient to call and put in a reservation or write an email to somebody. They'll fix that. Then we'll think the next most onerous thing is inconvenient. The truth is, we have extremely cush lives right now as it is. We're not going to use this to save time and do better things, become better people. We're going to use it to lazily shrink from society and become even more obsessed with electronic trivialities. Just like me writing this bitter comment right now. It's the continuation of an obvious trend.

dragonwriter 8y ago
Writing itself is a convenience and time saver to avoid memorizing and repeated vocal recitation. I don't disagree that there is a continued march of convenience, I'm just not convinced that there is any justification to the idea that there is a “this far and no further” point at which thst March stops being a net gain, and even less coonvinced that that point is conveniently just before the convenience advanced of the last few years (or even generations).
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  Yeah, it's been a trend in the past. You think it's linear? You don't see that it's picking up extremely quickly during this generation specifically? Do you think that we should be completely unconcerned about the fact that future generations will have lives completely dissimilar to any previous? And we don't know anything about the consequences. People have this idea that information technology is so innocent and only improves, never harms. I feel like this field is about to get a reckoning, but it's not going to be something we can undo. I don't think it's crazy to be skeptical and careful about it. I don't think it's a good idea to just assume it's fine and normal.

dragonwriter 8y ago

Writing itself is a convenience and time saver to avoid memorizing and repeated vocal recitation. I don't disagree that there is a continued march of convenience, I'm just not convinced that there is any justification to the idea that there is a “this far and no further” point at which thst March stops being a net gain, and even less coonvinced that that point is conveniently just before the convenience advanced of the last few years (or even generations).

vertexFarm 8y ago
Yeah, it's been a trend in the past. You think it's linear? You don't see that it's picking up extremely quickly during this generation specifically? Do you think that we should be completely unconcerned about the fact that future generations will have lives completely dissimilar to any previous? And we don't know anything about the consequences. People have this idea that information technology is so innocent and only improves, never harms. I feel like this field is about to get a reckoning, but it's not going to be something we can undo. I don't think it's crazy to be skeptical and careful about it. I don't think it's a good idea to just assume it's fine and normal.