25 ms·

Sir Tim Berners-Lee warns of widening digital divide

130 points by TangerineDream 6y ago

syshum 6y ago
It is ironic that he Talks about the widening digital divide while the W3C has continually ceded to the demands of copyright maximalists demanding ever increasing and costly DRM be put in "standards" which in turns makes free and open source solutions that can not comply with things like EME less favorable. Making technology more expensive and thus increase the that very digital divide
- Jonnax 6y ago
  How does the cost of building a standards compliant web browser have anything to do with lack of access to the internet? Web browsers are free. This is an infrastructure issue where people don't have internet access.
apples_oranges 6y ago
I was wondering, now that Starlink is getting ready for business, if connectivity white spots on the map could not be closed with it. Now, it's a very expensive service, and it might be against the TOS?, but it seems like one Starlink ground subscriber station could serve several households via Wifi or similar. Kinda how some of us shared our connection back in the 1990s, just faster. Perhaps the government of the UK could also make deals with Starlink and similar companies. I mean do that if you don't want to dig holes and put cables in them. Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? Call me postmodern, but idgaf if he's a Knight of the UK or the Jedi, it's just character spam. His name is "Tim Berners-Lee", no? (This man is a legend either way.) We say "Paul Graham" not "Dr. Paul Graham, Comp.Sci." and I would also call Professor Albus Dumbledore just Albus Dumbledore, I mean if there was a blogpost about him. :)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  A knighthood is a seriously different beast to a PhD e.g. Paul Graham will never be shown off alone to an audience of billions in an olympic opening ceremony.
  - ralusek 6y ago
    Right. A PhD is proof that you spent years of your life theoretically advancing the boundary of knowledge in your given field. A knighthood is that an old lady thinks you're neat.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Knighthoods are actually usually from the government, often for being a world leading researcher or sportsman etc. The fact that the queen or similar taps you on the shoulders is an implementation detail If you want to be petty all you have to do to get a PhD is pass a viva - Two slightly bizarre french "physicists" come to mind
      - Izkata 6y ago
        > Knighthoods are actually usually from the government, often for being a world leading researcher or sportsman etc. This gets lost in translation. I (in the US) tend to see it more like GP does as well.
    - xondono 6y ago
      You could also get your Phd by doing useless stuff for 3 to 5 years and kissing enough ass.
    - curtainsforus 6y ago
      That's a big 'theoretically', and given the government subsidies involved, the value involved quite strongly depends on the field in question, and is often questionable.
  - playpause 6y ago
    That was because he invented the web, not because he's a knight. There are thousands of knights in the UK.
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  > Knight of the UK Technically he's an " Officer of the Order of the British Empire", a bit anachronistic for sure :)
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    The British seem to treasure their anachronisms. "Order of the Garter", indeed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter (Honi soit qui mal y pense)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ralusek 6y ago
  I think his title should be "www" rather than "Sir"
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  > Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? No, that's "Mylord" to you.
- jgrahamc 6y ago
  Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? The headline comes from the BBC so it is natural that they use his title. Elsewhere he might be referred to differently.
- pferde 6y ago
  In a world where people increasingly share one or two line console text output as screenshots, you are bothered by three extra characters being character spam? :) I see it as a harmless thing.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Given it's a British article, it seems quite fair to do so. Just for fun, I'm going to waffle on about your comment a bit! I think your outlook stems from the "individualist" movement and mindset that encourages everyone to see themselves as individuals separate from society and it's constructs. As we have all become a little bit more disconnected from society because of it, and our place within it has become less important, we don't see such achievements as being as important as they once were. How many people don't even know who their town Mayor is? As well, access to information from the internet means you know exactly what this guy did, you know all his achievements already, he is elevated above his knighthood to you because you care more about his achievements than his place in society. Fair enough, and I'd agree! Imagine instead it's 1890 and you're a foundational part of a strong british community, then as graciously as he disembarked from the train, Sir Tim Berners Lee has greeted you. A sir! My goodness, what must he have done? You don't know, all you know is they hold a very important position in the society you're also strongly part of, so you can respect that achievement. Gosh, how exciting!
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I have to say, I don't see the connection between individualism and not caring about an individual's achievements. in fact, I would draw the exact opposite connection. individualism is very much concerned with the achievements of individuals, whether or not that individual is you. in any case, I don't think GP is disregarding what the good sir has accomplished in life. the quibble seems to be with titles specifically. I think egalitarianism would be a better word to describe this position.
    - ehnto 6y ago
      The detail here is that the achievement is acquiring status in a society with which individualism doesn't care about anymore. The OP cares much more for the real achievements, and not much for their title and place in British society (society of old at least) I think you are right about egalitarianism being part of the outlook, I think egalitarianism is part of individualism though. Everyone is as special as everyone else, so your rank in society isn't as important.
- wrycoder 6y ago
  Starlink, for me, is the same price as cable internet, once the teaser price on the latter expires.
- ectopod 6y ago
  Americans are sticklers for titles more than Brits. For example, outside of very formal settings no-one calls the prime minister "The Right Honourable Boris Johnson" but the president is nearly always referred to as "President Biden".
brisad 6y ago
Calling it a basic right, but also having it include DRM, that's a really messed up power balance.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Especially when Tim pushed for adoption of said DRM. A true hero.
throwaway53453 6y ago
> "A shocking number of kids in the UK don't have meaningful connectivity." Growing up the UK, I don't think I ever had a classmate without internet connectivity at home. It would've been like not having electricity. Am I out of touch?
- thewarrior 6y ago
  Did you grow up in a rural or urban area ? I mean if there are people queueing for food there must be people too poor to even own an extra laptop
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mercury_craze 6y ago
  Yes, you're out of touch. Access to the internet is seen as a luxury when you're relying on charitable donations to put food on the table.
- kjakm 6y ago
  I'm willing to bet if you did, you wouldn't know. It's not something anyone is going to brag about. Similar to kids getting free school meals or any other 'benefit' for being poor. When you have these problems you tend to keep them to yourself due to shame. Also, from the article: "But, he says, one-third of young people do not have any internet access and many more lack the quality of connection needed to work or learn from home."
  - throwaway53453 6y ago
    I dunno, I had a lot of friends from poorer families. Their computers were shared and usually not the best, but I never saw anyone without any access at all. Group projects were regularly done remotely on Skype after school to do homework (admittedly to my chagrin as I didn't have a Windows machine to run Office). Is there more reliable data on this?
tpmx 6y ago
This is the letter itself: https://onezero.medium.com/the-web-must-work-better-for-young-people-e384c289dc9a https://onezero.medium.com/the-web-must-work-better-for-youn...
doggodaddo78 6y ago
Screen addiction, phony social networks, and virtual interactions: all leading to the atomization and isolation of people from one another. People once had to communicate with each other mostly in-person and had to develop an ability to socialize. The internet snatched civilization destruction from the jaws of progress. I don't see how wishing a double-edged sword that cuts off more humanity than it brings is necessarily something to eagerly foist and bestow on everyone. Magical realism and kids inventing their own play games in remote or poor villages is what happens when they don't have the internet to destroy creativity and distract people from using their imaginations.
- nivenkos 6y ago
  Is the internet really to blame though? It can be a great way to meet new people and establish local groups. I think the bigger issue has been the lengthening of working hours (imagine working just 9 to 5), and recently of course, the lockdowns.
  - hong_kong 6y ago
    My take is that we're still adapting to and experimenting with how to live with the internet, given how it fundamentally changes so much and the transition is still very much ongoing. Every revolutionary technology probably generated similar amounts of hysteria about the end of civilization - think about the printing press, industrialization (luddites), TVs, etc. Eventually things should find a happy equilibrium, it just doesn't happen immediately. But it's assuming too much to think no solution today = no solution forever.
  - doggodaddo78 6y ago
    It's handing out heroin to anyone who wants it rather than handing out clean needles.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Is the internet really to blame though? You think kids are going to use the internet for homework and research?
macspoofing 6y ago
>Sir Tim Berners-Lee says too many young people do not have internet access and the digital divide has widened during the pandemic. Given the mental health crisis in young people (especially girls) stemming from social media use and ever present landmine of writing something inappropriate that will destroy your life later ... is that such a bad thing?
- Razengan 6y ago
  Preventing people’s access to something because of the potential downsides to it? You can apply it to any facility. That’s the same mentality that keeps girls locked up in some cultures, to keep them “safe”.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    To be fair, a lot of cultures prevent children from buying alcohol and firearms on their own.
    - Digit-Al 6y ago
      False equivalency. We prevent children buying alcohol and firearms because they might harm themselves and other people not because other people might use those things to harm them.
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        the original comment seemed to be concerned with kids harming themselves, but at any rate we prevent kids gambling as well which is much closer to the dynamics of social media than alcohol or firearms.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Preventing people’s access to something because of the potential downsides to it? We're not talking about adults, we're talking about children. Yes, at some point they need to be exposed to the internet because the internet is a fact of life. I'm just not sold that any child (say, under the age of 14) who doesn't have access to the internet would somehow be crippled socially, culturally or academically. I have yet to see any study that suggests limiting access to the internet for children, or even no access internet is greatly detrimental. Contrast this with the FACT that there is a mental health crisis happening right now due social media use, and that there is no effective way to segrate internet from social media. So what is the argument here? What if there is no safe-level of social media use for children? By the way it is not uncommon to see children of tech-savvy parents, who may work in the industry, outright banning or tightly controlling internet access to their children.
YuccaGloriosa 6y ago
Is it me or is this article just trying to leverage TLB's status to justify the extortionate expense of high speed rural internet.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Loughla 6y ago
  We run power and water to rural areas, even though it's incredibly expensive compared to urban areas.
eric4smith 6y ago
Digital divide is not even so much of a problem as social media overuse. Let’s say, and why not, that you’re a pretty girl living in a small village on a farm. You start to dabble on Instagram and at first post photos or horses, veggies growing, campfires - you know, normal farm stuff. A couple young farmers from the community has they eyes on you. They tout the size of their farms and how you can have beautiful children together. But one day, accidentally, you post a photo on Instagram of yourself that’s slightly revealing, you felt a bit daring that day. Now you got 15,000 likes. Normally you’d get maybe 2 likes for anything else. You get a little more daring. Now you’ve posted more like the “daring” photo and in the space of a couple of months, without even noticing, you’ve gained 120,000 followers. You fear looking at your DM. You have to turn off Instagram notifications. You start posting on tiktok. Even more followers because, video. In total you’re over 220,000 followers. Men contacting you every day. Now those farm boys with the promise of marriage look pretty lame. People start sending you money. Cash app. PayPal. Venmo. Secretly, you’re making more money than your parents. Another girl online mentioned lonely-fans. You’re considering it... Current social media has destroyed normal relationships. Destroyed remote communities. It’s 10,000x worse than any “digital divide”. There’s good or bad in everything - but this is one of the indisputably bad things that has happened to the world in the last 10 years.
- bobbydroptables 6y ago
  How is it undisputably bad? This woman now has access to higher quality men around the world instead of a random farmer without much to offer (no offense to the random farmers in the audience). She now has the option to leave a dead end rural lifestyle is she chooses. And if she's into the dead end rural life (insert whatever dumb american tropes we have that idealize wasteful rural modes of living), she won't find rich, high flying city guys very appealing and it's all a wash. Or maybe she wants to move to a different dead end rural community with a better match than the random farmer she happened to be born next to. Now she can do that on farmers only. You could say some good and some bad (and of course very bad for the random farmer whose main reproductive strategy was apparently counting on his mate not realizing he's not a catch and there are much better options), but you can't say it's only bad. Ideally, none of these people reproduce at all since we already have plenty of humans. Hopefully the shift to digital relationships can greatly reduce our headcount in the long run. This trend seems well underway already thankfully.
beaconstudios 6y ago
the biggest digital divide in my mind is the divide between those who can program and those who cannot. Those who can't program do not have access to the huge power curve that is the ability to automate or simplify white-collar work. There's certain to be a large gap out there of automatable problems in industries that programmers don't tend to care about (PlanGrid being a good example of this) that could do with being able to solve their own problems.

It is ironic that he Talks about the widening digital divide while the W3C has continually ceded to the demands of copyright maximalists demanding ever increasing and costly DRM be put in "standards" which in turns makes free and open source solutions that can not comply with things like EME less favorable. Making technology more expensive and thus increase the that very digital divide

Jonnax 6y ago
How does the cost of building a standards compliant web browser have anything to do with lack of access to the internet? Web browsers are free. This is an infrastructure issue where people don't have internet access.

apples_oranges 6y ago

I was wondering, now that Starlink is getting ready for business, if connectivity white spots on the map could not be closed with it. Now, it's a very expensive service, and it might be against the TOS?, but it seems like one Starlink ground subscriber station could serve several households via Wifi or similar. Kinda how some of us shared our connection back in the 1990s, just faster. Perhaps the government of the UK could also make deals with Starlink and similar companies. I mean do that if you don't want to dig holes and put cables in them. Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? Call me postmodern, but idgaf if he's a Knight of the UK or the Jedi, it's just character spam. His name is "Tim Berners-Lee", no? (This man is a legend either way.) We say "Paul Graham" not "Dr. Paul Graham, Comp.Sci." and I would also call Professor Albus Dumbledore just Albus Dumbledore, I mean if there was a blogpost about him. :)

mhh__ 6y ago
A knighthood is a seriously different beast to a PhD e.g. Paul Graham will never be shown off alone to an audience of billions in an olympic opening ceremony.
- ralusek 6y ago
  Right. A PhD is proof that you spent years of your life theoretically advancing the boundary of knowledge in your given field. A knighthood is that an old lady thinks you're neat.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Knighthoods are actually usually from the government, often for being a world leading researcher or sportsman etc. The fact that the queen or similar taps you on the shoulders is an implementation detail If you want to be petty all you have to do to get a PhD is pass a viva - Two slightly bizarre french "physicists" come to mind
    - Izkata 6y ago
      > Knighthoods are actually usually from the government, often for being a world leading researcher or sportsman etc. This gets lost in translation. I (in the US) tend to see it more like GP does as well.
  - xondono 6y ago
    You could also get your Phd by doing useless stuff for 3 to 5 years and kissing enough ass.
  - curtainsforus 6y ago
    That's a big 'theoretically', and given the government subsidies involved, the value involved quite strongly depends on the field in question, and is often questionable.
- playpause 6y ago
  That was because he invented the web, not because he's a knight. There are thousands of knights in the UK.
throwaway53453 6y ago
> Knight of the UK Technically he's an " Officer of the Order of the British Empire", a bit anachronistic for sure :)
- ethbr0 6y ago
  The British seem to treasure their anachronisms. "Order of the Garter", indeed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter (Honi soit qui mal y pense)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ralusek 6y ago
I think his title should be "www" rather than "Sir"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tannhaeuser 6y ago
> Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? No, that's "Mylord" to you.
jgrahamc 6y ago
Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? The headline comes from the BBC so it is natural that they use his title. Elsewhere he might be referred to differently.
pferde 6y ago
In a world where people increasingly share one or two line console text output as screenshots, you are bothered by three extra characters being character spam? :) I see it as a harmless thing.
ehnto 6y ago
Given it's a British article, it seems quite fair to do so. Just for fun, I'm going to waffle on about your comment a bit! I think your outlook stems from the "individualist" movement and mindset that encourages everyone to see themselves as individuals separate from society and it's constructs. As we have all become a little bit more disconnected from society because of it, and our place within it has become less important, we don't see such achievements as being as important as they once were. How many people don't even know who their town Mayor is? As well, access to information from the internet means you know exactly what this guy did, you know all his achievements already, he is elevated above his knighthood to you because you care more about his achievements than his place in society. Fair enough, and I'd agree! Imagine instead it's 1890 and you're a foundational part of a strong british community, then as graciously as he disembarked from the train, Sir Tim Berners Lee has greeted you. A sir! My goodness, what must he have done? You don't know, all you know is they hold a very important position in the society you're also strongly part of, so you can respect that achievement. Gosh, how exciting!
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I have to say, I don't see the connection between individualism and not caring about an individual's achievements. in fact, I would draw the exact opposite connection. individualism is very much concerned with the achievements of individuals, whether or not that individual is you. in any case, I don't think GP is disregarding what the good sir has accomplished in life. the quibble seems to be with titles specifically. I think egalitarianism would be a better word to describe this position.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    The detail here is that the achievement is acquiring status in a society with which individualism doesn't care about anymore. The OP cares much more for the real achievements, and not much for their title and place in British society (society of old at least) I think you are right about egalitarianism being part of the outlook, I think egalitarianism is part of individualism though. Everyone is as special as everyone else, so your rank in society isn't as important.
wrycoder 6y ago
Starlink, for me, is the same price as cable internet, once the teaser price on the latter expires.
ectopod 6y ago
Americans are sticklers for titles more than Brits. For example, outside of very formal settings no-one calls the prime minister "The Right Honourable Boris Johnson" but the president is nearly always referred to as "President Biden".

brisad 6y ago

Calling it a basic right, but also having it include DRM, that's a really messed up power balance.

ekianjo 6y ago
Especially when Tim pushed for adoption of said DRM. A true hero.

throwaway53453 6y ago

> "A shocking number of kids in the UK don't have meaningful connectivity." Growing up the UK, I don't think I ever had a classmate without internet connectivity at home. It would've been like not having electricity. Am I out of touch?

thewarrior 6y ago
Did you grow up in a rural or urban area ? I mean if there are people queueing for food there must be people too poor to even own an extra laptop
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mercury_craze 6y ago
Yes, you're out of touch. Access to the internet is seen as a luxury when you're relying on charitable donations to put food on the table.
kjakm 6y ago
I'm willing to bet if you did, you wouldn't know. It's not something anyone is going to brag about. Similar to kids getting free school meals or any other 'benefit' for being poor. When you have these problems you tend to keep them to yourself due to shame. Also, from the article: "But, he says, one-third of young people do not have any internet access and many more lack the quality of connection needed to work or learn from home."
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  I dunno, I had a lot of friends from poorer families. Their computers were shared and usually not the best, but I never saw anyone without any access at all. Group projects were regularly done remotely on Skype after school to do homework (admittedly to my chagrin as I didn't have a Windows machine to run Office). Is there more reliable data on this?

tpmx 6y ago

This is the letter itself: https://onezero.medium.com/the-web-must-work-better-for-young-people-e384c289dc9a https://onezero.medium.com/the-web-must-work-better-for-youn...

doggodaddo78 6y ago

Screen addiction, phony social networks, and virtual interactions: all leading to the atomization and isolation of people from one another. People once had to communicate with each other mostly in-person and had to develop an ability to socialize. The internet snatched civilization destruction from the jaws of progress. I don't see how wishing a double-edged sword that cuts off more humanity than it brings is necessarily something to eagerly foist and bestow on everyone. Magical realism and kids inventing their own play games in remote or poor villages is what happens when they don't have the internet to destroy creativity and distract people from using their imaginations.

nivenkos 6y ago
Is the internet really to blame though? It can be a great way to meet new people and establish local groups. I think the bigger issue has been the lengthening of working hours (imagine working just 9 to 5), and recently of course, the lockdowns.
- hong_kong 6y ago
  My take is that we're still adapting to and experimenting with how to live with the internet, given how it fundamentally changes so much and the transition is still very much ongoing. Every revolutionary technology probably generated similar amounts of hysteria about the end of civilization - think about the printing press, industrialization (luddites), TVs, etc. Eventually things should find a happy equilibrium, it just doesn't happen immediately. But it's assuming too much to think no solution today = no solution forever.
- doggodaddo78 6y ago
  It's handing out heroin to anyone who wants it rather than handing out clean needles.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Is the internet really to blame though? You think kids are going to use the internet for homework and research?

macspoofing 6y ago

>Sir Tim Berners-Lee says too many young people do not have internet access and the digital divide has widened during the pandemic. Given the mental health crisis in young people (especially girls) stemming from social media use and ever present landmine of writing something inappropriate that will destroy your life later ... is that such a bad thing?

Razengan 6y ago
Preventing people’s access to something because of the potential downsides to it? You can apply it to any facility. That’s the same mentality that keeps girls locked up in some cultures, to keep them “safe”.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  To be fair, a lot of cultures prevent children from buying alcohol and firearms on their own.
  - Digit-Al 6y ago
    False equivalency. We prevent children buying alcohol and firearms because they might harm themselves and other people not because other people might use those things to harm them.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      the original comment seemed to be concerned with kids harming themselves, but at any rate we prevent kids gambling as well which is much closer to the dynamics of social media than alcohol or firearms.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Preventing people’s access to something because of the potential downsides to it? We're not talking about adults, we're talking about children. Yes, at some point they need to be exposed to the internet because the internet is a fact of life. I'm just not sold that any child (say, under the age of 14) who doesn't have access to the internet would somehow be crippled socially, culturally or academically. I have yet to see any study that suggests limiting access to the internet for children, or even no access internet is greatly detrimental. Contrast this with the FACT that there is a mental health crisis happening right now due social media use, and that there is no effective way to segrate internet from social media. So what is the argument here? What if there is no safe-level of social media use for children? By the way it is not uncommon to see children of tech-savvy parents, who may work in the industry, outright banning or tightly controlling internet access to their children.

YuccaGloriosa 6y ago

Is it me or is this article just trying to leverage TLB's status to justify the extortionate expense of high speed rural internet.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Loughla 6y ago
We run power and water to rural areas, even though it's incredibly expensive compared to urban areas.

eric4smith 6y ago

Digital divide is not even so much of a problem as social media overuse. Let’s say, and why not, that you’re a pretty girl living in a small village on a farm. You start to dabble on Instagram and at first post photos or horses, veggies growing, campfires - you know, normal farm stuff. A couple young farmers from the community has they eyes on you. They tout the size of their farms and how you can have beautiful children together. But one day, accidentally, you post a photo on Instagram of yourself that’s slightly revealing, you felt a bit daring that day. Now you got 15,000 likes. Normally you’d get maybe 2 likes for anything else. You get a little more daring. Now you’ve posted more like the “daring” photo and in the space of a couple of months, without even noticing, you’ve gained 120,000 followers. You fear looking at your DM. You have to turn off Instagram notifications. You start posting on tiktok. Even more followers because, video. In total you’re over 220,000 followers. Men contacting you every day. Now those farm boys with the promise of marriage look pretty lame. People start sending you money. Cash app. PayPal. Venmo. Secretly, you’re making more money than your parents. Another girl online mentioned lonely-fans. You’re considering it... Current social media has destroyed normal relationships. Destroyed remote communities. It’s 10,000x worse than any “digital divide”. There’s good or bad in everything - but this is one of the indisputably bad things that has happened to the world in the last 10 years.

bobbydroptables 6y ago
How is it undisputably bad? This woman now has access to higher quality men around the world instead of a random farmer without much to offer (no offense to the random farmers in the audience). She now has the option to leave a dead end rural lifestyle is she chooses. And if she's into the dead end rural life (insert whatever dumb american tropes we have that idealize wasteful rural modes of living), she won't find rich, high flying city guys very appealing and it's all a wash. Or maybe she wants to move to a different dead end rural community with a better match than the random farmer she happened to be born next to. Now she can do that on farmers only. You could say some good and some bad (and of course very bad for the random farmer whose main reproductive strategy was apparently counting on his mate not realizing he's not a catch and there are much better options), but you can't say it's only bad. Ideally, none of these people reproduce at all since we already have plenty of humans. Hopefully the shift to digital relationships can greatly reduce our headcount in the long run. This trend seems well underway already thankfully.

beaconstudios 6y ago

the biggest digital divide in my mind is the divide between those who can program and those who cannot. Those who can't program do not have access to the huge power curve that is the ability to automate or simplify white-collar work. There's certain to be a large gap out there of automatable problems in industries that programmers don't tend to care about (PlanGrid being a good example of this) that could do with being able to solve their own problems.