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I think technology addiction is a real thing and a real concern. I'm young enough to have had a Nokia brick cell phone that stayed in my car in high school and
by bmitc 5y ago
I think technology addiction is a real thing and a real concern. I'm young enough to have had a Nokia brick cell phone that stayed in my car in high school and was only used for parental conversations. I just did things, explored, played. Now, I am stuck on my computer, phone, or iPad all day. Yes, I tend to read a lot of non-fiction and interesting things there or I'm doing work, but it's an endless onslaught of surface-level material and not deep and exploratory thinking. And I don't even play phone games or watch TV. We even see a change in how people watch things. The days of something like an hour-long Letterman show is over. Everyone wants little clips and bits to gnaw on. If one goes back to old radio and TV interview programs, they had real intellectuals on there with real questions. Now we simply have drivel.
I have personally become worried about my own addiction, which I would wager is pretty light relatively speaking. It's been helping for me to get out and do yard work, it's amazing how simply touching dirt grounds yourself. I've also been trying to get a work setup conducive to just sitting down and actually getting through some books I've surrounded myself with and get back to playing music and also exploring electronics.
- disqard 5y agoYour comment deeply resonated with me. As someone who has been writing computer code for nearly 30 years now, I hold tangible experiences dear (esp. yard work), and have been taking immense pleasure in reading physical books, with sticky notes ready for annotating and engaging with the material.
- bmitc 5y agoYea, yard work is a nice escape. I am fortunate to have recently obtained something that can be called a yard after having moved on from living in the city. I am doing my best to treat it as a conservation effort. We've started composting, I'm researching bird houses for the surrounding native birds (nesting only, no feeders), and I am looking for other ways to properly manage the place. I recently started researching how to have a lawn that's sustainable and acts as a carbon sink, and what I learned is basically the opposite of what the typical suburban yard does, which is usually to plant grass and weed out all unwanted weeds and species. Apparently that's quite bad for the soil and doesn't capture carbon well. A lot of people in my area have even cut down trees, put up fences, and made mono lawns. I found this article helpful. https://news.globallandscapesforum.org/38003/how-to-turn-your-backyard-into-a-carbon-sink/ https://news.globallandscapesforum.org/38003/how-to-turn-you... I really like the quote "We need to stop treating our soil like dirt". I'm looking forward to the spring and getting to plant locally native wildflowers. We had a bee or two in the fall when we first got here, and I'd love to see more activity.