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I've been following this thread and I have to agree with noduerme. Despite the truisms that each generation tends to think things are going to hell, this time

I've been following this thread and I have to agree with noduerme. Despite the truisms that each generation tends to think things are going to hell, this time they really are going to hell. A life unmediated by machines is qualitatively different from one that is. Books, TV, video games were self limiting compared to the modern internet—especially social media—delivered via smartphones. Why? 1. Because they change the way we acquire knowledge. Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_. We had paper maps and guidebooks (Lonely Planet, my ass it's today's planet that seems lonely), but when those didn't match the reality on the ground, we were forced to ask people. Now we can all go along in our own little bubbles with our phones and experience things without talking to people. 2. It is reducing our connection to our bodies and bringing us up into our heads even more. To live a full life means to be in contact with the physical world, and to act within it. 3. As has been said above, the incentives of the makers of smartphone apps are almost always at odds with living a meaningful life. The apps almost always will try to increase your engagement with your phone, and because time isn't infinite, this means decreasing your engagement with life. 4. Because of the portability, smartphones are omnipresent. Some people even check them while they sleep. And the sad thing is that, yes, it takes people who have lived almost their entire lives outside of the 'app' ecosystem to tell younger people this. The apps and the phone and the habit of using them all the time have changed you developmentally. You can't see the water your swimming in, but there are some of us who still can.

noduerme 5y ago
>> Because they change the way we acquire knowledge. Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_. This is such an excellent point, because it starts to bring into focus the really terrible problem of smartphones: There's nowhere to escape. The minds you encounter now, of people of any age, whose brain-meat is capable of looking you in the eye and not checking their phone for 5 minutes, are rare. It is lonelier than it was when Lonely Planet was the dog-eared guidebook. Even then, I prided myself on not checking guide books before I went. That attitude's been lost (and more importantly, the adventure and discovery has been lost) because it's virtually impossible to avoid seeing the weather and being sold ads in your pocket the moment you buy a ticket anywhere. That particular experience of traveling, meeting people, having unplanned experiences, getting lost in the world -- it really encapsulates all of the things we've lost to this hypnotic online lifestyle in one fell swoop. And it's so central to the human experience, it's fuckin terrifying to me what these new human-bots are going to be like without understanding or sympathy for it. >> You can't see the water your swimming in Neither can any of us. But I'm glad my folks banned me from watching too much TV, and told me it would rot my brain. I'm pretty disgusted with the Yuppie generation that raised children by handing them smartphones to stop them from crying, and never checked in to see if their kids were being raised to think or not. I still find those people, look in the eyes of another new human and learn things. It's just hard, and when you meet them it's like meeting someone in a wasteland. You're just happy to see each other. But hey, I was at a bar a few nights ago and chatting with a girl and her boyfriend who were very shy, but she told me about her art show (all promoted online) and I said I'd bring some friends. And as I walked away I heard her say, "see?! What did I tell you! Going out and meeting people in person!" And... yeah, I'm sad.
maccard 5y ago
> Books, TV, video games were self limiting compared to the modern internet—especially social media—delivered via smartphones. So make that argument against social media on smartphones, not against all screens, and modern media only being "feeding distraction to the masses" (a direct quote from noduerme). > Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_ Speaking slowly and loudly in english at someone in a small french village asking for the bakery isn't something that we should mourn losing. The meme of loud americans/english travelling to places and expecting everyone to speak english predates most people on this thread, and was the reality for most people. > To live a full life means to be in contact with the physical world, and to act within it. There is nothing about modern media formats - tv, video games, many parts of the internet, that stop you from doing so. As a child, I grew up watching TV programmes, playing games and reading books that inspired me to explore and take on new experiences. I'm never going to go wild camping in yosemite, and that's fine, but I was never going to do that in a pre-smartphone world either. > apps almost always will try to increase your engagement with your phone, and because time isn't infinite, this means decreasing your engagement with life. This is not a tautology. it only decreses engagement if you min max your life (which would be at odds with what you're saying). > You can't see the water your swimming in, but there are some of us who still can. To use your analogy, you can't see that the water you're swimming in is the same water your parents were swimming in when they were telling you the same thing about <whatever>.
- gerbilly 5y ago
  > Speaking slowly and loudly in english at someone in a small french village asking for the bakery isn't something that we should mourn losing. So don't shout then, and god forbid, maybe learn some French? English isn't my fist language, and yet here I am talking to you.

noduerme 5y ago

>> Because they change the way we acquire knowledge. Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_. This is such an excellent point, because it starts to bring into focus the really terrible problem of smartphones: There's nowhere to escape. The minds you encounter now, of people of any age, whose brain-meat is capable of looking you in the eye and not checking their phone for 5 minutes, are rare. It is lonelier than it was when Lonely Planet was the dog-eared guidebook. Even then, I prided myself on not checking guide books before I went. That attitude's been lost (and more importantly, the adventure and discovery has been lost) because it's virtually impossible to avoid seeing the weather and being sold ads in your pocket the moment you buy a ticket anywhere. That particular experience of traveling, meeting people, having unplanned experiences, getting lost in the world -- it really encapsulates all of the things we've lost to this hypnotic online lifestyle in one fell swoop. And it's so central to the human experience, it's fuckin terrifying to me what these new human-bots are going to be like without understanding or sympathy for it. >> You can't see the water your swimming in Neither can any of us. But I'm glad my folks banned me from watching too much TV, and told me it would rot my brain. I'm pretty disgusted with the Yuppie generation that raised children by handing them smartphones to stop them from crying, and never checked in to see if their kids were being raised to think or not. I still find those people, look in the eyes of another new human and learn things. It's just hard, and when you meet them it's like meeting someone in a wasteland. You're just happy to see each other. But hey, I was at a bar a few nights ago and chatting with a girl and her boyfriend who were very shy, but she told me about her art show (all promoted online) and I said I'd bring some friends. And as I walked away I heard her say, "see?! What did I tell you! Going out and meeting people in person!" And... yeah, I'm sad.

maccard 5y ago

> Books, TV, video games were self limiting compared to the modern internet—especially social media—delivered via smartphones. So make that argument against social media on smartphones, not against all screens, and modern media only being "feeding distraction to the masses" (a direct quote from noduerme). > Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_ Speaking slowly and loudly in english at someone in a small french village asking for the bakery isn't something that we should mourn losing. The meme of loud americans/english travelling to places and expecting everyone to speak english predates most people on this thread, and was the reality for most people. > To live a full life means to be in contact with the physical world, and to act within it. There is nothing about modern media formats - tv, video games, many parts of the internet, that stop you from doing so. As a child, I grew up watching TV programmes, playing games and reading books that inspired me to explore and take on new experiences. I'm never going to go wild camping in yosemite, and that's fine, but I was never going to do that in a pre-smartphone world either. > apps almost always will try to increase your engagement with your phone, and because time isn't infinite, this means decreasing your engagement with life. This is not a tautology. it only decreses engagement if you min max your life (which would be at odds with what you're saying). > You can't see the water your swimming in, but there are some of us who still can. To use your analogy, you can't see that the water you're swimming in is the same water your parents were swimming in when they were telling you the same thing about <whatever>.

gerbilly 5y ago
> Speaking slowly and loudly in english at someone in a small french village asking for the bakery isn't something that we should mourn losing. So don't shout then, and god forbid, maybe learn some French? English isn't my fist language, and yet here I am talking to you.