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>Strongly disagree, when has society ever decided less access to information is ideal? The trick social media companies use is convincing people that all they'

>Strongly disagree, when has society ever decided less access to information is ideal? The trick social media companies use is convincing people that all they're doing is giving people access to "information". They are not; they're just creating addiction machines. It should be self evident that wikipedia or a minimalist blog with a comment box is in an entirely different solar system from facebook's algorithm that keeps track of how long you scroll and then shows you something you're likely to interact with right before you're supposed to close the app, manipulating your emotions to keep you "engaged" longer. >Our descendants will create better platforms that can allow users to better filter for their emotional needs and they'll likely have better tools to understand their own emotions. We already have them. My kids won't be able to access the internet until they figure out how to navigate the command line. In the beginning ...

javajosh 5y ago
First, nice Neal Stephenson reference, second, you're right to challenge the notion that banning social media is equivalent to banning information. It's about time-scale. I figure my kids can and should read anything they want in book form. But they cannot and should not see anything they want from the internet. The time-scale of the internet is too short, the quality of information (particularly commentary) is very poor, the opportunity to "engage" is too distracting. I'm not convinced anyone is really able to handle the onslaught of the internet - I am certain that children are not.
- remarkEon 5y ago
  Beautifully put. Time-scale is what we're kind of dancing around when we talk about information consumption. When I was in high school, it was easy to sit, alone, with my calculus text book and devour everything free of distractions. I can't imagine what it's like to try to learn something like that in today's environment, where your time is a zero-sum game of attention manipulation. Now, I'm not saying we should all become luddites or something, and make our kids start from scratch with technology ... but ... there is at least some wisdom in that perspective. I do wonder if my (and by the looks of it some others' here) recent hostility to technology is because I'm a millennial, so my experiences with it straddle the analog-to-digital transformation and I can actually remember how things used to be.

javajosh 5y ago

First, nice Neal Stephenson reference, second, you're right to challenge the notion that banning social media is equivalent to banning information. It's about time-scale. I figure my kids can and should read anything they want in book form. But they cannot and should not see anything they want from the internet. The time-scale of the internet is too short, the quality of information (particularly commentary) is very poor, the opportunity to "engage" is too distracting. I'm not convinced anyone is really able to handle the onslaught of the internet - I am certain that children are not.

remarkEon 5y ago
Beautifully put. Time-scale is what we're kind of dancing around when we talk about information consumption. When I was in high school, it was easy to sit, alone, with my calculus text book and devour everything free of distractions. I can't imagine what it's like to try to learn something like that in today's environment, where your time is a zero-sum game of attention manipulation. Now, I'm not saying we should all become luddites or something, and make our kids start from scratch with technology ... but ... there is at least some wisdom in that perspective. I do wonder if my (and by the looks of it some others' here) recent hostility to technology is because I'm a millennial, so my experiences with it straddle the analog-to-digital transformation and I can actually remember how things used to be.