7 ms·

There’s an interesting… paradox? Observation? That up until 20-30 years ago, humans were not computerized beings. I remember a thought leader at a company I w

There’s an interesting… paradox? Observation? That up until 20-30 years ago, humans were not computerized beings. I remember a thought leader at a company I worked at said that the future was wearable computing, a computer that disappears from your knowing and just integrates with your life. And that sounds great and human and has a very thought leadery sense of being forward thinking. But I think it’s wrong? Ever since the invention of the television, we’ve been absolutely addicted to screens. Screens and remotes, and I think there’s something sort of anti-humanly human about it. Maybe we don’t want to be human? But people I think would generally much rather tap their thumb on the remote than talk to their tv, and a visual interface you hold in the palm of your hand is not going away any time soon.

LoganDark 2y ago
Computers are tools, not people. They should be made easier to use as tools, not tried to be made people. I actually hate people, tools are much better.
neom 2y ago
I went through Waldorf education and although Rudolf Steiner is quite eccentric, one thing I think he was spot on about was regarding WHEN you introduce technology. He believed that introducing technology or mechanized thinking too early in childhood would hinder imaginative, emotional, and spiritual development. He emphasized that children should engage primarily with natural materials, imaginative play, storytelling, artistic activities, and movement, as opposed to being exposed prematurely to mechanical devices or highly structured thinking, I seem to recall he recommended this till the age of 6. My parents did this with me, no screens till 6 (wasn't so hard as I grew up in the early 90s, but still, no TV). I notice too how much people love screens, that non-judgmental glow of mental stimulation, it's wonderful, however I do think it's easier to "switch off" when you spent the first period of your life fully tuned in to the natural world. I hope folks are able to do this for their kids, it seems it would be quite difficult with all the noise in the world. Given it was hard for mine during the era of CRT and 4 channels, I have empathy for parents of today.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  I will counter this by saying that my time spent with screens before 6 was unimaginably critical for me. If I hadn't had it, I would have been trapped by the racist, religously zealous, backwoods mentality that gripped the rest of my family and the majority of the people I grew up with. I discovered video games at age 3 and it changed EVERYTHING. It completely opened my mind to abstract thought and, among other things, influenced me to teach myself to read at age 3. I was reading at a collegiate level by age five and discovered another passion, books. Again, propelled me out of an extremely anti-intellectual upbringing. I simply could not imagine where I would be without video games, visual arts or books. Screens are not the problem. Absent parenting is the problem. Not teaching children the power of these screens is the problem.
  - f1shy 2y ago
    I second this motion. Technology is just a tool. It can be wisely used or not. Just forbidding it, is not wise in my opinion. You have to be careful to use it properly, or course. Also let me drop the thought here, that Rudolf Steiner, like Montesori and the like, shoot "this is good" "this is bad" based on "feeling" or intuition, or such. There were no extensive scientific studies behind it.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      The funny thing is that I remember the exact moment I fell in love with computers at 4. My grandmother cleaned houses and was often very late to pick me up from Headstart. So I would spend hours waiting, unsupervised, in a room with computer that had a giant note attached to the screen saying DO NOT TOUCH. >:) By 5, all I wanted was a computer. To me they represented and unending well of knowledge.
- setr 2y ago
  I’ve been theory crafting around video games for children on the opposing premise. I think fundamentally the divide is on the quality of content — most games have some value to extract, but many are designed to be played inefficiently, and require far more time investment than value extracted. Eg Minecraft, Roblox, CoD, Fortnite, Dota/LoL, the various mobile games clearly have some kind of value (mechanical skill, hand-eye coordination, creative modes, 3D space navigation / translation / rotation, numeric optimization, social interaction, etc), but they’re also designed as massive timesinks mostly through creative mode or multiplayer. Games like paper Mario, pikmin, star control 2, katamari damacy, lego titles, however are all children-playable but far more time efficient and importantly time-bounded for play. Even within timesink games there are higher quality options — you definitely get more, and faster, out of satisfactory / factorio than modded Minecraft. If you can push kids towards the higher quality, lower timesink games, I think it’s worth. Fail to do so and it’s definitely not. The same applies to TV, movies, books, etc. Any medium of entertainment have horrendous timesinks to avoid, and if you can do so, avoiding the medium altogether is definitely a missed opportunity. Screens are only notable in that the degenerate cases are far more degenerate than anything that came before it
bsder 2y ago
> Screens and remotes, and I think there’s something sort of anti-humanly human about it. Actually, it's the reverse. The orienting response is wired in quite deeply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response When I was teaching, I used to force students using laptops to sit near the back of the room for exactly this reason. It's almost impossible for humans to ignore a flickering screen.
- strogonoff 2y ago
  Sensitivity to stimuli behind orienting impulse varies by individual and I wish I was less sensitive on daily basis. These days screen brightness goes pretty high and it is unbelievable how many people seem to never use their screen (phone or laptop) on anything less than 100% brightness in any situation and are seemingly not bothered by flickering bright light or noise sources. I am nostalgic about old laptops’ dim LCD screens that I saw a few times as a kid, they did not flicker much and had a narrow angle of view. I suspect they would even be fine in a darkened classroom.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
    The last few times I've bought a new monitor, I've gone through the process of adjusting brightness based on comparing a document on screen to a paper sheet. This invariably results into going from defaults of 50-70% to very low figures like 5-15%, and it's not that I work in dark places, my offices have reasonable light from outside. I would be extremely uncomfortable using default settings, for me they are absurdly bright.
King-Aaron 2y ago
A flickering screen is modern man's flickering campfire.
lrem 2y ago
Playing computer games since an early age made me who I am. It required learning English a decade earlier than my peers. It pulled me into programming around start of primary school. I wouldn’t be a staff engineer in a western country without these two.

LoganDark 2y ago

Computers are tools, not people. They should be made easier to use as tools, not tried to be made people. I actually hate people, tools are much better.

neom 2y ago

I went through Waldorf education and although Rudolf Steiner is quite eccentric, one thing I think he was spot on about was regarding WHEN you introduce technology. He believed that introducing technology or mechanized thinking too early in childhood would hinder imaginative, emotional, and spiritual development. He emphasized that children should engage primarily with natural materials, imaginative play, storytelling, artistic activities, and movement, as opposed to being exposed prematurely to mechanical devices or highly structured thinking, I seem to recall he recommended this till the age of 6. My parents did this with me, no screens till 6 (wasn't so hard as I grew up in the early 90s, but still, no TV). I notice too how much people love screens, that non-judgmental glow of mental stimulation, it's wonderful, however I do think it's easier to "switch off" when you spent the first period of your life fully tuned in to the natural world. I hope folks are able to do this for their kids, it seems it would be quite difficult with all the noise in the world. Given it was hard for mine during the era of CRT and 4 channels, I have empathy for parents of today.

soulofmischief 2y ago
I will counter this by saying that my time spent with screens before 6 was unimaginably critical for me. If I hadn't had it, I would have been trapped by the racist, religously zealous, backwoods mentality that gripped the rest of my family and the majority of the people I grew up with. I discovered video games at age 3 and it changed EVERYTHING. It completely opened my mind to abstract thought and, among other things, influenced me to teach myself to read at age 3. I was reading at a collegiate level by age five and discovered another passion, books. Again, propelled me out of an extremely anti-intellectual upbringing. I simply could not imagine where I would be without video games, visual arts or books. Screens are not the problem. Absent parenting is the problem. Not teaching children the power of these screens is the problem.
- f1shy 2y ago
  I second this motion. Technology is just a tool. It can be wisely used or not. Just forbidding it, is not wise in my opinion. You have to be careful to use it properly, or course. Also let me drop the thought here, that Rudolf Steiner, like Montesori and the like, shoot "this is good" "this is bad" based on "feeling" or intuition, or such. There were no extensive scientific studies behind it.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    The funny thing is that I remember the exact moment I fell in love with computers at 4. My grandmother cleaned houses and was often very late to pick me up from Headstart. So I would spend hours waiting, unsupervised, in a room with computer that had a giant note attached to the screen saying DO NOT TOUCH. >:) By 5, all I wanted was a computer. To me they represented and unending well of knowledge.
setr 2y ago
I’ve been theory crafting around video games for children on the opposing premise. I think fundamentally the divide is on the quality of content — most games have some value to extract, but many are designed to be played inefficiently, and require far more time investment than value extracted. Eg Minecraft, Roblox, CoD, Fortnite, Dota/LoL, the various mobile games clearly have some kind of value (mechanical skill, hand-eye coordination, creative modes, 3D space navigation / translation / rotation, numeric optimization, social interaction, etc), but they’re also designed as massive timesinks mostly through creative mode or multiplayer. Games like paper Mario, pikmin, star control 2, katamari damacy, lego titles, however are all children-playable but far more time efficient and importantly time-bounded for play. Even within timesink games there are higher quality options — you definitely get more, and faster, out of satisfactory / factorio than modded Minecraft. If you can push kids towards the higher quality, lower timesink games, I think it’s worth. Fail to do so and it’s definitely not. The same applies to TV, movies, books, etc. Any medium of entertainment have horrendous timesinks to avoid, and if you can do so, avoiding the medium altogether is definitely a missed opportunity. Screens are only notable in that the degenerate cases are far more degenerate than anything that came before it

bsder 2y ago

> Screens and remotes, and I think there’s something sort of anti-humanly human about it. Actually, it's the reverse. The orienting response is wired in quite deeply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response When I was teaching, I used to force students using laptops to sit near the back of the room for exactly this reason. It's almost impossible for humans to ignore a flickering screen.

strogonoff 2y ago
Sensitivity to stimuli behind orienting impulse varies by individual and I wish I was less sensitive on daily basis. These days screen brightness goes pretty high and it is unbelievable how many people seem to never use their screen (phone or laptop) on anything less than 100% brightness in any situation and are seemingly not bothered by flickering bright light or noise sources. I am nostalgic about old laptops’ dim LCD screens that I saw a few times as a kid, they did not flicker much and had a narrow angle of view. I suspect they would even be fine in a darkened classroom.
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
  The last few times I've bought a new monitor, I've gone through the process of adjusting brightness based on comparing a document on screen to a paper sheet. This invariably results into going from defaults of 50-70% to very low figures like 5-15%, and it's not that I work in dark places, my offices have reasonable light from outside. I would be extremely uncomfortable using default settings, for me they are absurdly bright.

King-Aaron 2y ago

A flickering screen is modern man's flickering campfire.

lrem 2y ago

Playing computer games since an early age made me who I am. It required learning English a decade earlier than my peers. It pulled me into programming around start of primary school. I wouldn’t be a staff engineer in a western country without these two.