3 ms·
how old are you? smartphones are strictly better than no smartphones or no mobile phones. internet is better than no internet. etc.
by tpm 2mo ago
how old are you? smartphones are strictly better than no smartphones or no mobile phones. internet is better than no internet. etc.
- chongli 2mo agoYouTube is better than no YouTube. Wikipedia is better than no Wikipedia. But Google today is way worse than first decade Google. There's curves to all these things. It just feels like we're accelerating on the downslope of a lot of them right now.
- leephillips 2mo agoI agree with your point in general but > Wikipedia is better than no Wikipedia. In my opinion Wikipedia is worse than no Wikipedia. Wikipedia played a big part in suppressing what the Web might have been and started out becoming before it changed direction.
- chongli 2mo agoI have not heard this critique of Wikipedia before. Can you explain further?
- leephillips 2mo agoJaron Lanier is eloquent here in expressing a point of view that I find I share about Wikipedia and similar crowd-sourced phenomena: https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maoism-the-hazards-of-the-new-online-collectivism https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maois... I was watching in real time as Gopher, Wais, and the Web were all equally in play, and as the Web won. I had a personal website at the beginning, and I still have it. It seemed to be the next revolution in the dissemination of ideas after Gutenberg. Individuals could make their creations available to the entire world at almost no cost. Individual sites, individual voices, in all their eccentric glory, arose in profusion. Then it all became swamped by anonymous, unaccountable corporate voices. Wikipedia is a salient example of a collective, bland, plagiarising substitute for individual expertise that can not be held responsible for its words and that is accorded a false authority. it is part of the tragedy of the Web that could have been.
- what 2mo agoSmartphones are strictly worse than no smartphones.
- tpm 2mo agoI remember the time before smartphones. They make many tasks faster, easier, many tasks possible at all and replace specialised devices. You are wrong.