5 ms·

I'll leave the politics aside for a moment. What's really interesting to me is the human development around "online" and "offline". One thing i've noticed sin

by swalsh 13y ago

I'll leave the politics aside for a moment. What's really interesting to me is the human development around "online" and "offline". One thing i've noticed since my mom discovered Facebook, is how she seemingly always forgets who can see what. It would seem like she is not capable of understanding the multiple contexts that exist... and frankly I don't blame her. There's a lot. In facebook alone, there are posts everyone can see of course I can restrict that. I can post on someone elses wall, of course then mutual friends can see, unless or course permissions are configured otherwise. It can get really confusing when in the previous 50 years of your life, you really only had to deal with two contexts. Person at the other end of the phone, or other people in your proximity. I've pretty much grown up dealing with multiple virtual contexts, so it's natural to me (and other people in my generation) but its definitely not natural to my mother. I'd be really curious if there's actually something physiologically different between our brains?

jotm 13y ago
Not physiological, unless you count the different number of neurons and synaptic pathways. It's just that we learned how to do it, and they didn't. Kind of like learning how to use a sewing machine or two/more languages growing up.
xyzzy123 13y ago
> I'd be really curious if there's actually something physiologically different between our brains? I really, really doubt it. Part of learning to do anything abstract is that eventually, the abstraction becomes real to you. Money, musical notes, a "for loop", at some point, the abstraction becomes as real to you as a piece of wood you can knock on. All human brains do this, all the time, for everything. I bet you don't know what the little sticky-up-pipe thing on the top of your house does, but plumbers do. It's a thing and it has a name. It's hilarious to me to imagine that "online stuff" is special when the fact is that most people do not see the real world at all through the massive fog of abstractions we all live in. Most people don't know where their water comes from or where their shit goes to either. Do we call them "on plumbing" or "off plumbing" people? It's just practice, context, familiarity and importance.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  No plumber thinks they live in the pipes, but "online" people can feel like they live in a separate place called "online".
  - xyzzy123 13y ago
    That makes it a privileged delusion I suppose, as opposed to people who can read and temporarily relate to Julius Caesar. I suppose those people live in "Reading". P.S: I do think things are radically different now, I don't think people or brains are.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      Who are you to decide what is a delusion and what is not? Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.
      - xyzzy123 13y ago
        My original point was, and is, that the idea that your idea of reality inside the computer is exactly as real as you think it is. Which is as real as you would like it to be. Also, as unreal. When the water doesn't come out of the tap, the shit doesn't get flushed away, or for some other reason you're forced to deal with the mundane reality of life, your perspective will change slightly. Your reality will shift. Or if you buy a house, or have to do repairs. What I am saying is, is that this is absolutely no different than everyone else - the other people, who also do not live in reality. They don't understand how the plumbing works either, but their reality most likely involves intrigues, dramas and scripts with other people, played out perhaps on a slightly different stage. There is nothing in understanding facebook or moving a mouse around which requires new neural hardware. P.S: > "Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it" This is kind of ironic when you're talking about "online" as a place. If we're to use that metric, "online" is extremely unreal. (I think it's as real a place as any other, and not especially more unreal than other unrealities we live in).
anonymous 13y ago
Well, my mom manages pretty well with e-mail and such, but she's ahead of the curve on such things. My grandmother on the other hand is pretty fascinatingly bad with any electronics. She teaches English, so she doesn't have much trouble reading the stuff on the screen, it just seemingly doesn't make sense to her - any hierarchical menu or any sort of context input confuses her. Things we would describe as simple, such as programming a channel on a TV or adding a contact in her contact list on her phone are nigh-impossible tasks for her. Anything as complex as moving a mouse pointer with a mouse or typing on a keyboard is completely beyond her abilities. All of these are basically "spooky action at a distance". You move something here and something completely unrelated changes there by way of magic. It's no wonder people who've never even seen such things for 50 years or more don't have the mental model to understand them.
angersock 13y ago
"I've pretty much grown up dealing with multiple virtual contexts, so it's natural to me (and other people in my generation) but its definitely not natural to my mother. I'd be really curious if there's actually something physiologically different between our brains?" Given the amount of effort spent "saving face" and "keeping up appearances" by the older generations, as well as oftentimes truly sprawling protocols for dealing with different subgraphs of extended family ("Don't talk about this to your aunt, unless your cousin is around, etc."), I'm pretty sure that mankind has had virtualization of social networks for quite some time. I highly doubt that we're special snowflakes.

by swalsh 13y ago

jotm 13y ago

Not physiological, unless you count the different number of neurons and synaptic pathways. It's just that we learned how to do it, and they didn't. Kind of like learning how to use a sewing machine or two/more languages growing up.

xyzzy123 13y ago

> I'd be really curious if there's actually something physiologically different between our brains? I really, really doubt it. Part of learning to do anything abstract is that eventually, the abstraction becomes real to you. Money, musical notes, a "for loop", at some point, the abstraction becomes as real to you as a piece of wood you can knock on. All human brains do this, all the time, for everything. I bet you don't know what the little sticky-up-pipe thing on the top of your house does, but plumbers do. It's a thing and it has a name. It's hilarious to me to imagine that "online stuff" is special when the fact is that most people do not see the real world at all through the massive fog of abstractions we all live in. Most people don't know where their water comes from or where their shit goes to either. Do we call them "on plumbing" or "off plumbing" people? It's just practice, context, familiarity and importance.

nitrogen 13y ago
No plumber thinks they live in the pipes, but "online" people can feel like they live in a separate place called "online".
- xyzzy123 13y ago
  That makes it a privileged delusion I suppose, as opposed to people who can read and temporarily relate to Julius Caesar. I suppose those people live in "Reading". P.S: I do think things are radically different now, I don't think people or brains are.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    Who are you to decide what is a delusion and what is not? Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.
    - xyzzy123 13y ago
      My original point was, and is, that the idea that your idea of reality inside the computer is exactly as real as you think it is. Which is as real as you would like it to be. Also, as unreal. When the water doesn't come out of the tap, the shit doesn't get flushed away, or for some other reason you're forced to deal with the mundane reality of life, your perspective will change slightly. Your reality will shift. Or if you buy a house, or have to do repairs. What I am saying is, is that this is absolutely no different than everyone else - the other people, who also do not live in reality. They don't understand how the plumbing works either, but their reality most likely involves intrigues, dramas and scripts with other people, played out perhaps on a slightly different stage. There is nothing in understanding facebook or moving a mouse around which requires new neural hardware. P.S: > "Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it" This is kind of ironic when you're talking about "online" as a place. If we're to use that metric, "online" is extremely unreal. (I think it's as real a place as any other, and not especially more unreal than other unrealities we live in).

anonymous 13y ago

Well, my mom manages pretty well with e-mail and such, but she's ahead of the curve on such things. My grandmother on the other hand is pretty fascinatingly bad with any electronics. She teaches English, so she doesn't have much trouble reading the stuff on the screen, it just seemingly doesn't make sense to her - any hierarchical menu or any sort of context input confuses her. Things we would describe as simple, such as programming a channel on a TV or adding a contact in her contact list on her phone are nigh-impossible tasks for her. Anything as complex as moving a mouse pointer with a mouse or typing on a keyboard is completely beyond her abilities. All of these are basically "spooky action at a distance". You move something here and something completely unrelated changes there by way of magic. It's no wonder people who've never even seen such things for 50 years or more don't have the mental model to understand them.

angersock 13y ago

"I've pretty much grown up dealing with multiple virtual contexts, so it's natural to me (and other people in my generation) but its definitely not natural to my mother. I'd be really curious if there's actually something physiologically different between our brains?" Given the amount of effort spent "saving face" and "keeping up appearances" by the older generations, as well as oftentimes truly sprawling protocols for dealing with different subgraphs of extended family ("Don't talk about this to your aunt, unless your cousin is around, etc."), I'm pretty sure that mankind has had virtualization of social networks for quite some time. I highly doubt that we're special snowflakes.