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Japan is living in the future that the 1990s dreamed of.
(startrek.website)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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I think someday we will look back and consider if taking everything digital was ever the right choice. Friend always uses the term, "high tech downgrade." The more I interact with the internet the more I learn how it pushes the limits of our society in not so great directions.
I think the opposite can be said too. t's pushed society forward in so many great places as well.
I'm not saying there should be no internet. I am only saying maybe some restraint would be advantageous for everyone.
Thing is, the Internet at its core is just a vastly interconnected network. That's it. All the effects of the Internet are direct consequences of that fundamental property, and time.
The technological architecture that supports the complexity of modern civilization? The direct consequence of interconnectivity × time. QAnon? The direct consequence of interconnectivity × time.
You can't restrain the bad without crippling the good.
Nothing about what you said invalides my point.
Not every human transaction has to be made over the internet. Other technology's are sufficient and do not cripple society.
That part. "People should..." is an impotent sentiment. How do you incentivize, or force, a regression to "sufficient" technology? How do you do so without affecting beneficial network technology?
By learning from the past. See, in your mind you've already established all technological advancement is beneficial.
I think you might be misinterpreting my point.
Is your point limiting technological advancement always results in hindering the opportunity for good?
If so, no, I haven't. Unless you define good as anything that someone could find value in.
Maybe what you're missing is an example.
Tim and Susie live right next to each other and have windows facing each other. Tim and Susie are 6. They talk everyday over a tin can and string. Susie had the idea from seeing it in a comic book and Tim went home and made the tin can string telephone. The best part of their day is meeting up at the window and yelling to each other as each talk into a tin can. One day Tim's absentee father stops by for a visit and sees Tim and Susie preform their ritual. Tim's dad runs to the store and gets them a pair of walky talkies.
"Much better" Tim's dad exclaims while throwing Tim's tin cans in the trash. Tim and Susie think the walky talkies are neat and they run around for a day hiding behind bushes and seeing if they can find each other. Without the tin cans though they don't have a reason to meet at the window everyday so they quickly forget why they ever had the ritual in the first place. Eventually ones batteries dies and it doesn't even matter because they have long forgot their fun game.
Tell me. How did the tin cans cripple the chance for good?
Who does Tim's father represent? What does him throwing the tin cans in the trash represent? How does this analogy represent the topic we're discussing?
If the tin cans are old but sufficient technology, then the proper analogy would see Tim and Susie discarding the tin cans themselves voluntarily because the walkie talkies do what they do but better. Maybe there are drawbacks too, but Tim and Susie made their choice. Maybe Jack and Jill down the street like the intimacy of tin cans better and decide not to get walkie talkies, that is also their choice.
Maybe the window ritual is socially beneficial, but who enforces that, and how? Does Jack's mom get walkie talkies banned? Now what about all the emergency responders who used walkie talkies to save lives? Just banned for children? Who decides who qualifies as a child, and what about the children in the country who's houses are too far apart for tin cans?
I'm not saying there are no benefits to simpler options, and obviously every person has the freedom to use the simplest technologies they wish, but we're having a conversation about society not individual choice . I'm saying that there's no practical way to incentivize or force them at a societal scale. Unless you can think of one which isn't just Big Brother censoring the Internet, in which case I'm all ears.
Just answer the question. Did Tim's tin can stop the world from spinning? Did it have purpose? Was its replacement adequate?
Tim's dad represents Tim's dad. Not everything is an analogy. Of course we can extrapolate it but I'm trying in the most simplest terms possible to make you see my point.
If it's not an analogy then... yes, the world continues spinning if kids talk with tin cans? I don't see what any of this has to do with the topic of ~~the societal effects of widespread use of algorithm-driven social media platforms.~~ restraint with regards to the Internet?
Edit: got this conversation confused with a similar one. My bad
.... right, because that is what I was talking about in the first place. Societital effects of widespread use of algorithm-driven social media platforms. Pretty impossible w/ you.
That's on me, I'm also having an extremely similar conversation with someone else specifically about that
What you did say was:
So what I meant to say In my last comment was:
To spell it out again, not everything has to be done on the internet. Many people go on thinking 'out with the old in with the new' without ever considering scope and practicality. If you suddenly became manager of an office building with a complete pneumatic tube system your first instinct might be to gut the pneumatic tubes and do everything over email. That's an OK thought but should that really be your first instinct? Most people wouldn't even understand how pneumatic tubes work in the first place. Wouldn't it be more prudent to to understand what the tubes are there for. Why they've lasted 60+ years. If the building is already wired with ethernet and has internet connection what should it matter if you use both keeping the tubes in place to continue their purpose?
Okay, sure? That was always allowed. Again, "People should behave differently than they do" without any proposed method of bringing about whatever "differently" is, is just impotent platitude. That's why I keep reiterating "incentivize or force". Without one of those two pressures, people will continue to make individual decisions about their behavior, including which things they choose to do on the Internet, like they have been doing the whole time. Some will choose to do things on the Internet which can be done sufficiently other ways, others will choose to use simpler technologies.
When you start talking about how restraint would be advantageous, without any concept of how to incentivize or force said restraint, you're just becoming old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg.
When you start talking about how restraint would be advantageous, without any concept of how to incentivize or force said restraint, you’re just becoming old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg.I would challenge that. Say tomorrow I invented the eat-o-matic 5000 a top of the line eating utensil. Built in wifi, self cleaning, tracks how much food your eat, easy to manufacture, biodegradable, comes with a native streaming service that allows you to stream your eating experience to friends and family, affordable, etc.
Do you think in everyone would throw away their forks and knifes immediately and start using the eat-o-matic 5000? How about in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years?
Maybe the eat-o-matic is that good. I tend to believe forks and knives wouldn't go anywhere, though. I also know forks and knives are already not the only technology that exists and the fact that one utensil isn't ubiquitous proves that incentives and force are not the only factors at play.
I feel like a broken record:
Yes, obviously, people are allowed to make their own choices. Not using the flashiest new toys and services is allowed. Acknowledging that fact is not useful. You telling people what they should and shouldn't do is not going to have a societal effect.
If you would like to propose some regulatory or incentive policy to nudge people toward simpler technologies, then that is a useful conversation. But just stating your opinion? Old man yells at cloud.
So, all this just to say I shouldn't have an opinion?
I'm not saying that your opinion shouldn't exist, but some restraint would be advantageous.
Unless you think that statement is overly reductive, simplifying a nuanced subject to a flippant, self-indulgent remark that accomplishes nothing but ego-stroking
Some opinions provide valuable hypotheses which can promote thoughtful discussion regardless of their validity, like "A value-added tax would benefit the working class". Some opinions are hollow and useless, and serve only to make the commenter feel smugly clever for stating the obvious, like "Israelis and Palestinians should just get along".
Endless promotion of the latter is probably one of the most unnecessary uses of the Internet, muttering to oneself alone at home is a sufficient technology for that purpose.
Sounds like an opinion to me. Of course your opinion is more valid because you said it. Since you would never be a hypocrit incapable of self reflection. Certainly, at the very least, would be able to detect sarcasm. If by chance you came across it.
Let me know if you need me to explain it because I know how hard it is for you to comprehend simple ideas.
The irony.
Two can play
Flinch much?
So then you agree?
Everything evolves as a wave of extremes and eventually finds some sort of equilibrium, trying to contain that is a fool's errand.
Sounds like your own personal philosophy
Or a new normal... paved roads and cars in the US was once pretty extreme, until it became normal. Did you be it's grownup and tell it to go to bed on time, did you make a futile effort to stunt its growth or did you roll over. Story of the frog in boiling water.
Ever notice how some roads aren't paved?
I agree.
Nah
Ok... good talk.
Why are you responding to me on the internet?
.... why don't you have reading comprehension?
Maybe it's the Internet. You should show some "restraint".
Wtf are you even on about now? Go head explain.
because Reductio ad absurdum is easier than confronting hard truths they don't want to accept and possibly risk firing off a dreadful thing called a "thought" in that inert mass of jello they call a brain.
You can say it directly next time.
Digitizing some things, like medical records and rare texts, have been extremely useful.
Digitization of records in general is extremely useful.
I think the problem was that technological advances were faster than social ones. We ended with new ways to control people, and new forms of inequality.
Many of our problems with technology are rooted in a company abusing from their power. Even the troubled ways we communcate online today are a product of how bigh tech manipulated social networks.
The Internet is great. It connects people. I learned so many things even I lived in a small town in a third-world country.
But ads, scam, and 15-second videos are bad. The current Internet is nasty and not as beautiful as it was.
Two sides of a coin, I suppose.