Does anyone else feel technology has brought more problems than good?
Everyone just ends up sitting alone in their rooms staring at screens of various kinds, it's been the same since the 50s. It's destroyed local communities, created a generation of shut-ins in japan and other countries, and wrecked the environment.
How do you think technology and society can be brought more in-line with nature and remember what makes us a part of it.
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Get the fuck out side
do you know where you are bud
we are the shut-ins you're referring to
More problems? No.
But it has brought us a lot of problems.
Unfortunately there is no such thing as a free meal and you always have downsides.
And most unfortunate we can't go back to where we came from, technologies are here to stay.
What you can do is striving for your own personal, find a way for yourself and teach others how it can be done.
No I don't. Nor do I think technology needs to be bought "more in line with nature". Also you have a skewed perspective on technology due to being inexperience and PROJECTING.
Technology didn't destroy local communities, globalism did. If you live in a homogeneous neighborhood, you'd feel a sense of community. If you live in a city or a shitty suburb where everyone is from a different country and everyone's a different religion and a different race, you spend time inside looking at a screen because nobody outside will understand or care about the stuff you do.
Globalism is the cause of societal collapse, technology is the novacine to societial collapse.
god you think you're a smart fella don't you.
It doesn't matter if he's quouting an alt right youtuber, it's still the unpleasent truth
Computers make solving pollution easier because they vastly increase the productivity of people, we'd probably have the same levels of pollution without them, because the work spent on making computers would be spent on other, equally polluting things.
Most people still socialize a lot anyway, you just think everyone's a shut-in like you.
It fixed a shitton of problems and brought some new ones. I'll take feeling disconnected from the human race over backbreaking work and early death any fucking time.
Globalism isn't a cause, it's an effect. Technology has fueled globalism and all other aspects of our increasingly large and complex civilization, as much as they have, in turn, educated more scientists and engineers, discovering and building new technologies.
Technology is a tool, it didn't destroy or create anything, we did. Saying certain tech is bad is like saying opiates are bad. Sure, they are misused, but i'm fucking glad we have them for pain relief in hospital.
Jesus Christ you need to go Outside(tm) if you truly believe that shit. I’ve lived in flyover and you don’t know your neighbors any better than you do in a metropolis. Had you said trailer court I would have believed it and those are the most racially and religious diverse bunch you’ll ever find in America on a sq ft basis in the entire country, because they’re poor as fuck.
What I find funny is the people who complain about “too much screen time” are the same ones watching tv hours on end or are the same ones who won’t take their eyes off the screen when actually approaching or talking with people. The internet and Sup Forums in particular taught me to be somewhat more social than I ever was by showing me how utter ignorant and stupid a lot of my thoughts were and it taught me how to put myself in someone else’s shoes before I start mindlessly assuming things. Carry on
Try living someplace outside of the US-- if your government will let you leave the country, that is.
I live in Europe now user
>Everyone just ends up sitting alone in their rooms staring at screens of various kinds, it's been the same since the 50s. It's destroyed local communities, created a generation of shut-ins in japan and other countries, and wrecked the environment.
Yes, and? We are a civilized and developed society, we have no obligation to live like animals or "in tune with nature" or some bullshit, you hippie faggot.
I can't wait for the day when we will be able to just plug into true VR and escape from the shitty real world forever.
Adding to your reply, the case has been made that the internet, and free porn in particular, have reduce the rate of crime world around by offering men a free release to their frustrations. Keeping people indoors is not such a bad thing.
>Everyone just ends up sitting alone in their rooms staring at screens of various kinds
Living the dream.
>It's destroyed local communities
That's a good thing.
>How do you think technology and society can be brought more in-line with nature and remember what makes us a part of it.
It can't. And not only it can't, the only way to do it would be to go back to hunting-gathering, and I don't think you'd like that.
>That's a good thing.
I think it has brought good in terms of mathematics and record keeping and comparing in the form of databases and spreadsheets, and other things (a word processor/typesetter is so much more powerful than a typewriter).
But I think we're at a point where it's passed diminishing returns. I don't think this can be brushed aside as Ludditery either, because no one says we should go back to people arranging spreadsheets mentally and recalculating for every change.
I think it's the modern concept of what technology is for (entertainment and consumption) that is to blame. But to go against it just makes you a social outcast, and most people don't even have the luxury of a choice.
Personal transport (cars) destroyed local communities more than anything else. Now we have a situation where towns empty during the day and everyone funnels into a center of employment.
More problems than good? It depends what you value, I suppose.
We live "better" and "easier" lives now that at pretty much any other time in the past. However, people aren't necessarily happier because of it, and arguably are even less so in some cases.
Humans evolved to live in small groups of only a few hundred individuals. This is how we lived for thousands of years, and arguably how we're "meant" to live together - the way that is most emotionally satisfying for us. We aren't insects that live in giant colonies, with little individuality. We need close emotional connections with the people in our lives to be happy (and if this doesn't apply to you, don't take it personally; I'm speaking generally).
You could actually still blame technology (or rather, our cleverness) for what led to the situation we're in: the development of agriculture, in particular, provided us the ability to harvest large quantities of food efficiently, which in turn supported larger populations. Communities exploded into cities of tens thousands of people, is far more than we've evolved to be able to create meaningful connections with. So you get alienation, and people in your own community become strangers to you and vice versa, dehumanized, and so you get more emotional disconnect, crime, misery and so on.
I could go on, but you get the point.
Ted Kaczynski was right.
...
>offering men a free release to their frustrations
No wonder people tolerate all the bullshit going on in our lives now.
>Does anyone else feel books have brought more problems than good?
>Everyone just ends up sitting alone in their rooms reading books of various kinds, it's been the same since general population learned to read. It's destroyed local communities, created a generation of shut-ins in japan and other countries, and wrecked the environment.
>How do you think books and society can be brought more in-line with nature and remember what makes us a part of it.
False equivalence. Books don't have the result that highlights. Is it part of the joke that people who post brainlet memes are stupid themselves?
Agriculture was mistake.
It doesn't matter if technology ruined the world.
The world sucked anyway!
of course tech is cancer and killing everything that makes us human
have you even read the industrial society and its future?
Honestly, being in a primitive hunter-gatherer society doesn't sound half bad. Think about it:
>go out hunting with your bros for a few hours
>enjoy fresh air, exercise, and comradery
>get back home, fuck off for the rest of the day while the women make the food
Beats getting paid pennies for breathing in air pollution while being stuck in traffic on the way to a 9 to 5 grind for some ungrateful asshole that treats you like shit, just so you can live in some tiny apartment while subsisting on top ramen and beans, laughing at dumb memes on 4chins or reddit and masturbating to cartoons
Just because it's different it doesnt make it worse
Industrialized agriculture was a mistake.
>Everyone just ends up sitting alone in their rooms staring at screens of various kinds
And how is this a bad thing?
Ted Kaczynski was right.
That's not what people are arguing. The dopamine released by getting a (You) can't be compared to the soup of positive chemicals released by the brain during a true social interaction.
Internet is here to keep poor people entertained.
Panem et circenses.
I get a soup of "annoyed" and "tired" during a true social interaction. I have to do it every day and I'd rather not.
no. i would probably sit alone in my home reading a book or go outside and ride my bike if i didnt have my computers.
Speaking to people whose bag you pack isn't the kind of social interaction I'm talking about. The issue is that in order to avoid the bad interactions people avoid nearly all of them.
>Speaking to people whose bag you pack
Why would I pack bags of my coworkers? They're about the only people I interact with and it's already unbearable.
These are fallback steps for me...
desktop->laptop->phone->TV youtube->TV torrents->TV cable->book->drive car->ride bike->go to the mall->work on car or some other project
What a shitty living.
Stop being an autistic hippie
Maybe because technology is simply more interesting than rocks and trees? And notice what normies are doing with their phones - communicating. Without technology this amount of communication would be impossible without significantly disrupting the day's schedule. I wouldn't even be able to reply to your shitty question because I'm sitting across the globe from you.
>this amount of communication would be impossible without significantly disrupting the day's schedule.
What makes you think that this communication is of equal value to speaking to someone in person?
I think Internet communication has better value because you can take your time to think of an answer. Hence, better quality of the conversation.
>Hence, better quality of the conversation.
I'm yet to see any evidence of that being true.
Besides, people aren't robots. The pleasure gained by being around friends isn't something that can be fit into a quality rating system.
>I'm yet to see any evidence of that being true
Eavesdrop on any ongoing conversation. Zero essence, just empty smalltalk.
No. Feel free to live outside in the cold in winter on next to no food (as much as each of us would have on low tech agriculture without even modern food preservation) if you disagree. That's how that great nature is like.
Our modern trains, buses, planes that will bring you to your family members and friends even in a neighbouring country with it being normal of that being a cozy heated home with lots of good quickly prepared food so you can play board or video games or watch movies or talk or whatever, that is technology.
If sone people can't be arsed, that is their choice. And if some societies fuck up (say, by not having cheap public transport and making people generally too poor to travel and too poor to house some guests), that is sad but nothing we can easily fix.
>we can't go back to where we came from, technologies are here to stay
Not if you're NASA!!
Plus you're limited to words. You can't just show a picture or a video.
Fuck off, I'm working and paying my taxes. I don't owe the "community" any more than that. If I want to spend my off time staring at a goddamn screen I'll damn well do it.
Woah, looks like we have a radical individualist!
>taught me how to put myself in someone else’s shoes before I start mindlessly assuming things.
This is what a lot of people lack
let it burn
Every conversation i snoop on while driving the bus is literally "hahahaha so funny dude" or some variation of "i'm tired as fuck". So yeah that's bullshit.
*riding
Nope just you. You're the only one who has ever felt anything. You're unique and special. Kill yourself
Does anyone else feel fire has brought more problems than good?
Everyone just ends up sitting around the fire staring at embers of various kinds. it's been the same since the 600,000 BCs, created a generation of shut-ins in africa and other counties, and wrecked the environment.
How do you think fire and society can be brought more in-line with nature and remember what makes us a part of it.
Now this is the kind of argument I can really get behind.
the reason for this situation is the result of the dissonance between telecommunication advances and transportation advances. once we establish faster modes of transportation, we will manage to overcome the social decay.
yes
the industrial revolution was a mistake
but I can't shit in a bush, I'm too self-conscious
>Everyone just ends up sitting alone in their rooms staring at screens of various kinds
maybe you do
>hang up bro, i'll teleport over
I have never once thought this. Have you ever gone camping?
I think everyone has, but it's still just temporary nature.
Fuck no!
Boomer here who had it both ways and if you knew what life was like pre-internet I doubt you would miss that shit either. The only people who miss the past can't cope with the now, and those shitbirds always existed. Their fault, not that of progress.
I don't miss:
Dial landlines.
Not useful if your car breaks down in Bumphuque, MS where there's no phone booth. Requires an immediate response. No call screening until very late in the game. No texting, no forwarding, shit data capacity.
Push content television.
No useful information, dumbed down like today but the only source of news besides expensive, late dead tree news.
Waiting for paper catalogs and flyers to learn what's on offer. Buying anything was hit or miss because no reviews, no forums, and only manufacturer info, magazines (they lied for ad monies) or word of mouth to go by.
Snail mail communication.
Slow as fuck, slow as fuck, if misrouted slower than fuck.
Want nature? You have more info now on /out/ at your fingertips than ever in history. Use that shit or KYS.
The old days weren't some magic time of innocent happiness unless, like now, you were lucky.
Before the internet all you had for self-education was a public library. Your intellectual interests could not be explored with other like-minded humans if you lived where there weren't any.
Nature is nice to look at, but if you need to interact it to survive you'll work your arse off and your situation remains precarious. Get hurt? You're fucked because you can't work. Get sick? Ditto.
Today is the best time to be alive until tomorrow. Stop snivelling. It's unmanly and disgusting. If your life sucks, change it.
Yup this is so true and the reason why I've seriously started limiting my time with computers/phones. The point is "everything in moderation". But somebody has to teach you how to control yourself around addicting substances. I'm convinced that iving a developing child a computer or smartphone with no rules whatsoever has to potential to absolutely wreck their development and life.
Depends on the day. Today? Yes.
The Tristan Harris TED talk goes into all of how these media companies compete for attention. Even Sup Forums does it with muh (You)s.
This is the mistake a lot of people make when they say things like "haha books and newspapers are just like the web" when they're significantly different in terms of how they are perceived by the tiny reptile brain.
Nature will have the last laugh as always.
>we can't go back to where we came from, technologies are here to stay
Wrong. Technological regressions have happened time and time again in history. They are the norm and not the exception. "B-but now is different", no it isn't. We're already regressing in standard of living.
The irony
Read this
I'll watch that, thanks.
I'm surprised Amusing Ourselves to Death isn't on there.
...
You're lumping tech together for no reason. Even lumping all home electronics is idiocy.
Micro and personal computers haven't broken anything, it's the free-for-all internet with ignorant and illiterate people spouting nonsense, wanting their opinion heard.
Intranet - in universities for example - was no problem either.
>title sounds extremely interesting
>search for the book
>first thing i find
>"It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN
oh boy sounds like i'll be on my way to become a superior smug liberal
>mobile computer small enough to fit in your pocket and costs less than a pc ten years ago
>4g is literally everywhere so being tied to wireless is unknown outside of deep inna woods
>you're still in your room alone
Not technology's fault you lost the will to socialize user.
Postman hated all slick media savy politicians. His ideal of political discourse was the Lincoln-Douglas debate that lasted 8 hours.
Which is the coward's way of saying dumb poor people shouldn't vote without actually saying it.
I'd even say multi-tasking gave rise to a scatterbrained and disjointed method of computer use, which is then driven in to overdrive by an always-connected, high-speed internet.
>implying you can seriously answer political questions in 2 minute snappy soundbites
Let's be honest for a moment. Democracy was a mistake. Representation doesn't happen in practice.
Postman's point was that people are dumbing themselves down by making everything a form of entertainment. He was against Sesame Street as well.
Help me out here.
The book seems to be a critic about media and politics becoming sources of entertainment. Yet, media outlets most characterized by selling politics as entertainment are recommending the book?
>If you live in a homogeneous neighborhood, you'd feel a sense of community.
I live in a racially and culturally homogeneous country, this is a lie spread by racist americans
No faggot. It's implying dumb poor people won't watch a debate longer than 2 minutes.
Obviously.
Which is nonsense. Dumb people didn't just become dumb. They've been the majority forever. The only recent innovation was getting as many of the as possible to LARP like their opinions on public policy matter.
Yes; ironic, no?
I confuse the fact that industrial societies are less close knit due to the requirement of the job being less personal
>It's implying dumb poor people won't watch a debate longer than 2 minutes.
No, the media does that. Postman just highlighted it.
>They've been the majority forever.
Check out some children's exams from 100 years ago. Those kids would be genius tier today.
Well, two reasons comes to mind
1: it is ironic on their part (like you said) and that's the end of it, the book is fine
2: the book is bait for people who think they're smart
TED KACZYNSKI WAS RIGHT!
MEME IT
Here's an interview with him.
youtube.com
The irony is that the system they created in the first place ensured what they're now shocked has come about.
Ted Kaczynski was right.
Technology affords more freedoms.
Dumb fucks do dumb shit when given more freedoms. Technology is a tool. It doesn't have the capacity to be bad or good. Only humans do. So, when given better tools or capacity, some chose to do bad and stupid shit. The problem always has been what looks you in the mirror. One aspect being that people don't want to admit to this and deflect that responsibility to inanimate objects. With the level of technology we have now, we should be far more socially and economically advanced .. far less work hours and far more fundamental progress..yet were still centered on archaic games of manipulation and exploitation. The problem isn't technology.
>Technology affords more freedoms.
Actually it restricts and sometimes completely abolishes the most important ones because you're reliant on industrial society for those supposed technological freedoms.
>Check out some children's exams from 100 years ago. Those kids would be genius tier today.
They would but it has little to do with the school-system. Average IQ's are cratering because of dysgenic genetic pressure for over a century. The school-system just adapts to the average quality of the pupils enrolling.
Not only that, but there's a level of buy-in in society that once it reaches a point becomes nearly impossible for most people to opt-out.
Ted Kaczynski was right and so are you.