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Can An Individual Still Resist The Spread of Technology? (chicagotribune.com)
schwit1 shares a column from the Chicago Tribune:
When cellphones first appeared, they gave people one more means of communication, which they could accept or reject. But before long, most of us began to feel naked and panicky anytime we left home without one. To do without a cellphone -- and soon, if not already, a smartphone -- means estranging oneself from normal society. We went from "you can have a portable communication device" to "you must have a portable communication device" practically overnight... Today most people are expected to be instantly reachable at all times. These devices have gone from servants to masters...
Few of us would be willing to give up modern shelter, food, clothing, medicine, entertainment or transportation. Most of us would say the trade-offs are more than worth it. But they happen whether they are worth it or not, and the individual has little power to resist. Technological innovation is a one-way street. Once you enter it, you are obligated to proceed, even if it leads someplace you would not have chosen to go.
The column argues "the iPhone X proves the Unabomber was right," citing this passage from the 1996 manifesto of the anti-technology terrorist. "Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it."
Few of us would be willing to give up modern shelter, food, clothing, medicine, entertainment or transportation. Most of us would say the trade-offs are more than worth it. But they happen whether they are worth it or not, and the individual has little power to resist. Technological innovation is a one-way street. Once you enter it, you are obligated to proceed, even if it leads someplace you would not have chosen to go.
The column argues "the iPhone X proves the Unabomber was right," citing this passage from the 1996 manifesto of the anti-technology terrorist. "Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it."
Not really true. I can't think of anything I can do with my phone that I can't do otherwise. While it's easy to pay bills with an app, I can still go into my bank or mail a cheque. I can still use a camera, even a film camera if I want to. I can still mail a letter rather than use email.
not in any meaningful way. Individuals can't 'resist' any broad societal change on their own.
That said, the Unibomber's manifesto is just plain silly. The problem isn't dependence. It's tech being used to make our lives worse instead of better, usually at the behest of the ruling class. It's everything from tracking cookies that know exactly how much extra you'll pay for that bag of cat food or that box of diapers to armed autonomous drones. That's the part that's worth resisting. Not some nebulous assault on an idealized way of life pulled from something Thoreau wrote but systemic oppression of the sort that leads to the next 1000 year dark ages. And no, you can't resist that as individuals. It requires a concerted effort on the part of the working class. Unions, Democracy and powerful institutions that are carefully and continuously monitored.
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It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
There's a fine line between something that's just really useful and something that you depend upon.
The smartphone has become such an essential part of everyday life, that whenever I leave the house and forget mine, I very much notice it. But - it rarely actually stops me from doing anything. It's just an unusual feeling because it became a habit. Now habits might be hard to break, but they are not yet dependencies.
I can imagine that teenagers who grow up without ever having lived without a smartphone depend more strongly on it. And some individuals certainly develop a dependency on the level of addiction. And yes, more and more of the world around us simply assumes that you have a smartphone. There is a lot of truth to it. But the real world is rarely as black and white as manifestos make it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Ditto, though I have a phone, not a smartphone and I watch University lectures on YouTube for entertainment. Social media is a waste of time as youngsters who might be interesting to interact with tend to go "private" to grown-ups so it becomes anti-social media. The rest of it is either baby pictures or people sharing fake news hate speech. So I don't bother with social media much any more. Smartphones are overated so long as you have net access through a laptop, tablet or desktop.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
The funny part is that I got a smartphone so I could take pictures of whiteboards. True story. I would just get a camera in another age, which would be a camera with a much better lens, incidentally.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
No, this isn't a millennial view. This shows how far Slashdot has fallen. I remember Slashdot at its best, around 2000, and this is awful in comparison. There are still a few reasons to visit this site, even though the site sucks now. And yes, the management and editors are to blame for it.
This seems like an anti-tech story. Although there have always been concerns here about privacy and censorship, there was still an appreciation fow new technology. There were a lot more articles of interest to nerds instead of mainstream news. Are nerds really interested in multiple articles within a few hours of each other about how sites like Google and Facebook allowed advertisers to target racists? Such things are commonplace on Slashdot now, and that's why many nerds have left. Here are things Slashdot did have in the past:
1) Lots of articles about open source and Linux, especially when new versions of widely used software were released. Slashdot was committed enough to open source that they released the source to this site and hosted it on Sourceforge. Sadly, that code hasn't been updated in almost a decade, though it has been forked. Slashdot also posted a lot more content that would be of interest to programmers and developers.
2) More general tech articles about the releases of new hardware and closed source software.
3) A few posts about scientific advances, many of which were in the science section rather than on the front page.
4) Your rights online did raise concerns about piracy, TSA, surveillance, censorship, the ability to film the police, and privacy. However, there were a lot of articles about things like DeCSS, software patents, and often how they affected open source software.
5) Lots of articles about hobbyist DIY projects. If someone completed a cool software or electronics project, they'd create a webpage showing how they did it, and would submit it here. These were very cool because readers could duplicate the projects or even improve upon them. I really liked seeing how creative people were and the ideas they came up with.
6) There were a lot more articles about topics of interest to nerds like Star Trek, Star Wars, comic books, and stuff like that. They didn't really involve tech, but they appealed to nerds and we're of interest to nerds like Rob Mala who ran this site.
7) Ask Slashdot questions were often very useful because this site had a lot of very intelligent and experienced people who could answer challenging tech questions.
8) Slashdot posted lots of articles about video games and new releases. There were also articles about retro gaming.
9) There was a lot of user-submitted content including book reviews, features (editorials written by users), and questions submitted by Slashdot readers for intervews with prominent people. There are occasionally interviews still, but these were much more frequent in the past.
10) Malda and some of the other editors hosted what was effectively a podcast, long before that term was coined. It was called Geeks in Space.
11) Jon Katz was basically Slashdot's paid troll. He wrote editorials and almost always got flamed for them. He lost his job due to cutting costs a bit and wasn't replaced.
Many of these things are long gone. Slashdot wasn't a mainstream tech news site or a place for paranoid lunatics. It was a news site for nerds, and many of the topics that appealed directly to nerds are long gone. Even the focus on open source appealed to nerds because having access to the source allowed them to tinker with the code and do some really interesting things. Slashdot appealed to nerds and hobbyists, and most of that content is long gone. If the editors want the nerds to come back, they should post more of that content or go out and look for it online. Solicit that type of content, along with features and book reviews. Cut out most of the articles designed to generate political discussion, because we don't need several articles within the span of a day or two that are effectively about the same thing.
Bring back news for nerds!