Thought provoking on a lot of levels. I believe that the technology we're creating is cutting both ways.
It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness.
The opportunities that we've created that allow any given idea to go viral, become a killer app and make billionaires has distracted us from finding deeper ideals that could be shared to show us how to lead a more meaningful life and create a civilization worthy of stepping out to the stars.
I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense to anyone else, but something has definitely been bothering me for awhile and I think articles like this one are starting to help me articulate it and at least let me know that I'm not alone.
You are echoing a notion that I see and hear regularly from a number of my more artistic, spiritually inclined friends. That technology is isolating us from one another, preventing people from connecting as we did in times past.
Honestly? I think it's not true. In days of yore, people read newspapers or books to isolate themselves. Or whittled. Or knit. Or just looked busy. If anything has changed, it's that it is now possible to connect deeply to a person many thousands of miles away. Most of the connections in life are superficial, yes. That's true today and has been for centuries.
My artistic and spiritual friends are, sad to say, mostly pining for a golden age that never existed.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've never been to a 3rd world country for an extended period of time. If I'm wrong I'd like to apologize for making this assumption to make the rest of my point, because you can easily step on the way back machine by moving someplace where only a few people have computers.
During my time in Bolivia and Haiti I experience massive culture shock at the way people interact with their community. At night you can walk around the central plaza in the Okinawa Numero Uno (mind you this is a TINY town) and someone will find you to chat with you. In bigger towns (in Bolivia) people are friendly, because they have to interact to get directions, ask for a good place to eat, or just chat. There are community events ALL the time.
Was it a golden age? No, I don't think so, but it was a time and culture where people KNEW their neighbors because if you want to stave off boredom you have to hang out with them to laugh, eat, drink, etc. I don't think technology has changed this per se, but instead that TV and the culture of entertainment that we have has changed this.
I know that comparing the USA 30-50 years ago and Bolivia is an oversimplification, but there definitely was a culture difference before everyone had a cellphone in their pocket. It may not have been a golden age, but for some people it was a period where the risks were easier to understand.
That said, I also think people were still able to find isolation who wanted it, the main difference is people who were seeking a way to fight boredom had much fewer ways to do that in their house by themselves 50 years ago.
The difference you are describing is societies where physical mobility is possible and the norm versus societies where it is not. Places where it's possible to know all the people around you and places where it isn't. Places where actual cities exist versus places where they don't.
There are parts of the US like those you describe. I've lived in some of them. People KNOW their neighbors. Very intensely. It's very rare to have a neighbor that you haven't known for at least a decade. They still have TV, a culture of entertainment, Facebook, and iPhones. There's a constant sense of community, and an apparently endless stream of events.
And you know what? I can't stand life in those places. I found them incredibly insular. Stifling. Conformity-enforcing. It's not something I found to be beautiful, uplifting, or pleasant. They are not a thing I wish to encourage or would call a desirable model.
Did you notice that the things I cited - newspapers, books, knitting, and whittling - are all at least several centuries old? That was not an accident.
The difference is that the forms of entertainment you list are things you learn to do. You must be taught. Tv, music, audiobooks and some other new forms of entertainment don't require thought. They are shoved at you. They may provoke thought but don't require it. Then you add other advances on top of that, the internet, the avialbility of cars, planes, cellphone, etc. It changes society.
To argue that these things haven't changed society and that the older generation hasn't lived through it is ridiculous. Is it better? That's an opinion, and the older generation may think so. My dad LOVES working on old cars, but hates working with electronics (i.e. new cars)... Does he miss the "golden age". Heck yeah, but does he also love watching TV at night, heck yeah.
>And you know what? I can't stand life in those places. I found them incredibly insular. Stifling. Conformity-enforcing. It's not something I found to be beautiful, uplifting, or pleasant. They are not a thing I wish to encourage or would call a desirable model.
Again totally an opinion, but society has changed even there with the advent of the car/tv/internet/cellphone. These are things that expand our world, but shrink where we feel comfortable (I.E. I feel more comfortable driving an hour to see my friend then hanging out with my neighbor). Some people have adapted to the "new world" very well and others would prefer to reminisce about the golden age.
I'd like to take the best of both worlds, which is why I'm working to get to know my neighbors better, but also to enjoy the community I've found here on that interwebs thingy.
I think the core difference is that you think ideal a society where people are continually coerced into unwanted social interaction is ideal. I think it dystopian. I much, much prefer a society where i get a choice.
I don't think unwated social interaction is ideal, I want that interaction and I want the people I'm interacting with to want it too....
I get your point though, if you feel like you don't want that type of face to face interaction then it would seem like hell (See the TV show Ascension for what I'm talking about).
It reminds me of a quote from vince vaughn. http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0396269/quotes?qt=qt0329774 see " I apologize to you if I don't seem real eager to jump into a forced awkward intimate situation that people like to call dating."
I know light humor is frowned upon in HN but when I thought of it for this situation it made me laugh a little I hope you get a giggle out of it :-)
I find myself reminded of a personal experience from the "early" days of the net.
Back then it was dialup that was the thing, and IRC was the main communications system. This resulted in local and regional channels popping up on various networks.
But then came IM, in particular with MS bundling MSN Messenger with Windows.
Over a year or so i watched the IRC channel dwindle as people moved to using IM.
And yet, despite that increase in face to face interaction--Bolivians love Facebook in a way that few communities in the US would understand. The world is really shrinking when for 1 Boliviano (paid to the owner of the packed to the gills internet cafe) people can chat in real time for an hour from the heart of the Amazonian jungle with New York, London, or Singapore.
People have always wanted to be distracted or sought solitary hobbies, but what I'm talking about is more how we interface with one another.
The way we used to interface with one another was face to face and when you looked someone in the eyes it was simply harder to lie or hide your true feelings. Language is a pretty crappy interface, which is why tone and speech pattern and body language are all a part of the communication methods we evolved.
However, as we move forward we drop more vocabulary and use acronyms, we don't construct texts instead of speaking and we share perfectly captured moments with captions instead of simply sharing authentic moments.
A stupid anecdote, I went to some concert and a bunch of us were tailgating and it was super hot and most people were just chilling having normal everyday conversation. But a few people felt the need to be taking pictures as if it was some kind of wild fun time. It wasn't, it was just fine, but the pictures for some reason needed to be setup and made to create a fake representation of what was actually happening.
We can all share what we want with each other instantly, but what we share seems to need to merge with an identity that is perceived to be under constant scrutiny. How can our children develop an authentic self when the primary method of interfacing with others is subject to that sort of social pressure?
I know I'm just wasting my time since people simply say "If you want to do X, just do it" or "I just do Y and it's not a big deal", but it still feels like we're creating a culture dominated by a constant masquerade and today I felt the need to rant about it.
Any time you have two people interacting in any way, you have a culture dominated by a constant masquerade. All that's changed now is that you're more aware of it than you were before. I suspect quite strongly that you'll find this to be true in pretty much all of human history. It comes with being a social animal with a theory of mind - we care about and wish to shape how others view us.
> Any time you have two people interacting in any way, you have a culture dominated by a constant masquerade.
Often, but not always. And maybe that's another way to look at this. People are longing for authenticity, both in themselves and their interactions, and all they're getting are Facebook posts. In the non-tech society, you got phoniness, certainly, but you probably got more genuine interactions than you do now.
You got more interactions, but they weren't more genuine. They were every bit as much about building and maintaining an image.
I suspect they were less genuine, on the whole, because you had less ability to opt out and limit yourself to only more genuine interactions. In the non-tech society, keeping up appearances was and is of paramount importance.
I don't know about that. It's true that I can maintain relationships with people all across the world, in more or less real time, without months-long delays for letters to travel. But...
It used to be that I'd go into the bank and talk to a teller. Now I use an ATM. In the grocery store, I used to have a checker. Now it's mostly self-check-out. I used to go to the ballgame with thousands of other fans. Now I watch it on the internet.
Once upon a time, I would go to the theater, and watch live humans on the stage. Then I'd go to the theater/cinema, and watch a movie. Now I download it from Netflix.
In short, life has gotten a lot more impersonal in a lot of ways. It's more efficient, but less human.
The parts about addiction ring true to me, too. Paul Graham has talked about this with distraction. But I suspect that it would be valid for you to classify me in with the "artistic and spiritual" people.
What's happened is that a lot of things that used to require human interaction are now human-interaction-optional. We have choices that didn't before. Many people seem hellbent on not considering the possibility that these mandatory interactions were not desirable for many people.
I don't want a conversation with the bank teller. I just want my cash so I can go do something that I actually do want to do. Maybe I want to be entertained and get sloppy drunk in my PJs instead of going to the theater. It turns out I'm not even slightly alone. A lot of us seem to prefer our "less human" lives.
That's the way I feel too. I understand why extroverts want to have people around to chat with, but for me all that interaction just exhausting. I don't go to the theater any more and do all my shopping online. I'm happier for it, too.
I get the sense that the extroverts are confused by the revelation that we're not all extroverts. They feel something has been "lost" now that we have the choice to avoid being nonconsensual extroverts. And that said choice is exercised on a regular basis.
Well, I feel like I've been liberated from coerced interpersonal interaction. Others paint this as being disconnected from my community.
Maybe they define community differently. I don't consider the random set of people within a half-mile of my apartment to be my community in any kind of deep and meaningful way.
It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness.
Distraction is what you allow.
I hardly have any notifications on my phone or my desktop or do any kind of 'social networking' as related to going on facebook and twitter.
Yes, the narrative that we are will-less slaves to our electronic devices is just as disrespectful as the conspiracy theorist shouting "Wake up Sheeple!"
It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness.
The opportunities that we've created that allow any given idea to go viral, become a killer app and make billionaires has distracted us from finding deeper ideals that could be shared to show us how to lead a more meaningful life and create a civilization worthy of stepping out to the stars.
I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense to anyone else, but something has definitely been bothering me for awhile and I think articles like this one are starting to help me articulate it and at least let me know that I'm not alone.
I very much appreciate that.