While I admire (& to some degree share) your righteous indignation on the subject, I also need to point out that we’re still online, still poking letters on these dumb fucking screens, still using auto-correct, and still giving over more and more of our days and lives to algorithmic efficiencies that narrow the scope of our human horizon…
While I admire (& to some degree share) your righteous indignation on the subject, I also need to point out that we’re still online, still poking letters on these dumb fucking screens, still using auto-correct, and still giving over more and more of our days and lives to algorithmic efficiencies that narrow the scope of our human horizons. I love what you’re saying here, but the medium you (and everyone! myself included!) have been forced to use just fucking depresses the shit out of me.
It’s not hypocrisy, exactly, because we don’t really have a choice in how we can publicize our warnings about the threat of technological despotism *other than* using the despotic means of tech.
It’s fucking exhausting. It makes me want to give up and get myself a stupid fucking Friend™ and curl up with it as the world goes on its worldly way.
I get what you're saying, but I think it's less the medium than the message. Cros is using the internet to share his thoughts with us, actual human beings, and we are using it to communicate back to him and with each other. Using technology to further our connection with other human beings is good! That's how we broaden our horizons, get other points of view, and the reach that the internet provides is unmatched throughout human history. Yes, there's the risk of "bubbles" forming, but that also happens in real life: in middle/high school, when I was first starting to form political opinions, I was in a small Texas town and naturally leaned conservative. It was only after going to college, meeting new people, getting better internet access (we still had dial-up at home in the late '00s, and most of my time at school was either research for classwork or dallascowboys.com) that led me to find new sites, new ideas, and form new opinions that pushed me left: if I had been eligible to vote in 08 I would've voted for McCain; four years later Obama was an easy choice. As long as we don't use it to completely replace face to face interaction, but as a supplemental tool, it's just a fancy, more expedient way to write each other letters or read a global newspaper/magazine.
The problem with this current wave of new tech is that it's not about connecting us with each other, it's about surrendering our human connection to one with machines: forgoing talking to a live person for customer support to speak to a computer generated voice, ditching video calls where you can see an actual face for the "metaverse", pushing "art" created by computers that just consume and regurgitate actual art, and now pushing that even further to have a computer aggregate key words and phrases to try to replace an actual conversation with a real person. Some of those things might be fine as novelties, but they're being sold as the future, and that's what we should reject.
Yeah, I have no problem with the progression of technology or with human beings finding new mediums/methods to communicate with each other. What I do not want is for human beings to supplant these mediums that allow us to connect with other real human beings with algorithmically produced dreck and cheap scams
While I admire (& to some degree share) your righteous indignation on the subject, I also need to point out that we’re still online, still poking letters on these dumb fucking screens, still using auto-correct, and still giving over more and more of our days and lives to algorithmic efficiencies that narrow the scope of our human horizons. I love what you’re saying here, but the medium you (and everyone! myself included!) have been forced to use just fucking depresses the shit out of me.
It’s not hypocrisy, exactly, because we don’t really have a choice in how we can publicize our warnings about the threat of technological despotism *other than* using the despotic means of tech.
It’s fucking exhausting. It makes me want to give up and get myself a stupid fucking Friend™ and curl up with it as the world goes on its worldly way.
I get what you're saying, but I think it's less the medium than the message. Cros is using the internet to share his thoughts with us, actual human beings, and we are using it to communicate back to him and with each other. Using technology to further our connection with other human beings is good! That's how we broaden our horizons, get other points of view, and the reach that the internet provides is unmatched throughout human history. Yes, there's the risk of "bubbles" forming, but that also happens in real life: in middle/high school, when I was first starting to form political opinions, I was in a small Texas town and naturally leaned conservative. It was only after going to college, meeting new people, getting better internet access (we still had dial-up at home in the late '00s, and most of my time at school was either research for classwork or dallascowboys.com) that led me to find new sites, new ideas, and form new opinions that pushed me left: if I had been eligible to vote in 08 I would've voted for McCain; four years later Obama was an easy choice. As long as we don't use it to completely replace face to face interaction, but as a supplemental tool, it's just a fancy, more expedient way to write each other letters or read a global newspaper/magazine.
The problem with this current wave of new tech is that it's not about connecting us with each other, it's about surrendering our human connection to one with machines: forgoing talking to a live person for customer support to speak to a computer generated voice, ditching video calls where you can see an actual face for the "metaverse", pushing "art" created by computers that just consume and regurgitate actual art, and now pushing that even further to have a computer aggregate key words and phrases to try to replace an actual conversation with a real person. Some of those things might be fine as novelties, but they're being sold as the future, and that's what we should reject.
Yeah, I have no problem with the progression of technology or with human beings finding new mediums/methods to communicate with each other. What I do not want is for human beings to supplant these mediums that allow us to connect with other real human beings with algorithmically produced dreck and cheap scams
The medium IS the message, and that is “humanity” just isn’t good enough. . .