Destroying, no. Changing, absolutely. Whether the change is good or bad depends on who you ask.
Me, I'm glad I'm on the downhill side of life.
Russ
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Me, I'm glad I'm on the downhill side of life.
Russ
Given the technology that's available today, it's a fascinating, miraculous time to be alive. What human beings are able to design, craft and deliver with today's tech is simply incredible.
However, social media is doing more harm than it is helping... and that's unfortunate. All the bragging, shaming, excluding, bashing and smearing is doing a real number on a lotta folks.
However, social media is doing more harm than it is helping... and that's unfortunate. All the bragging, shaming, excluding, bashing and smearing is doing a real number on a lotta folks.
Comedian Louis CK had a bit about how people not only take modern technology for granted, but for some reason, feel entitled to more and better.
Airline passengers complain when their flight is delayed 20 minutes. When they arrive at their destination, they're angry because it took 7 hours to fly from NY to LA., terminal to terminal.
Are you kidding? 200 years ago it took months just to travel west across the plains in a horse pulled wagon and people died along the way.
A modern jet is like your living room in the sky. You sit in a chair for a few hours, watch a movie, have dinner, read a magazine, and then you're there.
He said he was recently on a plane when the flight attendant announced they were introducing high speed internet as a new service during the flight. An hour later the service failed. The guy sitting in the seat next to him disgustedly said "This is bull ****!"
Really? You're angry because something that you didn't know existed 60 minutes ago is temporarily no longer available to you?
Airline passengers complain when their flight is delayed 20 minutes. When they arrive at their destination, they're angry because it took 7 hours to fly from NY to LA., terminal to terminal.
Are you kidding? 200 years ago it took months just to travel west across the plains in a horse pulled wagon and people died along the way.
A modern jet is like your living room in the sky. You sit in a chair for a few hours, watch a movie, have dinner, read a magazine, and then you're there.
He said he was recently on a plane when the flight attendant announced they were introducing high speed internet as a new service during the flight. An hour later the service failed. The guy sitting in the seat next to him disgustedly said "This is bull ****!"
Really? You're angry because something that you didn't know existed 60 minutes ago is temporarily no longer available to you?
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The Internet has brought people together... but the methods we use to communicate have certainly been modified.
People regularly use e-mail, text, etc. to communicate with those we care about. We have the power to be in steady contact with others, especially with most of us running around with computers in our pockets.
But how often do you pick up the phone and call those same people just to visit vs. how much you did in the pre-Internet days? The number of those extended phone conversations just to visit and chat it up has dropped considerably for me.
And to take it a step further, when was the last time you put together hardcopy, mailed letter in an envelope (i.e., not a greeting card... and not shipping a gift) to a friend or family member?
People regularly use e-mail, text, etc. to communicate with those we care about. We have the power to be in steady contact with others, especially with most of us running around with computers in our pockets.
But how often do you pick up the phone and call those same people just to visit vs. how much you did in the pre-Internet days? The number of those extended phone conversations just to visit and chat it up has dropped considerably for me.
And to take it a step further, when was the last time you put together hardcopy, mailed letter in an envelope (i.e., not a greeting card... and not shipping a gift) to a friend or family member?
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We've been given technology that connects us in more ways than we could have ever imagined and yet were more alone than we've ever been. Weird .......sad, but weird
Actually, newspapers in the US (and later magazines as they took off) improved dramatically in the 20th century after being in a pretty bad "yellow" period from the 1700s through the Spanish-American War. Competition increased, and information moved faster and faster due to advances in technology. The editorial team was increasingly walled off from the business side (the owner and publisher)--that's what led to the golden age of newspapers, where they were able to conduct serious investigations and run lengthy pieces exposing corruption.
The landscape has changed, certainly, as consumers have gone elsewhere for news (first TV and now the Internet) and many newspapers botched the transition to digital. But papers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times are finally getting digital right, as their finances reflect.
As for Bezos, he's an easy target because he's so rich and frankly not a likable guy. But the fact of the matter is, the Post has run negative stories on Amazon since he took over. For example, here's a long piece about whether Amazon is turning into a dangerous monopoly. Link Removed
I have very mixed feelings about where people are getting their news online these days. For every site that tries to stay objective or close to it, there seem to be 10 more trying to grab audiences by slanting stories to a far greater degree than the typical newspaper has in the past 75 years. Sure, these sites may not have fat cat owners per se, but they often are bankrolled by wealthy folks with an agenda or they're beholden to advertisers that appeal to their politically motivated customer base. "Free"? Eh, maybe. Meanwhile, the editorial staff may consist of one person who isn't "toeing the line", but that also means they often don't have the time to actually interview sources or check facts.
Well, there seems to be an increasing body of physiological/psychological evidence that points in that direction... Fortunately, barring a sudden collapse of "Life As We Know It" in the near future, I'm old enough that I (hopefully) won't be around to find out... Sometimes, it's good to be an Old Fart...
I'd like to stress something that I mentioned in another thread. Social media has not caused anything other than efficiency in communication. The rudeness and sick comments? That has been what your friends, family and neighbors have ALWAYS thought in their heads. The seemingly heightened hate we now see? That hate has always been there. Nobody from Instagram or Facebook forces Uncle Johnny to lose his mind over what a football player does and write a manifesto. Social media is simply a handy scapegoat to cover for the fact that we've become gullible, prone to conspiracy theories and resentful as a nation. Many like to blame media for this. I kinda feel like high schools with million dollar football facilities and no money for a debate team are probably a bigger cause but that's not as flashy or easy as blaming a media company.
Now it's the video games that cause violence. Of course, these games are global, yet we're the only ones with daily mass murder. Is it the 20 year war, military glorification, and the us vs all enemies rhetoric that has been the only thing our young adults have known their entire formative years? Nah, we've got "reasons" for that. Definitely those dang games.
Maybe this post comes off as snarky or sarcastic, but I really do feel like blaming media is akin to putting a towel over a mirror so we don't have to look ourselves in the eye.
Now it's the video games that cause violence. Of course, these games are global, yet we're the only ones with daily mass murder. Is it the 20 year war, military glorification, and the us vs all enemies rhetoric that has been the only thing our young adults have known their entire formative years? Nah, we've got "reasons" for that. Definitely those dang games.
Maybe this post comes off as snarky or sarcastic, but I really do feel like blaming media is akin to putting a towel over a mirror so we don't have to look ourselves in the eye.
slobake
resident ... something
I think you're right, but I do also think there's another level to it as well. When the digital revolution was on the horizon, there was this excitement to it - the ease of access! the democratization! EVERYONE can be a reporter, opinion columnist, writer, etc! Which, to some extent, is true... and we've discovered that maybe it's not such a good thing that all these people get the ego trip of having a platform. So I think you're right, that at one level all the internet has done has been to make public the flaws, the prejudice and ignorance and spite etc., that we had all along.
However, I do think there's still a difference when you make those qualities public. Take a conspiracy theorist. They've always existed. But societies tend to form a sense of norms, and mechanisms to push things to the margins that don't satisfy those norms. Sometimes we complain at the unfairness of it, and sometimes justly (especially if we're the ones being marginalized), but there's also a healthy quality to this dynamic, to keep the unhealthy at bay.
With the mass democratization of information on the internet, however, the mechanism of marginalization breaks down. Before, while the conspiracy theorists existed, they didn't have a platform, most people could go about their lives undisturbed by them, they were marginal and they knew they were marginal. Now, however, they can have an internet forum, a chat group, a facebook club. Instead of a conspiracy theorist being the one oddball in his entire town that wears a tinfoil hat and subscribes to a mimeographed newsletter put out by another tinfoil hat guy who lives a thousand miles away, the tinfoil hat guys can all club up together and rave about their tinfoil hat ideas on a daily basis and commiserate about how nobody else appreciates their secret knowledge. They become a community to themselves. The margin disappears and the center disintegrates. Nobody's sure what's "normal" any more.
Most of us aren't really equipped to rationally analyze every proposition that comes to our doorstep. We rely on social cues, on whether our reference group around us finds an idea or proposal reasonable and good or crazy and bad. The tremendous connectivity and communicability of digital media makes that instinctive reliance go haywire.
This is true. Its sobering when free speech actually becomes "free" and anyone can talk. It's not as great as we would think. But that's us, not the medium, that's off. Technology is not going to devolve, so we better start deciding how to combat this problem.
as a continuation of the idea that people have always thought weird / terrible / rude things but just never shared them, pre internet...
i think there is a tendency to have false memories of some kind of golden age before the internet and mobile devices – how people used to talk to each other properly, people weren't openly rude or racist or just plain weird, people made proper appointments, etc, etc – "not like now when everyone is stuck in their phones" and so on.
well, i was there and i don't remember it being all that great.
i think people just watched television, read the paper (or whatever) or listened to Walkmans when killing time out and about, and shared their less palatable thoughts with trusted friends or family(who had to sit through it with gritted teeth).
as an aside, TV, portable music and newspapers have all been accused of killing the art of civil conversation. so it's not like we haven't been here before.
as for making plans and sticking to them, all i remember is, if someone ran late, it was a massive pain in the backside as you had no way of knowing when / if they would arrive! if someone was stuck in traffic or whatever for more than 30 mins, pow, there went your evening out a lot of the time.
i think there is a tendency to have false memories of some kind of golden age before the internet and mobile devices – how people used to talk to each other properly, people weren't openly rude or racist or just plain weird, people made proper appointments, etc, etc – "not like now when everyone is stuck in their phones" and so on.
well, i was there and i don't remember it being all that great.
i think people just watched television, read the paper (or whatever) or listened to Walkmans when killing time out and about, and shared their less palatable thoughts with trusted friends or family(who had to sit through it with gritted teeth).
as an aside, TV, portable music and newspapers have all been accused of killing the art of civil conversation. so it's not like we haven't been here before.
as for making plans and sticking to them, all i remember is, if someone ran late, it was a massive pain in the backside as you had no way of knowing when / if they would arrive! if someone was stuck in traffic or whatever for more than 30 mins, pow, there went your evening out a lot of the time.
Alkali Ike
Gold Supporting Member
- Jan 1, 2011
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As a child in the early to mid-80's, I remember my pop taking me to Denny's for breakfast on a Saturday morning now and then.
One thing we'd do was read the paper. He'd start reading his half, I'd read the other half. After 10-15 minutes, we switched halves.
Once done, we'd eat and then talk about what we read over coffee.
I imagine it was funny to onlookers though how we'd both sit there a good 20-30 minutes reading and no talking.
-Mike
