Open Thread - The Nagging Question - 04-09-2015
Good Morning, Everybody! What's going on in your minds ?
My question for today:
How is the Internet transforming human functioning, personhood, and identity through the engagement with electronic media?
Just asking a little question, no worries. 
I remember 1996. Many had viewed the Internet as intrinsically democratizing and welcomed it with enthusiasm and a lot of hope. When I detected the world wide web on my job, it made me immediately dreaming of a huge online bookstore, in which I could present in a searchable and subject categorized format "all you ever want to read in your life". Heh. I wanted my own little business, you know, like any lonely, lost and jobless immigrant does.
(Ok, Mr. Besoz had the same idea, he being a Wall Street guy, me being a immigrant needing to put some roots in form of a bookstore in the US. So the dreaming started. One guy made it, one gal was defeated with thousands of others. That was my first taste of interaction with electronic media... but I lose my thread of thoughts)
In 2002 Martin Hand and B. Sandywell wrote a research paper:
In another paper:
Cultures of the Internet: Identity, community and mental health
Kirmayer et al summarized and cited Martin Hand et al with these words:
the Internet would allow free exchange of information and would provide a comprehensive view of people's local situations. I would represent a public voice and representation that would have otherwise only available to the wealthy and rich.
Martin Hand et al. said specifically:
Whenever in history a rapid technological change occurred, like in this case the "digital information machine", it had been elevated as a central agent of history. Computing and computer- mediated technology – particularly the Net and the worldwide web – join a long list of ‘forces of production’ taken as causally determining the conditions of human existence. ... Anglo-American models of democratic reform and governance were combined with laudatory accounts of the libertarian possibilities of the new communication technologies. ..These popular treatments of digital technology promote images of a remorseless shaping of the future by the dynamism of technical innovation. They also function as a persuasive resource for a causal theory of the benign and progressive impact of the technical upon ‘the social’.
Phew. Yeah. How many innovative new gadgets have you been seduced to buy into in the last twenty years?
Others seemed a bit more critical of those bubbly hopes. Especially E. Morozov, who said that reliance on the channels of digital communication technologies would render people vulnerable to new forms of surveillance and social control by states and other powerful organizations.
Right. Who knew? Did You? When did it dawned on you that the form of surveillance and social control was may be ... a little bit too much to be good for you? For me it started with Facebook. The NYT starts in a book review of Morozov/s book Big Data Is Watching You ‘To Save Everything, Click Here,’ by Evgeny Morozov with the following sentence:
How can you resist a book whose first chapter begins: “Have you ever peeked inside a friend’s trash can? I have.” Trash is like “one’s sex life,” the book continues, “the less said about it, the better.” ... "The book crackles with intellectual energy and is encyclopedic in scope, examining the effects of technology on subjects ranging from politics to criminology to the endless quest to lose weight." ...
You realize that Morozov is taking up the cause of human values against those of the machine, and you feel compelled to sit up and listen. He dares to see the Internet’s fundamental credo of openness as a tyranny. He suggests that access to some information should be restricted, which in the Net-world is a sin second only to murder. He decries the ideology of “transparency,” reminding us that no human relationship can survive without innuendo, mystery, even lying. He exposes the damage of “ truthfulness” indexes that troll the Internet for beliefs expressed by public figures, punishing anyone with the audacity to let his thoughts evolve over time. He warns against “solutionism,” with which “problems” are identified according to Internet “values” (efficiency is good; politics is messy; make politics efficient).
How do you feel about it? We all know how much control the surveillance and data collection capabilities of this technology is imposing on us. Do you feel it has changed your lifestyle or your online communication, the way you interact on the internet? Do you believe you can "fight the machine" and speak freely?
This Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015 study just released certainly confirms how strong mobile phone access to the internet changed teens lifestyle and communication.
Facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily — including 24% who say they go online “almost constantly", according to a new study from Pew Research Center. More than half (56%) of teens — defined in this report as those ages 13 to 17 — go online several times a day, and 12% report once-a-day use. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access1 to a smartphone.
(To me surprisingly)African-American teens are the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one, compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens. African-American and Hispanic youth report more frequent internet use than white teens. Facebook is the most popular and frequently used social media platform among teens; half of teens use Instagram, and nearly as many use Snapchat. Interestingly there are gender and socio-economic group differences in the use of social media among teens.
Considering that the usage of social media via smartphone is "almost constant", due to its seductive, if not addictive personalized communicative and interactive powers, one can only wonder, why so far so little attention has been paid as to how intense, absolute and all encompassing the control through surveillance and data collection capabilities over our lives has become and how it may lead to a true tyranny and manipulation over our minds. What do you think? Do I see nightmares where there are none? Or do I have a point?
Comments
Good morning Mimi - great question... great diary
Well, it is has changed my life - totally. I can't believe how much I pay for what use to be free. I have two homes so that's two ISPs and two television providers. Add in two cell phones, and omg! My phone is with me constantly, and when I am home, I am either at my desktop or have my laptop in my lap. I no longer listen to TV news or read any hard copy magazines or newspapers, and I use the internet to look up everything - recipes, diseases and syndromes, historical facts, current events, spelling and grammar, HTML, etc. My latest acquisition is Grammarly. I love it, and it is free. My proofing skills are non-existent. Grammarly checks everything as I type, and it works in blogs, emails, and Word.
My biggest gripe is the invasion of privacy that comes with all of this connectivity and having to be the tech that keeps all of this stuff functioning. Next biggest gripe is texting/messaging. I don't mind it if it only requires me to respond with a yes, no, soon, or ok, and it definitely keeps me in much closer touch with my daughter and grandsons. But conversations? Forget it! That's why Jesus invited the telephone.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I had to chuckle at this
Neither my husband nor I have texting as a part of our plan. I really do not want it either. Many friends will say, "I tried to text you about this or that," and when we tell them we do not text, they are shocked. I figure if it is something important enough they will call me. If it is not that important, then they can email me. Otherwise is it just another invasion of my space to have texts coming in all the time.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
:-) that just shows me that you have a happy
family life and haven't experienced much isolation in your life. Be happy.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I just do not want to be "on call"
at all times. I spent several days with my best friend traveling earlier this year. She got a cell phone long after I did, but just this year, she has gotten into texting. It was constant, the texts flying in from her husband and friends. I am pretty much extravert, but I do value my space.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Texting is great - when kept in its place.
It is a great feature unless it is the primary means of communication.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
ah, that's such a sweet honest answer from a techie
the great thing is that you are not scared. You know how to keep the "stuff" functioning, which means, I guess, you also know how to make it dysfunctional ??? Sometimes I wished I had become a techie. But then I guess I would have an even bigger inner conflict.
I like text messaging, because it's short and I listen when it comes in and I don't have to "pick up the phone and talk". There are lots of people I keep at a distance by just accepting a text message only. I wouldn't have any problem to converse with them in person. But talking on the phone? That's too much for me. Talking on a blog? Oh, I get scared and angry too easily. So, in the end, the communication over text messaging, is a life line, but what kind of life-line is that? I mean, you really like that?
I am always in contact with my son, text and phone, never online on social media sites. I don't think it's my preferred life-style at all and am very nervous when I haven't gotten a message for two or three days. Life has become that unreliable. I miss the days, when it didn't bother me to say "what I don't know, doesn't make me hot", ie not feeling guilty, when I didn't "get" all the news "immediately". I miss the days, I wouldn't start the first thing in the morning reading the latest blog entries and some news. I long for the day where cutting out the online interaction wouldn't cause me to have a "cold turkey" like a hardcore addict. I really wished I could talk to people in person and do my reading offline in books and magazines and newspapers without any online interactivity. Am I just a rare example of a person to have those desires?
When people make their living within the IT technology (I just wonder how many of us do that, if you count all those, who have to use the technology to deliver their services they make their living with), of course I can't blame them for it. But why am I apparently the only chicken around here, who thinks that is a dangerous development. Is my cowardly by-standing German gene popping up? I am aware that his open thread is discouraging people. I really, really don't want frigging discourage anyone engaging in this "revolutionary act of talking truth to power" on a blog. I even admire those who stick to their guns and work so hard on it. Yet tell me the trick, how you continue to believe in it having a political effect? How do you manage to not get depressed by it? May you all still have "a life" somewhere that is enough of a counter balance, but what do all those do, who haven't that? I think the paradox is that they are already feeling lonely and are getting even more dependent on the online interactions with people, yet often that does lead to more depression, not less.
I found it always interesting to see that one of the most informative series at DK is the EB. Yet the political conversation about its content is almost nil. Doesn't that tell us something? How far is that really the fault of the "speech police" force on DK tasering our thoughts before they become digitized or is it a "general feature/problem" of the open network that doesn't forget any of our words?
I need to get that darn app Grammarly. I am an app-phobe, heh, we need that as a new mental health condition...
https://www.euronews.com/live
It just ain't natural.
Not when I see all the people looking down all the time. Why are they looking down? They're driving in their
cars and they're at baseball games, but they're all looking down. If everyone looks down there will be no one
looking up. I think that's the big problem, no one will be looking up. Then when something comes, no one will
see it.
The more information someone has about you, the more vulnerable you are to that someone. Now they have the
ability to almost pinpoint how we live our lives. So ya, I'd say that's a nightmare. People don't worry about it because
they think nothing will come from it. But there's a time and place and a reason for the season.
yes, looking down and not up is a good way to describe
it.
The first time that really hit me hard was when four family members came together to (what everyone of us knew) "wait for my niece's passing over to the other side". She was struggling with cancer for a very long time. We all knew she wouldn't make it for more than a couple of weeks or months the most. (She made it actually exactly one day longer than we all had been with her).
I and my sister didn't have a laptop. My sister is still living in a world where the internet hasn't entered her daily life. I didn't have my laptop with me. All others had. Though we all came together to give each other our loving support, I couldn't believe that almost no conversation between us took place. We sat in the living room, all looking down and intensely reading and typing and thinking in the space of their labtops, while my sister and me were silently watching and didn't know what to do. It was an extremely intense image to be confronted with. I remember that if someone really wanted to talk with the other, they almost made up an "appointment" for it, left the room and then had a real life conversation one to one.
I remember after several days my sister come out of such a conversation with her daughter, being sooooo happy that finally it took place.
Since that time I go around in life and watch people, looking down to their phones, either smiling, talking to themselves or seriously in thought, just they are not in real space. I wonder about it. I also resent to get a smart phone and start resenting to even carry around my old mobile phone, just life is impossible to master these days without it. I can't stand this development, I admit. I wonder also, if the fact that people come regularly into places like Starbucks not only because they have free access there, but because they need the "real life noise of people" surrounding them to over come the physical isolation many might have in their homes.
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I was watching some clips from a concert last week
and in the crowd it looked liked just about every dang person had their phone held up in front of them over their heads
so they could record it. I wondered what I would think if someone sitting in front of me was constantly interrupting my view
with their hands and phones.
I don't have a smart phone, just a dumb one, a pay as you go basic cell phone that it usually dead. I doubt I'll ever get a smart
phone unless something changes in my life. I really don't care to have the added complexity.
I've got a pet peeve about people driving while texting or otherwise using their smart phones. It's dangerous and stupid
and far too many people do it.
Wow mimi!
So much information in your morning open thread! Excellent job!
I remember when we finally got internet capability at the city. I do not remember the exact year, but what I do remember is that not everyone had a computer. Until that time, any research that we needed to do involved physically searching through the planning texts in our very small library at the office, and/or sending a snail mail request to one of the newsletter clearing houses requesting information.
When we all finally had internet access, it opened up a whole library for us to use in responding to planning issues and elected officials' requests. Prior to our having internet access to local property appraiser's records for data gathering, we had to use huge printouts and manually extract the data we needed. I can remember when we were doing our comprehensive plan as mandated by state statute, we had to provide data to back up how our plan was developed. It took three of us three months working all day and often at night and the weekends to manually extract and sort the data required by the new state law. Several years later under another requirement by the state law, we were required to review updated data and compare it to the original data. At this point, we were totally computerized and had a GIS system to do the data collection for us. What a difference.
Like any tool, the internet has its pluses and minuses. The biggest minus I can see outside of the surveillance capabilities that the internet has provided for the government is that it disconnects us in a way. In real life, we use all of our senses in our interactions with other human beings. The internet removes many of those senses that we use to filter our actions and reactions. In other words, it dehumanizes us to some extent even when we do not want to be seen that way or act that way.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
yes, you said it so well,
the library and search features and its uses for daily life research and interactions at your job is a huge advantage. That's what we all know and agree on. The somewhat unintended and may be amazing paradox which also evolved is the fact that the openness, transparency and interactivity combined with the fact that nothing is forgotten and is collected, leads to the most open and interconnected society that might end up to be the least open and most disconnected people. People don't see it, but it could end up that way. I admit I am confused about the whole issue.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Gaia's brain...
The Gaia hypothesis proposes that living organisms interact with inorganic surroundings that essentially forms planet Earth as a single living breathing entity. The internet has connected the most intelligent life form on planet Earth as a single interconnected intelligence, essentially increasing mankind's thinking capacity from a single localized entity inside each individual's cranium to a collective global intelligent entity. Thus the internet compliments the Gaia hypothesis serving as a collective global intelligence for the single living breathing organism, planet Earth. We are not quite there yet, but eventually all human knowledge will be at the fingertips of all who are connected to the internet, one would only need to know how to extract that knowledge. IMHO when you tap the internet you potentially expand your localized knowledge to include the knowledge of the whole planet.
The internet is Gaia's brain. We move closer to becoming the Borg every day.
Huzzahh, Gaia's brain, thanks for educating me, JtC
From Wikipedia
Darn, once upon a time I studied Chemistry, but I was a lousy student.
I guess I have to believe now that this Gaia Uber-brain will successfully self-regulate the conditions of our planet and livelihood's conditions to sustain us all. Ok, I have to study this. Sounds as if I were to become a believer in the Gaia brain, it would be a solution.
Darn, my brain is just too small for that stuff, JtC. I'll try, but meanwhile I will log off for a bit and come back later.
Thanks for your kind patience to let me whine and nag around. Weekend's Open Threads are a bit easier to swallow. Promise.
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No educating involved, Shaz...
just some mental ramblings.
I think this incident describes the problem well
link
wow, that's is really eye-opening, thx. /nt
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Meanwhile in Montreal
link
Very interesting
open thread. Thanks mimi. Everyday when I wake up I seem to debate your simple question in my head. I was a confirmed hold out Luddite until 2000 . In a way politics lured me into the web as well as the need to make money. I used to read dkos and DFA over my husband's shoulder. I became politically active in the late 90's. I listened to the radio NPR and later air America while I worked on my art. I was a old school hands on graphic artist in my former life and when the Mac took over decided to go low tech and reverted to making art. I broke down and bought a used rehabbed Window 98 PC and taught myself how to type and took to blogging. First at DFA, Huffpo and then at dkos.
I have mixed feelings about the net and social media. I recently joined FB and Linked In as work with my husband doing marketing for our business which is all electronic. I don't have a cell phone and my husband has an basic flip cell. I think computers are a tool that while it connects the world and gives all of us access to information it also encourages binary thinking. Smart phones seem like an oxymoron to me as I don't think computers are smart or intelligent in any way other then being a tool. Virtual reality isn't reality. It seems to me that human interaction is more then a being wired to constant stream of global data information and words running into your brain. Like the tower of babble do we really communicate? Does all this data and information inform human's or just distract them from living. Why do we need refrigerators that tell us we need to buy milk? Or app's that preform basic human chores? Life is not binary it's complex and human behavior is not logical or data driven. Technology seems to be wagging the dog.
I find that hive/borg thinking all designed by geeks who seem soulless has in a way made us all less tolerant, more tribal and more isolated from our humanity. We seem less able to connect in ways that are more important then the virtual electronic reality. I like listening to music but I like it in the air not pumped into my head with buds and hearing what a computer logarithm has decided I would like. I like drawing or painting a line by hand and not having to connect nodes and with a freaking mouse or clunky pen tool. Moving pixels around just doesn't move me. I need the human touch. We could all do with a little more humanism in our earth bound societies. Yet here I am sitting here netting and typing while the geek visionaries of the tech world are telling us all that this is the inevitable reality.
A NYT book review by Julian Assange.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles...
The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’
THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen........
The authors offer an expertly banalized version of tomorrow’s world: the gadgetry of decades hence is predicted to be much like what we have right now — only cooler. “Progress” is driven by the inexorable spread of American consumer technology over the surface of the earth. Already, every day, another million or so Google-run mobile devices are activated. Google will interpose itself, and hence the United States government, between the communications of every human being not in China (naughty China). Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unafflicted or only faintly perturbed....
The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. .. But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the “good” societies closer to the “bad” ones....
“What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,” they tell us, “technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.” Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever.
I refused to get a cell phone until 2003
It was the massive anti-war protests before the Iraq invasion that convinced me. The issue was trying to coordinate a meeting with a bunch of friends inside an immense crowd. I suddenly saw the benefit of cell phones.
It wasn't until 2011 that I got on FB. The issue was me going into the Peace Corps and knowing that the ability to communicate with friends and family would be unpredictable and spotty, so having one location to post photos and messages made sense.
You were in the Peace Corps?
Wow, how awesome. What was your experience like? Is it as hard to get into the Peace Corps as everyone says?
I miss Colorado.
The hardest question to answer
about the Peace Corps experience is, "What was it like?"
You can't really sum it up in one sentence, so inevitably you answer, "It was OK."
There were some awful moments and there were some great moments, and sometimes those moments happened at the same time. There were also a lot of moment where not much happened.
No, it's not hard to get in as long as you have a college degree or some special skills.
If you don't have those, then it might be difficult.
I'd love to read about those experiences.
Perhaps a diary or two about them?
I miss Colorado.
same experience for the African part of my family, who
all have cell phones deep into the smallest villages (independent of being poor, they manage to have them). They all communicate instantly, if they want to. I can very well imagine how important the cell phones were to you. Of course, often they just "don't talk to each other"... for decades...even a smart phone don't make them do it... :). If you want your group or tribal wars, you have 'em and stop communicating. That's the human condition.
https://www.euronews.com/live
yout comment is so excellent I have to read it three
times over. Thank you so much. I can't respond up to par, you have so much more power over the word. I know that I fell into a hole with my negative outlook, but also know with more old fashioned person to person communication, I would be better equipped to fight those darker zombie thoughts in my mind.
Amen to that. I hope we can change the inevitable reality into an evitable one.
Thanks for pointing out Assange's book. I don't know when it will be on my list to read. I feel a bit better now, because I had a long conversation with a long lost friend and I was surprised to understand that we both think similar to how we were thinking fourty years ago. You can't have that kind of understanding by
"moving the words in pixel format".
Beautiful response. I thank you very much.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Great topic, mimi!
Geez, I have so much to say about this.
First, I implore you all to watch Ellen Degeneres' brilliant stand-up comedy special from 2003, called Here and Now. It's specifically about the ways technology has changed modern society, and it's hilarious. I've watched it many times with Little Shiz over the years.
I remember that I got on the internet for the first time in 1994. My best friend kept talking about the "information super highway", and I was all "Wtf are you talking about?!" It took me several years (seriously) to even understand how computers and the internet worked, because my brain simply does not function that way. I used to blame Netscape (ha! remember Netscape?) for slow computer speed and I would curse at my 14.4 BPS modem. It was so ridiculously fun back then to hear the dial-up noise, and then get pissed when someone would call and knock you off the web.
I didn't have my own computer until probably 1998. I haven't really gone offline since then, LOL. I'm on the computer everyday, several times per day, for work and for fun. I barely watch TV anymore, since I can get all my news on the intertoobz and I can watch my shows (as well as movies) on Netflix. I became very politically active right before the 2000 elections and read an amazing array of political news on a daily basis, from all sorts of different lefty websites. My favorite, back in the day, was Common Dreams. I find that I can't read that too much anymore because it totally bums me out. It's almost like too much reality in such a small space.
I regularly have to temper all the depressing shit I read with funny stuff, because otherwise, it's hard sometimes to even get out of bed. :/ So I read The Oatmeal and BuzzFeed, and I sometimes play Sporcle because it's awesome.
I search for cute and giggle-inducing YouTube videos, too. So I totally hear you about the constant influx of terrible news being too hard to handle, mimi.
I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Facebook era. I also had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the whole idea of texting. I am often on FB, and I normally text with a few friends daily.
After the Patriot Act was passed, a chill ran up my spine. It was then that I started to realize that we are sincerely fucked, and that the government can snoop on us anytime and anywhere and for any stupid reason they choose. I think I have a healthy level of fear about it, but not enough to make me go off the grid. I honestly believe there will come a time when we will no longer have electricity, much less the internet, and we'll all have to learn to deal.
I stop and smell the roses every chance I get. I love nature, and I spend as much time with my family and friends as I can. My meat space life is enhanced by the things I do on the internet, but I have found that the internet cannot be my sole reason for living. it's genuinely hard not to get addicted, especially when you have access to ALL the information at your fingertips, all the time. I have a smart phone, but I pretty much only use it to download music, which I use when I go for walks or utilize public transportation.
If The Breakfast Club took place in 2015, none of those goddamned kids would have talked to one another because they would have been on their smart phones all. day. long.
Decidedly, it's a mixed bag.
I miss Colorado.
I love your comment
Being retired, I have time to spend on line and because we do not have cable or satellite, so I probably spend more time the average person on line. But that is time many people are spending watching mindless tv. But I am a people person, so I use the internet to keep up with long lost friends via FB and to keep myself up to day on what is happening in the real world. But it is definitely not my whole world and if for some reason we lost the net, I would adjust.
I do think a lot of young people are so dependent upon their electronic devices that they often miss out on real life. We are words on a screen, occasionally emoticons, and some of us have avatars of ourselves up but it cannot substitute for being around and interacting with real people. It is a balance and our electronic age gives us some tools to help us become more easily informed, but it does not substitute completely for real life experience.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I have met a ton of real-life friends from the internet.
From Kossacks to an old listserv I was on, to 3 long-term relationships I've been in ... I've met some amazing people from the 'net, and that's been a blessing.
Like you, I am an extrovert (I know that comes as a shock, ha :P), so I have to talk to people on a daily basis. I need my alone time as well, but nothing is better than meat space communication. Nothing is better than the look of empathy on a friend's face, or holding someone's hand, or hugging them. And you can't exactly get that from a "series of tubes", LOL.
I certainly agree about Millennials being too wired, with device upon device, to pay attention to what's truly going on around them. Little Shiz's dad and I have tried really hard to limit her TV and internet time, to adequate success. She's only 14, so she doesn't have a FB page yet, but all her friends do. She has a Kindle Fire, but prefers the look, feel, and smell of real books instead. She's not into video games, so that's good. She has a smart phone now, but is very restricted with regards to how she uses it. Her internet activity is pretty closely monitored.
Little Shiz is still only allowed one hour of TV per day, unless it's Christmas vacay or something like that.
She takes after her mother in all sorts of ways, not the least of which is she is into the performing arts, so she spends a lot of time at rehearsals and choir practice and stuff. She has sleepovers with her friends and goes to the mall and shit.
Jesus H. Christ, when Little Shiz starts to rebel (and she will, I'm sure of it, at some point), it's going to be hard as hell to maintain these rules going forward, but they seem to be working ... for now.
She is the exception, though, and certainly not the rule. I know too many kids who are too plugged-in, and I worry about that as well. What kind of precedent are we setting? What are we getting out of this, truly? What's the end goal here? Is it to have 5000 FB friends, and have 1000 re-tweets of things you've said on a whim?
Is it communication, or is it just instant gratification?
I miss Colorado.
it's impulsivity, I think.
the communication you have goes both ways, like instantly very gratifying or instantly very anger inducing. In that I see it's promoting "group" think and "tribal" wars. My son came in touch with the internet only as an adult and couldn't deal with it well. He basically doesn't like to use it. At college he felt very dependent on it, but started to use it more and realized the wealth of methods to learn something by himself. So his usage today resembles those of most adults, who don't work in the IT field or do research work through the internet.
I am the one who got "addicted" as I use to call my own interactions and he got "jealous", because I always did something he couldn't participate in via "real conversations". On the job I witnessed people not conversing with each other sitting in the same room, but all talking through their smart phones. If there was a small conversation going on, you could be sure it was always interrupted and not finished, because of competing distractions going on through messaging and email back and forth on the phones. When I stopped working and my son worked far away, I realized that blog conversations, were the only ones I had left. Considering how much news and discussions about the news it can get you all angry, I started to sink into a hole out of which I am fighting to get out.
This Open Thread responses are really a help. Thanks.
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My former computer
about a year or so ago melted down. The mother board was something to behold in its melted glory. We didn't have enough money at the time to replace it so I went 4 months without a computer. I kind of liked it. I would get up early and work on Eric's computer doing marketing and there wasn't enough time to go on the net to my usual haunts. I found time was altered somehow it went slower in real life with out being wired.
Jbou of dkos once said that dkos burns up your time and he was right. I try hard to balance the time spent on the net with real life but it's hard especially if your an addicted news and political junkie. I also found that I got out more walked more and gardened more and felt better more positive and in tune. I certainly had a more compassionate view of my fellow humans. I'm an anti-social introvert and in a way the net and facebook etc. does keep me connected. At the same time it enables me to avoid real social contact. So it is both a curse and a blessing, depending on how I use it. I'm also not real moderate and tend to be obsessive which is aggravated by by the net.
Once I got my new computer and the geeks downloaded my bookmarks etc. it took about a week before I started burning up my time again. Every once in a while I think I should throw the damn PC out the window but I don't, I just unplug it. I once years ago got so sick of the TV that I did throw it out the window into the shared driveway between our neighbors. It was fun to watch it implode. My yuppie corporate type neighbor who was home at the time was horrified and ran out to the driveway and said 'How could you, it was a Sony!" That was our first cord cut with TV. We went without TV that time for 6 mos. and broke down and got another Sony.
I love your comment too, great, ... jeez you are all
responding in such open personal ways, I can't say thank you enough. My own life story and the way I got involved in US news watching and reading, is so different from yours, that I realize more and more that the isolation I feel it has caused (only since I don't work anymore and have even lesser exposure to conversation with Americans than I had already while working) is based on this specific "story and surrounding conditions". And I should not generalize it and see that's my own conditioning and not that of others around me.
I don't think that it is a personal problem for most of you here (thank God), but one that in a political way you are all very aware of. I am relieved to see that.
Makes me feel a little better that I am not alone in my thinking. At least the "don't be evil" crap people start to get.
Thanks Shiz.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I will say I do boycott Facebook.
Did it for about a year but after learning more about the entire deal decided it would be better
not to patronize it. Like with cell phones, I figure we used to get things done without it, I can live
without Facebook.
It does bring up another topic. How far are we willing to go to win this thing?
I do, but don't think asking others to do the same, is
appropriate. I am lucky in that my left-over family does not use FB or they use it in ways that are so boringly ridiculous, I stopped reading after some weeks. My son keeps contact with people he was together with during his military service and with friends he knew through jobs. I never read his site, probably some more old friends follow up there too. Sometimes he tells me about those.
I think there are parents or other family members who can't control their impulse to see what the others communicate about. I feel I respect a person's space more by not "following people around there". I just don't want to. So, boycotting FB for me is easy to do. But for a lot of people it's an essential tool for planning and organizing with their groups of friends and allies and work colleagues, because otherwise they would never be able to do what they want plan. So, I feel it's not ok for me to say, heh, boycott it, just because for me it's an easy thing to do. I guess, I have given up "to win this thing" at least not by asking for a boycott. Just don't believe it's possible. But if something else would happen ... like the saltwater and fish eating up all the cables that make the intertubz ... I would say "bon appétit".
https://www.euronews.com/live