[HN Gopher] Sir Tim Berners-Lee warns of widening digital divide
___________________________________________________________________
Sir Tim Berners-Lee warns of widening digital divide
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-03-12 09:18 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| > "A shocking number of kids in the UK don't have meaningful
| connectivity."
|
| Growing up the UK, I don't think I ever had a classmate without
| internet connectivity at home. It would've been like not having
| electricity. Am I out of touch?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kjakm wrote:
| I'm willing to bet if you did, you wouldn't know. It's not
| something anyone is going to brag about. Similar to kids
| getting free school meals or any other 'benefit' for being
| poor. When you have these problems you tend to keep them to
| yourself due to shame.
|
| Also, from the article:
|
| "But, he says, one-third of young people do not have any
| internet access and many more lack the quality of connection
| needed to work or learn from home."
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| I dunno, I had a lot of friends from poorer families. Their
| computers were shared and usually not the best, but I never
| saw anyone without any access at all.
|
| Group projects were regularly done remotely on Skype after
| school to do homework (admittedly to my chagrin as I didn't
| have a Windows machine to run Office).
|
| Is there more reliable data on this?
| thewarrior wrote:
| Did you grow up in a rural or urban area ? I mean if there are
| people queueing for food there must be people too poor to even
| own an extra laptop
| mercury_craze wrote:
| Yes, you're out of touch. Access to the internet is seen as a
| luxury when you're relying on charitable donations to put food
| on the table.
| syshum wrote:
| It is ironic that he Talks about the widening digital divide
| while the W3C has continually ceded to the demands of copyright
| maximalists demanding ever increasing and costly DRM be put in
| "standards" which in turns makes free and open source solutions
| that can not comply with things like EME less favorable. Making
| technology more expensive and thus increase the that very digital
| divide
| Jonnax wrote:
| How does the cost of building a standards compliant web browser
| have anything to do with lack of access to the internet? Web
| browsers are free.
|
| This is an infrastructure issue where people don't have
| internet access.
| tpmx wrote:
| This is the letter itself:
|
| https://onezero.medium.com/the-web-must-work-better-for-youn...
| apples_oranges wrote:
| I was wondering, now that Starlink is getting ready for business,
| if connectivity white spots on the map could not be closed with
| it. Now, it's a very expensive service, and it might be against
| the TOS?, but it seems like one Starlink ground subscriber
| station could serve several households via Wifi or similar. Kinda
| how some of us shared our connection back in the 1990s, just
| faster. Perhaps the government of the UK could also make deals
| with Starlink and similar companies.
|
| I mean do that if you don't want to dig holes and put cables in
| them.
|
| Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"? Call me
| postmodern, but idgaf if he's a Knight of the UK or the Jedi,
| it's just character spam. His name is "Tim Berners-Lee", no?
| (This man is a legend either way.) We say "Paul Graham" not "Dr.
| Paul Graham, Comp.Sci." and I would also call Professor Albus
| Dumbledore just Albus Dumbledore, I mean if there was a blogpost
| about him. :)
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"?_
|
| No, that's "Mylord" to you.
| ectopod wrote:
| Americans are sticklers for titles more than Brits. For
| example, outside of very formal settings no-one calls the prime
| minister "The Right Honourable Boris Johnson" but the president
| is nearly always referred to as "President Biden".
| wrycoder wrote:
| Starlink, for me, is the same price as cable internet, once the
| teaser price on the latter expires.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| _Also, btw, do we have to say "Sir Tim Berners-Lee"?_
|
| The headline comes from the BBC so it is natural that they use
| his title. Elsewhere he might be referred to differently.
| mhh__ wrote:
| A knighthood is a seriously different beast to a PhD e.g. Paul
| Graham will never be shown off _alone_ to an audience of
| billions in an olympic opening ceremony.
| ralusek wrote:
| Right. A PhD is proof that you spent years of your life
| theoretically advancing the boundary of knowledge in your
| given field. A knighthood is that an old lady thinks you're
| neat.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| That's a big 'theoretically', and given the government
| subsidies involved, the value involved quite strongly
| depends on the field in question, and is often
| questionable.
| xondono wrote:
| You could also get your Phd by doing useless stuff for 3 to
| 5 years and kissing enough ass.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Knighthoods are actually usually from the government, often
| for being a world leading researcher or sportsman etc.
|
| The fact that the queen or similar taps you on the
| shoulders is an implementation detail
|
| If you want to be petty all you have to do to get a PhD is
| pass a viva - Two slightly bizarre french "physicists" come
| to mind
| Izkata wrote:
| > Knighthoods are actually usually from the government,
| often for being a world leading researcher or sportsman
| etc.
|
| This gets lost in translation. I (in the US) tend to see
| it more like GP does as well.
| pferde wrote:
| In a world where people increasingly share one or two line
| console text output as screenshots, you are bothered by three
| extra characters being character spam? :)
|
| I see it as a harmless thing.
| ehnto wrote:
| Given it's a British article, it seems quite fair to do so.
|
| Just for fun, I'm going to waffle on about your comment a bit!
|
| I think your outlook stems from the "individualist" movement
| and mindset that encourages everyone to see themselves as
| individuals separate from society and it's constructs. As we
| have all become a little bit more disconnected from society
| because of it, and our place within it has become less
| important, we don't see such achievements as being as important
| as they once were. How many people don't even know who their
| town Mayor is?
|
| As well, access to information from the internet means you know
| exactly what this guy did, you know all his achievements
| already, he is elevated above his knighthood to you because you
| care more about his achievements than his place in society.
| Fair enough, and I'd agree!
|
| Imagine instead it's 1890 and you're a foundational part of a
| strong british community, then as graciously as he disembarked
| from the train, Sir Tim Berners Lee has greeted you. A sir! My
| goodness, what must he have done? You don't know, all you know
| is they hold a very important position in the society you're
| also strongly part of, so you can respect that achievement.
| Gosh, how exciting!
| leetcrew wrote:
| I have to say, I don't see the connection between
| individualism and not caring about an individual's
| achievements. in fact, I would draw the exact opposite
| connection. individualism is very much concerned with the
| achievements of individuals, whether or not that individual
| is you.
|
| in any case, I don't think GP is disregarding what the good
| sir has accomplished in life. the quibble seems to be with
| titles specifically. I think egalitarianism would be a better
| word to describe this position.
| ehnto wrote:
| The detail here is that the achievement is acquiring status
| in a society with which individualism doesn't care about
| anymore. The OP cares much more for the real achievements,
| and not much for their title and place in British society
| (society of old at least)
|
| I think you are right about egalitarianism being part of
| the outlook, I think egalitarianism is part of
| individualism though. Everyone is as special as everyone
| else, so your rank in society isn't as important.
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| > Knight of the UK
|
| Technically he's an " Officer of the Order of the British
| Empire", a bit anachronistic for sure :)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The British seem to treasure their anachronisms. "Order of
| the Garter", indeed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter
|
| _(Honi soit qui mal y pense)_
| ralusek wrote:
| I think his title should be "www" rather than "Sir"
| [deleted]
| beaconstudios wrote:
| the biggest digital divide in my mind is the divide between those
| who can program and those who cannot. Those who can't program do
| not have access to the huge power curve that is the ability to
| automate or simplify white-collar work. There's certain to be a
| large gap out there of automatable problems in industries that
| programmers don't tend to care about (PlanGrid being a good
| example of this) that could do with being able to solve their own
| problems.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Sir Tim Berners-Lee says too many young people do not have
| internet access and the digital divide has widened during the
| pandemic.
|
| Given the mental health crisis in young people (especially girls)
| stemming from social media use and ever present landmine of
| writing something inappropriate that will destroy your life later
| ... is that such a bad thing?
| Razengan wrote:
| Preventing people's access to something because of the
| potential downsides to it? You can apply it to any facility.
| That's the same mentality that keeps girls locked up in some
| cultures, to keep them "safe".
| ethbr0 wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of cultures prevent children from buying
| alcohol and firearms on their own.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| False equivalency. We prevent children buying alcohol and
| firearms because they might harm themselves and other
| people not because other people might use those things to
| harm them.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the original comment seemed to be concerned with kids
| harming themselves, but at any rate we prevent kids
| gambling as well which is much closer to the dynamics of
| social media than alcohol or firearms.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Preventing people's access to something because of the
| potential downsides to it?
|
| We're not talking about adults, we're talking about children.
| Yes, at some point they need to be exposed to the internet
| because the internet is a fact of life. I'm just not sold
| that any child (say, under the age of 14) who doesn't have
| access to the internet would somehow be crippled socially,
| culturally or academically. I have yet to see any study that
| suggests limiting access to the internet for children, or
| even no access internet is greatly detrimental. Contrast this
| with the FACT that there is a mental health crisis happening
| right now due social media use, and that there is no
| effective way to segrate internet from social media. So what
| is the argument here? What if there is no safe-level of
| social media use for children? By the way it is not uncommon
| to see children of tech-savvy parents, who may work in the
| industry, outright banning or tightly controlling internet
| access to their children.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This last year, a large part of UK teaching to children of
| all ages has been entirely online. No internet == no
| teaching.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If only someone had invented a way to partition and limit
| access between networks...
| curtainsforus wrote:
| That kids definitely won't be desperate to work around
| and overcome.
|
| But I'm sort-of in favor, to encourage technical skills.
| Set up society so kids have to learn pentesting to see
| boobs, and seven proxies to not get found out and told
| off by the local morality commisar. Instant generational
| competence upgrade.
| macspoofing wrote:
| That needs to be qualified ... greatly.
|
| 1) There is such a thing as homeschool.
|
| 2) Schools are closed because of government mandated
| lockdowns. Not every region or nation decided to close
| their schools. In fact, most didn't. We're not even sure
| if that level of lockdown was good policy. Certainly
| there are credible epidemiologists who vehemently
| disagree with either lockdows or school closures.
|
| 3) The level of learning by remote instruction ... the
| data isn't out yet, but it isn't looking great. Maybe
| it's better than nothing but maybe not by much.
|
| 4) This is a generational pandemic that came suddenly and
| required big government bureaucracies to turn on a dime,
| and the internet to facilitate remote work was the most
| natural choice. But what are you saying, had this
| happened in 1992, no learning would be done? Or as the
| saying goes "necessity is the mother of invention" and we
| would find alternatives. We educated children just fine
| before the internet. In fact I suspect we would come up
| with something better than zoom classes.
|
| 5) But OK. Let's give the internet points for assisting
| with this pandemic. Let's draft laws that in the event of
| global pandemics you leverage the internet for remote
| learning. What is your argument for post-pandemic world?
|
| But overall I vehemently disagree with the notion that:
| "No internet == no teaching."
| dennis_moore wrote:
| To me that sounds as ridiculous as saying: "Given the high
| rates of obesity due to overconsumption of food, is the
| scarcity of food in developing countries such a bad thing?"
| jfk13 wrote:
| Isn't it more like: "Given the high rates of obesity due to
| overconsumption of junk food, is the unchecked availability
| and aggressive marketing of unhealthy, addictive junk food
| really a good thing?"
| scrollaway wrote:
| No.
|
| He said access to the internet, not to Facebook or
| something. You know, that thing that has new wonders of the
| world and incredible educational content such as Wikipedia,
| YouTube, etc.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Yes, the internet has some "wonders", and I appreciate
| them greatly. (If I didn't think it had value, I wouldn't
| have spent the last decade-plus of my life working on
| internet-related software and standards.)
|
| However, it also has a huge amount of toxic garbage, by
| no means restricted to a few "social media" sites.
|
| Whether we can stem the deluge of junk, so that the
| average person's experience of the internet is actually a
| net positive, seems uncertain at this point. I don't
| think we've yet figured out how to manage this.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Food has healthy stuff and unhealthy stuff.
|
| Access to food usually means access to both.
|
| Internet has healthy stuff and unhealthy stuff.
|
| Access to the internet means access to both.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Food is an actual necessity for ... you know ... living.
|
| Access to the internet by children is not.
| scrollaway wrote:
| You're ridiculously off-topic and plain wrong. Internet
| access is in fact necessary for a lot of people. And
| since now in many countries children socialize online,
| not just in real life, it's a necessary aspect of their
| life.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Internet access is in fact necessary for a lot of
| people.
|
| We're talking about children. Internet is a fact of
| modern life and yes, at some point in their development,
| children will be exposed to it ... nobody is denying
| that. I fundamentally disagree however that internet
| access (limited or otherwise) is fundamentally necessary
| for child development, or academic success or education
| in general. That's bullcrap.
|
| >And since now in many countries children socialize
| online, not just in real life, it's a necessary aspect of
| their life.
|
| Yeah. I know. We're in the midst of a mental health
| crisis especially amongst girls brought on by social
| media use. That's not a good thing by the way.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| In what way is "internet access" equivalent to "the
| unchecked availability and aggressive marketing of
| unhealthy, addictive junk food" in this analogy? I'm quite
| sure you've misunderstood the analogy.
| kjakm wrote:
| His point is that young people have had to rely on the internet
| for education most of the past year and that's been difficult
| for less wealthy people.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >His point is that young people have had to rely on the
| internet for education most of the past year and that's been
| difficult for less wealthy people.
|
| I think that needs to be qualified because this kind of
| argumentation tends rely on naive and simplified tropes and
| stereotypes of various class groups.
| Loughla wrote:
| What are you on about? Wealth and income are absolutely
| tied to ease and quality of technology/internet access in
| the home. That's not a stereotype, it's a fact (at least in
| the US).
|
| I'm not trying to be flippant, but do literally any cursory
| search related to income and technology and you'll find
| many, many, many scholarly articles supporting that
| statement.
|
| I have to assume that the lesson holds true for other
| countries, though I do need to admit ignorance to that
| fact.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Wealth and income are absolutely tied to ease and
| quality of technology/internet access in the home.
|
| And you think fiber internet, a MacBook Pro, iPad, and a
| big screen tv equates to better grades? Better learning?
| Better education? When it comes to education a book,
| pencil and paper and a teacher is all you really need.
| Heck, technology may even be a hindrance because of the
| distraction aspect.
|
| There are countries with better educational outcomes even
| amongst households with a fraction of income to their
| American comparables.
|
| It's not income level that's the issue. A child raised in
| a loving but low-income two-parent household will be fine
| growing up in this society. A child growing up in a
| single-parent home, especially where drugs or alcohol is
| an issue and living in a crime-filled, violent
| neighborhood (defund the police!) will be challenged. You
| can't just contrast wealth and not wealth. There are
| other factors that dominate.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How much access do kids have to books and a teacher right
| now if they don't have internet access?
|
| Our library has contactless pickup, so you can still get
| books. But only provided you first go the library website
| over the internet and reserve them.
|
| Our library has a Kindle lending library, provided of
| course that you access the library website to check them
| out and download the book to your ~$100 Kindle device
| over the internet.
| Loughla wrote:
| >fiber internet, a MacBook Pro, iPad, and a big screen tv
|
| No, but I (and this is not meant to be hateful) do
| believe you are out of touch with the reality of this
| situation. It's not about having fiber, it's about having
| anything except dial-up or a cell phone as an option.
| It's not about a macbook pro or an ipad, it's about not
| trying to do your homework on a shared family smartphone.
| The television isn't even a thing, not sure what that has
| to do with anything.
|
| >There are countries with better educational outcomes
| even amongst households with a fraction of income to
| their American comparables.
|
| That is a very bold statement. Please cite.
|
| >It's not income level that's the issue. A child raised
| in a loving but low-income two-parent household will be
| fine growing up in this society.
|
| This is also a SUPER bold statement. Please cite.
|
| >You can't just contrast wealth and not wealth. There are
| other factors that dominate.
|
| And yet, wealth and parent income are consistently shown
| to be the greatest predictor of future achievement, even
| when controlling for other variables such as ethnicity,
| gender, location. My citations:
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/40037226?seq=1
|
| https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J134v11n02_05
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/1519867?seq=1
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00
| 490...
|
| And that's just from 30 seconds of searching while out of
| the office. If I was at the office today, I could cite
| any number of the books and articles on my shelves on
| this subject, as this is literally what I have built my
| career in higher education on.
| mrvenkman wrote:
| I agree.
|
| He is making the point that young people have found it hard
| to learn over the lockdown because of not being able to have
| access to education. He said, "A shocking number of kids in
| the UK don't have meaningful connectivity."
|
| This has nothing to do with the toxicity of social networks.
|
| I believe that connection to educational services should be
| free for all families that can't afford it in the UK.
| mbg721 wrote:
| That can be seen as "poorer people don't have enough access
| to the Internet" or as "the people in charge created too much
| reliance on the Internet". If COVID had happened 30 years
| ago, the risk tolerance would be different and we'd be much
| more reluctant to close schools for an extended period of
| time.
| kjakm wrote:
| Yes, but it didn't happen 30 years ago. We have the ability
| to let kids learn from home and save more lives by doing
| so.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Except for poorer kids where "learning from home" isn't
| working. I think this approach that "we can just stay
| home and do everything online, we're saving lives,
| everything's fine," is generating a lot of unforeseen
| costs to society in the longer term.
| Loughla wrote:
| Okay? By that logic, the entire world has created too much
| reliance on the internet.
|
| We closed school when we had no power for 4 days two years
| ago. To extend your logic, schools have created too much
| reliance on electricity. If this was 100 years ago, the
| buildings would be different and we wouldn't have needed to
| close schools for an extended period. That argument doesn't
| make sense or have a purpose, but it makes just as much
| sense as your argument, to me.
|
| I don't understand what you're trying to say here, I guess
| is what I'm getting at.
| mbg721 wrote:
| What I'm getting at is that to whatever extent poorer
| kids are falling behind academically right now, it isn't
| really for lack of Internet access, but because we made
| policy decisions assuming everybody could learn-from-home
| for months.
| Loughla wrote:
| That's fair, but lack of internet access absolutely is a
| major problem. I still don't understand why you would try
| to remove that from the policy decisions about learning
| from home.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Boys have far higher suicide rates, we should not overlook
| helping them perhaps more.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| Screen addiction, phony social networks, and virtual
| interactions: all leading to the atomization and isolation of
| people from one another. People once had to communicate with each
| other mostly in-person and had to develop an ability to
| socialize. The internet snatched civilization destruction from
| the jaws of progress. I don't see how wishing a double-edged
| sword that cuts off more humanity than it brings is necessarily
| something to eagerly foist and bestow on everyone.
|
| Magical realism and kids inventing their own play games in remote
| or poor villages is what happens when they don't have the
| internet to destroy creativity and distract people from using
| their imaginations.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > The internet snatched civilization destruction from the jaws
| of progress.
|
| Remarkable how someone can post this bad take on the internet
| on the internet forum for the most internet-connected people
| who work on the internet.
|
| I'm old enough to remember when the internet was a liberatory
| technology. Even facebook/twitter were getting praised as
| recently as 2011 for the Arab Spring. And of course, even
| today, "cut off internet access" is a key checklist item for
| repressive governments.
|
| That doesn't mean there aren't severe problems being caused by
| social networks, but we should be specific about what they are
| and targeted in our solutions.
| darepublic wrote:
| Boredom is good for you but it's damn boring
| thatcat wrote:
| Remember also that the arab spring featured some coups, G was
| found to be shaping traffic during some of the re-elections
| to shift voting. Internet is not inherently good or neutral.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Totally agree those actions would be an abuse of power, but
| Google is not the internet. Google is among the most
| powerful entities on the internet. I worry that it wields
| the power of a nation state without the checks and
| obligations that constrain actual nations. But I can
| imagine a post-Google world where the internet persists. I
| think the internet is neutral. We users are not.
| krapp wrote:
| > I worry that it wields the power of a nation state
| without the checks and obligations that constrain actual
| nations.
|
| The power of a nation state is based on its ability to
| maintain and control property, levy taxes and enforce
| compliance with its authority through a monopoly on
| violence. The premise that Google or any web platform has
| anything near the power of a nation state is ridiculous.
|
| Also, Google isn't an independent state, they're a
| corporation and as such are subject to the laws of the
| nation(s) in which they operate. They do what they do
| because governments allow them to, not because they have
| the power to defy governments at will.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| In my opinion, Google is more of a monitoring station for
| governments, [1] as is Facebook [2]. I agree that they do
| not hold the power to directly levy taxes or enforce
| compliance on their own accord. They can probably
| influence voting and other aspects of public perception.
| Netflix has a show called "The Great Hack" [3] that
| starts to go down this rabbit hole as well.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbKxUYl3WSE
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shpiVm1qpnw
|
| [3] - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4736550/
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Internet is not inherently good or neutral.
|
| I agree! But, given that it exists, acting against it is
| hardly neutral either. I would argue - and this is
| deliberately a separate post from the top of thread - that
| many of the problems come from techno-libertarianism
| mistaking neutrality for impartiality, and assuming that a
| technology that doesn't explicitly mention politics is
| apolitical.
|
| The internet allows true information to circumvent censors
| and permit the organisation of dissident groups against
| repression. It _also_ permits the circulation of false or
| misleading information which has the effect of _promoting_
| violence and repression. Trying to distil this down to
| "internet good" or "internet bad" without having a clearly
| articulated politics is silly.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| Do you have a source for Google shaping traffic during some
| re-elections to shift voting? I ask as I have never heard
| this, it's a big deal if true, and sounds like a conspiracy
| theory (nb: how it sounds does not make it false).
| thatcat wrote:
| See @linuxbender's reply, The Great Hack was where I
| heard about it first.
| damagednoob wrote:
| > Technology is not inherently good or neutral.
|
| FTFY
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I grew up on the Internet, made a living with it for a long
| time, and still spend a good portion of time online. Making
| things for the Web is one of my favorite things to do ever.
|
| I was one of the early "adopters" of attached life, often
| neglecting "meatspace" pursuits in its favor.
|
| We have created some huge problems for ourselves and for
| others, and we have to work hard on solving them.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Is the internet really to blame though? It can be a great way
| to meet new people and establish local groups.
|
| I think the bigger issue has been the lengthening of working
| hours (imagine working just 9 to 5), and recently of course,
| the lockdowns.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| It's handing out heroin to anyone who wants it rather than
| handing out clean needles.
| hong_kong wrote:
| My take is that we're still adapting to and experimenting
| with how to live with the internet, given how it
| fundamentally changes so much and the transition is still
| very much ongoing.
|
| Every revolutionary technology probably generated similar
| amounts of hysteria about the end of civilization - think
| about the printing press, industrialization (luddites), TVs,
| etc.
|
| Eventually things should find a happy equilibrium, it just
| doesn't happen immediately. But it's assuming too much to
| think no solution today = no solution forever.
| Super_Jambo wrote:
| "The Internet" isn't to blame. The problem is advert funded
| media & technology and the 'free market' of eyeballs.
|
| Competitive markets; our greatest engine of innovation and
| creation are racing to discover our biggest weaknesses and
| exploit them mercilessly.
|
| This is inevitable -- at its core ad-tech is a market in
| manipulation. There's no possible band-aid fix to square the
| circle: Markets innovate for their customers. Even google
| must constantly optimise to better manipulate the public or
| be beaten by those who will.*
|
| We really need to get out from under this because machine
| learning makes it terrifying. We already have recovering
| addicts targetted to re-ignite their addictions. Eventually
| the technology will be good enough to make addicts of us all.
|
| In my view the answer is to nationalize product discovery.
| Have a free to use government run product register. Let
| industries create open standards for product specifications
| and have real legal penalties for deception. Have product
| reviews with again real penalties for fraud.
|
| Ban all paid promotion of products. Pay anyone selling
| adverts today 90% of last years revenue to run socially
| beneficial nonsense (call your gran, eat some veggies, go for
| a run). Until the whole thing is wound down.
|
| * There's an interesting meta-possibility here where ad-tech
| platforms manipulate and bamboozle their real customers _the
| advertisers_. Facebook lying about video plays for example.
| This is probably the best outcome for society! Naturally the
| legal system punishes it sharply.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > I think the bigger issue has been the lengthening of
| working hours (imagine working just 9 to 5)
|
| I'm pretty surprised to see this framed as if it's
| unrealistic. I have what you'd probably call a "very good"
| job, judging by my comp and the "coolness" of what I work on,
| and I work a hard 10-6. Based on the way people talk about
| it, I used to wonder when I'd hit the point in my career when
| I "arrived" and wasn't able to escape overworking, but I
| eventually accepted that this "common knowledge" is nonsense.
|
| Work/life balance is ultimately a choice. Unless you're in
| dire poverty, you have degrees of freedom to trade off
| between work/life balance, comp, how engaging the work is,
| etc. I have a friend who makes 20% more than me, has 100x
| worse WLB and working environment, and has a less interesting
| job. I'm 100% sure I don't want his job... But I'm reasonably
| sure he wouldn't want mine (he's a workaholic and likes money
| a lot more than I do).
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Is the internet really to blame though?
|
| You think kids are going to use the internet for homework and
| research?
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| I wonder what the age distribution of porn discovery looks
| like. Back in my day, I had to put-up with one of my
| neighbor friend's dad's Danish spank mags where you
| couldn't see anything due to follicular foliage in the way.
| ehnto wrote:
| I found my first pornography in a makeshift treehouse in
| the middle of a paddock next to a church, the irony was
| lost on a younger me. An almost wholesome experience
| compared to the firehose of pornography available for
| free now.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Reading this felt like listening to an obese, wealthy American
| speaking jealously of a poor Ethiopian's thin physique.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| + Attention atrophy (at a developmental stage, no less)
|
| The major engagement-driven platforms are chasing metrics, to
| the detriment of the future.
|
| Turns out, the world isn't quite as easy or quickly rewarding
| as Cookie Clicker.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| Yep. And then you end up with hunched phone zombies almost
| getting run-over crossing a street because they can't quit
| looking at the next Tinder. When they finally do meet, they
| lack the social skills to do anything, and just camp on their
| phones like that Bansky work.
|
| https://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/262026482406-0-1/s-l1000.jpg
|
| ProTip: if any humans manage to gather in large quantities in
| the future, all phones go into an unplugged microwave.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > if any humans manage to gather in large quantities in the
| future, all phones go into an unplugged microwave.
|
| Or just gently enforce the norm that it's rude to look at
| your phone? I totally get that there are individual people
| who use their phone while socializing (in my experience,
| usually those who are dealing with some intense anxiety at
| the time), but most people understand that it's rude.
|
| Is this just a cultural/class blindspot of mine? Do you
| really encounter social situations of 3+ people where
| everyone is on their phone at dinner?
| indigochill wrote:
| > The internet snatched civilization destruction from the jaws
| of progress.
|
| The _commercialization_ of the internet snatched destruction
| from the jaws of progress.
|
| Once companies realized there was tons of money to be made in
| engagement-by-any-means-necessary, the genie was out of the
| bottle.
|
| But there are still delightful isolated corners of the internet
| filled with brilliant imaginative creative people. Progress is
| still happening, but the mainstream's doing its level best to
| counter it.
| thewarrior wrote:
| This is an OK take that can be discussed on its own merits but
| I'm disappointed that this is top comment on a piece that
| discusses poverty and technology. People who are so poor they
| cannot buy a basic laptop or internet. Perhaps a reflection
| that all of us maybe out of touch.
| Loughla wrote:
| >when they don't have the internet to destroy creativity and
| distract people from using their imaginations.
|
| There is no way that the internet is solely to blame for a
| child's creativity and imagination dying. Think about the
| billions and billions of creative projects on the internet.
|
| I'm afraid that what you've done with that line is sort of
| romanticize some fictional past where kids were kids and men
| were men and women were women. There was always something that
| people tried to blame the death of creativity on - when I was a
| kid it was TV. When my grandfather was a kid, it was reading
| and books.
|
| While I agree that "social" media is destroying many social
| conventions, I absolutely disagree that the internet is to
| blame for killing childhood creativity.
| bin_bash wrote:
| yeah it just looks different. Instead of watercolors they're
| spending more time in minecraft and roblox. Are those worse
| for kids? It's too early to tell but I certainly doubt it.
|
| In my experience kids still love doing watercolors too.
| MaximumYComb wrote:
| My daughter does art daily. She also builds intricate
| cities in Minecraft. It blows my mind how detailed a 7 year
| old could get.
|
| I suspect building in 3D is going to provide some spatial
| benefits that drawing doesn't.
| keiferski wrote:
| You have to view things from a bigger timeline. The Internet is
| only about 25 years old. In the grand span of human history,
| that is _nothing._ It 's so insignificant that making final
| pronouncements about it is really nonsensical.
|
| I always go back to the printing press analogy. It took about
| 50 to 100 years after its invention for serious societal change
| to start happening: The Reformation, Counter-Reformation, birth
| of Protestantism, etc.
|
| Give it time. Networked communication is just getting started.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Proliferation of the Internet is much faster than that of the
| printing press, because vast majority of the population is
| now able to read and write. In the late 1400s, reading books
| was a fringe activity of a few educated people, mostly
| priests.
|
| People under 30 do not remember the world without Internet
| anymore; 25 years is a generation. That said, it is really
| too soon to proclaim any final judgments.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm just saying, Bitcoin barely existed a decade ago.
| YouTube barely existed 15 years ago. Google barely existed
| 20 years ago. A lot has happened in a very short period of
| time. It might take awhile to unravel these things.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| The iPhone isn't even 15 years old. People have cats
| older than that.
| MaximumYComb wrote:
| My work was talking about a 10 year plan yesterday. In
| the back of my mind I couldn't help but realise that the
| majority of the population was just getting smart phones
| 10-11 years ago.
|
| My parents didn't know what WiFi was, internet culture
| was still largely for nerds, etc.
| mercer wrote:
| While I agree with other replies to your comment that the
| internet became prolific/mainstream much faster than the
| printing press, I think your point still stands when looking
| at things from the perspective of a human life or culture.
| We're still the same humans that we were back when things
| perhaps didn't change as rapidly.
|
| Sure, the internet was a lot faster at becoming ubiquitous,
| but humans are still humans. Our society still needs time to
| adapt to internet, because 25 years old, as you point out, is
| really not that much on the scale of a human life or an
| institution or society.
| DSingularity wrote:
| How does the rate of spread of the Internet compare to that
| of the printing press? I think the ubiquity of the internet
| is what makes people comfortable to judge it as if it is
| mature.
| keiferski wrote:
| _By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western
| Europe had already produced more than twenty million
| volumes._
|
| It took roughly 30 or 40 years for the press to be widely
| distributed around Europe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing
| _...
|
| > I think the ubiquity of the internet is what makes people
| comfortable to judge it as if it is mature.
|
| Technology isn't going to stay exactly the same
| indefinitely. It just seems like a complete lack of
| imagination about the future to me.
| scaladev wrote:
| Such an easy thing to say from a privileged position in
| (probably) the richest country on Earth. I was lucky enough to
| be born in one of those "remote locations", which you could not
| find on the map if your life depended on it. The internet
| connection I now have _enables_ my creativity, however limited.
| It allows me to learn and use technologies I wouldn't even know
| existed. I'd rather off myself than go back to ye olden times
| when the only thing I had to entertain myself was a limited
| collection of 40-year old books from a local library.
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| > The internet connection I now have _enables_ my creativity,
| however limited. It allows me to learn and use technologies I
| wouldn't even know existed
|
| 100% agree. The internet provides knowledge right at your
| fingertips. It is amazing and sad at the same time that most
| people don't take full advantage of this.
|
| > I'd rather off myself than go back to ye olden times
|
| However, I have 99.999% confidence that you or most of us
| wouldn't do this. Human beings are extremely adaptable.
| sremani wrote:
| Internet makes the smart smarter and the dumb dumber. Its an
| amplifier. Same thing with Twitter, you can find amazing
| independent content or you can end up with commenting and
| dunking the outrage story of the day.
| yabudemada wrote:
| This is a mis-understanding of the OP. The internet is
| inherently a very __useful__ tool. The problem is that
| social-media companies have turned the need for social
| interaction into a crack-like addiction (by design) where
| peoples attention-spans are being sold piecemeal.
|
| Social media is often a junk-food version of social
| interactions designed to sell ads to people. This leads to
| short attention spans and social anxieties. How many dinner
| tables have you sat at where couples sit there on their
| phones, and scarcely talk? This seems commonplace now...
| ppf wrote:
| Absolutely perfect take. We are truly atomized and isolated,
| thanks to tech (and especially "social tech"). I know this may
| be controversial, but our (IMHO) huge over-reaction to Covid is
| just an indicator of the damage that has already been done.
|
| As a side note, I have taken this opportunity recently to quit
| every social media account, and give up my smartphone.
| brisad wrote:
| Calling it a basic right, but also having it include DRM, that's
| a really messed up power balance.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Especially when Tim pushed for adoption of said DRM. A true
| hero.
| YuccaGloriosa wrote:
| Is it me or is this article just trying to leverage TLB's status
| to justify the extortionate expense of high speed rural internet.
| Loughla wrote:
| We run power and water to rural areas, even though it's
| incredibly expensive compared to urban areas.
| [deleted]
| eric4smith wrote:
| Digital divide is not even so much of a problem as social media
| overuse.
|
| Let's say, and why not, that you're a pretty girl living in a
| small village on a farm.
|
| You start to dabble on Instagram and at first post photos or
| horses, veggies growing, campfires - you know, normal farm stuff.
|
| A couple young farmers from the community has they eyes on you.
| They tout the size of their farms and how you can have beautiful
| children together.
|
| But one day, accidentally, you post a photo on Instagram of
| yourself that's slightly revealing, you felt a bit daring that
| day.
|
| Now you got 15,000 likes. Normally you'd get maybe 2 likes for
| anything else.
|
| You get a little more daring. Now you've posted more like the
| "daring" photo and in the space of a couple of months, without
| even noticing, you've gained 120,000 followers.
|
| You fear looking at your DM. You have to turn off Instagram
| notifications.
|
| You start posting on tiktok. Even more followers because, video.
|
| In total you're over 220,000 followers. Men contacting you every
| day.
|
| Now those farm boys with the promise of marriage look pretty
| lame.
|
| People start sending you money. Cash app. PayPal. Venmo.
|
| Secretly, you're making more money than your parents.
|
| Another girl online mentioned lonely-fans. You're considering
| it...
|
| Current social media has destroyed normal relationships.
| Destroyed remote communities.
|
| It's 10,000x worse than any "digital divide".
|
| There's good or bad in everything - but this is one of the
| indisputably bad things that has happened to the world in the
| last 10 years.
| bobbydroptables wrote:
| How is it undisputably bad? This woman now has access to higher
| quality men around the world instead of a random farmer without
| much to offer (no offense to the random farmers in the
| audience).
|
| She now has the option to leave a dead end rural lifestyle is
| she chooses. And if she's into the dead end rural life (insert
| whatever dumb american tropes we have that idealize wasteful
| rural modes of living), she won't find rich, high flying city
| guys very appealing and it's all a wash. Or maybe she wants to
| move to a different dead end rural community with a better
| match than the random farmer she happened to be born next to.
| Now she can do that on farmers only.
|
| You could say some good and some bad (and of course very bad
| for the random farmer whose main reproductive strategy was
| apparently counting on his mate not realizing he's not a catch
| and there are much better options), but you can't say it's only
| bad.
|
| Ideally, none of these people reproduce at all since we already
| have plenty of humans. Hopefully the shift to digital
| relationships can greatly reduce our headcount in the long run.
| This trend seems well underway already thankfully.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > dead end rural lifestyle
|
| Sorry, but who's growing your food?
| bobbydroptables wrote:
| Machines, immigrant laborers and huge agribusinesses,
| mostly. I don't engage in the trendy family farm fad if
| that's what you're asking.
|
| More to the point, are you implying that it wouldn't be
| possible for a dead end community to grow food? If so, why?
| Seems like a bizarre argument but I'll bite.
| eric4smith wrote:
| So... this "dead end rural lifestyle" that feeds the world
| now will be populated by young men only running the machines
| abd tending the crops and animals by themselves.
|
| Hmmmm...
|
| Now let's extrapolate that to every country. Because that's
| what social media did.
|
| That example was taken from outside the United States. It's
| only worse inside North America now.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Well unless you force women back into coverture rural girls
| are going do like a couple of my friends, leave and never
| look back.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| >This trend seems well underway already thankfully
|
| On average, for now, yes. Not across the entire national
| population, though. We're just selecting for the sorts of
| people who thrive (reproductively/evolutionarily speaking) in
| the modern high competition/low scarcity environment. Because
| this environment is very different from the environment, say,
| 200 years ago, people that are more fit to the current
| environment are relatively rare now- which is why you see
| trends pointing towards overall population decline- but those
| small subgroups are there, quietly reproducing at >2.1
| children per woman. As such, over time, they'll come to make
| up the majority of the population, as the relatively non-
| competitive phenotypes numerically stagnate or dwindle.
|
| Ironically, the prediliction to be convinced of viewpoints
| like your own (given things like personality and political
| tendency have a significant hereditary component) is one of
| the things likely to be selected against!
|
| The future is a dwindling relative population of midwit
| liberals, lots of live-fast die-young r-selection chads, and
| one 150 IQ guy who made a billion clones of himself.
| idreyn wrote:
| It is maybe not such a bad thing that now and again a woman
| secures the financial independence she needs to look beyond the
| life she was born into in her tiny rural community.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| The new mental slavery comes in guise of emancipation.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Putting aside your ridiculous stereotypes; it's a bad thing
| becaauuuuse... What?
|
| Are you one of those people who get super scared when women are
| too independent or make more money than you?
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