[HN Gopher] Digitopia is ruining our lives
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Digitopia is ruining our lives
Author : deeshee
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-02-04 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (deeshee.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (deeshee.io)
| deeshee wrote:
| Hey HN,
|
| I, as many of you, work in tech. And the last 3 years were
| mentally horrible. The constant information bombardment, working
| remotely and rarely leaving the apartment, isolation, and so on
| and so forth, have left me scarred.
|
| If anyone feels the same way, I hope that the pieces I'm shipping
| are helpful as I truly want to help a million people on
| overcoming the 21st century pandemic.
|
| For those who are curious, I describe Digitopia as: an idealized
| but ultimately isolating and detached state induced by excessive
| digital interaction.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Digiqatsi, even.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Cue the Philip Glass soundtrack! _clouds start to whizz by_
| neon_electro wrote:
| Please remember that your experience discovering you were not
| suffering from ADHD is not shared by all your readers.
|
| I have only been diagnosed after 30+ years of guilt and shame
| related to procrastination and other behaviors associated with
| ADHD.
|
| Please recognize some of your readers actually suffer from
| this.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I've decided to combine the words "Digital" and "dystopia" to
| describe the hole I've found myself in.
|
| "Digital" and "Utopia" also combine to make "Digitopia". (Maybe
| my most HN comment yet.)
| deeshee wrote:
| Yep, that's true. I can only give a philosophical reply to
| this; we feel as we are in an utopia when utilizing tech to
| distract us from the negative thoughts/feelings that we are
| experiencing!
| dreamworld wrote:
| Why not digistopia? (digi-topia to me really sounds like
| digital utopia, which I'm all for... erm, actually I think a
| real utopia needs to acknowledge the real world, so it can't
| be fully digital)
| cobalt wrote:
| dygitopia works better I'd think
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Digiclysm.
| kazinator wrote:
| I also thought only of _utopia_.
|
| _dystopia_ is a relatively recent derivative of _utopia_.
|
| An individual can suffer in the middle of an utopia.
| StopTheTechies wrote:
| What is wrong with the tried-and-true "alienation"? This seems
| like a continuation of trends that were happening long before
| computers came around.
| deeshee wrote:
| What do you mean by "tried-and-true alienation"?
| hklijlyh wrote:
| Trying to start a flame war?
| jjjjj55555 wrote:
| I'm not the person you asked, but alienation was a major
| theme for early 20th century sociologists who studied the
| ugly effects of urbanization in those days.
|
| Alienation means the breakdown of social ties and the
| fragmentation of identity. Durkheim published theories on
| this stuff well over 100 years ago. He also studied suicide.
|
| I agree that we're probably seeing a continuation of trends
| that began long ago and that are tied in with capitalism,
| urbanization, and the decline of religion.
| StopTheTechies wrote:
| I mean it in the sense that Marks used it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
|
| I mean this not to imply a structural sense of our society,
| only the shock that his prediction is insanely accurate given
| the time and technology separating us.
| polotics wrote:
| Good idea! It then follows that we are looking at CAA: Computer
| Assisted Alienation , or maybe Optimized Alienation, or
| Automated...?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Being present - Being in the Digitopian state usually means
| living on autopilot. Grabbing one thing after the other, trying
| to get through the day, distracting yourself at any negative
| emotion you face.
|
| Yes, I've become aware that I am quite disconnected from "living
| in the moment" in a way that I was not when I was younger, a
| teenager.
|
| I had begun to think that it was a result of getting older,
| taking on more responsibility (or just being more responsible, ha
| ha).
|
| Losing my minimum wage job when I was in my teens, early 20's was
| not a huge deal. No mortgage but I did have rent -- but if I
| couldn't make that there was probably a friend's mom's basement.
|
| No kids then. No concerns about my health then. Friends to hang
| out with, commiserate with, bounce your problems off of.
|
| It may still be "just growing up" but I suspect the degree to
| which I have supplanted the "running around" I did when I was
| young with browsing may be a big factor.
|
| The author suggest meditation, walking, showering. I've showered
| daily since I was a teenager, started running daily (now walking)
| a decade ago.
|
| Like flossing, meditation has come and gone with me. Perhaps I
| should do it regularly (and floss regularly).
|
| Road trips seem to help me get back in touch with The Moment. No
| distractions...
|
| Last Fall a high school friend and I rode the "Katy Trail" on our
| bikes for 6 days. Hauled camping gear, tents, stoves, water,
| food... It sucked right up until the moment we finished -- and
| now I can't wait to do it again.
|
| Reflecting on it, I think it recharged my soul and brought me
| back into The Moment for almost a week stretch.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| We do need long vacations to recover from modern day digitopia.
| Living in the US though doesn't confer much such a priviledge.
| With an average of 2 weeks of vacation per year I don't think
| it's enough to have enough escape time to fully recover from it
| tpm wrote:
| > Last Fall a high school friend and I rode the "Katy Trail" on
| our bikes for 6 days. Hauled camping gear, tents, stoves,
| water, food... It sucked right up until the moment we finished
| -- and now I can't wait to do it again.
|
| I don't even need to ride a trail for days, just spending more
| than an hour on the bike outside is plenty to return me to the
| 'right' state.
| thimp wrote:
| If you are going to do a context switch of this nature it's
| best to do something random rather than routine. Sometimes the
| routine is the problem. Going for a walk every day may become a
| chore during winter but you feel obliged to do it because you
| feel like you should because of the routine you have developed.
| This is slave to the same thinking.
|
| The only bit of advice I can give is spend more time with
| actual people in real life. That doesn't necessarily mean close
| friends, just anyone you can connect with. Trade stories,
| ideas, experiences and importantly time with people. Be
| spontaneous and do things well outside your comfort zone.
|
| Importantly though, turning off notifications and choosing when
| you interact with technology, not the other way round, is
| important.
| Animats wrote:
| Re-invention of wheel. See "Internet addiction disorder".[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder
| blackhole wrote:
| It's interesting that, every time an article comes up like this,
| I wonder why I never seem to experience the same kind of digital
| addiction or negative feelings that other people do - and then it
| turns out I'm already doing almost everything the article
| suggests for "unplugging". I've taken an hour long walk every
| single day for the past 15 years, and shower, and make sure I'm
| not getting overwhelmed with notifications. Yet, I feel no desire
| to interact with the physical world. I prefer being online,
| perhaps because I know how to handle it properly. I wonder how
| much of our misery is caused by poor user-experience defaults
| that people don't think to change (like always-on notifications).
| We get used to a corporate-designed hellscape and think that's
| the only way to experience a digital existence.
| deeshee wrote:
| I'm happy to see that you are able to strike a good balance
| between those two worlds and, in an ideal world, that should be
| the ideal outcome, rather than going back into the stone age.
| makk wrote:
| > perhaps because I know how to handle it properly
|
| A subset of people seem to share this sentiment. From their
| perspective, the rest of us are somehow just doing it wrong
| when it comes to being online. What they never seem to have,
| however, is a clear understanding of what it's like to be on
| the other side.
|
| A little vignette: I've been entirely off of social media for
| about 10 years, as in no accounts. Very recently, however, a
| friend of mine went on a trip and said the best way to follow
| along was on Instagram. So, I created an account and followed
| just that person and one other close friend, who is a fan of
| posting pics. Straight away, I was bombarded with an endless
| repeat of advertisements in the feed for some kind of colon
| cleansing technique. I'm unaware of any problems with my colon,
| so just ignore it, right? It's not that easy. Now, I have ideas
| about colon difficulties implanted in my brain. And it's now
| crossed your mind, too.
|
| Some major forms of digital media insert themselves between me
| and my friends, rather than simply facilitating communication.
| In doing so, they hijack the power of human relationships.
|
| It bends people. I'm not sure how else to say it. From where I
| sit, progress likely means giving up on maximalist capitalism
| and developing online stuff that strikes a balance between
| everyone needing to make a living and everyone needing to be
| cared for as humans.
| thimp wrote:
| Technology is just a delivery mechanism which can be used for
| good or bad interactions. The problem is some technology is
| optimised for delivering the bad interactions because it
| benefits the technology vendor. Use technology that you control
| and decide when to interact with.
|
| What I see is a lot of people saying on the one hand "I want my
| privacy and to be left alone" then hiring a vendor that is
| motivated to take your data and bug the shit out of you because
| it's cheaper and subsidised by this poor behaviour. On top of
| that they then install apps which damage multiply that.
|
| Incidentally on notifications all my kit is set on do not
| disturb all the time apart from alarms when I need to get up.
| teekert wrote:
| I sounds recognizable and also insightful and as such perhaps the
| beginnings of a research question and hypothesis... I'd advice
| against making it more than that for now. We need real research,
| scientific recommendations. Something real. Otherwise it could
| just be a reflection of the human state as it always was. Similar
| to blogs claiming: "Stuff is not fun anymore, when I was
| young..." Yeah that's it, you're now old and you're not having
| fun anymore. It says nothing about the world.
| deeshee wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. But could you elaborate a bit? Are you
| interested in pieces that lay on the scientific-side of things
| or personal stories?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It is not Digitopia, it is Internet Addiction Disorder.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder
| bowsamic wrote:
| Ironically an article that is perfectly indicative of the very
| problems it is pointing out
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Frequency: 30-60 minutes a day
|
| 30-60 minutes to take a shower?!
| codetrotter wrote:
| It's nice to shower for a while.
|
| But speaking of this specific line from the text, "frequency"
| would be "daily", and the amount of time probably "duration" so
| this could perhaps be more exactly expressed as:
|
| > Frequency and duration: 30-70 minutes a day
|
| (Yes. Opposite order so not quite perfect either, heh.)
| smcameron wrote:
| > just enter the shower and turn the water on.
|
| Reverse this, turn the water on, let it warm up, then enter the
| shower.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Recently, as an experiment, I've begun compartmentalizing my
| digital tools.
|
| I've set up different system accounts for different tasks, then I
| configured each account with its own privoxy proxy that blocks
| websites that are not related to that task. The proxies are there
| basically as a reminder, since a lot of these tabs tend to open
| without thinking of it.
|
| So for example, on my work account, I can't use social media and
| news; on my social media account, I can't access github, access
| dashboards, or check my mail. Phone's on the work privoxy too.
|
| The idea being that distracted context-switching, e.g. opening a
| hacker news tab any time there's a moment's pause in what you're
| doing, a moment of frustration, of boredom, any negative motion;
| that this is a major part of the problem.
|
| This doesn't prevent me from checking up on social media (I'm
| doing it right now!), but it does mean I can't do so while
| supposedly working. To use social media, I need to log off the
| work account, closing anything I'm doing, and log into a
| different user. That's a lot of friction, and as a result, is
| something I do maybe once or twice a day for ten to fiteen
| minutes. I usually don't really find much to engage with and then
| log off.
|
| I do find myself needing to make active choices a lot more. Like
| if I find I don't know what to do next, I need to decide on
| something. I can't just default to grabbing my phone and start
| cycling through the usual tabs. It's taken a while to get used to
| reading these moments as cues for getting off my ass and doing
| something, but it's also incredibly impactful.
|
| The critical part of the regimen is that it does not have many of
| the drawbacks you get with going offline completely (or using a
| dumbphone), where you can't park your car because you need an app
| for that, or people try to get ahold of you and messenger isn't
| working on your brick.
| skydhash wrote:
| That's almost the same strategy I used to get a better
| work/life balance. I created a new user account on my computer
| and then connecting to services I used for work on it.
| Switching accounts is a pain (I logged off after using one), so
| that added enough friction for me. Similar things with social
| media. I allowed myself to use them, but only through a private
| tabs. It reduced the urge to visit them.
| eggplantemoji69 wrote:
| I generally agree with the defined problem, but when a
| prescription is provided then that becomes the new goal rather
| than the initial desired outcome (no more negative effects of
| digitopia). Your progress is compared against your adherence to
| the protocol firstly, then the initial desired outcome secondly.
|
| With that being said, to be a bit hypocritical, and with the
| disclaimer that this is non-exhaustive and different things work
| for different people, the protocol that has worked for me is as
| follows:
|
| Delete all social media
|
| Meditate hour a day
|
| Gym (weights, cardio) 5x a week
|
| Good sleep
|
| Proper diet and supplementation
|
| Have job that pays good enough and be good at it
|
| Live well below my means and take on no debt
|
| I think once you remove basically everything, and you've listened
| and quieted all of your thoughts and sophisticated ape urges, you
| come to understand things truthfully, and wisdom + stoicism +
| peace naturally ensues.
| wuuak wrote:
| I think there's like a confusion here, where people think tech is
| the direct cause of many of these symptoms. In reality, I think
| that pervasive tech _can_ be _a_ cause of depression, but it 's
| the depression itself that in turn wreaks havoc on your brain and
| produces the myriad other symptoms mentioned.
|
| Not being able to concentrate, escapism (fixation on superficial
| things/people, buying things online, imagining some perfect life
| you deserve to be living), sleep/restfulness disturbance (do you
| stay up to all hours and then frustratingly wake up early anyway?
| how about get in a solid 8 hours but wake up feeling like
| dogshit?)
|
| That's not tech overdose, that's depression.
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