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[weenog]

I find the best way to use a smartphone for additional smarts is to treat it like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, not an auxiliary brain.  Throw a question at google or wikipedia, skim the salient points, and get moving.  And don't forget your towel.

[Darkmere]

There was a book put out some time ago by Alvin Toffler called Future Shock that covered the information overload quite well. The basic gist of it was: Back In The Day people had limited options for basically anything. There was a corner store you went to, a gas station you knew, your neighbors were familiar because in the winter you had to rely on them and they on you, and all that. As communication and transportation effectively shrank the world, more and more options started show up...

Now instead of the corner store you can go to any wal-mart, k-mart, minit-mart, or strip mall and get a lot of the same crap, and your food choices have expanded from corner market and neighbor's chickens to (pick any restaurant chain) and so on and so on. The overload of options and lack of time forces people to categorize everyone else as "service terminals" instead of being able to take the time and know them as people. It becomes a defense mechanism and spreads to all social interactions in some degree... but Alvin had no idea about Twatter and Farcebook fostering generations of selfish oversharers who simply multiply the problem, filling most of our "information processing time" (wasn't the word, I forget how he put it) with completely worthless non-information.

[Neonivek]

Edit: I think my post would make the topic creator cry... I'll save it somewhere... but I don't think I am ready for the responsibility if it puts anyone under emotional distress.

Mostly it was saying that the TC is incorrect in his assumption.

[Jelle]

Call me a utalitarian, but I find it silly to blame the technological advancements in communication technology for the degredation of social interaction. Instead of demonizing the tools, I think it far more meaningful to focus on the basic human nature at the root of the problem. I think we, as a species, are sufficiently capable of metacognition to see that we have created a world for ourselves where the base instincts that govern our social behavior are becoming incompatible, disfunctional, out of context of the primal world that created them in the first place.

In fact, I'd argue that social decay is an invetiability when the way we think in terms of social interaction is constant yet population ever increasing. Every social network, for all social animals, are doomed to become nothing but an echo chamber, the advancement of communication technology only expedites this. Shit just wasn't made to scale.

I'm always reminded of Calhoun's behavioral sink on this topic. Sadly I don't share his optimism that we, as a species, can adapt to the changes we've brought on. I am ever the pessimist.


Bluh, I'm probably overdoing it. 

[Darkmere]

Eh, I think the tools are more of a symptom that has morphed into a cause. There's plenty of legitimate uses for twitter and facebook and whatever, but there's some compulsion that makes people want to use them as the end goal, rather than a means. Instead of confronting a relationship problem, just send them a breakup text and change your relationship status! Instead of volunteering at the local food bank, just Like it on facebook! Some people's inability to cope with reality has lead to those tools being created, which led to others learning they don't have to cope with reality.

I still say they greatly magnify the noise ratio on everyday communications, though, making the information filtering worse, regardless of why it's a phenomenon.

[Tyg13]

Edit: I think my post would make the topic creator cry... I'll save it somewhere... but I don't think I am ready for the responsibility if it puts anyone under emotional distress.

Mostly it was saying that the TC is incorrect in his assumption.

Go head and post it, I've got thick skin. The general opinion of this forum seems to be that I'm wrong in my assumption anyways, so it's not like I haven't heard it before. If I can't learn to take criticism, no matter how harsh, then I'll never improve my faulty reasoning.

[Eagleon]

Call me a utalitarian, but I find it silly to blame the technological advancements in communication technology for the degredation of social interaction. Instead of demonizing the tools, I think it far more meaningful to focus on the basic human nature at the root of the problem. I think we, as a species, are sufficiently capable of metacognition to see that we have created a world for ourselves where the base instincts that govern our social behavior are becoming incompatible, disfunctional, out of context of the primal world that created them in the first place.

Facebook isn't exactly high-volume sensory interaction, but it's marketed heavily as a replacement, and the idea appeals to our sensibilities. We know we can empathize with people 'online' - that isn't anything special, we do it without the internet all the time by thinking about people. So in comes social media, which is supposed to connect us. It has our friend's name, right there, and a picture of him posing with his widget! We've known him since we were in Highschool! That's our friend!

But all we get from him is meme images. He doesn't care about us. Or maybe he wants meme images back. Post meme images!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You mention Calhoun. Yes, we're animals, with weird squishy biological animal motivations that interact to form our behavior and societies. That doesn't mean we can't understand each other - we're all the same species, after all, and we at least know ourselves. We also aren't mice, which is probably the most salient rebuttal to his experiments. Mice don't use tools. A tool, improperly used, can mess with our ability to understand each other. Hell, a word improperly spoken can mess with our ability to understand each other. We strategize from birth methods to communicate with our parents that we need food or comfort - you could teach a baby that the way to get fed is to do endless baby-acrobatics, and they'd do it, because it's now their word for 'hungry'.

Sometimes those strategies fail. There are a lot of circles where the only option is belonging and actively participating in a social network - you might as well be invisible if you don't. We've never had anything like that before - it's the equivalent of having an entire culture run by passing letters under semiopaque plexiglass boxes.

You can't touch someone through Facebook. At the same time, can you blame people for expecting that level of sensual connection from a block of text on a screen? It's a very easy trap to fall into, because the convenience of not having to make a trip to their house would honestly be pretty nice if it worked. No, really, why not? Telesex? Sign me up! But it just isn't as good as it's been hyped and proselytized as, and that is dangerous. Think about if Colt marketed their guns for surgery. Social bonds keep us from collapsing into despair - if we're using shitty tools to make them, we're going to have, on average, more people with social problems.

I have a few friends that've let it become their soul source of empathy for 'the human race' (they say this as if they weren't human, complete sense is made!), and it isn't pretty. I don't think it's our only problem, but I definitely don't think it's helping matters.

[PkGamer]

You know what I hate?When a person , no matter who comes up to me and makes up the most ridiculous argument.And the person is like all proud then like, look I made the best argument ever and I got this smart person baffled?Well how are you supposed to answer something like: Just because it is better or I never touched it or sent the email or whatever if it's clear the person did?

[Vector]

I'd give you some advice if I could figure out what you were trying to ask =/

[Xazo-Tak]

My experience with anti-intellectualism?
Both my parents, in different ways.

[kaenneth]

You know what I hate?When a person , no matter who comes up to me and makes up the most ridiculous argument.And the person is like all proud then like, look I made the best argument ever and I got this smart person baffled?Well how are you supposed to answer something like: Just because it is better or I never touched it or sent the email or whatever if it's clear the person did?

If warm air rises, why is it colder at higher altitudes? Therefore global warming isn't happening.

[Korbac]

Bread goes in, toast comes out

Can't explain that!