this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Is your point limiting technological advancement always results in hindering the opportunity for good?
If so, no, I haven't. Unless you define good as anything that someone could find value in.
Maybe what you're missing is an example.
Tim and Susie live right next to each other and have windows facing each other. Tim and Susie are 6. They talk everyday over a tin can and string. Susie had the idea from seeing it in a comic book and Tim went home and made the tin can string telephone. The best part of their day is meeting up at the window and yelling to each other as each talk into a tin can. One day Tim's absentee father stops by for a visit and sees Tim and Susie preform their ritual. Tim's dad runs to the store and gets them a pair of walky talkies.
"Much better" Tim's dad exclaims while throwing Tim's tin cans in the trash. Tim and Susie think the walky talkies are neat and they run around for a day hiding behind bushes and seeing if they can find each other. Without the tin cans though they don't have a reason to meet at the window everyday so they quickly forget why they ever had the ritual in the first place. Eventually ones batteries dies and it doesn't even matter because they have long forgot their fun game.
Tell me. How did the tin cans cripple the chance for good?
Who does Tim's father represent? What does him throwing the tin cans in the trash represent? How does this analogy represent the topic we're discussing?
If the tin cans are old but sufficient technology, then the proper analogy would see Tim and Susie discarding the tin cans themselves voluntarily because the walkie talkies do what they do but better. Maybe there are drawbacks too, but Tim and Susie made their choice. Maybe Jack and Jill down the street like the intimacy of tin cans better and decide not to get walkie talkies, that is also their choice.
Maybe the window ritual is socially beneficial, but who enforces that, and how? Does Jack's mom get walkie talkies banned? Now what about all the emergency responders who used walkie talkies to save lives? Just banned for children? Who decides who qualifies as a child, and what about the children in the country who's houses are too far apart for tin cans?
I'm not saying there are no benefits to simpler options, and obviously every person has the freedom to use the simplest technologies they wish, but we're having a conversation about society not individual choice . I'm saying that there's no practical way to incentivize or force them at a societal scale. Unless you can think of one which isn't just Big Brother censoring the Internet, in which case I'm all ears.
Just answer the question. Did Tim's tin can stop the world from spinning? Did it have purpose? Was its replacement adequate?
Tim's dad represents Tim's dad. Not everything is an analogy. Of course we can extrapolate it but I'm trying in the most simplest terms possible to make you see my point.
If it's not an analogy then... yes, the world continues spinning if kids talk with tin cans? I don't see what any of this has to do with the topic of ~~the societal effects of widespread use of algorithm-driven social media platforms.~~ restraint with regards to the Internet?
Edit: got this conversation confused with a similar one. My bad
.... right, because that is what I was talking about in the first place. Societital effects of widespread use of algorithm-driven social media platforms. Pretty impossible w/ you.
That's on me, I'm also having an extremely similar conversation with someone else specifically about that
What you did say was:
So what I meant to say In my last comment was:
To spell it out again, not everything has to be done on the internet. Many people go on thinking 'out with the old in with the new' without ever considering scope and practicality. If you suddenly became manager of an office building with a complete pneumatic tube system your first instinct might be to gut the pneumatic tubes and do everything over email. That's an OK thought but should that really be your first instinct? Most people wouldn't even understand how pneumatic tubes work in the first place. Wouldn't it be more prudent to to understand what the tubes are there for. Why they've lasted 60+ years. If the building is already wired with ethernet and has internet connection what should it matter if you use both keeping the tubes in place to continue their purpose?
Okay, sure? That was always allowed. Again, "People should behave differently than they do" without any proposed method of bringing about whatever "differently" is, is just impotent platitude. That's why I keep reiterating "incentivize or force". Without one of those two pressures, people will continue to make individual decisions about their behavior, including which things they choose to do on the Internet, like they have been doing the whole time. Some will choose to do things on the Internet which can be done sufficiently other ways, others will choose to use simpler technologies.
When you start talking about how restraint would be advantageous, without any concept of how to incentivize or force said restraint, you're just becoming old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg.
When you start talking about how restraint would be advantageous, without any concept of how to incentivize or force said restraint, you’re just becoming old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg.I would challenge that. Say tomorrow I invented the eat-o-matic 5000 a top of the line eating utensil. Built in wifi, self cleaning, tracks how much food your eat, easy to manufacture, biodegradable, comes with a native streaming service that allows you to stream your eating experience to friends and family, affordable, etc.
Do you think in everyone would throw away their forks and knifes immediately and start using the eat-o-matic 5000? How about in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years?
Maybe the eat-o-matic is that good. I tend to believe forks and knives wouldn't go anywhere, though. I also know forks and knives are already not the only technology that exists and the fact that one utensil isn't ubiquitous proves that incentives and force are not the only factors at play.
I feel like a broken record:
Yes, obviously, people are allowed to make their own choices. Not using the flashiest new toys and services is allowed. Acknowledging that fact is not useful. You telling people what they should and shouldn't do is not going to have a societal effect.
If you would like to propose some regulatory or incentive policy to nudge people toward simpler technologies, then that is a useful conversation. But just stating your opinion? Old man yells at cloud.
So, all this just to say I shouldn't have an opinion?
I'm not saying that your opinion shouldn't exist, but some restraint would be advantageous.
Unless you think that statement is overly reductive, simplifying a nuanced subject to a flippant, self-indulgent remark that accomplishes nothing but ego-stroking
Some opinions provide valuable hypotheses which can promote thoughtful discussion regardless of their validity, like "A value-added tax would benefit the working class". Some opinions are hollow and useless, and serve only to make the commenter feel smugly clever for stating the obvious, like "Israelis and Palestinians should just get along".
Endless promotion of the latter is probably one of the most unnecessary uses of the Internet, muttering to oneself alone at home is a sufficient technology for that purpose.
Sounds like an opinion to me. Of course your opinion is more valid because you said it. Since you would never be a hypocrit incapable of self reflection. Certainly, at the very least, would be able to detect sarcasm. If by chance you came across it.
Let me know if you need me to explain it because I know how hard it is for you to comprehend simple ideas.
The irony.
Two can play
Flinch much?
So then you agree?