On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction | Hacker News Reader

On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

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45 pointsprostoalex28 comments

If you read articles from previous decades about the previous decades before them, I think you will find yourself a Crawford after Crawford. Woody Allen in Midnight in Paris nailed this. Statements like "People used to talk to each other", "People used to meet up and enjoy company", "People used to know real skills and critical thinking", are all false. This generation might stare and screens all day, but communication is easier than ever and people are communicating. People may not know how to be motorcycle mechanics, but they know how to develop programs, build electric drives etc... I strongly believe we have a capable and driven society, and the people are not "drunk on there screens".

This decade brings something new, communication is mostly done through devices, this wasn't possible before and this type of communication has a very narrow channel and a lot of information like body gestures, eye contact etc are lost.

I communicate way more face to face rather than through devices. Are you sure you don't do that as well?

And communication through phones for hours a day was normal for most people in the 90s too. Even in the 50s.

I think the difference is, when you called someone in the 90s to ask to say borrow a cup of sugar:

  Call neighbor. 1 minute of small talk
  Ask the question
  Get answer
  more small talk.
  Say goodbye.

Today it would be (via txt):

  A: can i borrow a c of sugar?
  B: y. come over
  A: k

A lot of communication happens through text messages which dramatically reduces the number of words you say to another human being.

I think what is more damaging is that most people can solve their own problems without ever having to rely on neighbors or even family. Cell phones, uber, and other services remove the need to ask for help. You don't really ask people for directions, ask the time, find out how to do something.

Yes. people still talk to neighbors, family, friends, etc. But it happens much less and in much different contexts. For instance the vast majority of people would not call their neighbor to check on their kids because they are stuck in a storm.

I wouldn't say it's bad, it's just different.

The text vs. call is an example of technology removing obstacles and inefficiencies. In your example, both of the conversations lead to people meeting face-to-face, but only one of them could be done while on a bus, or in between work meetings. Text-based communication enabled us to talk in situations when it wasn't possible before. I fondly remember late-night IM talks with my friends when I was in high-school. This is not something we could do on the phone, both because of stupidly high costs and because other people in our houses were sleeping.

RE most people solving their own problems, I think that's a) good, and b) not what actually happens. Good, because it means less time wasted for everyone in aggregate; not what really happens, because the world is getting more complicated and people delegate more and more understanding to third parties. Also, that we can solve some problems on our own doesn't mean there aren't other, more complicated problems - for help with which we end up calling the family or friends after all.

The world is fine, at least in this aspect.

Why wouldn't you smalltalk when you actually get over there to get the sugar?

Also, if you're arguing these devices reduce smalltalk, I'm not so sure of that. If anything, I'm more likely to idly chat to someone on IM due to increased opportunity to do so. Plus I can even put my daily life in tweets and post that reach an even greater audience than just whoever I happen to bump into.

Be in a management role for even a day. Trust me, body language is extremely important for communication, even in todays world.

While I agree with what you're saying, I think the point of the article is lost on you. I don't think the author was implying technology has us "drunk on our screens.", but rather, the ability of technology to act as a buffer between us, to create a world where we can have images, messages, opinions, from all walks of life constantly pouring into our minds through our hand-held devices.

I can only speak for myself here, but I noticed how after I started a professional career as a programmer and a tech-geek, I became more and more isolated; preferring alone time, and being in my head. It's just easier, to take in all the information and opinions you prefer, and ignore what you don't want. To engage in activities you want to do yourself, rather than compromising with others.

Perhaps this new society that emerges will not be WORSE than any previous one, but it will be different. I think it is important to understand those differences. I can already feel the growing pains caused by old institutions struggling to keep up with the pace of technology. We should keep an eye on those millennia old social institutions as well (like politics, community building, and voting).

You may find the pattern of complaints repeated decade after decade, but as the other commenter mentioned that is just as easily explained if it is in fact getting worse and worse. If you believe that, and believe that pretty much everything people point out as better that even our ancestors before the 20th century would agree with is better (less homicides for instance) is simply due to technological (incl. medical and scientific) improvement, then you're basically a neoreactionary. Give the authors in that field (or just writers from before the 20th century) a serious read sometime if you want a very different perspective on the world you live in.

I'd love to believe this, and I agree things weren't that better in the past (some form of nostalgic bias)[1], but when I hear people from the 60s, 70s talk, they have finer way to express themselves in more straightforward style. Especially politics (at least in my country), it's disarmingly sad to hear debates of that era, people seemed like far subtler and sophisticated compared to those in place now (they can't even hold a simple argument without resorting to low fallacious tactics).

I'm fairly convinced that when society is too comfortable (while being messier at the same time) then you see diminishing returns in people's existence.

[1] how society repeats itself, new tech bad for work, old good ways are dying; these are recurrent generational waves.

Personally, I ascribe differences in political talk to things being new. Democracy has a natural tendency to vote all competence out of the office, but it takes decades. Politicians of the past may have seemed smarter just because there weren't that many players specializing in persuasion tactics yet, and the "media experience" wasn't so streamlined.

Arguably, people today have more sophisticated politics. Resorting to fallacious tactics isn't a failing if it works. Maybe the problem is a moral one?

That's what I don't want to see. I care more about how it's done than how it 'succeed'. I'm realist, politics are a mess, and will never be all white.

I don't think the people who leverage these 'tricks' today do this because of superior intellectual skills or understanding. They just use it for blind results.

Which country? I don't remember the US political discourse of the 1960s and 1970s as being subtle or sophisticated.

France. They weren't perfect but gosh nobody today says anything worth listening to.

I'm always a little sceptical of these arguments too, because I wonder if the difference is this:

Now, when people are bored with what you're saying, instead, of their eyes glazing over, they might start to become increasingly attentive to their phones; In other words, they now have a physical bore-shield.

I think people meet and talk as much as they did - They just don't necessarily prioritise the pleb in front of them - and for some people, who like to monopolise their audiences, this is a problem.

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