The Modern World | Hacker News Reader

The Modern World

shkspr.mobi

26 pointsedent27 comments

The one question I had reading this was... why then travel to the foreign country? You're enmeshed in the same basic experience you had in your domestic country, except you had to sit in a plane or on a train for hours to get there.

I would recommend, every once in a while, a complete disconnect. Tell people you'll be out of touch for a week, entirely. Get a topological map of an area, get a compass, get an altimeter, and get a GPS satellite reciever (no, not a cell phone, a device that GPS-triangulates your latitude/longitude from GPS satellite signals) so you can see where you are on your topo map. Carry cash only. The location could be a wilderness area that you backpack into, a small town on the seaside with a hotel reservation set aside for you, something like that. Walk around, read a book, take photos on a camera with no internet connectivity to look at later, write in your journal, eat a meal.

Terrifying thought, isn't it? Separation anxiety is a thing, in the digitally connected world.

Terrifying? It sounds thrilling!

Right! The world is so accessible nowadays. You can travel light and far without much money. You don't have to rely on hotels and travel agencies to find a place to live and get information about the area.

Is finding this "terrifying" a young people thing? I'm mostly confused by this, because it's both very ordinary and rather nonsensical.

First, backpacking in the wilderness with a topographical map is a vastly, vastly different experience than staying a random town, where you have access to anything. Also, why use GPS and stare at a screen instead of you know, locating yourself using the trail markers, ridges, etc? Is eating a meal and reading a book something people don't do all the time? Also, what camera is this? A phone with airplane mode on? Are you not allowed to store the pictures online, is a physical media transfer required, what's going on? What role does cash play here? I'm really confused.

> You're enmeshed in the same basic experience you had in your domestic country, except you had to sit in a plane or on a train for hours to get there.

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/getting-away

What makes you think I didn't do all of that?

I went to cool museums. Drank beers I'd never heard of. Ate weird new foods. And wandered down cool side streets.

Most of the places were card only - and carrying cash is expensive. I read books in a park, chatted with locals. Wrote a blog post.

I used to do all that too, before GPS and smartphones. This way is much better for me.

That's the point. You can travel to the other side of the earth and all you'll get is the same experience as you would at home, but there's other brands of beer and different stuff in the museums. This isn't a diverse world, this is just reskins of the same template.

Technology gives, and technology takes away. That's what Neil Postman wrote in his book "Technopoly" and "Amusing Ourselves to Death".

This modern world isn't without its flaws, but the old world wasn't that rubbish either.

You only think it is good because you are the one of the winners chosen by the technologies.

Arguably there are a lot more winners than losers. Not sure who loses from having a good map application in a foreign country.

Maybe the people who don't make enough burning e-waste to get one of their own?

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/the-rich-...

[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...

And many others

Were they richer before the invention of the PC?

Not saying everything is fine. But seriously, that's not the fault of the technology.

I'm not sure the fact that some people haven't been made wealthy by technology is the most horrific thing we can take away from this situation.

I'm genuinely curious - did you read the penultimate paragraph of my post?

Yes sir.

Most of that's great until the power goes out. Or DNS/Cloudflare has issues. Or someone fat-fingered a router config. Or a construction crew/cargo ship breaks a major optical cable. Or an attack happens and everyone overloads the networks. Or bad people steal the databases. Or a government decides to track you.

The old world never had those problems.

The old world still works in those situations, but we have a better experience when the new world hasn’t experienced a fundamental failure.

Seems like a reasonable trade off to me.

Well, it depends how you want to define those problems. Paper records got wet, or burned away. Gas wasn't always available for street lights. Forged coinage was a problem - as was bribery and corruption.

So we're trading problems - but I know which world I prefer.

I loved the feeling of going somewhere, and nobody knew who I was or where I came from. Now, it's almost impossible to travel across town without a modestly-motivated person being able to find out about it. Does nobody else recognize the sacrifice of anonymity as a loss?

Reminds me of, Everything is amazing and nobody is happy (2011):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U

I'm not sure if this is subtle satire, or not.

The picture presented is very convenient living, but is it life?

Sure it is! The blog post focused a lot on the phone fibbing, but I'm sure in between those episodes the traveler had new exciting experiences.

> I have an IP address, therefore I am.

But he doesn’t. He only has a NAT:ed address.

well if it's a phone, it's probably IPV6.

It is magical. But the modern world, also:

  I handed over my passport to the border guard.
  my various devices happily slurped up the bits
  My phone immediately latched on to a dozen satellites
  I have an IP address, therefore I am.
  An army of volunteers had already mapped the city
  the next bus was snagged in traffic
  I didn't fancy walking through an unfamiliar city.
  useless to a thief - unless they force me to unlock it
  pickpockets operated in that area
  The conversation with the taxi driver was a little stilted.
  noting which standard allergens were present in each dish
  verified that I was vaccinated against you-know-what
  knew to wake me at 07:30 local time.  The next morning, as I entered the office where I'd be working

Though all of this basically existed in the past in other forms.

With a little-to-lot less authoritarian and monopoly control.

This thing smacks of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

oh this is beautiful

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