The future is analog: How to create a more human world
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
The office life in the US is layers upon layers of dysfunction. Dysfunction still actively taught at elite institutions delivering CEOs with no creative ideas beyond financialization (taking on more debt) and driving down costs. The gig economy being the ultimate goal. It’s not the auto-firing algorithms that worries me it’s the capriciousness and the insensitivity to bugs in the algorithm that worries me. It’s one thing to be fired for actual low performance that could possibly be avoided or at least predicted it’s another entirely to be randomly fired for something completely beyond your control for which you have no recourse.
If enough employers work together to treat their employees poorly employees will end up having to take worse conditions because they have to work somewhere.
I would prefer co-locate to a healthy work environment but I’ve yet to encounter one. Employers have gotten so used to treating employees badly (especially those on visas) that they’re not even in the ballpark of terms that I would accept. I’m personally fortunate that I’m not forced to take their offers, but I feel bad for those who do.
This is so true. The ideal company in the eyes of the MBAs is a C-Suite/Board with everyone else 'self employed' with no-rights or benefits. They see themselves as the back row of the chessboard, everyone else is a disposable pawn.
More and more, we are able to choose our own reality -- which "news" we subscribe to, which online groups we participate in, which games we play, etc. Two people in the same household, same room even, may have extremely different experiences each on their own device, and then have a diminished ability to process together.
It's a very different life from say, 30 years ago, when there were three or four major news networks, HBO for movies, a single TV in the house, a handful of print newspapers wherever you lived, people even going to places like church (which has its own set of tradeoffs). People in this world had a set of communal shared experience, apparently because they could not choose otherwise, like we can do now.
It's hard to have even a 5 minute conversation about non house/kids things if you never share visual/audio/mental reality.
Of course, we don't have children so that might be a major difference.
MY marriage
This is apparent in how many of us have ditched Facebook, or who leave our phones at home (or turn them off) during concerts, social events, and outdoor recreation activities to ensure we enjoy the moment. Personally speaking, I find I have better human connections today as a result.
I think the whole thing is silly. Extremes suck, find the balance that works for you.
I have maybe 4 apps on my phone: uber, sms app, browser and another browser. Everything else is moved to pc and I don't check messages frequently. Also HN is the only "social media" i engage with (even dropped reddit a while back). No enlightened experience or human connection found, to the contrary people i meet in person keep asking about my social media and I missed a lot of life events in other people's lives. But I have free time now and more peace so that's cool.
Even a quick google define: search shows that this is a genuine definition:
> analog: not involving or relating to the use of computer technology, as a contrast to a digital counterpart.
The problem is that people disappear into this hole. And disconnect from reality. Like drug-addiction and schizophrenia.
And they insist that it's all kinds of wonderful, to be all sucked up into dreamland like that. But it's actually really messed up.
(And of course it's vastly popular and profitable too, so it's considered right and healthy and everybody encourages it)
It's a problem that's been creeping up on us for a long time. And at every stage people have noticed how bad it is.
One cure would be a better dream-amplifier. I guess that wouldn't really be a cure tho.
Another cure would be something better than dreams. Free sex maybe.
I know, I know, I'm being a tiresome pedant. Words change, language marches on, a newborn's life will fade. Blah blah. I still don't like it when words change meaning under me and I want people to stop doing it.
I think the figurative use case we've given it makes way more sense than a lot of other words we've given new connotations to recently.
> The wall we all hit at some point during the pandemic was digital. It was a wall of video meetings, Slack threads, text chains, and emails. A wall built from Netflix and Disney+, Facebook and TikTok, Instagram, and the endless onslaught of urgent tweets. It was the wall in our hands, on our desks, and beside our pillows, a wall that we turned to for salvation but kept smacking into and then wondering why on earth our bodies were so damn beat at the end of each day. The wall was the full unleashed reality of the digital future as it completely consumed our lives.
And have no sense of it at all. "We all" did not hit that wall. It makes me glad I'm not on social media and work in an industry that allows me to switch off when I exit the building. My fondest memory of the pandemic was teaching my son to ride his bike, there was no traffic so it was safe to do it in the street.
WFH just a different type of working and people need to learn how to switch off.
Perhaps if they sat at the table, coffee in hand, and read a well-thought-out article in a newspaper or journal without digital noise they would have actually spent the time to understand what they’re reading.
Maybe reading a newspaper at the table with coffee with family/friends would be appropriate though - one perk of many being sunday crosswords.
But The Internet is plagued with the disease of infinite moving adverts, and when we log in with the intent of performing some task, it is simply too easy to get distracted.
Not only is there supplemental content-oriented distractions—but form factor dictates the speed with which we read. Newspapers are indeed perhaps a bad example because the short columns of prose encourages rapid reading and potentially encourages misinterpretation. On a mobile phone with the delight of accessible, responsive websites, the shrunken column is now how we read articles of all shapes and sizes. Shapes that would traditionally be designed for a larger form factor, for slower rate of consumption.
"During the pandemic, people have been consumed by their digital lives and have felt hollowed out by this. In response, many people have turned away from digital and have sought solace in things they can touch and feel, with their whole bodies. This has led to a boom in outdoor recreation and in activities that require more physical and mental effort. The author suggests that getting back in touch with reality can make us whole again."
Not to steal the author's thunder but I like to find out quickly the point and dig into the interesting parts. Not even sure if the above is a good summary but someone who did read the entire article word for word can tell me!
The other day, I happened to have some cash in my pocket and used that to buy a coffee, instead of using Apple Pay.
It almost felt like I was a spy buying something on the black market. Nothing being tracked, nothing to indicate I bought anything. It felt dangerous. It felt cool.
It was exactly how things were <10 years ago. What a thrill.
https://www.hustleescape.com/cbdc-advantages-disadvantages/
I’m thinking the “killer app” of crypto in the future may be just escape from these.
Ethereum would be anonymous and would be deflationary. I can see that being attractive to others, because it is to me.
CD players are exactly as much digital as Spotify,
Yes, mid 2020 till 2021 is the worst part of the pandemic era. For few months, shopping malls, restaurants, cafes etc are not allowed to open. Then the restrictions were gradually lifted: they were allowed to open in shorter business time.
Even at that period I'd still regularely go out to take pictures, visit local coffee shops, take a walk (no traffic yay).
My big question is: What does that experience mean for the future? Buy a house outside of the city to be closer to green/woods? Take a job where I meet people less remote? Etc
I did exactly that!
You can see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33490128, but we did the exactly that. We bought a house, we signed the contract in the first lockdown day, which was kind of awkward, using gloves and masks for the first time, together with the people from the bank.. we were all too uncomfortable with a situation that would become a routine for the next 3 years.
Regarding the job, I'm remote since 2010, but I have now a working place in the (now empty office). My team visit the office once every 15 days to do our retrospective, lunch and get some beers together..
Sure, it’s an op-ed, but making blanket statements like this (in the first sentence) detracts from its more valid points and alienates a large portion of knowledge workers who actually enjoyed some of the changes brought about by the pandemic.
Like any opinion, if you paint things in simple strokes you do yourself a disservice.
Now imagine that you can pay by your phone everywhere in the world, with one currency. With same DigitalID you could instantly communicate with authorities, share your data with doctors or let AI to choose your partner. Sounds scarry? Sure but we already build it. [1]
Like "digital means modern platforms with a craptop on our knees"... Oh, yes such IT involution is commercial crap, but that's not IT and the answer is not "going back" but study what we have had in the past, like original desktop computing vision vs the commercial implementation for the masses and correct mistakes instead of dreaming playing Amish...
Sounds unhealthy to me. Do you get Monday off or what?
In practice, weekends and 24/7 operations are more relaxing than the normal workday. All you have to do is your core job. There are no admin headaches, no stupid memos to write or HR-mandated online courses to take. No teams meetings. Everyone can focus on being ready for the mission.
Or without an office at all.
There could be cultural enclaves that will only find community online, and conversely, enclaves who will find community in person. I reckon that whether a group is on either side of this spectrum that I’m imagining will be determined by acceptance, agency, freedom to operate, etc. within the constructs of their core values.
With community will come the utilities that facilitate its success. I’m not talking about stereotypical “Luddite” or “Amish” like scenarios, but something not too far off to degrees that will vary from culture to culture, region to region, etc.
TLDR: people are going to “migrate from Twitter to Mastodon” in real life soon.
Err... no, we don't. We do lose the sense of touch and smell looking at audio-visual media, and the resolution is lower than what our eyes and ears are generally capabable of capturing. However, quantum physics tells us that all experience is indirect, that our senses only give us an interpretation of real phenomenon.
Certainly it's nice to go for a walk in nature, for a swim in a river, to see a live music performance, etc. But how about working in a coal mine, shoveling pig manure, working in a prison, spraying pesticides in an agricultural field? Those are also 'direct experiences' but not many would enjoy them.
Every industry can become a grind. Once you have say through a hundred Taylor Swift concerts you might be begging for that coalmine job. I met a piano tuner one who after twenty years of tuning Steinways grands in concert halls had developed a hatred for all classical music.
but the article struggles to formulate a coherent anti-digital thesis. in fact replace "digital" with "modern consumerist society / capitalist economy" and it makes more sense. the stress, lack of fulfillment, alienation, the disconnect from nature, the obsolescence of age-old traditions and the dissolution of local community bonds long predate the onslaught of "digital"
in fact you could argue we've got the "digital" that we deserve and that we worked hard for