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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

The coming anti-tech counterculture?

My girlfriend is adamant about keeping her old crusty flip phone with a broken hinge that doesn't have a real keyboard on it, or even the internet!

The majority of my friends almost refuse to own televisions.

I own a kindle, but almost never use it in favor of paper.

I also own several prosumer digital SLRs, but favor my old vivitar 35mm camera from high school.

etc. etc. The list goes on.

(For reference, my girlfriend and I are both programmers)

Look even here on HN, how many people are actually anti facebook, or how common "I'm staying off the internet for 6 months!" posts are.

The anti-tech counterculture is already here.

View on HN

Yep. And I think people who work in tech are more aware of the problems "bad" technology creates and are more likely to avoid it, even as the rest of society starts "coming online" in the sense that they have some kind of a personal web presence.

Reminds me of an article I read (maybe here) that described how doctors are less likely to pursue aggressive treatments for themselves when faced with late term cancer or similar diseases.

There was an NPR Radio Lab (?) about this recently I believe.

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2013/jan/15/bitt...

Maybe this: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die...

There's also Jeff Atwood's "Nobody hates software more than software developers"[1].

[1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-softwa...

Using a flip phone, not watching television, reading paper documents, or taking photos in 35mm is not anti-technology, it's using old technology.

It's quite possible that smart phones, televisions, and kindles don't make your life any better. But MRI machines, efficient vehicles, green energy, plastic money, RFID toll booths, the GPS satellite constellation, and the internet probably do. Being anti technology means that you resist things that would improve your life for no other reason than that they are new. It's fine to use old things, as long as you keep an open mind.

Oh for crying out loud.

Language is technology, clothing is technology, vegetables are technology, houses are technology.

The author is talking about people usurping modernity, not stretching the definition of technology to the point of absurdity.

> Language is technology, clothing is technology, vegetables are technology, houses are technology.

That argument can be made, but not convincingly. Instead, why not define "technology" as something man-made that most people find incomprehensible?

How is using the word technology to describe the GPS network and smart phones absurd? You are the only one here talking about vegetables.

Modernity is not Facebook. Facebook is pop culture, and we're already aware of the anti-pop-culture movement: they're called hipsters.

Hipsters are SO into Facebook. And even _more_ into Instagram. They define pop culture by positioning themselves against a "phantom" pop culture that is even more pop.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention...

Wait, what does being anti-facebook have to do with being anti-tech?

People dislike facebook for many reasons, and I can't say I've ever noticed an anti-tech vibe to them. Mostly it seems to be disgust with FB actions (privacy etc), with the shallowness of interactions there, or simply with the amount of time and mental energy it takes to "be involved" in FB.

Nah, right now anti-tech is an attitude. As soon as someone works out how to sell things to it as a market, _then_ it will become a counterculture.

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