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11% of Americans don’t use the internet

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Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#101

Post by cirgue »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #23

I wonder will the internet have matured (jumped the shark with excess commercialism, JS, ads etc) to the extent TV has that people start cord cutting the net. Anecdotally the novelty is starting to wear thin with more than a few people I know who barely use anything beyond a chat service and a little shopping (probably at Amazon).

It already has jumped the shark for me. I go online for HN, arxiv, stackoverflow/other online documentation, and google groups for my ulti league. I don’t use the internet for recreation anymore at all. It’s a cesspit. I have an rss reader that I check for headlines every couple of days, a Spotify account, and Hulu/Netflix/hbo go that I don’t use enough to justify the expense. If there were a way to find non-toxic, non-bullshit content (sort of an anti-reddit), I might consider using that if it were completely ad-free. I really miss the old days of the internet before there was any significant amount of money to be made. Forums, personal web pages, etc were fucking awesome. You could really feel the personal passion for what people were doing. People felt entitled to be themselves without fear of retribution, offending others, or failing at some standard set by society. Now it seems like everything is about chasing either money or likes. I fucking hate it.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#103

Post by mikec3010 »

mmirate wrote: post #96
nine_k wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spent your life becoming very efficient in a particular environment, there's an incentive to keep this environment from changing, and not to expend any effort to learn a new environment. That learning capacity can be more efficiently spent elsewhere. (An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while. They have more important thin…

It gets better: there are places selling their software via hardware appliances that run RHEL6.

That is better, actually. If it's proven for that many years why mess with it? Why assume that older is unilaterally worse?

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#104

Post by Rjevski »

novia wrote: post #100
Rjevski wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define educational. Watching stupid Call of Duty videos as a teenager is what allowed me to learn English (I am not a native English speaker) and I now owe my entire career to that. On the other hand, proper “educational” stuff has yet to make me a penny. Just because it doesn’t look “educational” (or should I say boring) to you doesn’t mean the kid isn’t learning stuff by watching (or listening to) the video. Chance…

I edited my comment and added a link to a typical video. The child watching this is already fluent in English.

That video is stupid but it is worse than reality TV shows or cartoons? It’s entertainment. Doesn’t always have to have a further purpose beyond passing time and satisfying curiosity.

My comment about English was just an example, when completely stupid (by my own admission) videos still somehow still managed to contribute to my life and career.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#105

Post by jlmorton »

Rjevski wrote: post #94
DavidAdams wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just one of many reasons why public libraries are so important. It's a major part of the mandate for modern libraries and librarians to offer a place where people with low incomes, low educational attainment, low tech literacy, and even plain old low literacy can get some help navigating occasional requirements like an online job application or trying to enroll in some kind of assistance program.

More than libraries, I wish there would be really affordable computers. We’ve already proven it’s technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive. Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, b…

You can get a Samsung Chromebook for $75. The FCC operates the Lifeline program, which provides subsidized Internet access to low-income Americans, but the program was gutted about three months ago, dropping about 70% of enrollees.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#106

Post by yesiamyourdad »

Rjevski wrote: post #97
novia wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but having also watched a ten year old consume YouTube videos... they tend to stay far far away from anything remotely educational. For example, this is the kind of thing that the particular kid I know watches: https://youtu.be/5O66ssNpg_A 22 million views. So basically nothing is gained from watching these sorts of videos. But what's lost? Maybe the opportunity to connect with family members?

Define educational. Watching stupid Call of Duty videos as a teenager is what allowed me to learn English (I am not a native English speaker) and I now owe my entire career to that. On the other hand, proper “educational” stuff has yet to make me a penny. Just because it doesn’t look “educational” (or should I say boring) to you doesn’t mean the kid isn’t learning stuff by watching (or listening to) the video. Chance…

That's pretty funny. When I was in college I had a roommate from Colombia and mentioned that I'd like to learn some Spanish. He enthusiastically recommended watching the Spanish language soaps on Telemundo, he told me watching American soaps is how he learned most of his English.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#107

Post by jethro_tell »

nine_k wrote: post #61
cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is that it seems to have more to do with age than intellectual capacity. I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it. They might learn just how to use it but have no curiosity on how it works.

If you spent your life becoming very efficient in a particular environment, there's an incentive to keep this environment from changing, and not to expend any effort to learn a new environment. That learning capacity can be more efficiently spent elsewhere. (An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while. They have more important thin…

There are places that just forked RHEL5ish and update the kernel and packages. At some point it's a mess, but until then, just keep patching.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#108

Post by tpfour »

ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #45

It’s reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there’s a big bubble I can’t wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (…

For your interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#109

Post by magic_beans »

pathartl wrote: post #84
pixelmonkey wrote: post #55

This is a shockingly small number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-r...

That number doesn't surprise me. I personally did not read a book in whole or in part in 2017 or 2016. It's something I don't need to do for my career and is not a past time of mine. My reading primarily comes from the internet. When I do read it's maybe a handful of books in a year.

That’s alarming and sad. No pleasure or drug is as powerful as a good work of fiction.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#110

Post by stephengillie »

simmons wrote: post #12

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starti…

My 70-something parents keep their cell phones at home, since they are so nice, so nothing happens to them. They carry pens and paper if they need to track something.

My dad was a privacy-conscious bus driver in the 1980s, and has always had an unlisted number. These days, I know he's calling because caller ID shows "Private Number" when he calls.

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