Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
1–10 of 56 posts
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#2Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#3Its smart bidirectional opium powered by mass scale machine learning and used to deliver ads and propaganda.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#4Obviously the answer must be no, according to Betteridge.
But even if there is a problem, I don't think it's smartphones. More likely social media, amplified by smartphone intimacy
Also, Britain talking about opium ...
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#5After the creation of cities and nation states, the smartphone is the next major step for the human race towards becoming a single superorganism. Maybe the last major step, seeing as full integration is probably a matter of many smaller advancements in the future.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#6Obviously the answer must be no, according to Betteridge. But even if there is a problem, I don't think it's smartphones. More likely social media, amplified by smartphone intimacy Also, Britain talking about opium ...
This time it's China making the smartphones.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#7For me, what's missing from the 'smartphone' // 'religion' analogy is — passion.
The emotional tenor of my relationship with my phone looks — and, I'm sure — very different from the way people relate to their faiths.
Facebook, YouTube, etc don't feel like 'movements' to me, like the article's author said. At least, I don't have the passion that a 'movement' seems to imply.
For me, smartphoning is an emotional gray zone. Most of the time I feel close to nothing. I use it to blot out my worries and deal with the mundanity of my life.
Which makes it more like actual opium, IMO.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#8TV was worse. People looking at the box for hours really looked like junkies, motionless, blurred look, mouth open. At least phones are asynchronous in nature and the ~~addict~~ err people can still function.
I think the real opium of people nowaday is politics, no matter what politics. People really want to protest the hell out of something. It gives meaning and purpose, it unites, but also makes them very vulnerable to manipulation.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#9Thanks to the pharmaceutical companies, here in the US opium is the new opium of the people.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#10For me, what's missing from the 'smartphone' // 'religion' analogy is — passion. The emotional tenor of my relationship with my phone looks — and, I'm sure — very different from the way people relate to their faiths. Facebook, YouTube, etc don't feel like 'movements' to me, like the article's author said. At least, I don't have the passion that a 'movement' seems to imply. For me, smartphoning is an emotional gray zo…
Yeah i think this article is textbook case of shooting the messenger