Unlike opium smartphones do not make you physically addicted and they do not have negative health effects in the same order of magnitude.
So what's the problem?
Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#12Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20427323
Yours appears to have been submitted after this one.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#13Unlike opium smartphones do not make you physically addicted and they do not have negative health effects in the same order of magnitude. So what's the problem?
That's missing the point of the analogy, though; when Marx said that religion is the opium of the people, he wasn't referring the the addictive or negative health effects of opium. I'm not sure whether the point the article is making holds up to what Marx was getting at, but he wasn't saying that religion is literally an addictive drug; he was referring to the ability of opium to be used as a retreat from the stresses of life under capitalism. The full quote[0] is clearer:
>[Religion] is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
>Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
[0] Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx, 1843.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#14This article comes off far more as an author who doesn't actually understand religious groups than anything having to do with technology. I'm not sure they understand why people get addicted to the internet either. They clearly wanted to make a point, but it fell flat on all counts from my reading.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#15For 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…
Isn't that the whole issue with Skinner-box things, though? They're not something that you care passionately about, they're something that's 'nothing' but you find yourself clicking or scrolling through them anyway.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#16No opium is the new opium
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#17This article comes off far more as an author who doesn't actually understand religious groups than anything having to do with technology. I'm not sure they understand why people get addicted to the internet either. They clearly wanted to make a point, but it fell flat on all counts from my reading.
Getting "addicted to the internet" is like getting addicted to glasses or getting addicted to cars. It's a vehicle and the special thing about it is where it takes you.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#18For 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…
Well, religion for most people wasn't a passion either -- that was just for the zealots.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#19For 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
Absolutely, the phones themselves are only messengers
The real question is something like what are the implications of small-group level intimacy, but on a global scale. Just for starters - there are very many questions raised by this recent capability.
Re: Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
#20For 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
If the "medium is the message" (that is, the medium dominates and enforces its norms over everything transmitted, e.g. by forcing people to echo bubbles, polarization, and centralized control by its very design regardless of what content is transmitted) then the messenger is the culprit -- and we should shoot the messenger.