7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they? • Hacker News Board

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#111

Post by randomdata » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #92

randomdata wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I may entertain an idea without necessarily believing it Of course. Being able to entertain ideas without necessarily believing it is what online interaction is all about. I suspect this is why your friend seems like a completely different person online. He should be. Being able to take a completely different perspective to see if you can understand it well enough to talk about it is an excellent learning tool a…

> I suspect this is why your friend seems like a completely different person online. I disagree, and strongly. Considering a different perspective does not in any way require that you become a different person. You may end up doing so, but at that time, the entirety of who you are shifts, and not just some persona that you present on Twitter.

Great example of using the device. It would be interesting to know if your post here had you re-evaluating your face-to-face persona or if it validated your status quo for you, but as we've never met face-to-face before to see how you may or may have not changed in such a setting I guess I have no way of finding out for sure.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#112

Post by na85 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:53 AM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #49

xkeysc0re wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is the most frictionless propaganda machine on the planet. AI is almost certainly being used in conjunction with human troll farms. There are firms which pay bounties on comments sections. I also think this is a reason social media should be de-emphasized: it's just too easy to game our squishy minds with a narrative.

I think our technological web is a ratchet we can't and shouldn't try to back out of, so I'm more interested in paths forward. I'm sure a lot of people think I'm ridiculous or joking for this, but I've stopped saying "AI" because it reads like a slur to me. Who am I to deem another intelligence "artificial"? If we can have a conversation and share ideas then what's even the difference? I think the way forward has to…

>Who am I to deem another intelligence "artificial"? If we can have a conversation and share ideas then what's even the difference?

I think this point raises very very interesting ethical and philosophical points of discussion, and a very small number of media pieces I'm aware of touch on this.

But Ghost In The Shell (or whatever) is interesting because you have the idea of an AI that is just as smart (if not moreso) than humans, and has a personality and emergent behaviours, etc.

Microsoft Tay or whatever really is just a thin but shiny veneer over some ML algorithms and is a poor facsimile of "having a conversation and sharing ideas".

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#113

Post by slg » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

random5634 wrote: post #76

I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive. Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports. So you'd come back to th…

Life is certainly less stressful if you ignore all the terrible things... unless a terrible thing happens to you and everyone ignores you.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#114

Post by tartoran » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #54

ipaddr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers without the internet were better in someways. Leaving the internet behind doesn't mean living without technology.

I'm curious to know in what ways you mean.

No internet means fewer distractions and one can do deep work, but this is not permanent. Internet is good but in moderation, too much of it and it starts consuming us.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#115

Post by kube-system » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

JamesAdir wrote: post #69

gremlinsinc wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have a smart phone and realize that every app is online? That face time is online? This study seems flawed if it didn't get very specific because there's not a small number of tech illiterate ppl who don't even realize they're online when they are....

This was also my thought. I find it hard to believe that 65+ years old don't use navigation on their phone when driving, or googling even basic information.

Is it a coincidence that 25% is also in the same ballpark as the percent of people 65+ that don’t have a drivers license?

But besides that, someone who got their license before 1972 would have spent almost 3/4 of their life driving without GPS.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#116

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #24

samatman wrote: post #19

7% of Americans say they don't use the Internet when polled . Some unknown percentage of that is the Lizardman's Constant[0], some of them mean "not much", plenty of them use the map on their phone and don't think that's "using the Internet", probably a decent amount who use Facebook to look at pictures of their grandkids but figure they aren't using the Internet because they don't own a computer (if you told them a…

> some are retirees who only have a land line (and genuinely don't use the Internet). A lot of phone lines use VoIP nowadays, so if they actually use the landline to call someone, there's a good chance they are using the internet anyway (even if their actual endpoint is still analog, which, in itself, is already becoming rare).

[deleted]

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#117

Post by sammalloy » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #102

ramraj07 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always bring up how people in Fiji or the Carribean are so happy and not stressed, and I’m not sure what the message is. Of course if you just want to relax and not worry too much about what you want to accomplish in life then yeah go to some corner of the world and live happily? However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives; they want it to mean something in their own way. Of course…

You miss the OP's point. They're talking about a specific aspect of culture in the Carribean, where they worked for a while, not about idyllic lifelong vacations. While there, they found that separation from the internet reduced the amount of outrage they felt. Unless you're suggesting that social media outrage is productive and helps people to accomplish something meaningful in their own way, you're not actually add…

I think the OP is also indirectly touching upon the benefits of the slow movement, which has serious (and positive) implications for technology and how we use it. People in big cities and urban environments might find the transition to this kind of thinking jarring and difficult. I've found it takes on average about two years to adjust to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture)

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#118

Post by ceras » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:26 AM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #79

macintux wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I’m in a world that relies on the Internet thus I use the Internet” isn’t the most useful way to find out who uses the Internet.

Sure. But you need to clearly define this. Is looking at Facebook really that different from a EC payment? Both are just instructing some electronic device to send packets over the internet. Having a call via VoIP can be abstracted to the same thing. I agree that the sledgehammer approach of saying 'everyone does' is not helpful, but neither is an unclear and inconsistent definition of use. An actual solution might b…

The methodology linked from the article[0] defines it as people who answered "yes" to either of these questions:

> (1) Do you use the internet or email, at least occasionally?

> (2) Do you access the internet on a cell phone, tablet or other mobile handheld device, at least occasionally?

Before mid-2013, the survey used different questions.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Non-i...

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#119

Post by sammalloy » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #113

random5634 wrote: post #76

I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive. Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports. So you'd come back to th…

Life is certainly less stressful if you ignore all the terrible things... unless a terrible thing happens to you and everyone ignores you.

In my opinion, it isn't about ignoring anything. It's about moderating our reaction to things such that "outrage" dissipates in the face of more reflective, sustained modes of thought. The 24/7 news cycle, which is often based on infotainment, doesn't allow time for contemplation of ideas, just emotions.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#120

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:34 AM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #90

random5634 wrote: post #76

I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive. Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports. So you'd come back to th…

Part of what you’re describing can be attributed to lack of internet. But other part is just being an outsider that doesn’t really care that much (and I mean that in totally non offensive way - it’s just a benefit of being an outsider). Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news, newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller scale,…

I would have agreed before getting rid of Facebook in 2016.

Two key things - a power force for stealing my attention is gone, and I’ve dumped faux friends who are really just old acquaintances that felt more intimate because I got to see them on Facebook.

Instead, I actually talk to people who are here.