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

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

#161

Post by tafox »

sammalloy wrote: post #117
lolinder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I don't see life slowing down, maybe after some natural or man-made disaster wipes out half the population and most modern infrastructure, but until then, I only see things getting faster.

HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being fast, literally by trading faster, not necessarily better, billions in profit are made. In other fields, first-movers often have a massive advantage, AWS for example.

Just look at Europe, things are slow and rather relaxed here... and as a result they've missed out on about the last 3 generations of technology.

I think many people won't be able to keep up, but the future of evolution is probably people who can sit still for days on end, just consuming information non-stop, with the ability to react very quickly as soon as the information signals opportunity for a reward. Some sort of really autistic apex predator stuff.

Ironically, even though computers can do so many tasks faster and better than humans, one would think we could all relax and let the computers work, but instead the trend seems to be, that we constantly have to be even faster in the remaining fields where computers are not yet superior.

The result of for-loops and automation hasn't been that humans no longer have to rush around doing mundane tasks, but rather that now we have to rush around writing for-loops and fixing all the bugs introduced by rushing... and so it continues...

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

#163

Post by gberger »

dhosek wrote: post #93
justapassenger wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.

I'm curious, you mention "outrage quotient" and "measurable improvement".

How do you measure outrage?

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

#164

Post by thorin »

My mum had never used the internet by herself, she's 81. My dad occasionally uses email if I send him photos of the kids (maybe a couple of times a month). He might use a web page to book a hotel a few times a year. That's it. I'm pretty sure he isn't "missing out" as such. They are both active and fit and have hobbies and friends around the country that they visit normally.

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

#165

Post by throwawayffffas »

gberger wrote: post #163
dhosek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.

I'm curious, you mention "outrage quotient" and "measurable improvement". How do you measure outrage?

I would guess, minutes of day being outraged.

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

#166

Post by syl_sau »

While I'd love to use the internet less, it has become clear to me, over the years, that it's an essential tool in pursuing relationship with people in their twenties. For better or worse, a lot of the social experience has been outsourced to the virtual networks: from organizing parties to sharing ideas to a friend to having fun together (nowadays done with online games), we seem to be less and less able to verbally formalize the things our ancestors were naturally good at (you'd call this "social intelligence").

It's not even that it's relevant to use it, it's just that people forget about you if you don't. Loneliness is a real huge problem among the youth -- without the internet it'd be unbearable.

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

#167

Post by dukeyukey »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #143
random5634 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think instead of saying it's relaxed, I would describe it as very local? Folks work pretty hard in Caribbean, but when I was there (a fair while ago), I also worked dang hard. But you absolutely felt like you were in a bubble. You really could imagine that Israel and the Palestinians would have an intifada / war and no one would notice. You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no fo…

> You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no for many good reasons) In the West, this is a conventional thing that many people expect.

Yeah, in the UK this is incredibly common. Drinks after work were at least a weekly thing, sometimes even a nightclub.

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

#168

Post by jonathanstrange »

Lammy wrote: post #34
xkeysc0re wrote: post #20

Honestly, I wish I could stop using the internet. I make a lot of things and enjoy sharing them because other people might find them useful. It has often led to wonderful and inspiring conversations. Yet it's obvious there's something very very wrong happening with American culture that began around the time of social media platform consolidation. "Being online" entails a distinct mindset and attitude that is incompa…

I've lost a few very good friends due to this. In-person and online interactions with the same person would vary wildly in tone and emotional intensity, like speaking to two entirely different people. The online interactions always pushed us apart, and the in-person interactions never failed to mend things, but of course those stopped happening over the previous year. I have to assume it's the same way with me toward…

It's the medium. Written text is not a suitable replacement for face-to-face communication, and Zoom or Skype aren't either because you can always be recorded / are semipublic in this respect.

On social networks mostly communicate to bystanders and there is almost no communication with each other. Moreover, important feedback mechanisms aren't present. If you meet someone in person, both interlocutors temporarily adapt to each other in their language, world views, opinions, etc. The effect may not be lasting but leads to better mutual understanding. In face-to-face communication people go at great lengths to avoid direct confrontation, conflict, and "loosing face."

This does not happen to the same degree on a social network. Discussions are way more adversarial than they could ever be in personal communication because people don't have to fear physical violence, and nearly everything people say is directed towards an anonymous audience. I have colleagues working in "Argumentation Theory" (in my opinion, a pseudo-science) who analyse these kind of interactions. However, not all of them realize that the people are barely arguing online - they're really mostly voicing opinions to show allegiance to their "in-group." This doesn't mean that there cannot be helpful and meaningful information exchange, explanatory dialogue works very well online. But personal conversations are rare, can only occur on forums where people have a common goal and there is no potential for conflict.

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

random5634 wrote: post #98
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…

I think instead of saying it's relaxed, I would describe it as very local? Folks work pretty hard in Caribbean, but when I was there (a fair while ago), I also worked dang hard. But you absolutely felt like you were in a bubble. You really could imagine that Israel and the Palestinians would have an intifada / war and no one would notice. You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no fo…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by collyw »

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…

I read the headline, and my first thought was "I wonder if they are happier for it?" thinking that they probably would be.

I have spend a fair bit of my life in countries where I don't speak the language particularly well. I like the fact that the subtleties of advertising and the spin put on the news often go over my head, but I realise especially during the last year that I consume way to much junk information on the internet.

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