21–30 of 107 posts
What does this even mean?
Text is already digital (made solely from a discrete alphabet), all about setting up a completely artificial virtual reality of sorts, and not fundamentally tied to any specific physical medium. Strangely, I nevertheless don't see many of these types of essays condemning novels on the same breath as social networking and video games.
I think the bigger problem is both city planning and immobile technology: most of us are forced to live packed away from the nature in cities planned for the long-gone industrial era, and until recently we were forced to sit in front of our heavy information devices. I believe the mobile revolution is going to bring back a lot of those "physical" elements that we are missing now.
It's not the first time societies face transfomations. We already eat virtual food, i certainly don't remember slaughtering that many chicken, pigs and cows lately, and i 've only milked a goat once or twice in my life.
Not sure what the paragraph about talking to children has to do with the rest. But I've been seated next to children that traveled alone before so perhaps it's just your perception? Often if we feel uncomfortable with something, we make others uncomfortable, too.
No, I was referring to this: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2010/06/british_airw... (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_sex_discrimination_poli... ) The point of the children paragraph is that many things are leading people to keep children indoors (fear of men, fear of the Sun) and this combined with a virtual world means that they are more and more cut off. At least, that's the hypothesis. Look…
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To me, Carr mostly comes across as trolling.
It's not just baseless ranting (well, not all the time), as he does provide arguments. But he's very contrarian in this day and age. His views sometimes border on Luddism :-) But there is some truth in it. In a way, in our quest for efficiency, comfort and safety, we are losing touch with nature, and even with the physical world. I feel that as we become more dependent on technology we become more like domesticated p…
Of course there is some truth in saying that technology has some unwanted effects on our lives. But, the question is what alternatives or solutions does he propose, if any?
You can improve the world by solving problems for a lot of people or you can improve it by writing books about problems which new solutions may or may not create. I think Carr has chosen the less useful option, if he is indeed trying to improve the world and not just trolling.
In the past, we had tribes. Small communities where everyone felt a sense of belonging. Why? Because everyone was important to the success of the whole. You could save the world, because the world was not 1 million people. Everyone mattered to each other, and everyone had stake in each other's lives.
The world has become something like this:
We RUSH and STRESS to go to places for 40 hours we hate, to work on stuff we don't like, with people we don't care about.
On the Kindle every book is Twilight. What does this even mean? Text is already digital (made solely from a discrete alphabet), all about setting up a completely artificial virtual reality of sorts, and not fundamentally tied to any specific physical medium. Strangely, I nevertheless don't see many of these types of essays condemning novels on the same breath as social networking and video games.
(bar 1984 which goes missing).
Well, my 3 and 1 year old also have playdoh and lego, and love playing outside. And can also play Angry Birds. If the physical world is being 'lost' then an alternative cause (in the UK at least) might be the amount of it available per person because of increased densities of living. Wolfram Alpha shows: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=uk+population+density 2011 - 663 people per square mile 1911 - 425 people per…
The high level population density in the UK is pretty misleading because quite significant chunks of the country are fairly lightly populated - making us all cram into what parts are left (e.g. the Central Belt of Scotland).
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It's not just baseless ranting (well, not all the time), as he does provide arguments. But he's very contrarian in this day and age. His views sometimes border on Luddism :-) But there is some truth in it. In a way, in our quest for efficiency, comfort and safety, we are losing touch with nature, and even with the physical world. I feel that as we become more dependent on technology we become more like domesticated p…
I didn't want to call him a Luddite, as that seems rude, but I'd have to agree with you. Of course there is some truth in saying that technology has some unwanted effects on our lives. But, the question is what alternatives or solutions does he propose, if any? You can improve the world by solving problems for a lot of people or you can improve it by writing books about problems which new solutions may or may not cre…
These concerns with modernity go pretty far back in our history, and some very smart people have come up with workable solutions you can adopt as an individual without needing to go change society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't want to call him a Luddite, as that seems rude, but I'd have to agree with you. Of course there is some truth in saying that technology has some unwanted effects on our lives. But, the question is what alternatives or solutions does he propose, if any? You can improve the world by solving problems for a lot of people or you can improve it by writing books about problems which new solutions may or may not cre…
There is quite a bit of room for interesting middle ground, I think. A lot of the public debate currently is framed more or less between the "very optimistic" and "very pessimistic" poles represented, respectively, by Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age , and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains . They make for a nice pair of dueling books, b…