Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another relevant one is E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops": http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
Thank you both for these suggestions. I recall reading E. M. Forster's story at school and my contribution to English class was that he was wrong about there being a separate button for everything: in reality things would have been multiplexed and the person would have used a keypad or similar :-) I have not read Walden. Will put it on my Kindle.
The lost world of physicality
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: The lost world of physicality
#52I have to balance my long sessions of hacking and screen time with something physical. Gym, home projects, or something that's making my body work too. I know others have experienced the same thing, with different solutions. Loving the virtual and code isn't a problem, as long as there's an offline component to balance things.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#53Supposedly you can read pdf's and HTML on a Kindle so in a roundabout way you can read Hugo, Coetzee, Kernighan, &c with extra effort for success in that area. I don't have a Kindle I'm just telling you what I looked up on amazon. http://askville.amazon.com/read-PDF-files-Amazon-Kindle/Answ...
Machines don't decompose or smell the same way books do but they acquire knicks and marks and eventually disintegrate in one way or another. My first laptop had a small field of worn-out coating on the case from where I rested my palm and thinking of it makes me smile a lil. This won't be a relevant point when data someday somehow no longer need a solid physical form but when that time comes we will find other things to be cool about them.
Sex: what happens when pornography becomes the default means of getting sexual pleasure.
Hopefully less syphillis less prostitution and less pretending to like someone so I can j my hilariously tiny w. Also, there have been pornos ever since computers were just the antikythera mechanism and we're here today so I think people still got laid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Hercu... Pornos probably won't be the 'default' unless parents or sex ed programs put a big emphasis on 'when you meet someone you like, ignore them and find porn'. It'll still feel weird to want pornos.
Also: The word 'real' when used in phrases like 'the real world' assumes a tacit and acceptable definition of 'reality'. I'm not trying to be irritating I just don't think there is one. This isn't because there are embedded devices and servers everywhere it's because of skepticism.
Something the post reminds me of: When I see two people less than two meters apart from each other and nearly no one else nearby, speaking on cell phones but not with each other it bugs me a lot.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#54"On the Kindle every book is Twilight." Struck me in church, standing there reading the Bible from an iPad, that the value of sacred texts may fade or alter, being indistinguishable from any other momentary array of pixels upon a slim universal reader. Being naturally physcial-focused, my toddler children may come to not grasp the "specialness" of some books - where I want them to learn value beyond bits and pixels.
Teaching a reverence for physical objects is in a very real sense untruthful... the ideas they contain are what should (or ought) to matter.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#55Sheesh, what do people have against ebooks? And where do they all get the same fetish for fondling paper? You can't grep dead trees. Books just aren't as effective. You also can't store tens of thousands of paper books on a tiny USB stick.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that mean the population density is underestimated?
It does, but it means it's also a misleading statistic within the context of this argument, because the high population density (600 people per square mile) would indicate that you can't ever walk 50 meters in one direction without bumping into someone. In fact, you can easily walk miles without meeting anyone - if you go into the countryside. On the other hand, you won't be able to walk anywhere near 50 metres witho…
Re: The lost world of physicality
#57For example in paragraph three you have a list for virtual, and a list for real - "pleasure" appears in one of the lists only, and as it would be clearly incorrect to imply that virtual worlds cannot give pleasure, it was just left off that list, which is a subtle suggestion that pleasure is only found in the real world.
Books, I'm completely with you on that personally, I far prefer actual books to reading on an iPad or a Kindle, and I'm generally quite sentimental in most areas ("my dad's watch", etc.) But would losing that be a bad thing? It would for me personally, because that's how I think now, but if I was brought up not thinking of these things as sentimental for the object not just for the content, would I be worse off? Not sure.
Sex: A big leap to suggest that porn will become the default blah blah. And while I really have no idea what was in the heads of people 40, 100, 500 years ago, surely we have always been able to imagine pretty much any sexual scenario for pleasure anyway? And, porn is hardly new in the digital age (though much more easily accessible, certainly), and we haven't got there yet.
Making: My 9 year old nephew loves playing with his DS, his Xbox, he's always picked up technology (e.g. iphone use) fast, since he was young. But that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy being read to. Or reading himself. Or playing with lego. Or playing on the swings at the park. Or playing with our train set. Sure, some kids might never leave the computer screen, but some kids will also spend all their spare time reading, that doesn't prompt blogs about books being bad.
Children: I saw your link somewhere here to the flying story, and while some people may think like that, certainly not everyone.
And ultimately, sitting in front of a screen doesn't have to be bad. Everything in moderation, etc. Playing video games with friends online is (less so now, but still to an extent) considered geeky and lacking social skills, but is it really different from playing football in the park? (Ignoring the excercise aspect). Does playing with PHP help you improve your thinking skills more or less than playing with lego? Etc.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#58I think that the world of TV, computers, video games has caused us to lose our connection with the physical world. Add on top of that fear: fear of letting children play in the street, fear of chemistry sets, fear of ultraviolet light. This combination means that people (and especially the young) spend hours indoors away from the physical world immersed in virtual worlds.
In my experience (and I'm only talking about my own experience), the fear is driven by "predators". People aren't significantly more worried by actual dirt than they used to be — kids in my neighborhood are filthy often. But there's a perception that there are dirty perverts behind every corner ready to snatch your kid from you — it's not so much of just a concern as much as a near-certainty. This is driven by "news" shows that focus on the handful of negative events out of the billions of positive ones - in other words, it doesn't at all reflect the reality than one sees in statistics. But, many people aren't statistically minded. Some kids are definitely losing out because of this. All we can do is allow our own kids the reasonable freedom that they're entitled to… I see many people doing so.
Books: as books move to electronic form they take on a different meaning. The words of the book transcend and the physical presentation is lost. On the Kindle every book is Twilight. In the real world the physical book has a meaning of its own: it's the book your wife gave you as an anniversary present, it's the book your late father got part way through and you dare not remove the bookmark he left in place, it's the children's book read and read until the pages are torn and worn. These physical remnants augment the book with personal meaning.
Speak for your own ebook reader - mine isn't filled with Twilight. Are more people buying Twilight than deep eternal classical philosophical works? No doubt, but that's not at all necessarily related to medium.
Sex: what happens when pornography becomes the default means of getting sexual pleasure. Does fantasy start to wither in the brain? If every fetish or desire is available (for free) at the touch of a button what happens when we are presented with a real other person to have sex with. And what's the cost of reality not matching screen fantasy?
Masturbation has always been the default means of getting sexual pleasure. It's assisted more now and I agree that's something to be cognizant of. But I remember wails a few years back of how rape was skyrocketing as corner convenience stores started selling pornography. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but my understanding is that rape, like most violent crime, is decreasing and is (in developed countries) at pretty low levels historically.
While we're theorizing, we could speculate that many peoples' sex lives are better now: as (widely-desired) taboos are normalized, more people get to engage in them. How many married couples have gone through life both wanting and desiring "more" (more pleasure, more intimacy, more "dirty", etc) but neither getting it because they both considered it off-limits? I've known far more couples whose sex lives have been improved by watching porn together than the opposite.
Making: as a child I had Lego, Play-Doh, and other toys to occupy my hands. Now imagine that these are all virtualized and I play with them on screen. There's no difference felt in my hands between them. No texture, smell and pliability of Play-Doh, no satisfying click of Lego, no hunt for the right coloured piece. If an infinite amount of virtual stuff is available does my imagination atrophy? If I can always find the right coloured, right sized Lego piece is this an advantage or a loss because I'm no longer forced to invent?
If you ever build a technological thing that makes kids not play with Lego and Play-Doh, it'll be because it's so immersive, fun, and imagination-stimulating that they don't want Lego and Play-Doh anymore. Every kid I see is surrounded by technology but still loves playing with these physical things too.
Children: as an adult man I'm now viewed by many to be a threat children. I can't be seated next to a child flying alone on a flight. I'm afraid to talk to a child in the street, and we've seen schools instituting policies against any sort of physical contact between children and teachers.
I agree: this is a huge problem. It doesn't seem, though, to be driven by technology but by its offshoot, media. I don't know what the answer is here. As above, I guess it's about making people statistically-driven rather than anecdote-driven. Good luck with that. Horror is more exciting than mundane news about the world being OK. As long as you have a free media, you're going to have this problem. Only possible remedy I see is a heavy educational emphasis on making statistically-based decisions.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another relevant one is E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops": http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
Thank you both for these suggestions. I recall reading E. M. Forster's story at school and my contribution to English class was that he was wrong about there being a separate button for everything: in reality things would have been multiplexed and the person would have used a keypad or similar :-) I have not read Walden. Will put it on my Kindle.
I think that sentence sort of encapsulates what you are saying in your article. It certainly pulled me up sharp.
Re: The lost world of physicality
#60I have the opposite experience: freed from absolute reliance on physical objects, my experience and enjoyment of them have multiplied. I find myself carefully selecting the objects I share space with and I have more time to wander public space because I'm not tethered to a single location.