The lost world of physicality • Hacker News Board

Re: The lost world of physicality

#81

Post by technomancy » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 7:07 PM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #59

jgrahamc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

The flip side of this is that without the Kindle, it would have been "I may go pick up a copy from the public library, if I find myself visiting it soon and remember this thread when I'm there."

He's a lot more likely to actually get around to reading it when it's instantly and freely available. Hurrah for the public domain.

Re: The lost world of physicality

#82

Post by TheSOB88 » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 7:30 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #72

Since nobody else has directly brought this up so far: our perceptions are strongly distorted by our environment. If you tend to spend a lot of time at the computer, you will tend to think that everyone else spends a lot of time at the computer. I live in a semi-rural area (Grass Valley, CA; local population approximately 25,000). Here, the neighborhood kids get together on my street and play outside. On the weekends…

So you're saying that kids aren't outside less than they were a generation ago? That people don't interact with the physical world less, opting instead to interact with their phones?

Are you saying I'm blind?

Re: The lost world of physicality

#83

Post by TheSOB88 » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #45

The trend away from physicality began long before the internet. In fact, the ability to spend mental energy and effort on non-physical things is quite possibly one of the defining features of humanity itself. Stories, religion, relationships, philosophy, basic societal concepts such as "ownership" or "justice"... all of these are abstractions from physicality. The invention of writing allowed us to make these abstrac…

We are physical beings, and our physical selves are wasting away the more we neglect them in favor of the electronic world.

Sigh... We were not meant to sit around and play video games all day. Our brains and bodies just don't respond effectively to it. It's not healthy.

Re: The lost world of physicality

#84

Post by anamax » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 8:14 PM UTC

Hisoka wrote: post #43

anamax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We start to view other people as competitors and enemies. Hold that thought. > In the past, we had tribes. And different tribes were enemies and competitors. And, if you don't think that there's competition in a tribe of humans, you're claiming that groups of humans are different from every other group of animals. (Simple example - even in tribes, 40% of males don't have genetic children while only 20% of females a…

Yes, true, but you still belong to 1 tribe. Nowadays we're lucky to have anyone besides family, or a S.O. who we consider a tribe. It doesn't help we spread the bulk of our days along people we don't care about too.

> Yes, true, but you still belong to 1 tribe.

Reread the parent - he led with "no enemies or competitors". It's unclear whether the tribe thing was separate or it caused "no enemies".

My point is that no enemies is clearly false in "the good old days" (when life expectancy was roughly 30). Tribes had enemies and there were enemies within tribes.

> Nowadays we're lucky to have anyone besides family, or a S.O. who we consider a tribe.

Speak for yourself. I'm reasonably anti-social yet belong to a couple of tribes.

Re: The lost world of physicality

#85

Post by mahrain » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 8:14 PM UTC

I have considered the same thing, and it's true for me too. Take your office, for instance: I don't use folders, everything is on the computer. Same for photos and albums, I don't need to store those, or CDs, LPs and the like. I have lots of shelf space and closet space to spare.

It took me some time to "back port" the concepts I know to the situation my colleagues grew up in: they got memo's in in- and outboxes, they read, copied and replied to stuff that went in folders on a shelf, and projects contained physical snipplets from newspapers, photograps and typed files to review. (Thank Mad Men for my insight here.) These went into filing cabinets alfabetized.

I can hardly imagine the inefficiency!

Re: The lost world of physicality

#86

Post by mnemonicsloth » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

When the internet was just beginning to show up on the collective radar (ca 1997, let's say), most people saw it as an isolating, anti-social influence. You could order a pizza over the internet without ever speaking to another human being! (Except the driver, but that was a minor detail.) The internet was obviously the thin end of a wedge. Today AOL says "you've got mail," tomorrow we're all living in one-person bunkers underground, getting all the necessities of life from Amazon's delivery robots.

In 2001, I read a rebuttal by a former IT consultant in a contrarian magazine. People had the same worries about the telephone, she explained. But the urge to connect with other human beings had survived somehow, eking out a meager existence on the fringes of society. No amount of advanced technology would ever be able to kill it off completely.

If our social instincts can survive suburbs and the telephone, we'll probably find an excuse not to drift off into the ether.

Re: The lost world of physicality

#87

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 8:33 PM UTC

wnight wrote: post #74

colanderman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't build redstone computers out of Lego bricks. Capability wasn't the author's point.

But capability is the point of books. If you want a work of art buy a sculpture/etc. There's a huge undercurrent of people who romanticize books, I was asking where/why they came from.

I have a couple of books I bought at library book sales years ago that are over 100 years old. I enjoy them more for their possible history than for the actual stories. The penciled-in notes, the owner's names before they were donated, the library stamps, etc. All these things give the books a sense of being "things" in their own right, with their own history, and that gives me pleasure.

Make sense?

Re: The lost world of physicality

#88

Post by lukev » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 8:45 PM UTC

TheSOB88 wrote: post #83

lukev wrote: post #45

The trend away from physicality began long before the internet. In fact, the ability to spend mental energy and effort on non-physical things is quite possibly one of the defining features of humanity itself. Stories, religion, relationships, philosophy, basic societal concepts such as "ownership" or "justice"... all of these are abstractions from physicality. The invention of writing allowed us to make these abstrac…

We are physical beings, and our physical selves are wasting away the more we neglect them in favor of the electronic world. Sigh... We were not meant to sit around and play video games all day. Our brains and bodies just don't respond effectively to it. It's not healthy.

We are physical beings, but we are not just physical beings.

Playing video games may well be a waste of time, but it's not because they're not physical. All the accomplishments which I admire most are informational or abstract in nature, not physical.

Re: The lost world of physicality

#89

Post by lukev » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 8:45 PM UTC

TheSOB88 wrote: post #83

lukev wrote: post #45

The trend away from physicality began long before the internet. In fact, the ability to spend mental energy and effort on non-physical things is quite possibly one of the defining features of humanity itself. Stories, religion, relationships, philosophy, basic societal concepts such as "ownership" or "justice"... all of these are abstractions from physicality. The invention of writing allowed us to make these abstrac…

We are physical beings, and our physical selves are wasting away the more we neglect them in favor of the electronic world. Sigh... We were not meant to sit around and play video games all day. Our brains and bodies just don't respond effectively to it. It's not healthy.

We are physical beings, but we are not just physical beings.

Playing video games may well be a waste of time, but it's not because they're not physical. All the accomplishments which I admire most are informational or abstract in nature, not physical.

Re: The lost world of physicality

#90

Post by thaumaturgy » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 9:32 PM UTC

TheSOB88 wrote: post #82

thaumaturgy wrote: post #72

Since nobody else has directly brought this up so far: our perceptions are strongly distorted by our environment. If you tend to spend a lot of time at the computer, you will tend to think that everyone else spends a lot of time at the computer. I live in a semi-rural area (Grass Valley, CA; local population approximately 25,000). Here, the neighborhood kids get together on my street and play outside. On the weekends…

So you're saying that kids aren't outside less than they were a generation ago? That people don't interact with the physical world less, opting instead to interact with their phones? Are you saying I'm blind?

No. I'm saying exactly what I said.

> Yes, there are people here who spend a lot of time behind computers. I'm one of them. There are kids who spend a lot of time playing video games. I've met some of them. But, that's not the whole picture...