101–110 of 331 posts
cute article, whenever I hear about someone “raised by the internet” I usually think of a negative result but glad to hear this is a positive one
I grew up in a rural part of the United States. First got online in 1996 when I was 8 years old. The best thing that the Internet gave me was a way to talk to strangers from around the world and make friends with people who I would have never had a chance to interact with in person. In my 20s, it lead to real life friendships with people I had met online, which is really cool. I have used Couch Surfing to make friend…
I also grew up in a rural town, in Norway. I think internet made me more of a "world citizen", empathic to all kinds of people, than I would have been without. A small town can be quite unwelcome to those not like us. But I wonder if some of that is lost now to those being "raised on the internet"? That things are too big. There were small forums, behave, as you know the avatars of everyone and they become your frien…
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Well said, something I had not yet put to words. It came up on HN recently, about how work is a place where it can be best to leave some things unsaid, because it invites assumptions about your character and capabilities that might not be true, or positive.
Keep your identity small. https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html (Not saying I agree or disagree with the essay but it seemed topical)
This is not being raised by the internet. Being raised by the internet is getting all your mores and morals from the internet. Learning how to do everything you know through YouTube videos. Learning appropriate responses to situations through forums etc. A lot of us are raised by the internet.
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I once heard, in a different century, that the "modal restaurant script" differed between the US and the UK in that in the former, the waitstaff asks the diners a bunch of (to a cultural outsider) overly prying questions, while in the latter, the diners ask them of the waitstaff. Still true? Never was?
Australian who has spent time living in the US: yes, the difference is still true today between how waiters at an Australian restaurant and servers at a US restaurant interact with customers. Waiters wait. If you need anything you make eye contact and they come over. Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc. I've always thought it was due to tipping. Serve…
I've been bothered far more by wait staff in Australia than I ever have in the US. Must be down to the location and the restaurant.
> I am certain they never intended to inspire a 12 year-old kid to find a better life. i can't speak for everyone, but as one of the people writing tutorials and faqs and helping people learn to do things with free software during the period miller is talking about, that is absolutely what i intended to do. and, from the number of people i knew who were excited to work on olpc, conectar igualdad , and huayra linux, i…
But it feels like more and more are taken over by money from advertisement. It is allways a relieve to me, find a site in the old spirit.
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I think the central takeaway of this essay is dead wrong, you should aim for the exact opposite. The fewer labels or identities you have yourself, the more strongly you hold on to them and the more fragile your personality. If the only thing you identify yourself by is your job and that gets taken away from you in a downturn, never to return, what's left? A lot of people who are in that situation and don't have other…
If your self-image includes the structure of the world around you, or the behavior of people other than yourself, you'll run into problems. I enjoy working with computers. I happen to work at a particular company doing computer things. Only one of those is an innate "what makes me, me " thing. Even if computers didn't exist, I'd still probably tend to gravitate towards things that are fun for the same sorts of reason…
This isn’t hypothetical; I have worked with people who’ve had to quit this form of work for the following reasons: Carpal tunnel that prevented using keyboard and mouse, brain injury, neck injury that made it impossible to sit at a computer (or desk), long Covid and “brain fog”. I imagine that vision impairment might lead to the same.
If any of these were to happen to me, would I still have my sense of self? Are we more than our love of technology?
> I am certain they never intended to inspire a 12 year-old kid to find a better life. i can't speak for everyone, but as one of the people writing tutorials and faqs and helping people learn to do things with free software during the period miller is talking about, that is absolutely what i intended to do. and, from the number of people i knew who were excited to work on olpc, conectar igualdad , and huayra linux, i…
"the internet was a gift economy, like burning man: people giving away things of value to all comers because if you don't do that maybe it's because you can't. the good parts of it still are" But it feels like more and more are taken over by money from advertisement. It is allways a relieve to me, find a site in the old spirit.
Here is the corresponding search engine for that: https://wiby.me
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That isn't even unreasonable as a cultural norm, although it is that those who most firmly enforce it also cherish silly habits like saying "bring your whole self to work." The expectation of not oversharing needs to be met by a commitment of not over- asking, but I suppose that's really too much to expect in an age so degraded that all the obligations across lines of social class are understood to run in only one di…
you can just… lie
(And then there are moral reasons, too.)
I’m glad this author had an endearing experience. I can’t say that I did. I’d blame “being raised on the internet” as a consistent contributor to a lot of negatives in my life. Certainly, I picked up a lot of the rage from people in the IRC circles I ran with, and like a parrot exhibited it in my personal life. Beyond that, the general degradation of IRL social skills. I can say my life took a significant upturn once…
I had an experience far more in line with the article. I grew up in extreme poverty, incredible isolation and within a very abusive family. So abusive that a big chunk of my childhood was spent in dealing with courts and police with eventually an apprehended violence order being taken out on my behalf against my parents to try and bring an end to the abuse. Extracted from the abuse but not the isolation I was headed to a very dark place.
The interent was world changing for me once given access. It opened the door to another world, to the ability to socialise without stigma, learn and grow with people that in comparison to what I had experienced, were quite normal and well adjusted though of course, not perfect by any means.
My time on it as a youth opened the door to a world that would later become my ladder out of that life and the foundation of my success as an adult. A ladder I would never had access to without the internet. I credit it for effectively having saved my life. I would be in a very different place now were it not for that exposure and experience. Where most of the people I knew as a youth are today, which is not at all a pleasant place.
Todays internet is not the same I feel, and that is also not to say that it could not instead have been a detrimental place or experience for some even then. Perhaps if you have a more normal upbringing, one in which you do not face such extremes than it may only bring negatives instead of positives, but for many, it's a hatch to exposure of things you may otherwise never get to experience as others do.