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When the push button was new, people were freaked

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Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#121

Post by medstrom »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #82
MereInterest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on where you draw the boundary between "you" and "not-you". If that boundary extends only as far as your skin, then your cell phone makes you forgetful and dependent. If that boundary extends to tools that you use, books in front of you, texts that you can summon up at a moment, then your cell phone gives you a phenomenal recall for facts, though also an increased risk of mind control. For me, I draw the b…

Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions?…

A remote-controlled door would become part of you, the instant you hold the remote.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#122

Post by Joker_vD »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #82
MereInterest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on where you draw the boundary between "you" and "not-you". If that boundary extends only as far as your skin, then your cell phone makes you forgetful and dependent. If that boundary extends to tools that you use, books in front of you, texts that you can summon up at a moment, then your cell phone gives you a phenomenal recall for facts, though also an increased risk of mind control. For me, I draw the b…

Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions?…

It seems you suggest to base the boundary on how easy/trivial it is to make something go away from your posession, akin to "big man in a suit of armour — take that off, what are you?" line of reasoning. Well, the problem is that stripping tools from someone is not that much more difficult than stripping memory: some fair amount of violence would be necessary in both scenarios (blunt torso traumas vs. blunt head traumas).

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#124

Post by [deleted] »

lisper wrote: post #56
whimsicalism wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect most people have never even heard of a thermal expansion tank. I suspect that if you did surveys every year going back to the 19th century, in every single one of them the majority of people would have never heard of a thermal expansion tank.

That's because they didn't exist back then. But I'll bet most people could tell you why they had separate hot and cold water taps. (These things are related BTW.)

[deleted]

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#125

Post by MereInterest »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #82
MereInterest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on where you draw the boundary between "you" and "not-you". If that boundary extends only as far as your skin, then your cell phone makes you forgetful and dependent. If that boundary extends to tools that you use, books in front of you, texts that you can summon up at a moment, then your cell phone gives you a phenomenal recall for facts, though also an increased risk of mind control. For me, I draw the b…

Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions?…

> via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary.

It also means that it depends on the situation. If I'm reading a book, then the movement of my hands feels instant as I reach to turn the page. But back when I played the piano, at times my hands could feel like they are falling behind, not listening to what I'm telling them to do, responding too slowly for what is being demanded of them. Whether or not my hands feel like "me" depends on what I'm trying to have them do.

> Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately?

I've never really thought of it in terms of time, in part because it is only something to quantify in retrospect. A pencil in my hand feels like a part of me, that responds as I move it. If I press it against a piece of paper, I interpret the sensory input as "felt" from the tip of the pencil, even though I know that I have no nerve endings there. But a pencil on the table isn't part of me. Whether there's a smooth transition between the two as I pick it up and gain control over it, or whether it's something that just "clicks", I'm not sure.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#126

Post by gweinberg »

I think buttons for clothing were around centuries before electric push buttons, and the electric buttons were named for the clothing buttons they resembled. Is that not so? So the fact that "button" in French could mean "push" would just be a coincidence, since you don't push clothing buttons. Or at least I don't.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#127

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

andirk wrote: post #22

Let's return to the button where possible. I often prefer physical buttons due to the feedback I get. I know it does nothing, but I'll still press extra hard on a stupid touchscreen if it's not responding. On how touchscreens are over-used for the sake of updating without physical constraints. "The software guys can independently do the design of the UI, changing things down to the very last moment, or even after the…

>On how touchscreens are over-used for the sake of updating without physical constraints. "The software guys can independently do the design of the UI, changing things down to the very last moment, or even after the last moment if the car can be updated."

Or just changing the underlying software. Especially insidious things like inserting new functionality that the user never wanted. Like clicking on the text entry part of a chatbox and instead of getting a blinking cursor to begin typing, getting a User agreement dialog and an "I accept button". Utterly infuriating change.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#128

Post by _jal »

medstrom wrote: post #121
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions?…

A remote-controlled door would become part of you, the instant you hold the remote.

Depends. If it is a poorly designed remote that forces you to think about how to operate it, the friction makes it much less you-like.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#129

Post by blix »

cercatrova wrote: post #60

From Plato's dialogue Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b: Socrates: I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters. Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god…

Is Ammon not absolutely right?

New information technology induces changes with how we interface with information, almost certainly a mixed bag of good and bad. Writing is directly associated with the decline of memory-based oral traditions. You can probably safely argue that writing brings many positives, but that does not preclude the existence of negatives.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#130

Post by tantalor »

gweinberg wrote: post #126

I think buttons for clothing were around centuries before electric push buttons, and the electric buttons were named for the clothing buttons they resembled. Is that not so? So the fact that "button" in French could mean "push" would just be a coincidence, since you don't push clothing buttons. Or at least I don't.

The push/thrust refers to the button itself, not what you do with it.

> a button is, etymologically, something that pushes up, or thrusts out

https://www.etymonline.com/word/button

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