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Being Raised by the Internet

jimmyhmiller.github.io

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Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#121

Post by orcim »

kragen wrote: post #62

> 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…

Many have definitely been motivated by the wish to share information. But there also wasn't much of an alternative. If you wanted to actively learn something, get someone else to use it, or get them to share what they knew, you almost had to interact with others. Which doesn't mean there wasn't a genuine want to help others. But it was also wanting what you shared to become better. Something that was a direct consequence of many of us having experienced a scarcity of computers, software, and information. And then experiencing network effects.

That still exists in some ways. But much of the Internet is very much being gatekept. Including YouTube, Wikipedia, GitHub, Reddit, and Hacker News. There is almost no point in posting things publicly anymore because not only is the average user not genuinely interested, but they are genuinely not interested. That is why kids grow up with TikTok. Because it is one of the few platforms where you can post on almost the same terms as you consume. And thereby experience those network effects.

I've ended up enough times on the Raspberry Pi forum to understand why anyone young today would not want to go into computer science or electrical engineering.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#122

Post by malfist »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #107
tbrownaw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And if you hit a physical or health issue that takes that away, or dramatically reduces the amount of time you can spend on it? 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 th…

This is way off in a tangent but that's kinda why I think a UBI won't lead to mass unemployment. So many people self identify with their work that it's almost always the first question when you're getting to know someone.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#123

Post by kiwijamo »

fermigier wrote: post #88

I wasn't raised (as a technologist) by the internet, but by cassettes, floppies, magazines and books. But we share at least one experience: the horrors of ndiswrapper. 20 years later, I recently tried to install Ubuntu on an old Intel MacBook Pro that I got somehow, and I realized that in 2024 you still can't install Linux on a laptop (at least, on laptop of a certain popular make) without jumping through hoops, due…

I find it has improved heaps in recent years. Even Debian (a fairly conservative Linux distro) supports Intel wireless chips right out of the box and I understand it has support for other wireless chips as well. It's gotten to the point sometimes Linux has better support out of the box than Windows does! Windows for example struggles with USB-C data but works perfectly on Linux.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#124

Post by throwanem »

Fuzzwah wrote: post #80
082349872349872 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc.

The median American in any restaurant with chairs not bolted to the floor can be assumed to operate on roughly the level of a marginally clever, but ill-parented and intemperate, four- or five-year-old child. Even nice places have to deal with this, because neither the child nor the American recognizes any such distinction.

The waitstaff need you to convince them they won't deal with this with you, which you can quickly and easily do by dressing appropriately - I know, but an American would need to be told - and comporting yourself in the correct fashion you described. A place worth eating at will recognize this and leave you pretty much in peace thereafter.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#125

Post by throwanem »

Aeolun wrote: post #114
bcoates wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's bad. Learn to mind your own business. If you don't understand, you are failing the test.

So what you are saying is that people have some hangup on saying ‘I don’t want to say’ and instead say all kinds of vague stuff that I might want to clarify, and that I should recognize that and just let it go? I’m not quite sure how to distinguish that from people unintentionally being vague.

Not everyone takes "I don't want to talk about that" easily. A '...with you' is always available to be inferred, and a weak ego easily takes insult at that. If that weak ego belongs to someone who signs your paychecks, now you have a problem.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#126

Post by [deleted] »

bcoates wrote: post #111
tbrownaw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bit I quoted seemed to be saying that curiosity and wanting to understand things are bad. Maybe that can be off topic and so out of place at work, but in online arguments prompted by something intentionally made public?

Yes, it's bad. Learn to mind your own business. If you don't understand, you are failing the test.

[deleted]

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#127

Post by kragen »

orcim wrote: post #121
kragen wrote: post #62

> 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…

Many have definitely been motivated by the wish to share information. But there also wasn't much of an alternative. If you wanted to actively learn something, get someone else to use it, or get them to share what they knew, you almost had to interact with others. Which doesn't mean there wasn't a genuine want to help others. But it was also wanting what you shared to become better. Something that was a direct consequ…

i mean, you could totally solve a problem yourself and not write it up. i did that lots of times too!

it'll be interesting to see what happens with llms and things like stack exchange

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#128

Post by kragen »

malfist wrote: post #120
fsflover wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Kagi has a small web thing too. But very few of those places are a community

kagi is explicitly not a community; it's a service you pay for. it's organized around a them/us distinction, and the users are the (atomized) outgroup, individually paying the ingroup for the service provided by that ingroup

there is nothing wrong with that; it's a perfectly good way of organizing things. but it's important not to confuse it with the relationship between, for example, linux users, any of whom is free at any moment to improve the kernel for everyone

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#129

Post by TZubiri »

https://xkcd.com/1311/

"The twenty-first century baby is destined to be rocked and cradled by electricty, warmed and coddled by electricity, perhaps fathered and mothered by electricity. Probably the only thing he will left to do unaidad will be to make love."

Mrs. John Lane, The fortnightly 1905

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#130

Post by ThinkingGuy »

lukan wrote: post #106
kragen wrote: post #62

> 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.

I'm old and fortunate enough to have gotten on the Internet in 1993, when it was smaller, more communal, and less commercial. As much as we old-timers lament the direction things have gone, there are still corners of the Internet where people still help each other, where people seek to share their knowledge freely, and help other humans, even strangers, without regard to artificial reputational or commercial gain. You just have to seek them out.
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