Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Digitopia is ruining our lives

digitopia.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 51 posts

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#41

Post by logfallcy »

blackhole wrote: post #14

It's interesting that, every time an article comes up like this, I wonder why I never seem to experience the same kind of digital addiction or negative feelings that other people do - and then it turns out I'm already doing almost everything the article suggests for "unplugging". I've taken an hour long walk every single day for the past 15 years, and shower, and make sure I'm not getting overwhelmed with notificatio…

Noticed the same in myself and my numerate, STEM minded colleagues. There’s some research that suggests understanding how to spot and reason through why something is logical fallacy acts as an inoculant against fake news[1].

It’s a recent category of analysis but subsequent studies suggest it’s real.[2]

Knowing how the sausage is made lends to awareness this stuff isn’t divine mandate. Disabuses people of pseudo religious belief in politically contrived economics, etc. If you consider religion is not the content of a holy book but a state of belief in socialized babbles essentialness to existence, American Civic Life looks a whole lot like a religion.

[1] https://theconversation.com/inoculation-theory-using-misinfo...

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo6254

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#42

Post by wuuak »

I think there's like a confusion here, where people think tech is the direct cause of many of these symptoms. In reality, I think that pervasive tech can be a cause of depression, but it's the depression itself that in turn wreaks havoc on your brain and produces the myriad other symptoms mentioned.

Not being able to concentrate, escapism (fixation on superficial things/people, buying things online, imagining some perfect life you deserve to be living), sleep/restfulness disturbance (do you stay up to all hours and then frustratingly wake up early anyway? how about get in a solid 8 hours but wake up feeling like dogshit?)

That's not tech overdose, that's depression.

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#43

Post by alwayslikethis »

lacrimacida wrote: post #27
JKCalhoun wrote: post #9

> Being present - Being in the Digitopian state usually means living on autopilot. Grabbing one thing after the other, trying to get through the day, distracting yourself at any negative emotion you face. Yes, I've become aware that I am quite disconnected from "living in the moment" in a way that I was not when I was younger, a teenager. I had begun to think that it was a result of getting older, taking on more resp…

We do need long vacations to recover from modern day digitopia. Living in the US though doesn’t confer much such a priviledge. With an average of 2 weeks of vacation per year I don’t think it’s enough to have enough escape time to fully recover from it

You might be right, but the way people behave on vacations make me think even long vacations would help.

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#45

Post by xg15 »

And of course it's entirely the responsibility of the individual consumer to discipline themselves and fight against digitopia, and not at all of the tech companies who pour unprecedented amounts of engineering effort, psychological skill and money into causing digitopia in the name of "engagement maximisation".

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#46

Post by apantel »

xg15 wrote: post #45

And of course it's entirely the responsibility of the individual consumer to discipline themselves and fight against digitopia, and not at all of the tech companies who pour unprecedented amounts of engineering effort, psychological skill and money into causing digitopia in the name of "engagement maximisation".

When it comes to protecting yourself from danger, you can’t leave it up to others. It doesn’t matter if it should be their responsibility to do xyz in your interest.

An example: when you are crossing the street in front of cars that are stopped at a red or stop sign, YOU have to watch the cars even though it’s technically entirely their responsibility to follow the traffic signs, be watchful for pedestrians, etc. If they were being perfectly responsible, you could just trust your walk sign and walk in front of cars without worrying about them. But that’s not wise. You have to watch the cars anyway in case one of the drivers screws up. If you don’t watch them, you’re putting your life in other people’s hands.

It’s not easy to control other people. You can’t control the government or large corporations. What you can do is take charge of the things you can control, and that’s where you can make by far the biggest impact.

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#49

Post by kj4211cash »

deeshee wrote: post #2

Hey HN, I, as many of you, work in tech. And the last 3 years were mentally horrible. The constant information bombardment, working remotely and rarely leaving the apartment, isolation, and so on and so forth, have left me scarred. If anyone feels the same way, I hope that the pieces I'm shipping are helpful as I truly want to help a million people on overcoming the 21st century pandemic. For those who are curious, I…

Thank you for writing this! I often feel the same way.

My relationship with Slack kind of summarizes things neatly. I enjoy using Slack and it is far and away my preferred method of communication with work colleagues and even work friends. At the same time, seeing slack messages or even the number of slack messages waiting for me is anxiety inducing. There is a false sense of urgency. Zoom is worse, on basically all counts. But Slack is a great idea and tool that is somehow awful for my mental health. I don't know what the solution is. I guess unplug and take a walk. No one has ever complained that I don't reply to a Slack message fast enough.

Re: Digitopia is ruining our lives

#50

Post by teekert »

deeshee wrote: post #18
teekert wrote: post #15

I sounds recognizable and also insightful and as such perhaps the beginnings of a research question and hypothesis… I’d advice against making it more than that for now. We need real research, scientific recommendations. Something real. Otherwise it could just be a reflection of the human state as it always was. Similar to blogs claiming: “Stuff is not fun anymore, when I was young…” Yeah that’s it, you’re now old and…

Thanks for the feedback. But could you elaborate a bit? Are you interested in pieces that lay on the scientific-side of things or personal stories?

What I mean is that OP is presenting a story, not a scientifically proven methods for mental health improvement. And perhaps some things worked for them. This is different from scientifically proven methods. Although useful, it is certainly not a given that the methods will work for you, it could even be so that they will have a negative effect on the majority of people. Still, there is value in these pieces, everyone is different, hence social science being difficult. One could use them to experiment, harm is unlikely to be caused. But, reading to much about self-help and just not getting started with it for whatever reason can also make you feel bad. It starts with acceptance imho. Anyway, just be careful with pieces like this is my advice. It worked for one person, OP. And there are a trillion more pieces with either similar of very different advice.
Post reply on HN