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

Leaving the Physical World

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 113 posts

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#41

Post by embedding-shape »

vinceguidry wrote: post #39
embedding-shape wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, anything else nonconstructive to add about the actual article, or you just felt like this was a good moment to try to put down another human for no reason?

Gen Z needs to chill on this expectation of unrelenting positivity. Or I guess y'all can just keep vaping to deal with the stress.

Not sure what Gen Z people you've met, but everyone I've met seemed depressed if anything to me. But also, don't really hang out with kids, so probably just the few I've met.

I don't care about it being positive or negative, but at least make it constructive and at least make it on topic instead of just spewing unrelated nonsense, but I guess it's hard for boomers to avoid posting their typical knee-jerk reactions publicly.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#42

Post by JSR_FDED »

jdw64 wrote: post #20
hattmall wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird take, IMO, the physical world is much more oriented around not being wealthy and you can still find plenty of community online. And your English seems fine. 90s / early 2000s internet was awesome though.

I'm writing this from East Asia, not the US. Over here, there is a suffocating cultural expectation: if you aren't in a specific tier of jobs by a certain age, you are branded a loser. Furthermore, the economy is so heavily centralized that there are very few tech jobs outside of Seoul. I tried to make it there, but after being heavily scammed, I had no choice but to return to my rural hometown. My English is also a…

Keep going and don’t listen to the noise.

Remember also that if you’re having an atypical experience you likely have a different perspective on the world, and what it needs, than others do. That different way of looking at things could turn out to be very valuable.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#43

Post by everdrive »

jdw64 wrote: post #3

Reading this essay brought tears to my eyes. To me, the physical world is a realm permitted only to those with wealth. The author beautifully romanticizes the evaporation of tangible labor, but the physical labor I actually experienced meant unpaid, stolen wages. It meant working through the night, dozing off on the early morning subway until the very last stop, and enduring endless contempt, humiliation, and the tox…

I sympathize strongly with you, but your cyberspace escape is getting worse by the year. I'd say I'm planning my escape but I'm working in tech and I'm not sure I have a path out.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#44

Post by aidenn0 »

> I believe most of this activity is a giant make-work project designed to keep us out of trouble and on the payroll while Asian robots churn out most of the physical things we really need...

Asian, yes. Robots, no (or at least not in the sense of the sci-fi image of one man in a factory whose only job is to press "start" at the beginning of the shift and "stop ad the end of the shift). We didn't abolish the labor, we reduced it a bit and moved it away from us.

[edit]

Productivity in Asia was even lower when this article was written (no date, but mentions that there are 800,000 computers on the internet).

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#45

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

RickJWagner wrote: post #11

“Here, guns were part of the furniture, and my taciturn neighbors used them on one another with heart-breaking regularity. These domestic killers rarely went to jail, since they could usually remind the jury that the deceased, whom most of the jurors knew, needed killing anyway.” It’s enjoyable reading, but I realized the author wasn’t to be taken seriously at this point.

C’mon, isn’t he obviously channeling Mark Twain and the long American tradition of a tall tale? Here’s a British version of the old men reminiscing: “ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k”

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#46

Post by aidenn0 »

flyinghamster wrote: post #30
dzonga wrote: post #8

> bytes which no one can chew, architecture no one can inhabit, and software which keeps no cold winter wind from anyone's bodies. this hits hard. hopefully we can start making physical stuff again & teaching kids how to do so.

I was ranting about the demise of American manufacturing as I was entering the workforce forty years ago , and it seems that nothing has improved in that sphere. Sure, dismantling General Electric produced a supernova of shareholder value, but the problem with supernovas is that once they're done, they're done.

This piece was written over 30 years ago.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#47

Post by vinceguidry »

embedding-shape wrote: post #41
vinceguidry wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z needs to chill on this expectation of unrelenting positivity. Or I guess y'all can just keep vaping to deal with the stress.

Not sure what Gen Z people you've met, but everyone I've met seemed depressed if anything to me. But also, don't really hang out with kids, so probably just the few I've met. I don't care about it being positive or negative, but at least make it constructive and at least make it on topic instead of just spewing unrelated nonsense, but I guess it's hard for boomers to avoid posting their typical knee-jerk reactions pu…

> I guess it's hard for boomers to avoid posting their typical knee-jerk reactions publicly.

I use the phrase "there's a boomer in every room," to describe the phenomenon. Always taking up space, never knowing when to shut up. Always working out a way to make it about him. I'd say it equally applies to post author and the person you responded to. There's no teaching them otherwise, complaining is pointless, hence my response.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#48

Post by stavros »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #35
justonceokay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be privileged to live in the physical world. I quit programming to make candles for years, then apartment maintenance, now in the trades. I make 1/3 what I was making doing digital work, and I’d take a pay cut before returning. The reasons I had for leaving were manifold, but the big two were wanting to quit Adderall and having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a hard road to live…

You may have missed that they're from the developing world, where menial labor is far less well paid and far more backbreaking and dangerous than in the US.

Korea is hardly the developing world, but they're from not-US, basically, which might as well be the developing world as far as the conversation is concerned.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#49

Post by RickJWagner »

erikerikson wrote: post #24
RickJWagner wrote: post #11

“Here, guns were part of the furniture, and my taciturn neighbors used them on one another with heart-breaking regularity. These domestic killers rarely went to jail, since they could usually remind the jury that the deceased, whom most of the jurors knew, needed killing anyway.” It’s enjoyable reading, but I realized the author wasn’t to be taken seriously at this point.

Please explain.

I’ve lived much of my life in the upper Midwest and have close relatives in Wyoming.

Nobody behaves like that. Ever.

The environment is harsh and people unfailingly help each other. Law and order is respected. The culture is one of independence, but rooted strongly in public good.

What the author wrote must surely have been an attempt at humor in the Patrick F. McManus vein.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#50

Post by tinyplanets »

samothrace wrote: post #38
davidwritesbugs wrote: post #4

His "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was the most unintentionally comical thing I read at the time. Like his lyrics and prose it was woefully pretentious & leaden. I also met him once. A more unpleasant, up his own ass, person I can barely recall.

Checks out. I could barely make it past the first paragraphs. "Like very few Americans of my generation, I come from the physical world. ...earning a living from things I could touch and smell." What is the majority of the workforce doing, then? People working in fast food, welders, plumbers, carpenters, laborers, people working in slaughterhouses, janitors, cooks, waitstaff, the people working at the grocery store a…

Wholeheartedly agree. As an American, I get SO tired of the "rugged American individual" narrative...
Post reply on HN