Gen Xers and Older Millennials Say They'd Prefer to Live in an Era Before the Internet (fastcompany.com) 284
A new Harris Poll shared exclusively with Fast Company found that most Americans would prefer to live "in a simpler era before everyone was obsessed with screens and social media," reports Fast Company, adding "this sentiment is especially strong among older millennials and Gen Xers."
The Wrap summarizes the poll results: 77% of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was "plugged in," meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage...
63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy. In total, 67% of respondents said they'd prefer things as they used to be versus as they are now.
"Interestingly, baby boomers were slightly less eager to time hop, with only 60% of people over 55 saying they'd prefer to return to yesteryear," notes Fast Company: While Americans may want to unshackle themselves from the burden of constant connectivity, an overwhelming 90% also said that being open-minded about new technologies is important, a finding that mostly held up across demographics. About half of respondents even said they tend to adopt new technologies before most people they know...
Just over half said they found keeping up with new technologies overwhelming, and about that same percentage said they believe technology is more likely to divide people than unite them. Here, it was younger respondents who took the most pessimistic view, with 57% of people under 35 agreeing that technology divides, versus 43% who disagreed.
The Wrap summarizes the poll results: 77% of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was "plugged in," meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage...
63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy. In total, 67% of respondents said they'd prefer things as they used to be versus as they are now.
"Interestingly, baby boomers were slightly less eager to time hop, with only 60% of people over 55 saying they'd prefer to return to yesteryear," notes Fast Company: While Americans may want to unshackle themselves from the burden of constant connectivity, an overwhelming 90% also said that being open-minded about new technologies is important, a finding that mostly held up across demographics. About half of respondents even said they tend to adopt new technologies before most people they know...
Just over half said they found keeping up with new technologies overwhelming, and about that same percentage said they believe technology is more likely to divide people than unite them. Here, it was younger respondents who took the most pessimistic view, with 57% of people under 35 agreeing that technology divides, versus 43% who disagreed.
Indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Back in simpler times, I would have been free of the compulsion to post a snarky comment in response to the article summary at the top of this page.
For me but not for thee (Score:4, Funny)
Computers and the internet set me free (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who grew up in a shitty rural town, and managed to improve his lot by learning to program, I have to wonder how many of those people who miss the old times were born to lots of money.
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In the 90s, my elementary school library had a book on BASIC, and a lab full of Apple IIs that booted to an interpreter. I also bought a book on C from the local book store, I think that was around $30.
The fact that education is now equated with "born to lots of money" is a whole separate problem in itself.
Additionally, nobody who answered this survey is a programmer. They are people who equate the internet with their social media app-icons, plus maybe Amazon and eBay.
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Same here.
My family was middling income, and the year I could apply for University for a degree course was the year the government dropped free tuition, meaning suddenly a degree cost several thousand more - but the plethora of support for anyone-that-isnt-bottom-income that is now available was not in place back then, so because my parents actually earned a wage above minimum meant I was expected to get loans or not go to university.
So I didnt go.
25 years later, Im exactly where I would be if I had gone to
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I have to wonder how many of those people who miss the old times were born to lots of money.
They were born in a time of historically low income inequality. I guess that counts as "lots of money".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Hell, I'm Gen X and I can't see myself giving up the Internet for many reasons. First, the ability to meet up with people who have similar interests. Second, the ability to get information as well as products is just way easier. E-commerce is revolutionary even if you're in a big city if you need to get that one rare item.
I know life pre-Internet. And I'm not sure I want to return to it. If you think datasheets are hard now with NDAs and such, they're even harder when you're having to write requests in, sen
Social media is optional (Score:5, Insightful)
Barring some types of billing or work related; the internet is largely optional. Social media doubly so. You're not even required to have a smart phone.
Go play outside already.
The only beneficial aspect of the past was just assuming most people were idiots instead of having documented proof.
No man is an island (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Social media is optional (Score:5, Insightful)
"You're not even required to have a smart phone."
In front of a nearby restaurant there's a city owned parking space with an EV charger. The city will give you a parking ticket if you're parked there while not charging your car. The only way to activate the charger is with an app that you must install on your smartphone. There is no other way, you can't swipe a credit card, you can't deposit cash into a slot.
So yes, in this instance, you are required to have a smart phone.
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Gen X here (Score:5, Interesting)
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Same. Late GenX, and am perfectly happy with the internet. Social networks need to be taken in small doses and not become the center of your life. In that way, I am super happy with how techbro CEOs seem to keep fucking them up—more opportunity to drag friends and family out of those doom-spirals and back into the sunshine.
Re:Gen X here (Score:5, Interesting)
Its the unhinged yokels who use it.
Personally, I don't care if unhinged yokels use the Internet. What I can't stand is when unhinged yokels get thrown into my face by companies hoping to monetize annoying me with them. Remember the XKCD "someone is wrong on the Internet" cartoon? Companies realized that they could get a boost of revenue by algorithmically showing people "hot takes" online, getting them to reply, increasing page views, and therefore ad views. Of course, when everything becomes nothing but a stream of hot takes and people trying to build your outrage, the Internet becomes tiring. And that's what I think people are feeling.
I don't want to go back to an Internet before social media or an Internet where most people didn't use it. I want to go back to an Internet before it was taken over by advertisers and managers focused on short term profits at the cost of long term stability. There was a brief, golden age when social media could be used to connect with real people, before everything was monetized by advertising.
The real problem is that people these days aren't willing to pay for anything. Back in the "good old days" of the Internet, you'd pay your ISP, and your ISP would provide what today we'd call "social media." It was funded by the people using them to connect with other people. These days, everything is funded by ads. People aren't willing to pay for things, so everything ends up being ad-funded and focused on increasing ad views.
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The government says I am "elderly." (Score:5, Informative)
I'm 74. I just find it amusing that so many youngins want to return to "simpler times." I think the "good old days" were called "these trying times" when we went through them. I'm not so happy with the politics, but I am very happy with the tech. Rock on!
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That's nothing. When I was young, you called an Uber by standing out in the rain yelling at cars. This was considered a basic feature of city life.
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I still do (in NYC) ... actually, I don't yell as much as wave my hand. On the rare occasion that I need a hire car, taxis have actually become on par with Uber, if not cheaper.
Problem is in the outer boroughs, taxis are scarce ... but you can usually do Uber once, then get the driver's phone number/card. It's beneficial for everyone not to go through Uber. Cash in pocket almost always wins.
Count down to them then inventing the internet (Score:3)
Lol, the generations that thinks it's weird when older folks would rather talk on the phone than text? Yeah, I'll say this is just a case of thinking out loud, which is fine!
P.S. Robert Silverberg's The Time Hoppers comes to mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We were more unified (Score:3)
Old days always looked better but they weren't I mean .. look at the homicde rate in the early 1990s when 95% of the US population didn't have email. The murder rate was double. Also check the 1920s etc. Check out this really good reference: https://sites.nationalacademie... [nationalacademies.org]
They can reduce the tech they use anytime. (Score:3)
Distinction between Internet and Social Media (Score:5, Insightful)
GenX'er here. I think there may be a big distinction between the 'classic' internet of old for say web browsing, old forums, shopping, ordering food etc., and then what came with social media -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.
I'd be curious if the poll made a distinction if it would be different, I think many generations might still want the internet but have come to see the problems with social media.
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When I was at school and needed to solve math problem, I had to dig into a book and find similar example so I could understand the approach. Now you just google and numerous youtube videos come up. Need to double check an answer - wolframalpha will solve it for you and present you with an answer. Now google bard will solve th
Re:Distinction between Internet and Social Media (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you just google and numerous youtube videos come up.
Don't you just love it when the top results for a question are all ten minute videos, usually all starting with "hey guys", and not the three lines of text that are really all that was needed?
Same thing when you're looking for some collectible in a game; it's not that I don't appreciate the effort that goes into making game guides, it's just that sometimes a jpg of the map with an X drawn on it is preferable to scrolling through a video trying to find the damn thing.
A good compromise is to turn off all notifications (Score:2)
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Just as all boomers are finally on Facebook (Score:2)
all them youngster want to do away with that.
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Electronic Gaming / Computers (Score:3, Interesting)
It appears that the oldest surveyed were born at or after 1979. So, by the time they really became aware, they had electronic games, at least, even if it might have been Space Invaders at an arcade, but if you want to get really primitive, try going back to the 50's. There's a thing called boredom, which was our heavyweight prize fight for those of us growing up. My memory has never been great, and so I got interested in science and had stacks and stacks of Pop Sci and Pop Mech, would read them cover to cover, and then a few years later, do it again, 'cuz I forgot the details of the less interesting stuff. OK, show me an article where they get Nuke Fusion to work, I'd likely remember it after reading it once, but the 75th iteration of the flying car from yet another person's pipe dream would go flying overhead into deep space.
But anyone with a computer and is bored is, well, I dunno. I just don't understand. I started playing Quake 3 in the 90's, play it most every day, and have killed over 240,000 bots to date. Love that game. And am never completely bored even if the net is down. If grid goes down, then yeah, that's a problem, but that's rare.
No, I like Social Media, and keeping up with friends from my high school class of '65. Really nice. I don't think there's much I'd change now that Musk has booted the censorship fans from twitter. Or maybe Musk can take over Facebook next. Or merge Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook into "YouTwitFace."
Some Things to Consider (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking from the younger side of this conversation, I do think part of it stems from a sense of feeling overwhelmed.
Things have become more interconnected, turbulent, and volatile. Younger and older generations alike see all the bad news being blasted to their eyeballs at nigh instantaneous speeds, and feel utterly helpless in the face of an uncertain future. Misery loves company after all, and people love to spread it around like the plague via social media and the like, creating a feedback loop of sorts that is routinely exploited by said social media entities. Bad news is awful, and yet so addicting we simply cannot look away like we do at a gory train wreck.
Then you have all the cyberbullying, harassment, doxing, mob hate, theft, and the just plain trolling that allows anonymous individuals to get away with little to really stop them. It feels dehumanizing at times, especially when being on the receiving end of a dedicated bullying campaign by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of anonymous users.
Personally I do not dislike the internet persay, moreso what it seems to be turning into. I think a bigger issue is that the WWW we all grew up with is being gutted and sectioned up by a handful of companies. It is frankly absurd how much power the likes of Google, Twitter, Meta, etc have over the web, and in turn our lives. Their role in the Arab Spring back in the day was a harbinger of things to come, and still we have no real recourse against that type of power.
And then you have the likes of Reddit shitting the bed by wit of their idiocy and lack of care for the communities they have fostered. And now we have AI tech threatening to turn the internet into one giant, glorified botnet. Just imagine a future where no one will be able to tell if a user is actually a human or just a really convincing bot, and the scary part is we may come to accept that over proper human interaction.
Tl;dr modern web is turning into a bot-filled dumpster fire and people conflate it with internet bad as a whole.
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Just FYI.
I would just like (Score:4, Insightful)
I would just like a time before Google, Amazon, Facebook, marketers, advertising companies and similar. It's the bat-shit evil companies destroying the Internet. It now seems every company is looking to use the Internet to somehow control and screw you over with the aforementioned companies showing the way. The promise of the Internet to unite and inform has been severely skewered by Silicon Valley. Advertising companies have done the most damage.
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They were just as bad before, it just wasn't quite as in your face and they didn't have the tools to be as evil as they could be.
Everything humans build gets abused - the Internet was created not to let information be free (though some of the early people involved clearly wanted that), but to ensure the bureaucracy could survive a nuclear strike.
What is really regrettable is that the system was originally built on the assumption that it wouldn't be abused. A little more paranoia and a little less unicorns
Joseph Campbell (Score:5, Insightful)
In _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_ Joe Campbell eloquently explains why both archaism and futurism can't and won't work for society.
Archaism -- the desire to return to the past, often a golden era. The problem is that the remembered past is not the same as the actual past... and also human nature and destiny moves forward with time.
Futurism -- the desire to plan for and logically create, step by step, a future society which we all work hard to move towards. This can't work because it is impossible to plan for and foresee future events, let alone convince everyone to work together on some grand plan.
Instead human society evolves in a deeply mythological way, via death and rebirth. If Archaism is symbolic of the Womb, and Futurism is symbolic of the Tomb, then the actual future is elements of the old reborn as the new.
The takeaway from the survey is that the current state of things needs to, and will eventually, die when enough people feel as those surveyed did. It's not the _things_ we have that are the problem, it is peoples' minds. Right now for all our fancy technology, we are brainwashed into desiring ever greater amounts of consumption. Part of that is an endless feedback loop of dopamine addiction, analogous to endless overeating. We're waking up to the fact that technological overeating is making those who do it... really fucking sick. The next transformation must be inward... where we turn off and tune in to our deeper states of consciousness. Like the sorcerer's apprentice we've unleashed magic without fully understanding it... and there is no sorcerer coming home eventually to save us. Those who overconsume technology are already barely functional addicts, with ever shortening lifespans and ever increasing mental disorders. As other people on here say, the way out is to choose. Choose what is healthy over what feels good. Understand the endless Matrix-like structures urging us to amass more and more wealth in order to increase our personal consumption and choose not to be a human battery feeding the false god of technology.
It'll happen, because eventually the ones who can master their use of technology without becoming addicts will be the only ones left. I urge you to be one of those people
Luddites going backwards (Score:2)
Where there's some valid reasons for disconnecting from the Internet, they clearly don't understand the full concept.
First off, you're reliant on the community being non-hostile. If there's a local bully, he's going to be more of a problem. If your community is gentrified (and it will be), it's stagnant.
When growing up, you're more reliant on parents, and that's widely variable. You have to go to shops to purchase things, and if you're in a semi-rural area, that's possibly an hour trip.
Currently, one can do
The problem isn't being plugged in. (Score:3)
Internet vs. social media (Score:3)
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Problem isn't the Internet (Score:2)
The problem is the corporate stranglehold on the Internet, and the consolidation of what was once a rich tapestry of companies, organizations and hobbyists, into a spigot of gray ooze.
I was there (Score:3)
It's better now
Where should I go? Serious call for recommendation (Score:2)
I'm Gen-X... I'm not sure I agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm 52. I wish for a time when the masses weren't so polarized and just fucking thrilled to hate each other so much. You know, when the question of, "Who did you vote for?" was considered rude. I don't glorify the past - the problems were always there. But the internet made it so, so, so much worse. The online world turned closet shitheads into loud, proud, obnoxious imbeciles. The worst in people were given a platform to revel in the muck. And if I were a betting man (and I've been known to be) I would wager better-than-even that the schisms being driven into society by obsessive connectedness will take a century or more to unravel.
But... I wouldn't turn back the clock. I think we have to go through this as a civilization... and although it'll take more than the rest of my lifetime to get over the hump, it needs to be done. I forget who it was that said that if you suddenly gave everybody the ability to read minds, society would collapse immediately. The internet is a middle ground - we'll see how it goes.
My retirement doesn't include internet access. It does, however, come equipped with a fishing rod, a lake lot, a wood stove, and a couple of cases of good scotch.
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I feel like there was plenty of hatred to go around post-Civil War, in the 1920s (Red Scare, etc), 1950s/1960s (anti-civil-rights riots) ... maybe the 80s and 90s were just comparatively peaceful times domestically.
I think the problem is larger than that, especially post-COVID ... people have a limited capacity for social attention, and the time spent consuming "empty calories" online reduces ability to interact spontaneously in person.
Why Use Wrong Gen-X Start Year? (Score:2)
unplugged != before internet (Score:2)
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Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely nothing is stopping these people from replacing their cell phones with dumbphones, replacing streaming with cable, and simply abstaining from online toxicity. If they want that simpler world so bad, why aren't they acting on that desire? Hmmm?
I have had conversations like this and I always get the same sort of resistance. They whine that they "just can't." They point out some stupid thing that they just can't live without on their phones. Or some benefit that they like. And they act like this holds them trapped in the sad and miserable world of online connectivity.
They lie to themselves on two fronts. The first lie is that they can't disconnect even a little bit. ITS A LIE. I ditched my cell phone and went back to a bar phone, de-googled my life, avoided social media sites and all their political manipulation and toxicity, and you know what? I am still in touch with everyone dear to me, we remain in constant communication, we visit often. I still engage with the world and meet new people whenever I choose. I am not internet-free, but I don't obsess over it and it doesn't fill me with anxiety because I actually pay attention to what is and is not toxic and I keep the toxicity out of my life. You can, too, if you truly want to.
The second lie is that they actually do want the whole world to go back to a simpler pre-Internet era. No, they don't. They are fixating on a specific subset of social problems and wishing those would go away, while completely forgetting all of the benefits that connectivity brings. They would hate life without those benefits, and deep down inside they know it.
The whole conversation is just posturing. Nobody wants to ditch the tech, they just want to ditch the problems that come with it. And, guess what? ALL of those problems are actually just problems of human pettiness, drama-seeking, and addiction. None of those problems are caused by the tech, they are just being expressed through the tech. Anyone who is serious about living a more peaceful life absolutely can, here and now, by actually acting on the truths that are right in front of their faces.
There is a severe deficit of critical thinking in the online world, and that too is probably just human nature. But that, more than anything else, is responsible for everything that we hate about the modern world. People believe false facts whenever it suits a narrative, rather than seeking true facts, and people choose convenience over safety every damn time, and people fall into political echo-chambers (leading to extremism and hatred) rather than engaging their neighbors in honest dialogue. These are all personal problems that exist independently of the Internet, and can be overcome just as independently.
Don't like the world? Be better. It's that simple.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Interesting)
No, what we want is to go back to where you didn't have to wade through a ton of shit like people posting any random thought on twatter / faceshitter all while yelling as loud as possible to get gratification from higher and higher follower numbers. Then brigading against companies / employers with what few followers aren't bots to push their agenda on everyone else. Or even worse, using the bots to help brigade.
We want to have normal human interactions and not be called out for the drama de jour by idiots posturing to try and make themselves look good.
We want to be able to say our piece without some dipshit thin skinned ape coming out yelling about how they are offended that we don't agree with them 100%, and ten other white knights yelling "that might offend one other person in the millions who see it". Because they haven't grown thick enough skin to block a feather.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:4, Insightful)
No, what we want is to go back to where you didn't have to wade through a ton of shit like people posting any random thought on twatter / faceshitter all while yelling as loud as possible to get gratification from higher and higher follower numbers.
You don't have to wade through that now. I've heard about all that stuff, but never actually seen it.
I must define things differently than the 77%. I love widespread Internet and cell phone usage. Wikipedia is great. Amazon is super useful. Podcasts are one of the best things that have ever happened to me. I recognize the change has brought some bad things, but the good outweighs them.
There's no reason you have to care about Twitter.
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> There's no reason you have to care about Twitter.
I don't care about Twitter, I don't use it but it has a definite impact on society and that is the problem.
Take a look at how people on TikTok are spreading misinformation and hatred towards different groups (let it be men, women or opinions political or otherwise) and now that has a global reach of umpteen millions. Then remember that all this controlled by a government who is hellbent on controlling their people and can manipulate the content as they s
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It's quite easy to use Facebook and Twitter without encountering any of that stuff either. All you have to do is stop following/friending people you don't like.
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All you have to do is stop following/friending people you don't like
It is simple in fact. Only follow your real-life friends, and, at any rate, they are just as likely as to say something offending irl as they are to post something on-line.
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In which case it's prolly best just not to have friends, as you cannot control what anyone does. You can stay offline or away from social media all you want, but your friends won't.
It's trite to say that nothing is absolutely good or bad, but to my mind anything that facilitates communication is preponderantly good, even if it is liable to being abused.
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These arguments as old as Socrates, and probably older. He mistrusted writing. Then there was the printing press: although your distinction is facilitated by the net, it does not depend on it. Tract publication, for instance, has a surprisingly long and cranky history. Luther divided the entire West with his.
Again, I'd rather have the cacophony of the current net than not.
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No, what we want is to go back to where you didn't have to wade through a ton of shit like people posting any random thought on twatter / faceshitter all while yelling as loud as possible to get gratification from higher and higher follower numbers. Then brigading against companies / employers with what few followers aren't bots to push their agenda on everyone else. Or even worse, using the bots to help brigade.
We want to have normal human interactions and not be called out for the drama de jour by idiots posturing to try and make themselves look good.
We can do that. Just don't go on social media and if you do make youself a little bubble. A private facebook group or subreddit or just good ol' fashioned email if you really want.
We want to be able to say our piece without some dipshit thin skinned ape coming out yelling about how they are offended that we don't agree with them 100%, and ten other white knights yelling "that might offend one other person in the millions who see it". Because they haven't grown thick enough skin to block a feather.
This seems counter intuitive to your fist point. You want to able to shit your thoughts out online without being exposed to everyone else's shat out thoughts?
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Availability, for one. The only dumbphone I've seen recently is a landline telephone, and the phone companies want to push people away from that. Even classic cellphones are being depricated.
However, there's nothing forcing people to use all the features of the smartphone. Aside from minor differences, smartphones can be used identically to classic cellphones or earlier PDAs.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Insightful)
Search for "4g flip phone" or "5g flip phone" -- plenty available if you buy your own (not through the carrier). You can get a VoIP landline, BTW.
The problem is that a lot of fucking stupid things are getting tied to having a smartphone ... e.g. you can't get into some places/venues without a QR code on their appitty-app. This has gotten worse since COVID, of course.
Re: The Good Ol' Days (Score:3)
Restaurant menus only accessible via QR codes. I don't know who thought that was a good idea.
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I was about to write precisely that. Thanks for saving me the work.
Preach on.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely nothing is stopping these people from replacing their cell phones with dumbphones
Let me stop you right there. I just got back from hospital (literally an hour ago). Last night I got a WhatsApp message reminding me to check in to my hospital visit. I logged into a website which required a government ID check that uses 2FA from my phone. It does have an SMS based backup but it is horrendously slow and doesn't get around the fundamental requirement that technology is here to stay. After my check-in I was sent a QR code which I scanned at the hospital.
Yeah a FUCKTON OF MY LIFE is preventing me from replacing my cell phone with a dumb phone. Nearly 100% of simplification processes in the past decade in every aspects of our lives, be they government, banking, or simply communicating, have been based around technology.
People are lamenting the complexity of owning technology, you said they don't need to but the reality is their lives would be even more complex if they didn't. Technology IS the simple world. The old world is dead.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Insightful)
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Absolutely nothing is stopping these people from replacing their cell phones with dumbphones, replacing streaming with cable, and simply abstaining from online toxicity. If they want that simpler world so bad, why aren't they acting on that desire?
As a GenX, this is exactly what I've done (sans the streaming part. I don't do either). I have a simple flip phone where people can call me if needed, I don't belong to any anti-social sites other than here, and again, other than here, abstain from online toxicit
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Absolutely nothing is stopping these people from replacing their cell phones with dumbphones
Yes there is because its expected now, go to a service station and buy a map see how many there are. Find a payphone see how that works for you.
Try log in somewhere and not have 2 factor authentication, or even call may places and expect to talk to a person who can do something.
Society is now structured in such a way that you are expected to have a smart phone.
As a Gen Xer I had high hopes for the internet, but its turned out to be a huge disappointment, basically a way to advertise constantly to you and co
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Your fault.
You've shown affinity to whatever political group that amplified negative aspects of society, and now those three things are constantly shown in the media rather than just being something that should have died out quickly.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Insightful)
Having lived in a couple decades before the Internet existed, I'm a little confused by your post. You don't have to jump to the 19th century to get back before the Internet existed.
Sears and Monkey Wards had physical stores. Sure, you could order stuff from them (and get it in 3-5 days typically, not 60-90) - but they had a lot of stuff in-store. Disease wasn't particularly rampant, and life expectancy wasn't that much shorter than it is now. The wire services got the news to us pretty quickly, and there were TV newscasts that actually covered important stories as they happened. It wasn't exactly a horrible time to be alive.
But I also remember keeping a Thomas Guide in my car for those times when I needed to drive somewhere unknown. I remember hunting for a payphone late at night when my car broke down in a deserted part of Seattle's industrial district. Overall, I'll take the present, thank you very much.
Hey, Millenials. Worried about screen time? PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN AND GO OUTSIDE! It's not hard.
Side note... we have a Montgomery Wards upright freezer that's still functioning - bought in the 1980s.
Re: The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Insightful)
I am Gen X, my childhood was described by Stranger Things, kids riding their bikes to weird places randomly. Teenage years was heavy metal and punk shows. College was philosophical debates in coffee shops with strangers, older people too. Got my first cell phone after college, around 2000. ALL THAT IS GONE. You can put down your phone and go to a coffee shop, but every person there is staring at a screen. Walk in the park and strangers look at you anxiously clutching their phones. Everyone exists simultaneously in a state of constant surveillance and tracking, and fear. Yet we were fearless when we had none of it. The moral of the story to me is everything is a trade off. You really give something else up to get the cool tech, its sad to me the younger generations dont even know what was lost.
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You accidentally a few words there (Score:2)
> Disease was rampant and death was a fact and life expectancy was great.
You do realize that to most people that'd be pre-AOL (i.e. the 1990s) and not the 1800s, right?
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1800 is an exaggeration to make a point. What the lawyers call reductio ad absurdum.
Nope. That's absolutely not the term of art you're looking for.
Re:The Good Ol' Days (Score:5, Insightful)
> Disease was rampant and death was a fact and life expectancy was great.
What does this have to do with wanting to live without social media affecting every part of your life or society?
They don't want to turn back the dial to time before antibiotics, internet or easily accessible information. What many of us (I include myself in this) want is that social media, especially sites like Twitter, TikTok, FB et al. to have less of an impact in society and people who are clearly mentally unwell (hi xer, i am xyr hur dur) to have their ability to voice their insanity to millions reduced.
Wanting some of the positive things from the 'good old days' and leaving the bad ones behind doesn't mean you "voted for Trump" or want to dial back the clock 200 years.
No, the headline is bullshit ... (Score:5, Funny)
We don't want to give up the internet, we just hate it when we are all connected 24/7 and obsessed with social media.
Anybody can surely see there are both costs and benefits. Maybe the sweet spot was when we had internet at home & work, and tiny dumb phones in our pockets. And I had all my hair.
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Not so easy. My bank, for example, requires a 2FA app in order to log in even from a desktop. Can't run that on a dumb phone. It requires a smartphone from within the last five years for security reasons.
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Re: The Good Ol' Days (Score:2)
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CNN, back when it was both non-partisan, non-biased and factual.
And IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
Re: The Good Ol' Days (Score:2)
No Netflix, no TV, you had to come out of your room to have fun. And oh boy did we. Probably also out of boredom. We knew everyone, knew their problems, took care of each other. Fought, argued, amended... Then internet was introduced. Newbees stuck with their high-school friends. Empty corridors, MSN sounds everywhere.
If you grew up with internet, you cannot
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FIrst of all, the topic of the survey emphatically wasn't a return to the 1800s or even 1900s so your post missed the point worse than your usual train-station restroom goer misses the bowl. It missed the point on purpose, though - unlike the mentioned 1800s, the life of the average person has not improved in the last thirty years, economically or socially, so of course people wish for it to go away. Internet is, in part, an easy s
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You don't get it, they just want to return to the time of "That 70's show' or "The wonder years". That's the beauty of it.
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Let’s go back to June 1, 2007.
There was NO IPHONE.
There was NO ANDROID.
Reddit was 2 years old.
Twitter was 15 months old.
There WAS Amazon.
Heck, Amazon MP3 was great (!!)
And Amazon Prime was about 2 1/2 years old.
Netflix went Digital Video in January 2007, 7 months previously.
AirBnb had just been released and was a few months old.
YouTube was bought by Google on November 2006, 7 months previously.
Heck, Facebook had opened up to the world on September 2006, 9 months previously.
Yes, if we time travel back
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The only people longing to go 'back' to them days are delusional idiots.
Not really. Most people fondly remember life when everything was/seemed simpler. They don't remember the bad things. If they are too young to remember they know it only from what their parents told them and what they saw in movies, both of which is also seen through rose coloured glasses.
I also fondly remember the time of Fidonet and Usenet, before the eternal September happened (through AOL). Or the time even before that, when I simply was a child and didn't have many worries (apart from being beaten up by
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Go back to 1 June 2007 and show Steve Jobs what life is like in 19 June 2023.
He’ll be so fucking horrified that he’ll not do the iPhone 1 Release on 29 June 2007. In fact, he’ll destroy the iPhone and stick to making a better BlackBerry. Making sure that we avoid all the dopamine addiction of smartphones.
We should also visit the guys who created Android and show them the same thing.
We get to keep Amazon Prime, Netflix, Uber, Twitter, YouTube, AirBnb, everything else, all of which was creat
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Yeah, news traveled at the speed of light via the telegraphs since the 1840s.
The telegraph played a pivotal role in the American Civil War in the 1860s.
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Re:Kind of surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't live the experience the 1st time as you filmed it and reruns will fail to give you back what you lost; never fully experienced because you were filming it with divided attention.
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I was 13 and had... (Score:2)
6502 Machine Language for Beginners.
https://www.atariarchives.org/... [atariarchives.org]
I was doomed from a very young age to a life of technical nerdity... and a great career.