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For most of us, it’s hard to imagine life without the internet.
For better or worse, we’ve become hyper-dependent on the digital universe housed in our screens. We use it on a daily basis to communicate with friends, book flights, shop, skim the news, watch movies and television shows, and stay up-to-date on Kim Kardashian’s derrière.
As access to the internet has improved in the past two decades, the offline population has steeply declined: today, only 11% of Americans don’t use the internet, down from 48% in 2000.
[...] The stories here represent only a small sample of Americans who don’t use the internet, and the reasons why.
Data tells us that the majority of non-users are elderly, but this shouldn’t endorse the trope that old people are technologically challenged. There is certainly no dearth of octogenarian techies, like my grandfather, who was the first in line to buy a PalmPilot in 1997 and has been at least 3 steps ahead of me on the gadget front ever since.
In fact, 51% of of 65+ citizens have broadband internet at home, and 34% are active on social media. In case you need an uplifting anecdotal addition to this, two of the world’s oldest men — Walter Breuning (114), and Alexander Imich (111) — were reportedly frequent and adept internet users until they died.
And though some of the rationales the folks we interviewed seem a bit like stubborn rants, they do have merit: the internet has negatively effects on face-to-face communication, creativity, attention span, social anxiety, and depression — and in light of recent scandals like Cambridge Analytica, data and privacy concerns are certainly valid.
Source: https://thehustle.co/meet-the-11-of-americans-who-dont-use-the-internet/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:11AM (4 children)
The elites want us off the internet. Everybody off the internet! If people were on the internet, they might also take the opportunity to at least become somewhat educated, (oblig) though not many do. However, the few that do are then able to use their social networks to allow a conversation about, for example, whether or not to defy their union's shutdown order and continue a strike.
That's the real danger: more smart people will have access to, if not education, but at least the collected works of humanity going all the way back to the first empires. That runs more of a risk of a smart extrovert [writer is introvert and thus disqualified], in small ways, providing the working class with catalysts to transform them into a revolutionary class.
"Oh, and! Caution!" to paraphrase. "Questionable scientific 'studies' churned out in a 'bring in funding or perish environment' probably mix up causation completely, but we really want you to believe that using the internet causes anxiety and is not an effect of generalized anxiety."
It's a nice way to attempt to scapegoat the generalized anxiety that pervades the working class currently on to the abilities to organize with peers efficiently and peruse a vast, global library.
Note: they try many things to achieve one goal. If one fails, such as ending net neutrality and using ISP censorship as an end-run-around to the First Amendment, they will also be trying a propaganda angle (here), also twisting social network providers' arms to bury "fake news," and there are likely other angles out there as well.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:45AM (1 child)
Yup.
Omageerdd the news is all fake propaganda!!!11 I can't take it anymore!!!!
And if you think you are spending too much for bandwidth/cap you don't use because omagerd, all Hollywood/streaming video is boring/derivative, just wire $20 of Ethereum to the xfinity anon so he can teach you the secrets for how to steal free internetz.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:58AM
Naah, I get all my free internetz tips from AC here on Soylent.
I'm certain I have no reason to question his credibility....
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:57AM
Peruse it while it lasts:
https://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/ [gutenberg.org]
Help construct this vast, global library:
https://www.pgdp.net/c/ [pgdp.net]
(approx 100 years out of date)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 25 2018, @01:21PM
The most likely one is an innocuous looking flood strategy.
The old saying about weak minds talk about people, stronger ones about ideas or WTF (there's many variations on this theme through philosophical history).
All they need to do is flood the proles with meaningless people news (social media twitter FB?) and the proles will be too busy digesting what Justin Beiber tweeted today to bother thinking about workers of the world unite or whatever. Social media is the modern opiate of the masses...
And of course it extends upwards to relatively more trivial topics. Socialized medicine would affect roughly 100% of working age adults so lets get the proles all riled up about 5% of the population getting gay married or 0.5% of the population having or not having various trannie rights. Just as long as they don't think about 100% of the population being subject to a shitty medical industry or shitty post-1965 immigration policy or shitty federal reserve policy etc etc.