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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: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:24AM
-s of my writing.
Some people just don't want computers to be part of their lives.
I ride public transit and so often chat with strangers. From time to time I'll come across someone who doesn't use computers, so I suggest they get free lessons at the library. Every Last One replies that they don't want anything to do with computers.
That includes a Sheriff's Deputy who has a computer on his desk at the County Jail - but has no computers in his home.
No one is going to continue using my code after I'm gone, but lots of people will still benefit from my writing. For that reason I emailed my extended family then requested they ensure that my writing stay online were I to perish or be incapacitated. My brother-in-law said he'd take care of it - he's into computers too.
But the Internet is fragile: it would be destroyed by even a very limited nuclear war, a comet strike or the eruption of a supervolcano.
However, paper can last for thousands of years.
For that reason I'm working on a print edition of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder [warplife.com] that I'll self publish through Lulu [lulu.com]. When I get the cash I'll also get a limited print one with acid-free archival paper, then donate them to University libraries.
Maybe hemp paper - that the Constitution and the Declaration Of Independence will last forever is in part due to their being printed on hemp.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]