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from the too-busy-shitposting-to-go-outside dept.
Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good:
Screens used to be for the elite. Now avoiding them is a status symbol.
[...] Life for anyone but the very rich — the physical experience of learning, living and dying — is increasingly mediated by screens.
Not only are screens themselves cheap to make, but they also make things cheaper. Any place that can fit a screen in (classrooms, hospitals, airports, restaurants) can cut costs. And any activity that can happen on a screen becomes cheaper. The texture of life, the tactile experience, is becoming smooth glass.
The rich do not live like this. The rich have grown afraid of screens. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools are booming. Humans are more expensive, and rich people are willing and able to pay for them. Conspicuous human interaction — living without a phone for a day, quitting social networks and not answering email — has become a status symbol.
All of this has led to a curious new reality: Human contact is becoming a luxury good.
As more screens appear in the lives of the poor, screens are disappearing from the lives of the rich. The richer you are, the more you spend to be offscreen.
I remember when the tag line for AT&T was Reach out and touch someone and it was portrayed as a good thing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bussdriver on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:23PM (4 children)
It probably applies to most everything. 80% of youtube is toxic shit which causes long term harm. Is the 20% of harmless or useful content worth it? That is the real question. Some people learn a few things... their betterment offsets the 80% who get worse?
People digging past the click-bait traps to use youtube productively most likely (at least 80%) would find other sources, often better in some way (likely faster since these people can read faster than listen to audio and skim a document with images faster than scrub a video on youtube.)
The low hanging fruit is probably 80%. I think it's reaching to say 20% of the web is actually useful; social media is hard to imagine even 10% being beneficial.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:31PM (2 children)
Don't worry about the percentages. Just do your best. Live a good life. Vote for decent social security. If people follow your example, all the better.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:57PM
It's also good to vote for people who don't take away school lunches for four year olds. Just thinking of GWB.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:52PM
Well, you can use one of the percentages [wikipedia.org] as a good starting point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:34PM
You seem to be referring to the "lowest common denominator". Those people who spend their days being entertained by LCD entertainers, are, in and of themselves, LCD's. No, they aren't worse, after seeing the trash on television, or on the movie screens, or on Youtube. They are exactly the persons being marketed to, and they are getting exactly what they were looking for.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.