He nails it, IMO.
- I and millions of other early ‘netizens’ as we embarrassingly called ourselves, joined an online world that seemed to offer an alternative human space, to welcome in a friendly way (the word netiquette was used) all kinds of people with all kinds of views. We were outside the world of power and control. Politicians, advertisers, broadcasters, media moguls, corporates and journalists had absolutely zero understanding of the net and zero belief that it mattered. So we felt like an alternative culture; we were outsiders.
Tagged because this is worthy of conversation, but I have nowhere else I'd put it.
I stopped reading after this: Why should anyone want to dissociate themselves from all that connectedness, fun, convenience, reach and power? Well, because it would be – and I can’t be bothered to search for a better word and anyway perhaps there isn’t one – awesome. I skimmed the rest to see if he expanded on this idea, but I was disappointed. Instead, this is what I got out of it: As if I haven't posted this enough already. So he's advocating that we ditch anything involving online communication, just to rebel? Because... it's awesome? What a nonsensical and unproductive load of hooey. Being a rebel for the sake of being a rebel isn't awesome. It's dumb. I mean I get it, lots of what happens online today is frivolous and probably even harmful. In my opinion, people under 30 today are far too caught up in social media. Most people are stupid and lazy. They're going to use the Internet for the lowest common denominator content , and they're going to be exploited via it. But that's always been the case with any technology, whether that be the printing press, radio, TV or the Internet. I still think more good than harm comes from it being online, and I think my life is improved by it. I get my news online, I read enlightening articles and conversations on Hubski, I can discover new and free music on any number of websites, and I can indulge my random interests on reddit. Why would I give that up just because of the bad stuff on the Internet? (Normally I like to just ignore these types of articles, but this one was particularly asinine.)Well maybe. But I’m going to suggest that if I was young now, my proudest boast would be: ‘My friends and I, we disappeared ourselves. No social media, no email, no chat, no wifi, no selfies, no SMS, no smartphones. We did it. We did this thing. We Got Off The Grid.’
He's advocating we ditch the so-called Internet presence because the alternative is by far more heartfelt and emotionally-satisfying. He argues that there is much more joy in talking to people face to face than there is in talking to the fictional names online (like we're doing at this very moment). While I agree with those two ideas, I, too, find it a lot like rambling of an old man. While he does talk of a part of the picture, as is often the case with essays like this, it feels like he's intentionally leaving out the great traits of the Internet - and I assume intention because a person as clever as Stephen Fry simply can not skim over it mindlessly and leave with a single, solid and unbased opinion. It's not impossible to survive without the Internet, and there are a lot of things one might interest themselves in offline, it provides great opportunities on its own, like instant communication or shared knowledge (alike encyclopedias). Judging by the blog post, though, it is as if those things don't exist; as if the Internet is all about social networking and ads (which are now easily blockable, as he, a tech-savvy person a long way, should very well know). Feels hypocritical, coming from a person letting his thoughts out onto his own website's blog, for people all over the world to read regardless of race, age, gender or social status. I'm not defending the Internet, nor am I judging it. It's a great tool, but that's all it is: a tool. A knife can be used to chop carrots or to kill people, and we don't protest pleeding to ban knives. I'm sure there are some fucked-up things people do with knives, but it doesn't make the knives any less useful as far as their intended purpose - interconnection of the world, making sharing information a lot easier - is concerned. You can post selfies online or you can dig up Wikipedia articles to learn about things. You can shitpost in Twitter or you can discuss what's clearly a thoughtful article of a single person a huge physical distance away from either of the discussants. You can choose what to do, and that's both the beauty and the beast of it.So he's advocating that we ditch anything involving online communication, just to rebel? Because... it's awesome?
I'm someone who paid to be on "The Well" a million Internet years ago. As someone I talk to, not on a social media site, likes to say 'The Internet went to hell when the normals were allowed online.' The only places I hang out online anymore are here and a few astronomy forums.
I entered The WELL as a militant Catholic and left two years later a militant atheist. The name I used back then is best left in the dank memes of history. Yea, and that is what Fry is sort of trying to get at. Small communities that are hard to get into, hobbies that demand skill and dedication to enjoy, art/music/movie genre's that require an investment to enjoy, those are the best communities to be a part of. Everyone on the web page or in the community has that one thing, at least, in common and from that point you can build online friendships. The WELL was hard to get into, and the people in there were all nerds, dorks, geeks, outcasts, etc. That "otherness" bound people together. I doubt I'd have left religion if it was not for meeting people there while talking about space and science. Edit: reading that back at myself made me chuckle in light of KB's Hipster Hate thread being bumped up again.Couldn't stand it when AOL let all the "spectators" in.
Nostalgia Moment #1,320,966: I used to run BBS's using RedRyderHost. I could build a BBS from scratch in about two hours. Kinda like those guys who can build a fully customized WordPress site in about as much time. So each RRH BBS I'd set up, would become part of the network of them. And they all had to share each other's numbers, and transfer each other's email. It was a part of my deal. I didn't ask for payment. I just built the site, put it on a floppy, and told the person how to get it up and running. They'd go home, read my laser-printed directions, and suddenly a new BBS would appear. Watching the modems connect, watching the email files move across, reading new posts as they came through - real-time - at 300 baud... It was kinda amazing. Here were all these people who had never met. Talking. Sharing stories. Ideas. Helping each other out. I eventually brought home a 14.4k modem (some brand with "robot" in it, or something) that was bigger than a laptop computer is today... then I was able to read ALL the usenet groups I wanted (rec.moto, rec.pyro, were two of my regular haunts), get all the cool shit from The WELL. Then I started testing Apple's eWorld. That's how I made the connection to NASA, and eventually got a job there. Flame wars. Heh. Look at the internet nowadays.... sheesh.
The Internet remains full of potential, the Web, modeled after publishing and recreating the old media in a new form was begging to be Disneyfied. Opt out of social media by all means, but, until it's legislated away, there's still room for the Internet to be better than that.
So, here's how I became aware of this post. I was checking the new articles in my RSS reader today (the old FeedDemon). I saw @goobster's badged comment, skimmed it and checked the article. As I was reading it, I thought "wow... what he mentions in here is all the things I've been doing all these years!!". From what was in there, the only missing part for me was meeting people face to face, due to my disagreements with local people and the difficulty in finding like-minded folks in my town. But I'm getting off the point. I quit Facebook around 5-6 years ago. After blocking posts by a huge amount of people in my timeline (and cringing at what my parents posted). I decided to delete it. Not deactivate the account. Took me a couple hours to find that hidden link to delete the account for good. Also, 2 more weeks so they would delete my data. Allegedly. Then I got in love with RSS. With it, I can pick my own sources of information. I don't have to go to the websites I'm interested in. They come to me. I don't have another entity or people curating my timeline, deciding what I should see and what I shouldn't. I think this is a good example of rebellion hinted by Stephen Fry in his article. RSS used to be popular, but with more people reading blogs and the like through social media, it fell to the sidelines. Finding good RSS feeds nowadays for me has been quite an ordeal. In the past month I got around that problem. Also, @mk, I'm really grateful that Hubski has easy-to-find RSS feeds. Thank you! The other mainstream platform I was trying to circumvent was Whatsapp, ever since Facebook bought it. To this day, I haven't found a way to get things from inside that app. It was mostly to interact more with local people in my area. Then I found Telegram and started using it to talk to international users (which I still do and love it). Now, back to Whatsapp, after seeing what people do in there and comparing both apps, I said "hey, I don't want to tap in there anymore. Nothing useful to me". Another funny thing was that I met people who used a Telegram unnoficial client in Brazil called ZapZap, and they didn't know they were using Telegram itself! One woman even went and said "Telegram is crap"! My point with this comment is to share my experience as a person who doesn't use the platforms and social media everyone uses. It's not easy and takes a lot of work to set up things, but in the end... it's worth it.
- Facebook: it didn't really appeal to me. I don't share my life all the time with people and I found that engaging them over there wasn't very effective. Their attention was divided among many other things. Sometimes they wouldn't see what I posted because of the EdgeRank algorithm. Also, I felt much better when I didn't receive updates from everyone else all the time. - Whatsapp (popular messaging app in my country): In the beginning, it was because of it requiring my phone number to use it. Other than that, since I'm not tied to any group of friends in these things, I took a look at the features. Didn't like it that I would have to ask permission to get in a group every time and that my number would be visible to everyone. Also, cryptography issues back then. I ended up using Telegram. - Instagram: I don't really take many photos. Just of articles I read in magazines and posters I need to remember later. - Reddit: I haven't mined a lot of information from there. Got some penpals once through /r/penpals and I'd hang out in /r/casualconversation, but... after a while it felt off to me. I didn't like the feel of the place. I also expected to meet more people from other countries, but most of them were from the US in these subs at the time (last year). In Telegram, most people are from Iran. - RSS: This one was big back in the late 2000s, but now not many people use it because they get their news from their feeds in FB and the like. I use it to check my email, monitor some ongoing events, keep up with Hubski and follow the themes I'm interested in. I use it to run some Twitter queries too. - Twitter: never felt like sending anything there, I just check hashtags for things I'm interested in and the trending topics once in a while. Tried using it with an account before, but I thought it was too disorganized. A lot of stuff thrown at one's face at once. Lists help organize things a bit better, but then the problem was checking them. I wanted to find a desktop client (because I'm too lazy to keep tabs open and refresh them). Since there wasn't any, I forked it to RSS. - Youtube: I just go in there to do research too. Now I forked some channels to my RSS reader. When I can't find what I want there, I go to Vimeo or Dailymotion. - Snapchat: Tried using it as a bridge between me and the people who use Whatsapp. I got it to run in an Android emulator, and the idea was to check it on my desktop, but that didn't go well. I scrapped the idea. Snapchat is more image oriented. Wouldn't be good for texts only. This is pretty much it. I'm trying to use email more, so far I'm getting weather reports through there, and haven't found any newsletter that caught my eye yet. I stopped with the penpals too, we just drifted away from each other... and I rarely send anything at all. The more troublesome point was keeping contact with locals in my area, but I rolled back to phone calls and texting ,even though they charge per text and per minute spoken around here. I'd love to find a free alternative.What is your reason for not using the platforms and social media everyone uses?
It was an fun read on the retrospective of computers and the internet. I had to smirk at his last paragraph. After all the bravado of talking about writing letters, walking to meet people face to face and all of that, he writes at the end that he hasn't given up email, text or the cloud. He's only given up most of social media. That's not a brave new world. Many of the people without social media or those who are not on the grid are those who never got on the internet. He also makes it sound like a call to arms, but he doesn't seem to realize that his position in all of it is pretty advantaged and unique. Other people didn't have a twitter account with millions of followers. He got that through his fame unrelated to social media. He also doesn't explain why the internet would get mean when the politicians, media and corporates got involved. They may shape the backdrop, but they're not the ones adding the twitter comments. I get that he feels like social media has become sheeple-like which is true of anything that becomes mainstream. But the alternative he gives doesn't solve the problem he's describing.
I've been online since the early 1980's. Bulletin Board Systems. Email. The WELL. Usenet. Hand-coded web sites. eWorld. Tribe. LiveJournal. MySpace. Blogger. The original incarnation of Tumblr. Facebook. Blah blah blah. What every commenter has missed in this thread, is the fact that Stephen Fry's article has nothing to do with technology... it's a love song to the rebellious nature of youth. And that it is the rebels who move the world forward. Not the sheep following along single-file behind the leader. He mourns the loss of the rebellious spirit of youth. Women wore pants to rebel. Rebels rejected the 2.5 kids and a white picket fence "nuclear family" and embraced communes, roommates, and living alone. Punks tried to tear down every societal norm to rebel. Metal heads applied skill and craft to rebellious ideas and tools and developed a finely honed precision to their rebellion. Grunge rejected the precision of metal and went sloppy. Both in clothing and technology. Rap rebelled against the structure of a band, and the assumption the front man should sing. Every single one of these things were driven by the young, rebelling against the ways of the old. Stephen Fry makes the simple point that the most common thing - the thing that Advertisers love, the thing the mass media has fully embraced, the thing even your parents are doing - is Social Media. So the most rebellious thing you could do is dump these tools of the modern bourgeoisie, and go analog. Talk in person. Make things with your hands. Don't buy in to the machine and become a cog in their wheel... opt out! You don't HAVE to be on social media. You don't HAVE to have email. The case he makes is that people like he and I have lived in both worlds, and by personal experience we know that both are valuable. But being electronically connected is now the norm. Adults today have grown up with screens and internet connections. These are today's Normal. But rebellion is about fighting against the norm. So the most rebellious thing one can do now is opt out of the digital advert-verse, and engage people in a real way. Face to face. Don't offer up your eyes, your mind, your time, and your soul, to advertisers, just to get another momentary endorphin jag. The comments in this thread are really pretty funny to me. And a bit sad and pathetic at the same time... seeing people clutch so hard to something, as it cuts into their hands and the blood runs down their arms and they cry "I'm fine! Don't touch me!" and cower in the corner... The internet is a tool. A needle is a tool. Put heroin in the needle, and you'll become unhealthily obsessed with the tool. Put yourself on social media, and your internet becomes an obsession, rather than a tool. Now YOU are a tool of the advertisers. Rebel. Don't offer yourself up to be lied to. Go where they can't get you. Rebel.
I wonder where he gets this idea... Both the Comp. Sci. and Engineering schools at my university require that all students have a laptop capable of running software related to the coursework (financial aid is available specifically to help meet this requirement). The university also supplies plenty of computer labs. If I insisted on turning in all assignments on paper, I would be laughed at and given failing grades until I was kicked out of school. The modern world absolutely can and will force you to have an online presence.They couldn’t force me to have an online presence after all.
To you and to Wintermute both: When I started living in the rented apartment in Tomsk, which happened in September, I had no Internet access for months - April's going to be the second month I have it. The thing I missed most was YouTube videos. I once spent a night in the uni library just to get all of the stuff downloaded and saved to watch later. The Internet makes a lot of things simpler, quicker and/or more comfortable to do. It provides instant communication as well as archives and logs of things. It lets you do almost anything with the digital data. But to say that you can't do anything offline? To say that you can be forced to be present online? Ridiculous, almost infantile. While I do send and receive messages through the only social network I have a page in, I use it mostly to gather home assignments for a single class and search through vast array of musical tracks when I want to listen to one of them. In fact, while it's possible to do without a social network page (which I did for a few months), the latter being so comfortable in this particular network is the only reason I haven't deleted the page yet. The assignments I can also gather from the tutor directly, with no detriment for either of us, but I don't while the page is up. Most of our assignments are required to be presented in written form. The only reason I don't do a lot of them long-hand is because I have trouble writing by hand and I asked the tutors to allow me not to. We're linguists. Guess how many other faculties use the same practice in the uni (Tomsk State Uni). If I had to lose Internet access, I'm sure I'd miss some things - like YouTube videos, quick music access and one particular online game, Dota 2, - but beyond that, there are so many things to do offline that to say that Internet presence is a "should" rather than "may", that it is socially mandatory rather than a preference is a skew of values rather than a representation of reality. The Internet is useful, and there are a lot of things there that you won't find anywhere else, but you can live without it, much like you can live without coffee or swimming: once in a while, for a good measure, and if that's enough for you, that's fine. You will only miss out on things you deem important, and not to everyone Internet presence is such a thing. P.S. The incomplete list of things you can do offline: - spending time, face to face, with friends and family - cooking delicious meal - jogging/running - powerlifting - reading books by famous philosophers - solving Rubik's Cube - writing - arguing over the meaning of life with other people - volunteering - driving a motorcycle across the city - walking - having sex - bottling your own beer - cutting figures out of wood - teaching children English - arguing for a better future, on any scale, with those who can make it happen - looking good in that shirt and tie - doing homework - doing housework - sewing - farming - riding a horse - building a plane by hand - growing tea for yourself - consulting etc. By now, you should get my point.
If I don't have the Internet I cannot do my job, and I don't get paid. I have friends, some I have never met in person, in four countries and seven states. Without the Internet I'm have never met them. You, for example, and I would never interact without an online forum. The issue you address was not the issue I was addressing, so I take a step back. This comment was in the context of kids going to college. Just about every class, yes even the art students, requires online access and access to the college intranet. I have coworkers taking online classes and then they have to show up with a laptop at the final; no laptop no grade. So, going with the offline theme, let's say you decide to abandon the online world and move out to the middle oh nowhere and be a farmer. They no longer fax weather reports here in the US, so you need some way to get the NOAA alerts online. If you live in a rural area and are building new construction, good luck getting land lines unless you already have telephone lines running along your land; here in the rural areas they use phone calls over wifi and cell phones and are going to stop laying copper to new construction in "low population tracks" in 2018. Even still there is a multi-thousand dollar hook up fee if you want a land telephone. You can buy older farm equipment that is not online enabled, so at least there you can pull off your goal. But, then stuff breaks. Parts, depending on what you are using on your farm and its age, will almost certainly have to be bought online, or at least ordered online and shipped to the guy who is going to do the work. Living on 40-50 acres isolates you more than most people realize and we being social animals, you will need some form of social interaction. That means hoping you get along with your neighbors or talking to people online. The new tractors even use GPS to till and harvest, requiring map uploads via the internet. Is it still possible to live in the first world without the internet and online connectivity? Possibly, but it will take a lot of effort. Where you live looks like it is way out in the middle of nowhere, yet is still a modern connected city. The reason I posted this link is to still a conversation on how to move online communities to embrace the good that they can do while being on the lookout for the dangers of 'hug boxes' exclusions and the other darker parts of the human experience.No way in hell you can do anything offline now. Even the art students need to use computers.
That's fair. I've gone way wild on the blaming and the bashing in the comment you replied to. Writing past bedtime, when I get tired and grumpy, was not a good idea. I apologize for the dissent of the discourse. This is not reality for me. I can't vouch for the whole of Russia - I can imagine, for example, Moscow or Saint Petersburg having similar practices due to economical advantage - but in Western Siberia and further to the east, such connectedness is not the case. As students, we are to learn how to operate a computer and the basic stuff there - office software, library databases, stuff like that - as well as, occasionally, partake in online-only homework (which I've totally forgotten about because I don't take part in the class), but this is it. Neither is reality for me the fact that you have to work so much online as a farmer. In fact, it's hard for me to believe you get to - or have to, from how you put it - work in such interconnected conditions. In Russia, farming is done very much offline; as they call it, "by the old ways". You want parts for your tractor? You go to the shop and buy or order them. You want seeds? You go to the shop and buy or order them. You want weather forecast and warning? You have radio, cell phones and neighbourhood. Even if the last two don't work for you, as per your example, you still have radio, which doesn't require any lines but the electric one, and that's done with diesel engines if you don't have the connection (which, given how communitized our gardening is, you most likely do). So on. What you describe sounds more like sci-fi to me. Your middle of nowhere is nowhere near my middle of nowhere. You'll be surprised how well people are doing without the gimmicks like Wi-FI and GPS in Russia, be it city, town, village or a secluded little house in the woods. This kind of living is where I draw my conclusions from, and while effortsome, it's far from impossible, given how 70-year-old women can survive on their own in the harsh Siberian winter. Can you expand on those darker parts? I never heard of hug boxes before you've mentioned it. Links to the articles alone would be fine.The issue you address was not the issue I was addressing, so I take a step back.
This comment was in the context of kids going to college.
Where you live looks like it is way out in the middle of nowhere, yet is still a modern connected city.
while being on the lookout for the dangers of 'hug boxes' exclusions and the other darker parts of the human experience.
Watch this TED talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en The problem comes into play when you are surrounded by people and ideas that enforce your world view. There is a reason religious cults practice segregation and demonize the outside world. Liberals who do nothing but read and interact with other liberals, to use an example, reinforce the good parts of being a liberal, and then also reinforce the idea of "Anyone who does not think like I do is s stupid redneck who hates women and wants to pave the earth." same thing with any ideology that can become an Identity. then, when someone comes along and says "oh that is not correct" and tried to counter you with facts, you dig down and believe your worldview even more. The Backfire Effect is real, I've watched it in action, and I have been guilty of it myself. Start talking about cutting NASA, R&D, and educational funding and I have to fight my gut reflex to call you a dumbass, take a breath and read what you are saying before I can react to it. That seems wrong, don't it? But Humans are not rational creatures. We had to invent the scientific method as a way of processing data to take our biases out of the observable universe and to prevent our ingrained ideology from contaminating what is really going on outside out heads. A conservative should read at least one liberal paper, web site, blog etc., if for no other reason than to know what the other side is saying. A christian should read atheist/Buddhist/Shinto philosophy to see how close some of what they are saying is to Christianity. Listening to the contrary view can help you better understand YOUR reactions to the world, see the problem through someone else to get a bit of perspective and, when you are ready to debate you know the talking points the other guy is going to use and can counter them. The final thing to think about is that humanity grows when it faces a challenge. We as individuals grow and become better people when we see difficult situations and learn to deal with them.Can you expand on those darker parts? I never heard of hug boxes before you've mentioned it. Links to the articles alone would be fine.
That's a great deal of detail on opinion bubbles many communities act as. I particularly appreciate how you present scientific method as a counterbalance to our natural bias mechanism, or, perhaps as a supplementary system. Is there anything else as obscure or not immediately obvious that one should be wary of on the Internet?
Well, honestly, you have to fight it. There is no easy answer. If you believe "A" then find people who think "A" is wrong and see why they think opposite you. Ignore the screeching extremists for the most part, but do occasionally check them out so you know what language they use. In the US we call certain phrases and words "Dog Whistles" so that the nut jobs know you are on their side, but no scaring away the moderates. The point here is not to get you to change your worldview. The point of doing this is to get you to see your beliefs through the eyes of the opposition so that when you get outside your filter bubbles you can debate intelligently. Nothing disarms someone faster than saying that you read on THEIR media (talking point here). That, and leaving your filter bubble will lessen the risks of you becoming an extremist yourself.
Place holder as this deserves an answer, may make a new thread. LOL. Yea, you got me beat there. Here the furthest I can get from a city of 500,000 people is about two hours drive.Can you expand on those darker parts? I never heard of hug boxes before you've mentioned it. Links to the articles alone would be fine.
Your middle of nowhere is nowhere near my middle of nowhere.