siphersaysstuff:ami-angelwings:snailchimera:jocularwitticism:hugtherobots:I know it’s trendy t

siphersaysstuff:ami-angelwings:snailchimera:jocularwitticism:hugtherobots:I know it’s trendy to fight the system and cry that we are all becoming slaves of technology, but this attitude overlooks that computers and phones are tools for communicating. When someone thinks I’m an idiot smiling at a machine, I’m actually smiling at my girlfriend who is 10000 miles away and whom I would have never met if not for these newfangled electronics. As they say: when the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger.This is a topic that I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while now; much credit to this excellent post for bringing it to the front of my brain.Beautiful.There’s a tendency to talk about computers and electronics the same way people used to talk about television, but they’re entirely different animals. Television is not, at its heart, interactive. A TV displays a transmitted signal which you can receive as passively as you wish, while ways in which you can engage with it are limited. While you *can* do the same with other electronic devices, since after all most of them can be used *as* TVs, there is a much wider range of possibility and you are much more likely to become engaged with whatever you’re doing. There’s really no excuse, in particular, for ignoring the extent to which we use our electronic devices to communicate and form bonds we would not otherwise have been able to form, or maintain bonds that would otherwise have been lost.In short, kudos to the OP.I was going to rant about how the internet actually allows a lot of people to MAKE friends and build communities in a way that many people can’t do in “real” life, and that it allows marginalized people to connect and be themselves in ways that they couldn’t in the past.  But then I saw this.  So I’ll just leave it here.It also goes to what snailchimera said above, that we’ve ALWAYS found ways to occupy ourselves and keep to our own personal space, but until the internet and computers, it’s all been one-way.  We read newspapers, read books, watch TV.  Now we have the option of doing all of that AND interacting with people we like and want to.  Sharing our thoughts with the world, being in communities online, etc…  It’s not like without the ability to do that, we were EVER more connected in person.  People might make small talk with the person next to them if they were bored, but that’s not a real connection.  And just because it’s in person doesn’t make it deeper than talking to a friend via email.  And honestly, most of the time pre-computers, people were reading like in the above picture. >_>  And I’m sure if they could talk to their friends through those newspapers, they’d be doing that too.Bits like this will forever remind me of this piece penned (ha ha) by Penn Jilette over two decades ago…Being Morally Opposed To The Walkman Carries With It Certain Responsibilitiesby Penn JillettePublished 1989From Penn and Teller’s Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Page 178I was leaving my business manager’s office. The elevator arrived right away and I got on to find there was another passenger. She was black, she had a beautiful smile, her headphones blended with her hair, and she was listening to some pop love song on her Walkman. It was loud, but I couldn’t make it out. Maybe I’d never heard it before, but it was a love song. I smiled, slipped on my super-cool candy-red headphones, and turned the Clash’s London Calling way up.We had ridden together for several floors when we were joined by one of those bicycle delivery guys. He had a little hat, the tight black bicycle pants with the reinforced crotch; he was Hispanic and had the little tiny headphones that fit right in the ear so you can only see a couple little spots of blue and some wires coming out of the ears. He looked at us, wrote something on a manila envelope, put it in his backpack, and turned up his music. I have no way of knowing what he was listening to, because “Revolution Rock” was filling my head. But whatever it was he was enjoying it. We swayed our heads together in different rhythms.The three of us rode a few more floors, then were joined by a businesswoman type. She had on one of those female biz suits, and her hair and makeup were soft and natural. I think she ran every morning or at least took a dance class. Through the light tint of her glasses, I saw her look at each one of us and roll her eyes up. Then she started shaking her head like we weren’t going to notice. My fellow passengers didn’t notice, but I slipped my headphones down around my neck and said, “It must sound like Charles Ives out here, huh? Is it too loud for you?”She gave me this little condescending smile through her tastefully lipsticked mouth and said, “You people just cut yourselves off from everybody, don’t you? I mean, it’s really bad enough that no one even makes eye contact anymore, but you people just walk around in your own little worlds. We’re a culture of very lonely people. It’s sad. It’s really very sad.”Since the other two people in the elevator were still in their own respective little worlds, I appointed myself spokesperson for us three lonely people. “You were really dying for human contact here, weren’t you? Huh? You walked on this elevator and said to yourself, ‘Oh, Jiminy Cricket! I really wanted to talk to this delivery boy, this receptionist, and this big ugly son of a bitch with a square head. But alas, they’ve cut themselves off from my personal contact. I guess I can’t have any meaningful dialogue with them. Darn.’ You don’t give a yuppie-tweed-fuck about the three of us! You just need something sensitive and humanitarian to talk about over your fuckin’ power lunch…. I’ll make a deal with you - we’ll take our headphones off and we’ll listen to you, but you better have something to say. And when you ask him what kind of bike he has and he tells you, you better really care. And you better keep us entertained… do a little fuckin’ dance if you have to! When each of us walked onto the elevator we smiled at one another and you just rolled your fuckin’ eyes. So, you want personal contact? Shoot!”So, this was another elevator ride in the big city during which I didn’t fall in love, make a friend, or even set myself up to get laid. But I do enjoy the Clash. -- source link

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