Technology, Intamacy, and Identity

are humans more miserable now than ever before? does technology add to our suffering or just give us a lens for what we could not previously see? i have a theory that the Internet has allowed us all to find our true identities, and as a result we have become emotionally isolated. growing up without Internet i remember so much of my persona being shaped by those around me. I watched what they watched, played what they played and in general adapted my community's values. now i have the power to expose myself to whatever I will and as a result i have absolutely nothing in common with those around me. I feel closest with anons that I will never meet and as dramatic as it sounds I view myself as an outsider everywhere I go irl. Feel free to share your interpretations of technology's affect on intimacy and identity: do you view it as a positive or negative development?

I think this depends strongly on where you are in life, both physically and emotionally. It's kind of like how people in developed countries worry about vaccines for their children while parents in less developed countries would probably kill for those same vaccines. Closer to your point, though, it's not technology that has made us miserable. The use of technology has greatly improved our physical lives. For example, older people look younger now than ever before. This is because much of the physical labor that could wear down the body has been removed via technology. We simply age better. The problem is that we have not psychologically (mentally?) developed much over the lifespan of civilization as we know it. Many of the same problems still abound and they are tied to how we view the world. There is wealth and power inequality, abuse of others and so on. Technology allowed us to engineer the world around us, but we haven't evolved to keep pace. The rise of pollution and climate change, our ongoing tug-of-war when it comes to nuclear weapons, our use of finite resources, our lack of ability to face a changing planet, etc. These are all symptoms of an inability to think broadly about causes and ramifications and the inability to think deeply on a subject with great detail. Our technology has and will continue to give great ability to shape our reality, but we aren't really up to the task of understanding how to deal with that new reality. I've been told in the past that humanity is in a kind of adolescent period where the power of the human race is being explored without understanding the ramifications. The implication here is that humanity will eventually mature and things will even out. I think that partially true. I think that humanity has really come into the idea of technology and as a result is hungry for more. That means more exploding smartphones to feed more power-hungry masses and less memory of how to deal with the world when technology shuts down. I suspect that if humankind comes to grips with climate change, we'll see the large nations like America, China, etc discover they're too big to deal with a post-climate change world. We might see the giants break into smaller nation-states and things might develop into an equilibrium from there. There's going to be a log of conflict before that happens, though. A lot of death as well.

>>6834 >the Internet has allowed us all to find our true identities, and as a result we have become emotionally isolated. Or, the Internet has given us false hope of pride that we actually accomplish something without doing anything! >now i have the power to expose myself to whatever I will and as a result i have absolutely nothing in common with those around me. Now, we've the power to expose ourselves to whatever we wish and as a result we trust and believe in nothing or everything, we question everything. Thus, feeling absolute void(snow flake syndrome) which eventually leads us to misery. >are humans more miserable now than ever before? It definitely feels like misery. The heavy use of technology has brought nothing but feeling of isolation and despair because we people are supposed to live in a pack, in a social circle. And technology goes against this, it gives us a false dilemma that we're eventually connected, but in reality it's completely different and deep down we know this. >does technology add to our suffering or just give us a lens for what we could not previously see? Technology has given each people a voice which was not possible a decade ago. Everyone can stand up for what they believe in even if it's a lame or a scared belief, you'll eventually find a community no matter how niche it is. Therefore, the feeling of "I'm special and different from everyone, world just doesn't understand my problem and it is everyone else fault for not understanding me".

Maybe this relevant, maybe not. I'm posting it because it seems to relate to OP's musing on the devastation of tech. It's an article from NY Mag with quotes from various tech luminaries on how the Internet began and where things went wrong. https://www.lainchan.org/hum/src/1523741795406.pdf

HAHAHA God Damn It! I'm an idiot and posted the wrong link! http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-internet-from-the-people-who-built-it.html

I think that our love towards objects dies. Beacause nearly any object is accesable through the internet. So we dont have a personal relationship and thus no love to them. This is observable with things like cloth pieces and technological devices. Many of you surely have a laptop or a pc as their most valubale obsession. If it was gone one day but you get the money to buy a new one you wouldnt be sad about the loss its just a technical piece after all. people from older generations and still from our generation know had or have things with personal conections or values. Like a shirt you bought from another land or a gift from someone you love. So our summed up whole love gets smaller because all the small things that got lost disapear and they sum up to big amounts.

>>6834 i feel joy when i meet people irl with internet interests. though there's so much to see online they probably have a completely different internet experience than you and may not know most things you reference to them, it depends on how much you go online and for how many years. i see it more of a positive because of the connections you make with people, but there are negatives

>>6903 How different is that from digital objects though? Is it just the tangibility part that matters?

>>6834 I feel like social media, especially date sites, have completely ruined what a meaning relationship is supposed to be.

It's not technology itself, but the total transformation of our society's entire understanding of existence that's been taking place for hundreds of years. It began with the degeneration of the Catholic church, then the reactionary Protestant reformation, then the Enlightenment, then the Industrial Revolution (socialists start getting it half-right only from here), and then the post-war era that led to the development of the internet. This substance was then released to the entire world population by the US government, and the vast majority of this population have this quite unexplainable mental disease that's been evolving inside us for hundreds of years that leads to dangerous self-destroying mental processes when exposed to something like this. It's unexplainable because there is no way in the common language of our current society to express what is beyond today's current society. This concept that changes the way we perceive the world and react to our feelings is so alien to us that we don't even have the language to explain it. This one is a dumb reality show, but it still illustrates a point I'm trying to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH6SUTMQ__g . All these contestants start breaking down after HOURS when left to only their own thoughts. The obese wife lasted only four hours before she started sobbing. The social media dudebro and the single mum who replaced the sow start showing symptoms of drug withdrawal. The single mum actually THREW UP from having to spend a few hours to a day with her own thoughts. People like these make up the vast majority of our society - don't you think these people have some serious illness? What we're seeing here is that people have absolutely no way of coping with having to confront themselves, it brings up difficult questions in their subconscious that they try their best to suppress, otherwise their conditioning of 20-40 years starts totally collapsing in on itself. For once they started to show a semblance of understanding that they've been engineered into being docile domesticated animals immersed in a grand spectacle. The mindset that made people hundreds of years ago more resistant to this confrontation of the self is so alien to us that we can only begin vaguely understanding it after using psychedelics, provided that we are already aware that there's a mysterious problem that needs to be solved.

I don't think it's necessarily inherent to technology, it's just another factor compounding external factors in society. Irrespective of personal feelings regarding social media it's indisputable that it has had a negative effect on the way people view themselves and others. Instant gratification has shortened our attention span, we are in a voyeuristic competition with our peers where we inspire envy by showcasing a curated history of our lives for the world to see and personal bias becomes incredibly entrenched as we fill our feeds with news/satire that only supports our existing views. On top of that Tinder has made the idea of maintaining relationships obsolete, if you don't like your partner just open the app and get another. The above really leaves a lot to be desired about human interaction so when you add on our real life issues on top of that it's little wonder why people feel disillusioned. I don't think there's a fix for it beyond a conscious effort to distance ourselves from the internet.

>>6907 I just watched the link you posted and soykaf, is this the real world? I get that or some people it might be hard to be just by themselves but this was way too much. If this is how the western societies look right now, I guess these countries will really collapse in couple of years because aparently most people have serious metal problems. The funny thing is that it's usually anons who don't have a problem with being alone are seen as weird and in need of medical help. To the main topic, I believe that people are more miserable today, at least in developed countries, however rechnology is not the main reason but maybe more a tool to make yourself miserable if you don;t know how to use it to your benefit. In the past people had much more economic problems, getting through another year, not dying at war or from some disease so they looked for comfort in religion, beliefs or some other abstract ideas that would make them feel better. Now the quality of life is over 9000 better so people forget about their minds but still concentrate of bettering material situation. And I get it, at least in my case, because my parents and grandparents still remember hard times when everything was hard to get so they wanted me to have more then them, still buying new stuff, simply because they could do it now without problems. And I was like that too, however now I see that it's too shallow to make one happy. After all these centuries of development it looks like old philosophical traditions, religions and sages wre right. It's better to work on your mind and personality and let go consumerism culture because in the long run it will detroy you. Today people are avoiding problems and challenges in their lives so much that they collapse soon after they face the one they can't run away from, they turn into artificial friends on social media or simple pleasures which are easy to get and later are surprised that they are sill not happy, that something is wrong. They forget that it's the suffering and harshness that will make you stronger and eventually those are the things that lead to happiness, because you must put some effort into something so it could feel meaningful.

I think it might be part of a greater trend. The things that we are drawn to aren't necessarily what will make us happy just like how eating the best tasting foods aren't necessarily what will make us healthy. Technology allows us to walk new paths but the most appealing path may ultimately make us unhappy. The internet allows us to remain social without social commitments and it allows us to be entertained without having to focus our attention for very long. What ends up happening is that the internet acts as a "good enough" replacement for a lot of things that would otherwise require effort. People can meet their bare minimum needs in terms of social behavior and stimulation, anything beyond that takes extra effort. This creates a place where people people feel that their lives are missing something but not one where they are so miserable that they actually are pushed to change anything.

>>6907 I just want to address that pic. What they call "traditional" is just Platonic, and what they cal "modern" is merely Aristotelic. Sure, Plato is older than Aristotle and so Aristotle could be deemed "modern" if you start counting modernity 2 millenia back. On the other hand, Aristotle dominated most western epistemological thinking during the whole Middle Age.

>>6906 It solely depends on oneself. Today a mass number of people, a significant amount of people rely on others. They don't want to "think", thinking is becoming a old genre. Everyone wants cheap thrills, cheap entertainment, quick meal, quick results. fuarrrk this generation!!!

>>6834 Books provided a similiar feature before the internet - a medium to let people pass on information&ideas despite being far apart in time & distance. The net allows for immediate feedback in both directions now wich allows for faster change but it's growing it's own weakness as the real users lost control of itl to bots&fud to steer opinion/ information. Nowadays the resorts were you genuine people met in open discussion are just as remote from the public as the people living in libraries.

>>6916 What do you think of the theory that ever increasing industrialization is destroying the art and culture of western civilization?

I doubt humans are any more miserable than ever before due to technology. We're in the middle of the world's largest crisis of consciousness, crisis of identity and crisis of rights - to date. Nobody knows what's correct, the right thing to do, or what is real. Nobody knows who they are, their identity is in tatters. Nobody understands why their rights are so critical, what rights they have, and why that matters. Misery today is a state of confusion. Technology, if anything has amplified these actual problems. Now, tumblrinas are postulating thousands of gender identities - among other more esoteric identity categories - people debate being oppressed as if they're some special something when we're actually all less free. Communists and fascists are growing groups of people who view our rights as obstructions to their idealized view of the future and humanity; taking to twat'tar to ecludiate their deplorable views under the guise of progress to senseless masses who cling to their us vs. them narratives. News cycles are so short and the pace is so rapid that quality and objectivity has been replaced with subjective narrative-driven drivel, slough for the masses presenting sneakily-inaccurate caricatures of some un-reality we're all somehow still living in. tl;dr So your question is overly simplistic, technology isn't the cause, it is the amplifier.

>>6921 >So your question is overly simplistic, technology isn't the cause, it is the amplifier. I'll go along with that theory if you can tell me what the root cause is, as opposed to what it definitely is not.

>>6920 I think that mass production and the ever shrinking limitations imposed by geographic distance lead to the whole world being more culturally homogeneous. In the past your culture was defined almost entirely by the people in your community but as mass production of products and mass distribution of entertainment grew, so did the number of people they could reach. Mass production is important but to sustain mass production you need mass appeal. The things being produced need to appeal to the largest number of people possible. The culture is heavily influenced its most visible cultural pieces. Before mass production these were defined by either things that were so noteworthy that they transcended geographic limitations and spread on their own merit or by things that were common due to geographic availability (foods) or historical reasons (clothes, religion, etc). After mass production the most visible pieces of culture were increasingly the ones with the greatest mass appeal (like movies). As time went on the reach of these kinds of things extended beyond state, country, and linguistic borders. Human culture as a whole trends toward homogeneity when there are no barriers to the spread of entertainment and goods. The theory that this is destroying western art and culture seems like a bit of a stretch though, the west is by far the greatest exporter of culture. Western clothes, music, food, movies, and videogames have pretty much become ubiquitous worldwide. Exceptions to this rule like the clothes in Saudi Arabia make it even more obvious just how significant this is. It's also important to note that just because the most popular type of a given art form (music, TV, movies, books, etc) is soykafty it doesn't necessarily mean that art form is getting worse, it just means that a single work/artist attracted all the people with no taste. Why is soykafty pop song 19313 at the top of the charts? Because people who care about good music take some time to find specific niche artists they enjoy rather than just listening to what's on the radio. There has never been a time in the history of the human race where there has been more good art available, it's just that the works that become popular are not necessarily the best because they must appeal to the lowest common denominator.

We might not agree on the root cause, but I think we've made an inroad on the question of technology. I'll present my argument as best I can, and you'll have to judge for yourself if it paints a complete enough picture. I believe the root cause is a complex mixture of Marxist "alienation" (from the production of one's labour), polarized politics on competing strains of authoritarianism (communism and fascism being the extremes competing for people's support that I regularly witness), information overload [1], and a macro-scale identity crisis [2]. These I believe are the root causes of our misery. [1] information overload isn't so much caused by technology in and of itself, but rather (again) amplified by it, being that technology doesn't itself produce ideas but rather serves as the conduit of their transmission. We're living in an ever more complex world where ever-more balkanized populations express notions of reality in differing ways. Take for instance the experience of transgender people: they exist outside the confines of a predetermined, static gender identity. They're thus producing viewpoints which are outside this old norm-driven viewpoint of sex/gender uniformity. I'm not going to claim their view is somehow more valid but rather it paints a differing picture from what the (using their terminology) black cisgender heterosexual woman might experience as day-in/day-out reality. These ideas are being produced at an astonishing rate as people become more and more comfortable entering the free market of ideas. We're not, at this time, used to such an influx of new viewpoints and ideas. What once required tomes of heavy consideration to propagate now requires a mere tweet. We no longer need an editor, publisher, the wetworks of information exchange to accomplish this end. We're inundated with a deluge of new information every moment, learning to condense moments of deeply personal consideration into fragments of experience for the masses. In this moment, we've entered the new methodology without due consideration to our readiness. Technology is merely the conduit, it is agnostic to the pace and content of our production, and if we merely had better printing presses that enabled the same publishing of countless individual thoughts, we'd be faced with the same problem. [2] Identity is argued ad nauseam in this moment of time, it is done such that we're collectively being faced with a very real crisis of identity. We're grouped into the minds of critical analysts, protesters and antagonists based on arbitrary criteria such as the colour of our skin, gender and educational background. So much is made of these elements that as a society, we've seen a commonality fall away. No longer are there Americans, Canadians, the English, the French (I'm from the west, these are my examples. I'm unaware how the Middle/Far East is faring in terms of their identity) - such groupings are faulty in the eyes of many who put forth smaller sub-group definitions of populations, rife with problematic historical baggage. People are so tied now to what they can visually group you into - be it white male or black woman, anything in between or far astrife away - they've forgotten what unifies us and brings us together in creation, production, the ecstasy of existence. What will be our collective identity tomorrow is undetermined, but our past is dying in the arms of those who still champion it, themselves often problematic in terms of what they view as that identity and how it should be carried forth. I hope you'll find something of value in these arguments to understand my viewpoint.

>>6926 is a reply to >>6924 Sage for doublepost. Sorry.

>>6925 >it's just that the works that become popular are not necessarily the best because they must appeal to the lowest common denominator. this

>>6920 as an edgy boi I wish it fuarrrking was but industrialization is inherently a western thing in my opinion, and the essence of western culture has dominated the world. I don't think if another culture was dominant it would have happened like this, but it's also the reason we are on top. Western culture I think is characterized and has been starting with Christianity with a obsession over things that sound good, regardless if they are, then justifying these things with very cyclical thinking, and then not being comfortable with others not wanting to partake. What we do is right, it's right because god says so, we made/brought god, we make right. And then upset about how other cultures and people could NOT do right like we do, and a desire to correct it fully believing it is helping or "progress". And then industrialization. It's good to the west because it's progress, and progress is industrialization. Who knows what it's progressing towards, but again it just makes us a little high when we have these big complex systems and we understand them and we are making even more complex factories with our complex factories. But again I don't think this would have been universal like it appears to be now had things gone down differently, I do believe it's very western to think "How can one not appreciate the thought gone into this machine" or even just "how can one not appreciate thought". Very masturbatory if you think about it. If you aren't industrialized today you are labeled as a country of idiots probably, makes me think of those pictures where it goes "Africa vs Europe" and one is huts and one is factories. I mean yeah of course if your in western culture it's like "haha what idiots" and seems so obvious the huts are worse. More than anything though I think you are on to something. It's that western society replaced "my god" with "my logic". But I think logic itself is somewhat western, not in general but in terms of the belief that it triumphs over emotion, spirituality, etc. A different culture, to keep fuarrrking repeating myself and being annoying, might have only seen logic as useful not as how life is to be understood. Because we do see it as such, art and culture lose value. They no longer are "real", they are symptoms of whats real and can be boiled down to instinct. I have no love for the west, our culture is characterized by things I said above as well as very evil and unsympathetic actions in my opinion. But there was a culture, there was a bond, and this thing im saying we think we are "progressing" towards that we don't know what it is was a lot clearer, probably because it was the betterment of culture and fellow man (even if fellow man was limited in scope), and an idea that there were causes more important than being financially stable and safe with a house. Now we have many people like me, who don't have any fuarrrking clue why this society exists.Yet again, I live to be safe, and safety means I can live. even if you don't find what im saying true itself, the fact that i'm saying it and you've probably seen others say similar reflects something about the society that raised us. i'm fairly positive, as far as we come and unstoppable as we seem, the west will fail because of precisely what your saying. Logic and technology has replaced culture and art here. We can appreciate the former all day, marvel at its complexity or skill it took, talk about how intelligent it makes us, but at the end of the day for your average person feelings of sadness, isolation, disillusionment, anger, happiness, the whole rainbow, are more real to us and hit us harder then discovering for the sake of discovering, progress for the sake of progress. I think most could agree thats fact, thought is good, entertaining even, but our bodies don't feel thoughts unless they carry emotions with them. And one could argue with this great logic that our subconscious affects us more than our conscious, if you subscribe to that "we are just a bunch of chemical reactions" then consciousness isn't anything beyond awareness of some things that come out of the subconscious. Eventually it's gotta tip, and people are going to find more comfort and answers in culture and art, and they are going to look to other cultures (perhaps already have been) because of how far the west has killed it's own. I don't think I even know any respected artists at the moment by the masses or by high level critics that don't criticize the west. At best they simply don't speak on it, and I would say on average they are focused on individuals unless said person is from a non white background.

>>6944 I also realized after typing this that I disagree with you at the start and claim industrialization is western culture just in modern form and then changed my mind and agreed it's the death of culture. for clarification/correction, I do think industrialization is an inevitable product of western thought, which is partly western culture. But I also think western thought is kind of suicidal in nature and we are seeing the beginning of it taking its own life. So you are right regardless that industrialization is killing our culture and art, and I just wanted to go on a rant about how industrialization isn't separate from western thought, and evidence of our week foundation.

>>6920 >>6944 I would agree that more culture is needed in the West. I can see it myself that most of the people are mainly interested in satisfying their need. Besides this their next concern is their job or education. While these are necessary concerns, the western society should emphasize more other things such as the arts or sports(not staring) for the main public. This might be an aid to the raising number of people affected by mental disease such as depression. I honestly think that technology can be really helpful. However I can not really agree with how it is used by the mainstream.So many hours can be spent in a futile attempt to satisfy oneself on their computer or phone without really learning anything. Moreover most of the people around me are to a certain extent completely uneducated in topics regarding computer science. I honestly believe I should do a better job myself however I am not going as low as to just spend my entire life using something for hours without any knowledge on it. At the very least I have mastered a few programming languages which proved to be an interesting hobby. I believe they should make computer science a mandatory course in high schools or maybe even middle schools as people just use technology so much nowadays

If we're including the entire planet and not just people in our situations (which I know vary greatly but at least we all have leisure time and electricity or we wouldn't be posting here) then probably yes, people are more miserable. The people who build these devices for us, live downstream from our pollution and/or do not benefit from our medical and other advances would probably have been better off at some point in the past.

>>7055 > as people just use technology so much nowadays They use technology as a tool and that's the right approach. People don't actually need to know how a drill works or a car or a dishwasher. It will still enhance their lives as technological tools. I do believe however that because of that much more responsibility has to be forced onto the manufacturers of technology. They are to be forced to provide truly sustainable technology and cheap(better free) repair services. Technology being heavily tied to markets and the happy merchant games is issue number 1. Issue number 2 imo is how people use technology in an inflationary way - entertainment electronics are the worst sanser for example and I don't see us evolved primates dropping this bullsoykaf soon. This is heavily tied to issue no 1. The healthiest way to approach technology is to use it as a tool. Like a hammer, it should perform work instead of lulling people into some form of technological masturbation. >So many hours can be spent in a futile attempt to satisfy oneself on their computer or phone without really learning anything. Just a tool used the wrong way.

>>7065 >They use technology as a tool and that's the right approach. People don't actually need to know how a drill works or a car or a dishwasher. It will still enhance their lives as technological tools. I completely disagree with you on this. The problem with using tools without knowing how they work may in the short term be beneficial, but you run the risk of blackboxing the technology in the future. An example I would give is allowing pilots or ship captains to use only GPS to navigate. as long as it works, there is no problem, but when a metal box filled with hundreds of people looses its bearing in the middle of nowhere, it would have been a good idea to make sure that ther ewas a backup plan in place to prevent this from happening. Its alright when it only applies to social objects like social media on phones, but when life support systems or financial infrastructure are too complex for their creators to even know what is going on, then it becomes virtually impossible to repair it if something goes wrong. >The healthiest way to approach technology is to use it as a tool. Like a hammer, it should perform work instead of lulling people into some form of technological masturbation. this is not wrong, but using technology solely as tools by a complete society means valuable skills will be lost when they are needed, a certain amount of the population NEEDs to be able to understand the technologies they are working with in order to be able to build off of them, but not be so far ahead that there is a technological divide where people will take decades to recover lost skills

>>7065 > it should perform work instead of lulling people into some form of technological masturbation You just gave examples yourself that demonstrate the latter. The amount of time people spend in front of screens is staggering.

>>7066 > too complex for their creators to even know what is going on, then it becomes virtually impossible to repair it if something goes wrong. I'm saying you shouldn't force normal people into learning about technology, They don't care and don't need it. Manufacturers and interested people will always know what's up and blackbox scenarios like yours are just a myth. Humans are curious and there will always be enough cracks trying to figure everything out in case something gets forgotten. >this is not wrong, but using technology solely as tools by a complete society means valuable skills will be lost when they are needed, a certain amount of the population NEEDs to be able to understand the technologies That's what job training and books are for. No need to force kids into coding, this is soykaf. They don't teach how a car works in driving school, yet all the sheeple deal just fine. Mechanics do the rest. >>7067 I am aware of that. Nothing wrong with a mental wank once in a while with your like-minded weirdos on the internet. Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA! I'd say around 60% of my computer usage is work(university) related. I dare to assume that this makes me part of a productive minority. If I drop porn, it will be 90% easily x----D

>>7070 >Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA! wow, worst language enhancer I've seen in a while

>>7071 > language enhancer this is bullsoykaf

>>7070 Honestly... if I elimated time spent waiting for replies, my internet usage would dwindle substantially. I spend time and effort posting something very clever and creative things and billions of people the world over have the nerve to ignore it! The part of my brain that is still three years old won't walk away until someone at the very least tells me I'm full of crap.

>>7070 >Manufacturers and interested people will always know what's up and blackbox scenarios like yours are just a myth. are you familiar with old computer science exerts coming out of retirement to maintain systems that have not seen updates since the 80s? >Humans are curious and there will always be enough cracks trying to figure everything out in case something gets forgotten. except for when people loose interest in something that they deem useless and it becomes lost forever. >They don't teach how a car works in driving school, yet all the sheeple deal just fine. Mechanics do the rest. depending on what country you are in the you do in fact, just because anybody with an IQ over 60 an pass a drivers test in the united states does not mean people in other countries can drive just as easily

>>7070 >They don't teach how a car works in driving school, yet all the sheeple deal just fine. conditioned response =/= knowledgeable user

>>6834 A rather fitting quote is "with great power comes great responsibility" Technology, especially the internet is an incredibly powerful tool, and the accumulated knowledge of society is at our disposal through it, but it is also a substrate where capitalistic and political forces are competing for influence over its users. Base people without responsibility or purpose will simply be at its whim. Why? Because there are entities with countless geniuses working for them which spends unlimited amounts of money to do so. Those individuals who can control their base desires will benefit greatly from it though, and hopefully move society further

I know this thread is near the last page and no one will probably read this, but here's my two cents anyway. A wise man once said "Technology is neither good or bad, it is neutral". This is mostly true, but technology despite it's neutrality has so far generally caused our quality of life to worsen through downstream effects. Of course this seems counter-intuitive, as other's have said in the thread technology has given us many things. It seems almost silly to say that it hasn't raised our quality of life, medicine, the free flow of information, food aplenty, Anime like SEL, how could these things not be good? However you have to realize that these things don't actually change our aggregate level of wellbeing all that much. You can go into the jungles of South America and find uncontacted tribes without even the technology for fire, ask them how they feel, and in many cases there will probably be more people who report being happy than a random sample of the first world despite their primitive state. This is because of a thing called the "Hedonic treadmill", basically it's just a type of homeostasis for the reward circuits in our brains, it keeps us attuned to our environment so we keep functioning and don't fall into a pit of despair, nor become too content. Studies have shown that a healthy young person who undergoes something horrible, say getting paralyzed in a car accident, will of course feel worse shortly afterwards, but gradually they will return to the same levels of wellbeing as before. If we could not attune to our circumstances we wouldn't really be fit for life. Imagine if by simply being born into our high tech world would cause one to be proportionally more happy than our ancestors. No one would get anything done, we'd all be walking around with smiles on our faces too content with our circumstances to strive for better! This also means we don't run out of things to worry or be sad about. Even our reasonably stress free lives in the modern world, without sudden life or death situations occurring regularly, can be extremely stressful. For this reason I'd say that technology has not really improved our lives in the sense of making our everyday wellbing greater, though of course I have no desire to give up what we already have, nor to give up on hoping for gains in the future. Technology by it's existence, even if neutral, distorts how we behave. The reason that technology has (so far) mainly caused declines in our wellbeing is because there are a few areas of our lives that can contribute to causing lower levels of life satisfaction, and (again so far) technology has indirectly caused these. For instance, humans with strong social connections are often happiest, those without far more often are more miserable than their peers (the best predictor for suicide success is lack of social connections). Technology doesn't directly cause us to be less social, but it has shaped our societies into ones that are far different than the social circumstances we evolved to work best in. This is not a new thing, this has been going on for a long time, but only really caught on as technology enabled cities to become far more productive than the small towns and villages we are most attuned to. Now with the current state of technology, although we are more connected and mobile than ever, we also have far less stability in our social networks, and it is far easier to become completely disconnected than before. Another area that makes us miserable is visible inequality. Some of the very earliest technology started this trend. The agricultural revolution kicked off the start of a lot of things that have made people miserable. Vast wealth disparities, accumulation of wealth, long term rulers, hereditary castes and discrimination, the subjugation of women, organized religion and religious persecution, the nation state itself all became the rule rather than the exception because of technology like agriculture and animal husbandry suddenly changed how it made sense to behave. Today inequality is at massive levels, and it is made worse by the fact it is highly viable. Even people in the poorest nations on earth can go on the net and see pictures of a man with more wealth than their entire country lounging on the deck of a fifty million dollar yacht. As I mentioned earlier humans make their happiness by comparison, both to their environment and lived experience, and to other people. The visibility of this inequality, which in olden times would have been unthinkable, makes people feel worse since it can easily ruin all proportion and scale for their lives. Finally any society that relies on technology has to be a knowledge based society. The problem with this is that knowledge can often lead to unhappiness. The most advanced societies are also those with the least religious people, because to master technology, we must collect knowledge which directly contradicts many of religion's most comforting aspects. Religions are at their core human centered systems of knowledge and ways of orienting oneself in the world. What they may lack in predictive power, they make up for by making their adherents feel a sense of purpose and understanding. In a technological society however, the systems of knowledge we acquire are mere Techne, they are not 'human', they are cold and sterile, but we cannot deny them since they have undeniable power. This leads to many people feeling adrift, like the world no longer has human scale, that it is essentially unknowable. The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. Technology itself is neutral, future developments might take us in the opposite direction, and there are already some hopeful signs of that. We might re-orient our society away from drastic inequality and atomized individuals as we shift to a society of automated labor, we might use realistic VR to socialize with friends over any distances, we might make computer programs and robots which can hack our instincts to make us happier and healthier. We might even be able to make ourselves the center of our own world again with a pseudo-religion of humanism and technological advancement.

>>8893 I probably made us feel more isolated in a huge world because before we didn't had a concept of how big the world was, everything was limited to our local communities. As someone said above, it made us culturally homogeneous, but I don't find that good. Being different and unique communities is the appeal of mankind, everything feeling the same is what made humanity stuck and boring.

I see it as something we have to learn to work with. To act like its a choice to go back doesnt seem right to me, it isn't in my opinion and its a waste of time to focus efforts on that rather then how we can make the best of it now. I think your right to a degree OP, I at least think that what your saying is a part of it. For some of us growing up the vast community of the internet which let us do whatever however was our home community, more than family sometimes. I could talk endlessly and conjecture about the nature of the internet and the people that grew up with it and how it affects us and how it affects me. Sometimes I think im crazy for not starting a youtube channel or something, I can almost assimilate myself into any online community no matter how niche and also most of my predictions about where things have been going are confirmed. Its definitely something I, as many of you are, am an expert on through familiarity. At the end of the day though I dont think it helps anything. I can line up the good and bad and whats going to happen all day, but at the end of it its like talking about whether atomic bombs are good or not. The bombs dont really care and arent bound by good or not, they are here and we cant uninvent them. Even if we did the knowledge of their existence (as we birthed) would cause someone to seek to build one, and not in a "one evil power hungry person ruins it all by taking advantage" sense im not even saying they would have to be evil or power hungry. Its as out of our control as the realization that I can tell/quantify the time with a sundial or an hourglass. We can get a new perspective on time, we can think about whether we should be less or more punctual, we can think about lots of things that we do have control over. We cant think about whether we should unrealize its existence. But I suppose someone who completely disagrees with what im saying might think thats the only smart concept ive proposed.

>>6846 >Or, the Internet has given us false hope of pride that we actually accomplish something without doing anything! This hits me right at home.... I read something online then something in my brain tricks myself into believing I know it already so I never finish reading it and instead look for other crap to read/watch. Sigh...

bump

>>11653 /thread Buddha is reported to have said, “If you want to get rid of death, get rid of birth.” There is no other way. If you want to get rid of misery, get rid of the lust for happiness. And when there is no misery, there is happiness. But it is not because you desire it; it is because you don’t have any desire. In a deep desire-less state, you are full of bliss.

Positive with clarifications. You can always have too much of a good thing and I think it is important to remember that. There is something to be said for physical intimacy with other so complete isolation from others around you will lead to lain-like disconnect.

technology was alright until it got commercialized. Nowadays if you can design the most addictive interface and generate the most addictive content, you make the most money. I place the blame 100% on capitalism, even if you don't use those addictive things you're still surrounded by people who do.

I think that it does; specifically, I mean the internet. We get so totally bombarded with information of all sorts, constantly. In the space of an hour on the internet you can see things that make you laugh, things that make you cry, things that make you angry, things that shock you and things that comfort you - you can drag your brain through all of the emotions you can make it, and that simply isn't natural. The brain responds, in turn, by dulling everything. You get desensitized to everything as a result. You simply fail to react to things how you should, because you've been putting yourself on a rollercoaster ride of feelings for so long. Take a break now and then. I've found that I'm much happier when I spend most of my time reading books rather than browsing imageboards and forums. It also makes the time on forums much more fun when I do do it. As for feeling nothing in common with those around you - how do you mean? Your have different tastes? You don't need to like the same things as everyone else to feel close to them. The best friendships are based on liking the other person as a person, not because you both play the same games or listen to the same music. Appreciate people for who they are, and appreciate that nobody will ever be the same as you. Part of the fun of being human is seeing how varied and different other humans are.

>>11682 but personal tastes in music, beliefs etc. are part of what a person is. The "core" is *less* than their whole self.

>>6834 I live in a third world country, so my experience with tech is kind of ambivalent. I know some people that barely know how to use an smartphone, and other people that got an smartphone as fast as they could, without even questioning the need for it. As I have seen, both groups of people now tend to use internet as a source for their information, and as education here in my country is so, so soykafty and people barely understand what they read, they believe word by word of the information that they consume. We had some kind of "feminist" revolution earlier this year, powered only by the internet. As good as it might seem that TV is powerless on the newer generations and people might be "rebelling" on something, we are tending to the same vices that boomers had in relation with TV. I do think that humans are simple creatures and as I have experienced, my smartphone makes me feel miserable, busy all the time and overly anxious. I see that also on the subway (the only place that i'm forced to share my space with other people) that other smartphone users look anxious too, and I feel that even the social relationships are being demolished. People now barely look at each other in the eye, you can't have a deep conversation without the fear of offending someone, and things are obviously getting worse as augmented reality is getting more and more real. I don't think it's the fault of technology, I think it's something we as a species are trying to deny, some deep emotional pain that is undermining our nature and trajectory on life and projecting that negative energy onto others and ourselves.

>>11715 >We had some kind of "feminist" revolution earlier this year, powered only by the internet. As good as it might seem that TV is powerless on the newer generations and people might be "rebelling" on something, we are tending to the same vices that boomers had in relation with TV. Are you actually from Chile? Both your experience and description of the revolution match with what I've seen myself. >I do think that humans are simple creatures and as I have experienced, my smartphone makes me feel miserable, busy all the time and overly anxious. I see that also on the subway (the only place that i'm forced to share my space with other people) that other smartphone users look anxious too, and I feel that even the social relationships are being demolished. People now barely look at each other in the eye, you can't have a deep conversation without the fear of offending someone, and things are obviously getting worse as augmented reality is getting more and more real. I don't think it's the fault of technology, I think it's something we as a species are trying to deny, some deep emotional pain that is undermining our nature and trajectory on life and projecting that negative energy onto others and ourselves. I 100% agree with that assessment, but I think the deep emotional pain you describe has always existed, it's just that now it's become obvious because of the relative lack of conflict in our lives. For millennia people have been complaining about a sense of unsastifactoriness that never quite escapes them, and chances are it was there throughout the various wars and collapses humanity has faced, maybe even worse than what we're seeing. I feel like this projection of negative energy can't even be described as a purely human phenomena, it's just that we lack a sense of meaning, we lack connection with others and we lack conflict to keep us occupied with soykaf that actually matters. If I may hypothesize, this projection of energy outwards was once dedicated to tasks greater than us and people from outside, but with the tranquility of modernity, comes the stress of pent up negativity that can't quite express itself physically and instead corrodes the minds of the masses, myself included.

>>11743 That unsatisfactoriness is an inherent feature of the way our minds are built. "The Creative Nothing" is what we are, a void from which all concepts flow and into which they must all one day return. Technology is merely a creation of our vacuousness, it provides entertainment, and pleasure, power and a sense of acceleration toward a future vision. All conceptions that work to quell a restless and creative nothing, to feed and satisfy it, if only briefly. The creative nothing can never be filled, so it will always be hungry. Modernity and societies throughout history have found various ways of alienating that hunger, waging war on the creative nothing in each and everyone of us. Ultimately, it has been a battle of the man against himself. Once there is a substantial population of folks who recognize their nature, and no longer accept the alienation and repression of society as valid, a new world without government and society will be created. One in which each is for himself and each seeks to fill his hunger in his own way. Human intimacy has always been an illusion. Human identity has always been an illusion. Even the self is an illusion. Technology merely provides a mirror that reveals that illusoriness.

>>11744 The way I saw it, the sense of unsastifactoriness I described stemmed from the fact that humans are mere animals who try and hold onto ephemeral things in a universe that doesn't seem to care about our fusses and desire to keep things static. I do see truth in that history can be described as a battle of man against himself, or more specifically, the relatively static idea a man carries about himself against his somewhat unpredictable primitive instincts, and how this plays out in a world where everyone is facing said struggle and nothing we hold onto will last forever. To bring this back to tech I see how people aren't even pretending to put whatever instance of soul they might still have on their social media presentation. Ultimately, what the Internet does is amplify the preexisting struggle of how people see themselves with how they actually are (at least in that very moment), and when people care more about marketing themselves like products, it only creates a neverending dopamine and sadness cycle where people try and one up their personal marketing, then inevitably suffering when they no longer are who they present themselves as.

>>11746 That seems like a solid analysis. *gold star Thanks for engaging.