Technology and Isolation

I've seen tons of people and the media claim that technology is making people nowadays more isolated than ever before. But personally I feel like technology is the only thing that makes me feel less isolated from this world. Even with modern technology allowing for more escapism than ever before, I still feel like it is the real world to blame. If the real world wasn't so isolating, then we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. However, it is true that isolation has gone up just as technology improves, but then again I have yet to see anything that directly shows a connection between the data. On top of that, I have seen that many articles on this topic also says about how the future of technology will make this worse. They mention how future technology may allow people to immersive themselves in digital simulations, completely detached from the outside world, or other kinds of things along those lines. These articles do a lot of fearmongering about future technological advancements, and suggest that it will make everyone completely stop interacting with life in general. But what do you think lain?

dead internet theory is already halfway real. Places like youtube/reddit half the posts are bots if not more and real people get shadowderezzed for opposing views. human interaction online objectively reduced compared to a decade ago. People went online because they would find more interesting genuine interaction but said interaction got systematically destroyed over the decades and you cant go back outside cause nobody is there anymore. Im genuinely curious if touching grass will return or people will passively sit in modern chatbot cages.

>>85685 >Im genuinely curious if touching grass will return or people will passively sit in modern chatbot cages. Hopefully many people do indeed go back to touching grass. It would both benefit the real world and the internet, as only the kinds of people who would use the internet before it got commericalized would likely be the only ones left active online, which could result in the internet reverting back to how it used to be.

>>85684 We leave home in the morning, drive to work or commute in a box (car or bus or train), slave away in a cubicle, then go home and maybe wait in line for groceries only to face a digital kiosk. The only personal and social aspects of our lives take place at home. Day to day organic interaction has been slowly phased out as society shifted from people centered systems to increasingly faceless impersonal process orientated systems where people have no specific individuality beyond their utility within a bigger system, think of ID cards, college intranet, catalogs of objects on an online marketplace or any public service you use. Social interaction doesn't take place randomly or organically like it did before, people talking on the street or while waiting for the train or some random encounter on the corner. The only connections between people are brokered by commercial platforms like social media, dating apps or your workplace mail system. In the past, it was common for people to meet their soulmates at work, today this isn't socially acceptable we are supposed to use dating apps. The post-modern condition is also post-social. Hook up culture, impersonal sex with strangers facilitated by apps, is a great example of this post-social world. Is this the cause of technology? The media acts as if this was an inevitable consequence of machines. But why did we build digital kiosk machines? Why did this society think replacing gas pump employees with digital self-service devices or automating sex through hook up apps was a good idea? These technologies didn't drop out of the sky. They are creations of the society that built them and a product of a deeper attitude and worldview that the media isn't really interested in investigating. So its not as simple as the machines did this to us, we built these damn things in the first place. >They mention how future technology may allow people to immersive themselves in digital simulations, completely detached from the outside world, or other kinds of things along those lines Baudrillard was talking about this stuff back in the 90s. The death of the real happened decades ago. It doesn't await us in the future, its here right now.

>>85804 >Baudrillard was talking about this stuff back in the 90s. The death of the real happened decades ago. It doesn't await us in the future, its here right now. I thought the death of the real would be much cooler, but I guess not.

I wouldn't be less isolated without the web. There's no one I've met irl that I could actually open up to. I don't know how people are just born in a random location and then the people around them just happen to be compatible with them and they live a normal life, I don't understand how this works.

>>85804 Exponentially growing taxation through what is known as inflation due fiat printing + public traded companies legal obligation for growth. Lowering operational costs is a reliable increase in profit shortterm and reports are annually so removing people became a goal and it obviously led to automation. Same system also led to steady impoverishment of the public - people cant afford to pay because wages never kept up so former quality customer services cease to exist. >>86349 In the old days before internet everyone would be outside so it was easier to meet people organically. There was literally nothing to do in your own room besides reading books from local library. So you went to a local playground and met other kids who where there for the same reason. You played with them and became friends simply because you spend frequently time with them. Did you like everyone? Obviously no but you either compromised lacking alternatives or simply switched the playground making friends with other people.

>>86350 >In the old days before internet everyone would be outside so it was easier to meet people organically. There was literally nothing to do in your own room besides reading books from local library. So you went to a local playground and met other kids who where there for the same reason. You played with them and became friends simply because you spend frequently time with them. I know that, I was there and I did make friends but those were just friends that you play with as a kid, chances are as you grow old you'll drift apart. I have nothing in common with my childhood friends and I couldn't hang out with them now at all. And those friends I made were out of social pressure, I did like them but I still wasn't able to be my real self with them, so I just stopped hanging out with them. >you either compromised lacking alternatives or simply switched the playground making friends with other people. Compromise is that I mean when I say that I wasn't being myself, I'd rather be alone than have to put on a persona that I can't keep up with more than a few years anyway. If you actually manage to find friends IRL, either you're very lucky or you're so normal that you can hang out with anyone because you have no filter.

>>86351 >Compromise is that I mean when I say that I wasn't being myself, I'd rather be alone than have to put on a persona that I can't keep up with more than a few years anyway. meant compromise as tolerating each others bullshit. They do soykaf you don't like and you do soykaf they don't like. Its a fair deal and much better than play pretend.

>>85684 in my personal opinion the thing that makes everyone feel more isolated and alienated now is not technology itself but rather what technology may let you learn, you see them virtual worlds and gaze upon other realities different than yours, see how other people live their lives in other parts of the world or get to known certain media that make you wish that your life was different, humans are short sighted and normally you just accept things for what they are but now you got all those options and places and information and concepts available on the web and you can see the world in other perspectives, wishing for your reality to be different or your experiences to be changed or something like that, technology more specifically the internet makes you see reality in a different way and mostly this new perspective cannot be duplicated into the real world so you feel distant there and the people you know irl may not understant this way of reality that you see. only in the virtual worlds you are able to find such connection so essentially is not the internet and technology that makes you feel isolated but rather what makes you learn that most often than not leads to incapacity to find connection in the real world sorry if this doesn't make sense, this was mostly a stream of thought from me and i don't speak english that well whatever

>>87154 That's exactly what I believe too. I think it's a double edge sword, with the not-so-nice edge being sharper... although it does show you that there is more to this life than you initially thought, it also shows you aspects of life you will never get to experience. I guess it's a matter of balance

>>85804 I wrote a really elaborate essay of a reply to this but I keep getting back "please make a better post" so at this point I guess I'm just going to sit back and sulk. Technology really doesn't want me getting my thoughts out there, it seems.

>>85684 I think that the total amount of isolation has only changed in it's form not amount. Let's say in a technological society you can't find anyone to hang out with so you have to find people online. The opposite would be true like in >>86350's situation. This is also highly personal, and doesn't count for everybody in any other situation. You could feel isolated with people around you, for example. Technology fills the holes but creates new ones, and this state of isolation/non-isolation remains perfectly balanced. :P

>>87334 apparently it was all because you said a "forbidden" word like *ооmer.

>>87203 >>87154 I agree with the sentiment here, if I follow correctly. Technology doesn't make people more lonely per se. It expanded how much we can know about and see, vividly, and it makes the real absence of those things more palpable and painful. On the other hand, it wouldn't be painful if technology wasn't also giving us a decent idea of the experience of those things, which is in itself worth something, and sometimes can be worth a lot. E.g, a simulated spa day may not be that great, but a simulated concert can at least get across the music... Baudrillard was already mentioned in this thread but his book, Simulacra and Simulation, is very relevant and anyone in this thread would most likely enjoy it. But personally, I think Baudrillard had an overly negative view of hyperreality. I think hyperreality can provide beautiful transcendent experiences to humans which can save us from the failings of reality. To reconnect that thought to OP, technology lessening isolation may be an example of that. As for whether humans will eventually become advanced enough to stop interacting with life entirely and plug into some BR holodeck - I'm not sure there will be much need to. The real power of hyperreality will be how it transforms our psychological of meatspace. To think it will take place in cyberspace misses the point, which I suspect is why Baudrillard did not like The Matrix. What happens in cyberspace will reflect itself back into meatspace and reshape meatspace in its image, and vice versa, in one infinite loop. I also think a point Baudrillard either missed or didn't make explicit enough is that hyperreality has always been part of the human experience. Technology is a lot more than just electronics. Wagon wheels and ox plows are technology too. There has always been a social-perceptual layer which reinforces itself back into the physical. It is our job to be good shepherds and curators in cyberspace, where our influence is often more capable of becoming outsized, so that the hyperreal landscape others and ourselves inhabit becomes more pleasant. Ugh, I sound high, but I'm not. These are half-formed ideas that I can't yet express without sounding poetic and pretentious, though I don't want to. It's just a side effect of abstractions. I have to be fuzzy to hope I encompass something true. I hope someone relates to what I'm trying to convey nonetheless.