
Electronic Loneliness (1995) - doots
http://www.mediamatic.net/5909/en/electronic-loneliness
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l33tbro
Interesting how prescient the final comment would come to be some 20 years
later. A pretty decent summation of the modern critique of social media's
'like' mechanics and their lack of ability to create change:

"The Net as ideal treadmill for self-styled identities will create no
revolutionary situations, nor bring the world to an end. Cybernetic emptiness
need not be filled, nor will it ever be full (of desire, abhorrence or
unrest). Until telematic energy finally disappears into the flatland of
silence in the face of blinking commands."

~~~
CptFribble
Until/Unless digital opinion mechanics (likes, etc) are given the weight of
real world consequences, they will continue to be empty gestures. The only way
to move past this era of "like this post to help stop a dictator" is to
implement Internet voting or something similar.

I'm not necessarily advocating for internet voting, just saying until some
legitimate public outcome is driven by internet-enabled decision-making, all
current social media/internet group-decisions will be empty of meaning.

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sundarurfriend
Could someone translate that into ordinary English? It's hard to get even a
feel for the core idea here.

~~~
rgbrenner
The one line version is: the internet creates isolation (by removing our need
to leave the home, even for work) and therefore loneliness. It's anti-
computers (called home terminals in the article) because it disturbs the home
as a refuge from work--a place for leisure (in front of a TV-- not the work-
like home terminals).

Keep in mind, this is when most people were still not connected (or even had a
computer), there were maybe 20,000 websites worldwide.

So this is a pro-status-quo position... arguing against the change that was
beginning to occur from computers becoming widely available.

I think it's hard to read because it's a translation of this:
[https://www.mediamatic.net/en/media/inline/2016/12/14/8_2_am...](https://www.mediamatic.net/en/media/inline/2016/12/14/8_2_amp.jpg)

~~~
throwanem
Interesting prefigure of Tinder in there, too, I thought.

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projektir
I think there are some interesting points in here but I am having a lot of
trouble with the language. A lot of the time I cannot be certain what a given
sentence is actually saying.

I'm continually confused by how the word "psychic" is used, for instance.
Unfortunately, writing of this sort makes me skeptical of the value of the
article, as it signals an odd mental model I can't properly connect to.

I.e.:

> Telework is not an institution, but a constitution, a mental frame in which
> the new work effort can move. Psychic, to begin with: what used to be called
> immobility is now the point of departure for delivering labour performance.

Eh? Is this just a weird way of saying "work at distance"? So telework is
telework?

> An axiom of self-realisation has been slapped onto telework in passing:
> you're only someone if you're in business. No activity, no identity. Pepped
> up, in shape and evaluated for performance, the individualised mass must be
> brought into a state of readiness for digital piecework.

This might be a criticism of a everyone-must-have-a-job-to-have-identity
mentality, but I cannot be sure, and I'm not sure how it makes sense, since
that mentality is definitely present right now in the US, but telework is not
all that common still. But I might be misinterpreting that sentence.

> A feeling of urgency must be created, the feeling that unless we all do
> something about it, everything will end posthaste in decadence, crime and
> entropy. There is delight that the masses will once again have something to
> do and can once again be kept on a leash. At home we are experiencing a
> science-fiction invasion: the spaceship is ensconcing itself in the living
> room and the feeling of being on a virtual trip through space imposes
> itself.

I would say this is just plain nonsense. I don't think this sense of urgency
is needed by anyone or ever was and I do not believe the article provides
evidence for it. A lot of things are said, but nothing is proven.

I think isolation is caused by reduction of the value of religion and no
corresponding social replacement for structures such as churches (see
first/second/third place concepts). This in turn makes alternative means,
which are currently digital, more popular. But not just them, I think Meetups
perform a similar function. But, hey, saying things is easy, proving them is
another matter.

What I generally find missing in articles like this is some... balance, I
guess? It always smells of age-old criticisms of technology combined with
criticisms of people who do not socialize as much as some in society believe
is proper, and since that sect has always existed throughout history, it's
hard to separate its inherent bias against what I would call "nerds" from good
points.

The articles sound like they were written by people to whom the internet is of
absolutely no use, so they do not really understand it, and can only see its
shallow applications, and shallow applications (of which I consider Facebook a
type) generally do not look great. So the entire field gets vilified and used
as a scapegoat for society's problems, in this case as an evil force that
weakens labor rights. Strangely enough, fields generally get worse as more
people join them, not because the fields themselves are bad, but because all
the worlds problems now get encoded in them as well.

McLuhan has a similar problem with being overly fatalistic but he's a lot more
readable.

It would be more interesting to read a criticism of the internet by someone
who uses it in more advanced ways.

