For those who can afford it. Others in the gig economy will live ever tighter bound by the digital tether.
The office life in the US is layers upon layers of dysfunction. Dysfunction still actively taught at elite institutions delivering CEOs with no creative ideas beyond financialization (taking on more debt) and driving down costs. The gig economy being the ultimate goal. It’s not the auto-firing algorithms that worries me it’s the capriciousness and the insensitivity to bugs in the algorithm that worries me. It’s one thing to be fired for actual low performance that could possibly be avoided or at least predicted it’s another entirely to be randomly fired for something completely beyond your control for which you have no recourse.
If enough employers work together to treat their employees poorly employees will end up having to take worse conditions because they have to work somewhere.
I would prefer co-locate to a healthy work environment but I’ve yet to encounter one. Employers have gotten so used to treating employees badly (especially those on visas) that they’re not even in the ballpark of terms that I would accept. I’m personally fortunate that I’m not forced to take their offers, but I feel bad for those who do.
> Dysfunction still actively taught at elite institutions delivering CEOs with no creative ideas beyond financialization (taking on more debt) and driving down costs. The gig economy being the ultimate goal.
This is so true. The ideal company in the eyes of the MBAs is a C-Suite/Board with everyone else 'self employed' with no-rights or benefits. They see themselves as the back row of the chessboard, everyone else is a disposable pawn.
I think it's more about shared experience, or lack thereof.
More and more, we are able to choose our own reality -- which "news" we subscribe to, which online groups we participate in, which games we play, etc. Two people in the same household, same room even, may have extremely different experiences each on their own device, and then have a diminished ability to process together.
It's a very different life from say, 30 years ago, when there were three or four major news networks, HBO for movies, a single TV in the house, a handful of print newspapers wherever you lived, people even going to places like church (which has its own set of tradeoffs). People in this world had a set of communal shared experience, apparently because they could not choose otherwise, like we can do now.
This is my main complaint in marriage, we don't visually see or listen to almost anything the same. We only overlap in the physical world, not TV/YouTube or music. I'm on Reddit/hacker News/YouTube and she's on Instagram/Facebook. She's the primary watcher of our Netflix and Disney accounts. The Netflix account shows 8,000+ videos watched over the years, primarily by her.
It's hard to have even a 5 minute conversation about non house/kids things if you never share visual/audio/mental reality.
That's not marriage, that is your marriage. My partner and I have no issues with this. We talk about stuff each other didn't watch, too, if we found something interesting to talk about. We watched soem of the same things before we lived in the same country, too, and online blends seamlessly into real space easily.
Of course, we don't have children so that might be a major difference.
I think many of us who work in tech eventually come to the same conclusions as the author because we are more likely to see technology for what it is, rather than a social norm.
This is apparent in how many of us have ditched Facebook, or who leave our phones at home (or turn them off) during concerts, social events, and outdoor recreation activities to ensure we enjoy the moment. Personally speaking, I find I have better human connections today as a result.
And landscapers don't maintain their lawn, cooks like junk food,etc...
I think the whole thing is silly. Extremes suck, find the balance that works for you.
I have maybe 4 apps on my phone: uber, sms app, browser and another browser. Everything else is moved to pc and I don't check messages frequently. Also HN is the only "social media" i engage with (even dropped reddit a while back). No enlightened experience or human connection found, to the contrary people i meet in person keep asking about my social media and I missed a lot of life events in other people's lives. But I have free time now and more peace so that's cool.
Not sure why this has to be seen in the light of extremes vs. gray areas. People should really be more open to questioning ways of living as a whole instead of just automatically aiming for some middle ground by default and without discernment. In the end it’s better to be decisive and consistent than to be contradictory and mediocre.
I agree about friction being important. I think it’s something we need to build into tech workplaces to sustain long term healthy work lives. Like, Pomodoro but the opposite. Maybe we need to ditch Slack and Teams for everything but the water cooler chat. I don’t know, but I miss the days of going for a walk while the computer ran something.
I still haven't checked it out myself yet, but https://twist.com/ markets itself as actually asynchronous communication instead of the constant distraction that Slack/Teams is.
I’m surprised this was stretched out into an entire book. I’m not sure there’s much there or anything that can be taken away about the future being more analog. The argument simplifies to: when people weren’t allowed to do things in doors with others, they all went outdoors and had to take a break from the computer. The leap is they’ll now all love being outdoors and doing these things because I love doing these things. To find an easy counter example to that - flour is now well stocked and I haven’t had home baked sour dough for two years now. Instead of a societal shift to “analog” this all may just be a flash in the pan.
Very often these kinds of books are written like the transcript of a motivational speech shared during a work conference, with slideshow-style text rendering throughout to pad the spacing.
People love dreams. Digital is the latest advancement (...books, radio, tv...) in dream-amplification. A technology that facilitates shoving one's WHOLE head right up into dreamland's funky orifice.
The problem is that people disappear into this hole. And disconnect from reality. Like drug-addiction and schizophrenia.
And they insist that it's all kinds of wonderful, to be all sucked up into dreamland like that. But it's actually really messed up.
(And of course it's vastly popular and profitable too, so it's considered right and healthy and everybody encourages it)
It's a problem that's been creeping up on us for a long time. And at every stage people have noticed how bad it is.
One cure would be a better dream-amplifier. I guess that wouldn't really be a cure tho.
Another cure would be something better than dreams. Free sex maybe.
Sigh, really? The future is "analog"? We're going to be using technology where the voltage on the wire is proportional to, i.e. analagous to, the represented signal?
I know, I know, I'm being a tiresome pedant. Words change, language marches on, a newborn's life will fade. Blah blah. I still don't like it when words change meaning under me and I want people to stop doing it.
To add some pedantic anti-pedantry: high speed digital electronics is almost indistinguishable from analog. Once your signals are in the range hundreds of MHz or more (i.e. DDR bus), designers of digital electronics have to worry about the exact same things as the analog engineers.
> The wall we all hit at some point during the pandemic was digital. It was a wall of video meetings, Slack threads, text chains, and emails. A wall built from Netflix and Disney+, Facebook and TikTok, Instagram, and the endless onslaught of urgent tweets. It was the wall in our hands, on our desks, and beside our pillows, a wall that we turned to for salvation but kept smacking into and then wondering why on earth our bodies were so damn beat at the end of each day. The wall was the full unleashed reality of the digital future as it completely consumed our lives.
And have no sense of it at all. "We all" did not hit that wall. It makes me glad I'm not on social media and work in an industry that allows me to switch off when I exit the building. My fondest memory of the pandemic was teaching my son to ride his bike, there was no traffic so it was safe to do it in the street.
I worked remotely before the pandemic. My world was already Zoom meetings and Slack threads and text chains. The digital world made it so I could attend friends' birthday parties, or game nights, and I was suddenly on equal footing at work with regards to participation, but where I could still be at home with my family and raising my puppy. The future is probably more hybrid than it is now, but it's not what the article claims, either, which was light at best.
I think you missed the point, respectfully. Halfway through the article it states about that you said - nobody remembers the digital, but they remember the “analog” moments such as you teaching your son to bike.
I think you missed the point, respectfully. The OP doesnt remember the digital, because it didnt happen for him. I suppose he was living digitally minimal life before and throught the pandemic
I skimmed the article trying to find the conclusion/main point. And I think it's not about getting back to the office. Actually, the word "office" doesn't even occur in it - the article is about the difference between the actual experience and its digital representation, praising the former. So, fortunately, it's not one of these employer propaganda articles where they find creative ways to get their cattle back to the box.
ChatGPT summary (by copy-pasting main text of article): The pandemic has caused many people to turn away from digital distractions and seek solace in things they can touch, feel and sense with their whole bodies. This has led to a surge in outdoor activities, as people crave the feeling of being outside and disconnected from screens. Some experts believe that the pandemic will leave a lasting legacy, as people remember the joy of being outdoors and the bonding experiences they had with their families. This could lead to a permanent shift away from the digital world and towards a more analog existence.
I think many of the HN responses have proven the articles point having read it digitally. In a digital world people are consuming so much information they don’t have the time to properly think about the meaning behind an article—and they get it wrong, perpetuating false ideas in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps if they sat at the table, coffee in hand, and read a well-thought-out article in a newspaper or journal without digital noise they would have actually spent the time to understand what they’re reading.
You make a good point but im not sure a physical newspaper/journal would be the best example of a non-digital endeavor. I don’t intend to nitpick here but maybe one of the biggest “tradeoffs” of the digital space is access to information; when it rains it pours hey?
In my opinion access to diverse news and professional/academic journals is one of the best parts of the internet.
Maybe reading a newspaper at the table with coffee with family/friends would be appropriate though - one perk of many being sunday crosswords.
You’re definitely right about having a wealth of accessible information! The Internet was of course the next innovation since the Gutenberg press paved the way for knowledge transfer.
But The Internet is plagued with the disease of infinite moving adverts, and when we log in with the intent of performing some task, it is simply too easy to get distracted.
Not only is there supplemental content-oriented distractions—but form factor dictates the speed with which we read. Newspapers are indeed perhaps a bad example because the short columns of prose encourages rapid reading and potentially encourages misinterpretation. On a mobile phone with the delight of accessible, responsive websites, the shrunken column is now how we read articles of all shapes and sizes. Shapes that would traditionally be designed for a larger form factor, for slower rate of consumption.
"During the pandemic, people have been consumed by their digital lives and have felt hollowed out by this. In response, many people have turned away from digital and have sought solace in things they can touch and feel, with their whole bodies. This has led to a boom in outdoor recreation and in activities that require more physical and mental effort. The author suggests that getting back in touch with reality can make us whole again."
Not to steal the author's thunder but I like to find out quickly the point and dig into the interesting parts. Not even sure if the above is a good summary but someone who did read the entire article word for word can tell me!
I do have to say there is something innately refreshing about putting on a vinyl record, and not having my listening habits tracked by an algorithm.
The other day, I happened to have some cash in my pocket and used that to buy a coffee, instead of using Apple Pay.
It almost felt like I was a spy buying something on the black market. Nothing being tracked, nothing to indicate I bought anything. It felt dangerous. It felt cool.
It was exactly how things were <10 years ago. What a thrill.
Most of the negative attitude about this article seems to come from people who weren't raised to appreciate art. It's obvious from all the rebuttals that focus on petty semantics over substance.
One thing I have found helpful with my children is that they are introduced to things in an analog way. Board games before video games. CD players before Spotify. This will they have a tangible relation to something in a very limited way so that they understand just what they are doing. Then, later, once they have a good grasp of what “listening to music” is as an activity, they can use digital services.
show me the cd with 100 million tracks on it, that reports my every play/pause to a bunch of advertisers, and then tries to guess what i want to listen to next. semantics, i know. but c'mon ;)
Yes, mid 2020 till 2021 is the worst part of the pandemic era. For few months, shopping malls, restaurants, cafes etc are not allowed to open. Then the restrictions were gradually lifted: they were allowed to open in shorter business time.
Even at that period I'd still regularely go out to take pictures, visit local coffee shops, take a walk (no traffic yay).
When I read such articles, I just can realize how happy I am for having a family. Sure my pandemics was not perfect, but to have always the digital brake, go outside, play with my kids, cook with my wife and enjoy the life together. We spent so much time together and was the time that I was able to spend more time with them. in times where traditions such as family and children are daily undermined, it has never been so important to have one by your side.
Same here. I even have the chance to live about 10min from the grandparents of my kids and the rest of the family is reachable within an hour. I started enjoying small bike tours, hikes but also disconnecting from work while travelling with kids.
My big question is: What does that experience mean for the future? Buy a house outside of the city to be closer to green/woods? Take a job where I meet people less remote? Etc
> My big question is: What does that experience mean for the future? Buy a house outside of the city to be closer to green/woods? Take a job where I meet people less remote? Etc
I did exactly that!
You can see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33490128, but we did the exactly that. We bought a house, we signed the contract in the first lockdown day, which was kind of awkward, using gloves and masks for the first time, together with the people from the bank.. we were all too uncomfortable with a situation that would become a routine for the next 3 years.
Regarding the job, I'm remote since 2010, but I have now a working place in the (now empty office). My team visit the office once every 15 days to do our retrospective, lunch and get some beers together..
How were you able to office an office and bought a house (close by?)?
I am assuming your office is in a big city or near an airport and not directly where you live?
You can find balance in the digital world. In fact, plenty of people feel more comfortable and themselves online. But plenty don’t. This article lacks that nuance.
The purpose of an op-ed isn't to synthesise the range of views available into a digestible format. It's to articulate a distinct perspective or a dialectic between two perspectives as clearly and convincingly as possible. Ideally from a sincere and informed place. This article articulates one - very common to many knowledge workers - perspective on the pandemic (and contemporary online in general) experience. That of disconnection and disembodiment.
Sure, it’s an op-ed, but making blanket statements like this (in the first sentence) detracts from its more valid points and alienates a large portion of knowledge workers who actually enjoyed some of the changes brought about by the pandemic.
Like any opinion, if you paint things in simple strokes you do yourself a disservice.
Beeing "analog" makes today life harder. Sure, we can choose to use or not digital technologies. But we already implemented digital practices that are not mandatory, but necessary for everyday living. Imagine life without banks, only cash. Imagine communication without instant messengers, only letters.
Now imagine that you can pay by your phone everywhere in the world, with one currency. With same DigitalID you could instantly communicate with authorities, share your data with doctors or let AI to choose your partner. Sounds scarry? Sure but we already build it. [1]
I found curious but also alarming how people prove to be unable to separate a certain implementation of a technology from the technology itself.
Like "digital means modern platforms with a craptop on our knees"... Oh, yes such IT involution is commercial crap, but that's not IT and the answer is not "going back" but study what we have had in the past, like original desktop computing vision vs the commercial implementation for the masses and correct mistakes instead of dreaming playing Amish...
EVs kinda skipped this whole analog/robust/scrappy phase of ICE & just took the worst of non-repair friendly things like soldered NAND flash which will wear out. Non-user replaceable battery modules & completely touch based controls. Having options or atleast allowing for user/3rd party repairs, without which adoption will always be hindered
The digital reality? A quarter of the workforce worked from home. The rest of us continued to go in. We worked double shifts to cover for all the managers and "thought leaders" at home on laptops. The real digital reality is that many industries can get along with far fewer office workers. Id say more but it is 0645 sunday morning and i have to get back to work.
Military stuff. While everyone sleeps in on lazy Sunday, watch officers in windowless rooms look at big computer monitors. Intelligence people do there [redacted] thing to feed those monitors. Aircrew and mechanics sit in old buildings on the edges of runways, checking and rechecking their aircraft every few hours. Weather people go out every hour to measure clouds. And deep in their bunkers are teams with fingers on nuclear triggers. Be it a Russian missile launch or a fisher in distress, a system of hundreds of people is out there 24/7 waiting for the red phone to ring. It might not be glamourous, but I'd rather work every Sunday morning than spend Thursday afternoons designing a better ringtone for that phone.
In practice, weekends and 24/7 operations are more relaxing than the normal workday. All you have to do is your core job. There are no admin headaches, no stupid memos to write or HR-mandated online courses to take. No teams meetings. Everyone can focus on being ready for the mission.
I can see the future becoming more analog than it is digital, only for specific groups of people in proportions that vary region-by-region.
There could be cultural enclaves that will only find community online, and conversely, enclaves who will find community in person. I reckon that whether a group is on either side of this spectrum that I’m imagining will be determined by acceptance, agency, freedom to operate, etc. within the constructs of their core values.
With community will come the utilities that facilitate its success. I’m not talking about stereotypical “Luddite” or “Amish” like scenarios, but something not too far off to degrees that will vary from culture to culture, region to region, etc.
TLDR: people are going to “migrate from Twitter to Mastodon” in real life soon.
> "Our bodies are vibrations. Our words are vibrations. Our movements are vibrations. Nature in all its glory is a great cosmic dance of vibrations. But when we filter our encounters through digital technology, we sever those vibrations."
Err... no, we don't. We do lose the sense of touch and smell looking at audio-visual media, and the resolution is lower than what our eyes and ears are generally capabable of capturing. However, quantum physics tells us that all experience is indirect, that our senses only give us an interpretation of real phenomenon.
Certainly it's nice to go for a walk in nature, for a swim in a river, to see a live music performance, etc. But how about working in a coal mine, shoveling pig manure, working in a prison, spraying pesticides in an agricultural field? Those are also 'direct experiences' but not many would enjoy them.
Every industry can become a grind. Once you have say through a hundred Taylor Swift concerts you might be begging for that coalmine job. I met a piano tuner one who after twenty years of tuning Steinways grands in concert halls had developed a hatred for all classical music.
No need to invoke quantum physics woo here to make the same point. One synapse in from the peripheral senses, the information is all just neurons spiking. That’s a compressed, lossy, and time delayed model of the real world before information has even hit the brain.
Neurons spiking is a lot of quantum woo, as you put it. Collapse of an electric charge gradient across a membrane, neurotransmitters being released and binding to receptors, etc., all involve various QM processes. I was however thinking more about photon scattering, reflection, and emission from so-called material objects, well before those photons hit the rods and cones in the eye.
"digital" has become a fashionable punching bag. deservedly, as the manner in which this technology is being deployed, the kind of experiences it creates and its long-term impact are far from the utopic world that was promised.
but the article struggles to formulate a coherent anti-digital thesis. in fact replace "digital" with "modern consumerist society / capitalist economy" and it makes more sense. the stress, lack of fulfillment, alienation, the disconnect from nature, the obsolescence of age-old traditions and the dissolution of local community bonds long predate the onslaught of "digital"
in fact you could argue we've got the "digital" that we deserve and that we worked hard for
The office life in the US is layers upon layers of dysfunction. Dysfunction still actively taught at elite institutions delivering CEOs with no creative ideas beyond financialization (taking on more debt) and driving down costs. The gig economy being the ultimate goal. It’s not the auto-firing algorithms that worries me it’s the capriciousness and the insensitivity to bugs in the algorithm that worries me. It’s one thing to be fired for actual low performance that could possibly be avoided or at least predicted it’s another entirely to be randomly fired for something completely beyond your control for which you have no recourse.
If enough employers work together to treat their employees poorly employees will end up having to take worse conditions because they have to work somewhere.
I would prefer co-locate to a healthy work environment but I’ve yet to encounter one. Employers have gotten so used to treating employees badly (especially those on visas) that they’re not even in the ballpark of terms that I would accept. I’m personally fortunate that I’m not forced to take their offers, but I feel bad for those who do.