“When I see an old movie, like from the ’40s or...

17th February 2012

Quote reblogged from graph praxis with 2,203 notes

When I see an old movie, like from the ’40s or ’50s or ’60s, the people look so calm. They don’t have smart phones, they’re not looking at computer screens, they’re taking their time. They’ll sit in a chair and just stare off into space. I think some day we’ll find our way back to that garden of Eden.

—

Rudy Rucker (via wilwheaton)

I wouldn’t characterize the ’40s as a non-technological, slow-paced garden of Eden, but I’m so behind the sentiment on this one.

(via linearbbq)

“THOSE DAMN KIDS AND THEIR SMARTPHONES”

this is a completely bullshit sentiment

death to generic nostalgia, i spit on your resistance to popular technological advances, etc.

people have been busy and preoccupied and stressed out since long before the invention of the transistor

(via zincfingers)

Oh, for goodness’ sake. To clarify:

I come from a large extended family where holiday gatherings are a big deal. When I was growing up, after Christmas dinner, we would sit down in the living room and talk, read books, play Trivial Pursuit. (I know you’ll find this nauseatingly wholesome, but please restrain yourself). This year, after Christmas dinner, we sat down in the living room and within ten minutes every one of the twenty-odd people in the room had pulled out an iPad or a smartphone. Most of the adults began checking up on messages from work; the extent of the resulting conversation was to sigh about a newly-scheduled meeting or exclaim over a cute kitten macro.

For my birthday last year I finally got an iPod Touch. Before that, the smallest device that I owned that could access the Internet was my laptop, which seems positively clunky in comparison. Over the past eight months, my connectability has increased to the point where I’m never without my email. Going for more than half an hour without checking my inbox is unusual. (The same thing goes for text messages, though that’s slightly different.) With this connectability, my distractability and my stress levels have also increased: I no longer sit down to read an article, work on a problem set, watch a movie, have coffee with a friend, etc. without reflexively checking my phone and my iPod every five minutes or so. I’m never fully focused, and I’m never fully removed from the stressors that constantly pop up in my inbox.

Sure, there’s nothing in smartphones and the like that makes this behavior inherent; we’re not automatons completely controlled by the technologies we use. I don’t think the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s were magical utopias free of stress and distractions, nor do I think that everyone should throw out their iPhone. But new technology enables connectedness to a greater degree than ever before, which changes how people interact with others and go about their lives — and some of those changes are good, and some are bad, and there are things that I value and miss about past ways of living. There’s a big difference between pointing that out and condemning wholesale all new technology in favor of an idealized past that never existed. Hence my support for the place this quote is coming from, if not for the exact formulation. Capisce?

Source: Boing Boing

somewhere different now