People peddling arguments like this are being incredibly obnoxious. There are billions of people alive today who don't have access to modern medicine/electricity/internet. You claim with a straight face that your quality of life is not better than them?
I don't disagree with you, but I want to play devil's advocate. Unlike water and electricity, the internet is still kind of a luxury. If the electricity cuts out for a couple of days, all of our food rots, and we starve and die. If the water cuts out, we get dehydrated and die.
If the internet cuts out for a few days... well.. It'll suck. But nobody will die. If I recall correctly, 60% of the internet's traffic is Netflix, with the remaining diced up between Youtube, streaming, and social media. The internet, as it stands right now, is a global entertainment system. I know we do business on it, and it's a boon for communications, but it's not a life or death thing.
Aside from that, I'm actually still on the fence philosophically on whether or not the internet is "good" for humanity. It's allowed huge amounts of misinformation to spread. I think you could pin the spread of anti-vax ideas on the internet. We waste millions of hours playing video games and streaming videos. I am currently bored at work browsing hacker news, so instead of allowing that boredom to force me into improving our app, I'll just sit here quietly until somebody adds a ticket into my queue.
People have lived happy lives without the Internet for millennia, in fact I've lived a portion of my life without the Internet and I can remember the "good old days". Life with the Internet is very cool, but it was pretty cool also before it. I won't say that our lives were better before the Internet, but such argument can be made - imagine a world without X, Facebook, TikTok and the scourge of social media; for many people that was a better, slightly simpler world.
Medicine, on the other hand, was responsible for removing an immeasurable amount of pain and suffering from humanity, including having our loved ones (and ourselves) around for much longer. I find hard to believe people would give back antibiotics for anything we have from the post-Internet revolution.
I spend all my time online and don't always keep normal hours. I sleep far better than I used to.
I'm healthier than I used to be and I live a spartan life. To accommodate my health issues, I have no carpeting, no upholstered furniture, no books or magazines in the house, etc.
These articles consistently vilify modern tech and the kind of light it emits. They seem to never, ever, ever mention modern North American Affluenza as in any way pertinent to the problem space.
I think they are overlooking a very important detail.
I'm sure there are others. That's not everything. But I think it's a large factor that is largely overlooked.
Internet access is not nearly a luxury in the same way cigarettes are.
Yes, it won't literally kill you not to have Internet, but that's a disingenuous argument. I did not say "essential to remain alive", I said "essential".
You are simply not at a level playing field if you do not have Internet access in 2018.
Family emergency while you're not at home? Resources to learn about the world, educate yourself? Increased job opportunities? Housing listings? Mobile financial services?
"It makes sense to not measure those things because they don't increase our overall happiness or productivity."
I disagree. The accessibility of everything nowadays reduces the opportunities for frustration very often (i.e I don't need to queue at a bank at my lunch hour except in very special circumstances). Thus - more happiness.
"You can't live off imgur cat pictures or spreadsheets about big mac nutrition."
No, my comment was not about the internet alone. It was about the secondary effects accessibility of information has on daily life in the strictly physical domain.
"People need a house, an occupation that gives meaning to their lives, the right to political participation and shape their everyday experiences."
Yes, I agree. The human life is very shallow without the joy of self-expression. I was not suggesting smartphones connected to internet will replace life. My comment was about the fact how they reduce the tedious, non-productive segments of life.
I think you missed what the parent poster might be saying, it's not about "Bubbles of Comfort". I too live in one of those countries like you put it, and while I live in the bubble to some extent, I know people who've never used internet or a smartphone/computer in their entire lives and live a decently happy stress-free life. Their lives are not nasty or brutish, they're not leading less-fulfilling lives as a result. On the contrary, I think most of them are happier, more content and wiser than me.
What you might be doing I think... is making the assumption that technology, 'things' like gadgets or better cars and modern medical health is central to human life. Yes, life would objectively improve if you have those, but if I have to work 60 hours a week doing something I don't really care about, then is that really a good trade-off? I think the answer is not the same as yours for everyone.
I don't think the comparison is between social media access and electricity access. The comparison is between access to internet and access to electricity. You just picked a specific case of "internet access" to make it look more silly and easier to defeat.
Using that same technique, I can say "Comparing internet access to being able to use your toaster is the height of disingenuous absurdity". You can see why this technique isn't really legitimate and should be avoided in public arguments.
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