The "Future": Perceived vs. Reality
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
It makes me sad to see young teens hang out and message each other on facebook while they are in the same room.
But why? They are still spending time together, communicating and sharing with even more people. I know adults love to hate this stuff, but what's the actual negative component to it? People are more social, more connected, more in touch than ever. I see it as wonderful. My kids will never face the loneliness and disconnected world we had no option but to face. Just like other advancements, our kids don't need to hunt for all of their own food or face a world without vaccinations. They can travel farther, faster, more safely. They can attend school and not be afraid of wild animals at night.
That we have improved our lot is not a bad thing.
There is nothing wrong with that view point, but as you already know it differs from what 90% of the world thinks. I feel like the human race would be lost without our roots. We can never fully appreciate nature without spending time in it.
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@handsofqwerty said:
Pretty soon we'll live in a world where people can message someone on Facebook or text them, but put a group of people in a room together and tell them to "talk" and they'll have no idea what to do or how to interact like human beings.
Based on what do you feel this way? Everyone says this stuff but what group of people is losing the ability to talk that used to be able to? Is there any foundation in reality for this? You are assuming a devolution of skills that is not observable or even expected. There is no logical connection between "communicating more in media X" with "losing the ability to communicate in media Y."
I know that Facebook, as an example, allows me to spend more time being social, even in person, than I could be before.
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@scottalanmiller not everything is black and white. I am sure you will train your kids to be social and to have proper communication skills. The problem isn't necessarily our children, it's everyone else's children too, in this evolving world.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's never happened before. This would go against all of history. There was never a backlash against printing, telephones, television, etc. It would be unprecedented for it to happen with the Internet.
I'm not saying any of these are right or wrong, but....
Book burning
Then you get into the real nut-jobs like boko-haram etc.
Far from unprecedented, though I suspect that the movement to unplug from the internet a bit will be deep, broad and have legitimate reasons. I find it very anti-social and I have to make sure I practice my people skills regularly (a great outlet for that is my job, talking to people)
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@IRJ said:
@scottalanmiller not everything is black and white. I am sure you will train your kids to be social and to have proper communication skills. The problem isn't necessarily our children, it's everyone else's children too, in this evolving world.
But the average children never learned to communicate well nor does it matter too much. The majority of the population is not well educated or skilled. Communication skills have always been mostly for the upper 25% or so. Those are the people who will, almost always, leverage the new technology to enhance that, not to fall prey to it.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's never happened before. This would go against all of history. There was never a backlash against printing, telephones, television, etc. It would be unprecedented for it to happen with the Internet.
I'm not saying any of these are right or wrong, but....
Book burning
Then you get into the real nut-jobs like boko-haram etc.
Far from unprecedented, though I suspect that the movement to unplug from the internet a bit will be deep, broad and have legitimate reasons. I find it very anti-social and I have to make sure I practice my people skills regularly (a great outlet for that is my job, talking to people)
Sure, that's how I see the anti-Facebook crowd. But those were not generally so much about the technology as the message. Book burning normally was only certain books. It was freedom they hated, information, not the books. If the books promoted their message they liked them.
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But none of those were every society as a whole. It was always fringe elements. Everything good always has a fringe that hates it.
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Often hating it because it is good. It is the good in things that makes a lot of people dislike stuff.
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@scottalanmiller I admit that post was mostly to point out that precedence for any anti-new-thingy is very typically.... human.
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My main point was, I suppose, that I don't feel like being plugged in 24/7 is a good thing. I need to ruminate about it.
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At a few talks that I have given recently, one of the things that I like to point out is that as IT practitioners one of our key jobs is embracing change. Change is scary for all people. Absolutely everyone. Change means the unknown. But IT is one of those fields where we deal with this daily and are trained to handle it well. That we are adept at handling change is what makes us good at IT.
This means, that with rare exception, as the world changes, the more it changes, while scary, the more it benefits us. We are the ones, on average, more prepared to benefit from rapid change. No matter how scary it seems, remember that you are likely the demographic most likely to make out well.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
It makes me sad to see young teens hang out and message each other on facebook while they are in the same room.
But why? They are still spending time together, communicating and sharing with even more people. I know adults love to hate this stuff, but what's the actual negative component to it? People are more social, more connected, more in touch than ever. I see it as wonderful. My kids will never face the loneliness and disconnected world we had no option but to face. Just like other advancements, our kids don't need to hunt for all of their own food or face a world without vaccinations. They can travel farther, faster, more safely. They can attend school and not be afraid of wild animals at night.
That we have improved our lot is not a bad thing.
But in an age where we are more connected than ever, we are also more disconnected than ever. People who are my age and younger may be able to fly on any given electronic device, but basic communication skills are being replaced by the ability to text and chat via IM. Pretty soon we'll live in a world where people can message someone on Facebook or text them, but put a group of people in a room together and tell them to "talk" and they'll have no idea what to do or how to interact like human beings. This is when the technology goes from being a tool as a benefit to something detrimental.
Is there evidence for this? I know there has been a number of studies done on attention span in the internet age, which showed that our (collectively) attention span has gotten shorter as we are exposed to more and more internet stuff.
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@coliver said:
Is there evidence for this? I know there has been a number of studies done on attention span in the internet age, which showed that our (collectively) attention span has gotten shorter as we are exposed to more and more internet stuff.
This is true. And it started before the Internet age. Reading books helps to offset this.
But there is another question, is a long attention span good in a world where we don't need it? Or are we properly adapting to the world as we know it? What's actually negative about handling shifting information streams more efficiently?
There are cons, of course, but what is the net effect? Are we adapting properly or improperly is the bigger question.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Is there evidence for this? I know there has been a number of studies done on attention span in the internet age, which showed that our (collectively) attention span has gotten shorter as we are exposed to more and more internet stuff.
This is true. And it started before the Internet age. Reading books helps to offset this.
But there is another question, is a long attention span good in a world where we don't need it? Or are we properly adapting to the world as we know it? What's actually negative about handling shifting information streams more efficiently?
There are cons, of course, but what is the net effect? Are we adapting properly or improperly is the bigger question.
I didn't say it was a bad thing. Around the same time an evolutionary biologist made the case for short attention spans as an evolutionary advantage, allowing our ancestors to focus on many different things at once while still being able to forget things that aren't deemed important by the brain. It was just a blog post... but interesting none-the-less.
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I've read several books, some by psychologists and some by things like the Harvard Business School that have studied the effects of video games and the conclusion is pretty unanimous that interactive gaming is making kids thing faster, strategize better and learn better than ever before. Gamers are a desired workforce component as they are often in the top tier of knowledge workers.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
People who are my age and younger may be able to fly on any given electronic device, but basic communication skills are being replaced by the ability to text and chat via IM.
I don't believe that there is any foundation for this. In what way could previous eras communicate better?
I strongly believe it is an issue, but not as a function of increased technology; rather as a function of poor education standards.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
People who are my age and younger may be able to fly on any given electronic device, but basic communication skills are being replaced by the ability to text and chat via IM.
I don't believe that there is any foundation for this. In what way could previous eras communicate better?
I strongly believe it is an issue, but not as a function of increased technology; rather as a function of poor education standards.
You believe that it is an issue that people communicate poorly? (Agreed) Or you believe that there is an issue that current educational practices are creating a generation that does so more poorly than in the past? (Not sure I agree.)
I agree that communication skills are poor. Not sure that I would agree that they used to be good.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
People who are my age and younger may be able to fly on any given electronic device, but basic communication skills are being replaced by the ability to text and chat via IM.
I don't believe that there is any foundation for this. In what way could previous eras communicate better?
I strongly believe it is an issue, but not as a function of increased technology; rather as a function of poor education standards.
You believe that it is an issue that people communicate poorly? (Agreed) Or you believe that there is an issue that current educational practices are creating a generation that does so more poorly than in the past? (Not sure I agree.)
I agree that communication skills are poor. Not sure that I would agree that they used to be good.
I think that your 25% figure may have been true at one point, but based on what I see daily, that figure has decreased dramatically. I'll bet less than 10% of the general public has a clue about proper grammar or how to construct a decent logical point about anything. Most people have no clue about logic, grammar, spelling, etc., and I find it very discouraging to think what the future may hold in that respect.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
People who are my age and younger may be able to fly on any given electronic device, but basic communication skills are being replaced by the ability to text and chat via IM.
I don't believe that there is any foundation for this. In what way could previous eras communicate better?
I strongly believe it is an issue, but not as a function of increased technology; rather as a function of poor education standards.
You believe that it is an issue that people communicate poorly? (Agreed) Or you believe that there is an issue that current educational practices are creating a generation that does so more poorly than in the past? (Not sure I agree.)
I agree that communication skills are poor. Not sure that I would agree that they used to be good.
I think that your 25% figure may have been true at one point, but based on what I see daily, that figure has decreased dramatically. I'll bet less than 10% of the general public has a clue about proper grammar or how to construct a decent logical point about anything. Most people have no clue about logic, grammar, spelling, etc., and I find it very discouraging to think what the future may hold in that respect.
I agree that few people have those skills. What I feel, though, is that even fewer had them in the past. In what generation could 10% even write, let alone write well? It's only recently that there is widespread literacy, post 1900. Since 1900, when was there ever a time period when the majority of people wrote well?
The only major difference is that we now see people who write poorly all of the time. They used to be filtered because the effort to publish was so high. Now that anyone who wants to be heard can write something somewhere, we see the people writing who previously could have only sent a letter by post or hoped that a publisher or editor somewhere would let their work get seen. And in those cases, often a team of people edited what went to print before it was seen by the public.
That we no longer use editors for most printed activity is a major change.
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When it comes to making technological predictions, Ray Kurzweil (and others) came up with a pretty good method of doing so. Of course, it's not a crystal ball, but it works best when trying to verify whether or not someone's prediction will likely be possible.
Some more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change
I use this often when talking with people. In my experience, people either think things will happen way too soon or way too far away. Two examples:
- Flying cars
- I showed a demo video of a piece of software to my father in law some years ago, and he said "that's at least 100 years away," but I had already written it. He wasn't the only one either.
People are just really, really bad at predicting technology. If they think the idea is simple they will say it'll be tomorrow, if they don't understand it (like software) they say it'll be super far off.
