What is Digg?87 Comments
- trghpy, on 07/21/2008, -6/+49Killing me more slowly? Than what? Normality? cigarette smoking? sun radiation?
If the digital age is killing me more slowly than say... normality; wouldn't that mean I'll live longer?
PLUS
Whole article is totally a guess with poor assumptions. -Kids won't know how to grieve cuz they won't understand the loss?- I know lots of internet people and we all still have our humanity.
Not to mention, how can they judge longevity when none of us born into the worst part have reached middle age? Plus how do they account for all the old farts who are still on top of their game?
You choose to skim through web pages because you searching for information. you don't read the dictionary when you're looking for a just a word. Duh.
You find the information your after instead of being bored and reading whats available.
And guess what old man. You chose to be assaulted with at least half of you complaints.
You could choose not to have an iphone, not to have an email address, and could even choose never to answer your phone. Your live would be different, but your life is based on the choice you make.
Times are changing. Update your text books. - Aitese, on 07/22/2008, -0/+10"Is the digital age destroying us?"
Yay for hyperbole! - Nosferotu, on 07/22/2008, -2/+11So what you're telling me is that people are better off when they're given less to work with, and forced against their will to do without convenience?
If you don't like technology, don't use it. Every time one of these articles pops up, it always starts with our poor, whining author complaining about the hard life of a journalist b/c they have 600 websites that automatically feed them information, and 300 emails coming in daily on top of that. YOU DID IT TO YOURSELF, IDIOT.
Anyone growing up with the web, and technology, has long ago learned to ration their usage and control their immersion to a level that is comfortable to them. The baby boomer generation, and the one just after it (whatever they're called) grew up THEN got technology, so they're freaking out on it without using some basic self control. Calm the hell down - providing ourselves more convenient, efficient ways of doing things is not going to be the end of the human race, people.
And frankly, if I can live to 50 with technology or 70 without it, I'll pull the trigger at 50. - kingofinternet, on 07/22/2008, -2/+11judging by digg, failing public schools is killing us.
- inactive, on 07/22/2008, -2/+10This is just dumb.
I read the same article in the 90's except it talked about the TV doing just that.
People have never been smart. No use to try and find what makes us dumb, it's the default state.
The problem is everything that made us smart has been removed. Education system is now pure *****. I have nothing good to say about it. They removed all competition and don't reward superior intelligence. In fact, they suppress it by equating the minimum to the maximum. It's custom made for the lowest common denominator. It's slow, repetitive and ultimately aimed at the dumbest idiot in the room.
People don't raise their kids anymore. That started in the 70's and it's still not happening. All you have to do is go outside to witness this: grown men negotiating with 6 year olds. What the ***** happened to "shut your mouth"? People will actually apologize for disciplining their kids. Grown people apologize for telling children how to behave, to the children. WTF.
In fact, if it weren't for the all the information that is readily available to everyone at the tip of their fingertips, I'm sure about 80% of people in school right now would fail miserably. At least they're being exposed to the information somewhere. - Nosferotu, on 07/22/2008, -1/+8There is MASSIVE amounts of evidence in psychology that using domination to make your kids do what you want, rather than talking to them/explaining why what they did was wrong and letting them make the right choice themselves, ends up creating children that are much more likely to misbehave, and end up generally less intelligent because they're less capable of dealing effectively with choices and social situations.
This is also why schools are now rewarding all children for TRYING instead of just SUCCEEDING - because we want to teach them that it's better to KEEP TRYING, even if you don't always win. That doesn't mean children don't get an extra pat on the back because they did win, or at least get the smug INTERNAL satisfaction of being the best (which means intrinsic rather than extrinsic reward - also much more effective at motivating, same as the issue with parents).
So if you're gonna talk about intelligence, why don't you get over your "stuff should never change" attitude and be an intellectual. Behaving like a cynical, whiny old man doesn't help anyone, including yourself.
All that said, I still believe our schools are crap, but it's got more to do with forcing children to be there 8 hours a day whether or not they want to be, and forcing them to learn X subject for 50 minutes a day rather than being able to spend time on what they're truly interested in and will focus on. - Ethek, on 07/22/2008, -1/+8I can tell you my kid, who is 5, can direct himself to flash emulated mario games (when given the chance) on the net and use a console like anyone else. He is just as likely to play with my horde of legos for hours on end.
His distractions come from carefully diagnosed food allergies. Food preservatives and dyes such as Red40 will initiate physical symptoms such as puffy eyes, geographic tongue (allergy symptom) and 'inattentive hyper like behavior' I guess hes got some kind of buzz from the raging chemical reactions that has set off in is head. Sugar is 100% ok btw.
Anyhow. this is a very difficult study to isolate. I'll squirrel the info away to be used or discarded if needed. - DanBoodro, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6Digg is my daily distraction...
- boothin8or, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6I think his observations are correct, but his conclusions are rather shallow. Sure, people don't want to read things with the depth they once did, but there is still valuable knowledge that needs to be presented. And with the increasing social networking, we are standardizing the language used on the internet for its purpose. So, in order to present the more nuanced works that encourage people to think more deeply, all that must be done is to write in a simpler, logically coherent and consistent way. This allows the work to stand on its own in a place a volatile as the internet (our modern Wild West), while still keeping important information alive and available to everybody.
This is what I find is the main disadvantage with the works of the 19'th century: they are highly dependent on the reader being of the same cultural background as the writer. To me, this is why U.S. mass media seems so watered down, because it was built on the various subcultures of America, and then watered down and generalized to appeal to all Americans, and then watered down some more to make it appeal to foreign audiences as well. And to me, this is what deconstruction is: a way to keep a piece internally consistent without regard to reality, so as to allow it to be appealing to anyone with the most basic understanding of the culture. - rentmitchum, on 07/22/2008, -3/+8Wall-E + Idiocracy = Future of the human race.
- TheKillDoctor, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5Didn't they say the same thing about television many years ago.
- Duositex, on 07/22/2008, -1/+6No. Stop asking me questions in headlines. This isn't trivia it's the opposite. YOU give ME the information.
- spfldnet, on 07/22/2008, -3/+8Sounds like propaganda from the old broadcast and print media, trying to vilify the Internet.
- Jamiciut, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5Distraction is a key element in boredom. I asked myself, when was the last time I did nothing? I couldn't remember. The over-stimulation of the internet (when taken to excess) only leaves us feeling more bored than we were before.
This type of boredom has been associated with depression and ADD (the two 'new' epidemics of today's youth).
The article makes an important point about the difference between knowledge and information. We of digg and the 'internet generation' have a fetish for new and largely irrelevant information.
Curiosity is vital to intellectual development and the internet is a wonderful tool for that development. However, constant connection to 'information' does not bring about any sort of meaningful development. - ieee, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4"One irony that lies behind all this is the myth that children are good at this stuff. Adults often joke that their 10-year-old has to fix the computer. But it’s not true. Studies show older people are generally more adept with computers than younger. This is because, like all multitaskers, the kids are deluding themselves into thinking that busy-ness is depth when, in fact, they are skimming the surface of cyberspace as surely as they are skimming the surface of life. It takes an adult imagination to discriminate, to make judgments; and those are the only skills that really matter."
- Nosferotu, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I read somewhere that a single modern day newspaper in a big city has in it more information than a peasant would have learned in their entire life in the dark ages. And yet, somehow, I can read a paper and it doesn't feel like my life is getting shorter because of it.
All this sensationalist anti-technology crap... I hope it goes away with the generations moving up now. The 20-somethings right now are the first to have been young enough to be impressionable when the technology boom began, hopefully they're the cusp of the end of all this stupidity. - ieee, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5I'm a professional programmer. I never carry any mobile devices with me. I keep my cell phone in the glove compartment of my car as an emergency phone. My best ideas and most profound thinking happen during my transition times. Those things would happen a lot less for me if I was being buzzed everywhere I walked, drove, or waited.
- gllopc, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3It's a dramatic way of saying that something will shorten your life, but not immediately kill you.
- oriondr, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3"In 1995 his son was killed by a distracted driver who ran a red light."
Okay, I don't think you're allowed to tout your psychology credentials when your objectivity was just thrown completely out the window by the sentence above.
(Talking about the author of the book, not the article). - inactive, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4yeah, first the comic books were going to kill us, then rock and roll, then video games, now computers the internet...say what you really want to say: "GET OFF MY LAWN"
- smurfsahoy, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5Pure correlational, anecdotal BS. It's all either random guesses that sound good, or studies run on huge populations now vs. 20 years ago that have 50 bazillion other variables different from the controls.
I especially like the part where they talk about loud phone conversations and screaming babies as dangerous and unnatural distractions. Go and live in a large city in the Aztec empire hundreds of years ago, and guess what? You'd be surrounded by screaming babies and loud, annoying talkers. And instead of traffic noises, you have people screaming over deals at the marketplace. Are they for real?
By the way, MANY older and more well run studies have shown that people working in quiet, sterile buildings or underground are far more unhappy and are less efficient if great pains are not taken to correct certain aspects of their environment. Guess what the #1 factor is for restoring people's sanity in shut away work areas? Being exposed to other human activity. Hustle and bustle. People talking on the phones and cars driving by. Sitting in a shut in, dead silent room with no distractions HURTS your concentration and your well-being. - orchidee2, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3I also was, and unfortunately sometimes still am, one of those enthusiastic multitaskers, always doing at least three things simultaneously. But the time I saved by doing so, I lost, because I forgot something or simply made mistakes. Paying full attention to the charge of the moment is something we all have to relearn. I think, distraction won´t automatically kill us, but it will take us the satisfying feeling to notice that we had forgotten the world around us, because we were so deep into one subject!
- diceau, on 07/22/2008, -4/+7Sensationalist garbage ... and a poor attempt at that.
Author should concentrate less on crapping on. - WiretapStudios, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5I stopped reading the article halfway through.
- Pixelante, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2Uphill in the snow both ways.
- EntropyFan, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2No. But not to worry, I think we are doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves.
- leerayIG88, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2Electrogonorrhea: the noisy killer
- DanBoodro, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2Cyberspace is a better alternative...I can't slay warlocks and elves IRL
- Nosferotu, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Lindsey, my point is simply that the amount of technology we take in day to day has been increasing exponentially over hundreds and hundreds of years, and at the same time these sensationalist fears have been following suit - but yet, we still exist, and are still able to function, and we've yet to die from information overload.
Whether or not the newspaper thing is true is really rather unimportant. I was just using it as a potential example. You certainly can't argue that we DON'T take in vast amounts more information each day than people even a few hundred years ago? - robbiemuffin, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I always liked the argument:
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. We're all people. We need to take people off the streets, not guns! That way we can have nice, safe streets, full of guns... and no people. Only the good stuff. - robbiemuffin, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I almost agree with majik, but I don't think it was very well put. The way majik said it was rather well put, but that .... essay-thingie , it was a bit much. :)
Still, even if I can enjoy my life twice as much to live it half as long, there's only so many halfings I'm willing to accept. - m0llusk, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Sugar is not okay, in fact the inflammation response to eating it is probably one of the factors that led to your child acquiring food allergies which are extremely uncommon in natural settings.
- Jpeg2600, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1killer ape from outer space
- pixmaker2, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2that article sucked. just turn off your iphone when reading a book or driving or watching a movie. ofcourse your going to be distracted.
- lindseylu, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Look closely and you'll see he's not just talking about technology; rather, he's using technology as a way to bring the point home to the casual reader.
For example, he speaks of people who use language in two ways at once and how it is not effective to do so. A technological example of this is when a person has a conversation on the phone while writing an e-mail. The point isn't about phones or the internet. It's about the language part of the brain. The brain is becoming exhausted and that is what he's implying that will kill us slowly.
I do not agree with that part of it, but if you're going to write a ill-written response, please make sure you know what you're talking about first. The author of the article is clearly not the best writer, but that doesn't excuse your poorly written rhetort because you're clearly no better at organizing your thoughts than he is. - lindseylu, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1See? And that's all you needed to say in the first place.
How likely is it that a listener will take seriously a man on a soapbox when that man doesn't have a clear message to deliver? I responded to you not because I was trying to pick a fight, but because someone with your passion for ideas should be more organized with his thoughts. It adds validity to your response and strengthens the clarity of the message.
I really couldn't care less about the points. I'm not a fan of arguing point against point. I'm a fan of the bigger picture and your original post just irritated my senses. And, yes, that does make me an *****. Sorry in advance.
OH! I almost forgot - It does look like I targeted you. I ran out of energy after writing to you that I gave up writing a similar response to other people. I didn't mean to target you. I'm just glad you're not so petty that you take offense to that. - Nosferotu, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Yikes, you're really focusing on me, aren't you, Lindsey? I'll try to be more concise and write up an outline of my posts before actually putting them out there next time.
If you read closely, MY point is that he is trying to argue that in modern-day, technology has so saturated our lives that it's inevitable that we are often pressed to focus on multiple things. I really don't care if the purpose of his argument in this article is to tell me that I can't focus on too much at any one time - that point is obvious, and not worth writing about. It's clear that his point is that our world has become much more fast-paced, as a result of growing technology, and as such it's not possible for us to keep up in our day to day lives.
I understand that you can write an impressive rebuttal, but you're very clearly trying to avoid understanding the point of my posts so that you can pick a fight. You seem intelligent enough to read between the lines, and understand the implied issue that I'm responding to with these. If you want to have a substantive discussion about the issues raised in this article, then let's do that. If you want to write masturbatory troll posts, be my guest, but you're not showing me the error of my ways. - lindseylu, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Your response is probably the only thought-out response here. Kudos on not only having your own opinion, but also having a solid argument to back it up.
- lindseylu, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1This is a very shallow and crude interpretation of information. For someone who bases his arguments on things he "read somewhere," you sure are very opinionated.
- stutimandal, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I read the subject as "digital ape" and I wondered what it could be.
- trollick, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1You know what else distract us? Books.
- inactive, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1How much attention you have to pay something depends on how hard it is.
- inactive, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Yes. Now they are saying it about the internet on television.
- majikstranger, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2Very well put. People fear change so much. We believe in evolution yet we deny evolution every step of the way. what if fish never stepped on land because it would change their way of life and their swimming and water breathing abilities deteriorated. How dare they.
- secrity, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Instead of reading a book while watching TV, I now surf the internet while I watch TY; not a lot of difference.
- hcharger, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1 The digital age in theory is not killing anyone any quicker than normal means, but the digital age despite the learning capabilities derived from it are making people more stupid and less self reliant because it has almost wipe out man's ability for practicality and communication skills which are the key to survival.
- Nosferotu, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1All I can say, Ach, is that you should re-read my initial response, then do some research on what the ACTUAL situation is, rather than linking a picture of a CARICATURE of the stereotypical 'bad child', and a 2 year old article about cutting (which, the article itself states, is a much older phenomenon than 'these days').
Honestly, learning to actually effectively support a point of view/argue a topic, and really research something before developing a biased point of view, is something that even age can't teach. - inactive, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Sounds like the video game industry to me. Where hobbies turn to life changing obsessions.
- c1966x, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2> kids won't know how to grieve cuz they won't understand the loss
if you're going to try to make a salient point that informs us that you are a cogent, thinking reader, do you think you could take the extra two seconds to spell "because" right? - RobotBuddha, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I love experimental psychology, but the "pull wild guesses out of your ass" side never ceases to make me embarrassed by association. That was a very well put summery of the problems with it.
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