this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 202 points 2 days ago (3 children)

There’s (mostly) nothing wrong with the technology. It’s the enshittification and profit motive behind nearly everything that’s the real problem.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 days ago (3 children)

How do you separate the two? To me smartphones seem like the sort of thing that was always headed in a bad direction. It's inherently a tracking device. Touchscreens are easy to use and intuitive but really slow and inefficient for most things that go beyond browsing/viewing content. It pushes you to get all your software from a centralized walled garden. If it weren't for smartphones, the people who mostly only use smartphones probably wouldn't be spending a lot of time on the internet, and that would be for the best.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How do you separate the two?

you end capitalism

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

The rest of the fucking owl moment

But I agree lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Makes sense, though I meant that more in the sense of like, how can it be said that there is nothing wrong with the technology when it's been designed around the profit motive.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

If it weren't for smartphones, the people who mostly only use smartphones probably wouldn't be spending a lot of time on the internet, and that would be for the best.

Exactly. Eternal September was peanuts compared to smartphone connectivity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

How do you separate the two?

A major change in how our economy works. No, I don’t expect this to actually happen in my lifetime.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think that having the convenience of an easy-to-use, always-online device in your pocket at all times is inherently addicive. The profit motive just compounds this issue on purpose to extract wealth, but it is more of a symptom of a larger issue.

Humans, nor any other animal on this planet have ever existed in an era that they can be always connected to everyone in their species at all times; even having that ability at all is revolutionary and unprecidented.

It used to be that the only people you talk to would be people in your local area, but now a significant portion of the percentage of people that an average person is likely to encounter on a daily basis is via means where their real character is hidden behind a carefully curated mask.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Whales kind of have their own internet.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Waterworld Wide Web

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So do trees and fungus in symbiosis.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Yes, but you can’t discount the human affects that ease the transition. Smartphones made bite sized pieces of attention way more accessible. And ease of access to distraction/dreams away from the reality we all live in is what I mean, I guess, by accessibility.

Disregarding or summarizing the above: Why can’t there be an objective reality each of us can depend on to relate to eachother with?