Back in my 3rd world country days, (2005-2008) the computer room was the only classroom with a bars over the windows, had a double gata on the doors, and were were only allowed on ONE kid friends wikipedianlike site.
Wish i could remember what the tool was called. All I can remember it is was green and yellow, and occasionally a cartoon character would pop up and say something encouraging…
We used to call it “surfing the web” too!
Having the internet available at all times was never the problem.
Letting for-profit corporations and other real world supervillains control it and how we use it was and is.
Sure, the lack of oversight of the early internet meant that some predators got too much leeway. Still better than the Epstein class being in CHARGE of everything for everyone.
TL;DR: the internet is not the problem. Billionaires, their corporations, their lawyers, and their pet politicians are.
Agreed, but this phenomenon is as natural as wolves hunting deer. Any time you see a new invention like the web, you see a bunch of
vulturesbusinessmen swoop in and try to take it control over it as you mentioned.Capitalism is definitely the problem, but more generally, it’s the sense of creating incentives of some kind (in this case, absurd profits) without asking ourselves whether these incentives are preserving our social values. And if they are not preserving our social values, then they need to be corrected until they do, hence the importance of regulations.
As a society, we’ve lost sight of this fact, and it’s our generation’s defining responsibility to remind the world about it.
Agreed, except the part at the beginning where you (probably unintentionally and/or me being overly literal) argue that the capitalist abuse we need to regulate away is equivalent to basic and mutually beneficial natural predator/prey relationships 😉
Wait, you are saying billionaires and shitty politicians where the whole problem the whole time? Fuck, call me surpised
Hi, Surprised, I’m Viking Hippie! 🤝🏼
Alain de Botton sort of talks about this in Religion for Atheists. Why it’s important to have rooms (or buildings) that serves a certain purpose.
Literally one of the things people ask when you have sleep problems is if you do other things in bed (like watch TV, read, relax).
It has been known to affect sleep patterns to stay in bed or the bedroom all day.
I mean my apartment has like 2 rooms so I can either sit on the couch or the bed.
Oh I know. I didn’t say it was fair, just that they ask.
Could you expand? I don’t know Religion for Atheists.
He talks about people needing secular places for different things. One place to be calm in, another place to be sad in, a place to be in awe.
Religions all have so many things in common for a reason. We need to separate the things that we don’t like about religion and utilize the things that work.
We used to have a room with the internet in. Now we can’t be rid of it and all it’s distractions, stimulation and stress.
I don’t know it either, but I figure it’s the same general idea that is fairly common, which is that certain spaces should be reserved for certain activities.
i.e. bedroom is for rest and sleeping, this corner is for reading, this room is for being creative, this room is for work. it helps focus you on what you are doing in the moment
And kids went to a computer lab to do computer stuff
When I went to college, I was privileged enough to have my very own laptop. Over half of my fellow students didn’t have a computer at all.
turns to dust and blows away
Cool math games to brush up on my mathematics skills of course
I remember a game where you had to eat healthy.
The health bar was a poop in a toilet and would sink or float depending on what you ate. I swear it wasn’t a dream!
Yeah, but then, if you were like me, you spent most of the rest of your time watching TV or playng video games if you had nothing else to do. You basically always kept yourself entertained by those… despite the fact I also read a lot more back then.
You had a whole room dedicated to it? Well la di da, aren’t you fancy ;p
We had our computer in the corner of the living room on an ancient sewing table and a very uncomfortable wooden chair. The tower sat directly on the brown shag carpet.
My mom would watch detective TV shows and chain smoke. Well I tried to play Encarta MindMaze through the hazy air. So it was not that far off from a Chinese Internet cafe.
This makes me want to binge Law & Order while gaming.
Back in my day, you had to listen to your computer summon the demon called internet with wild screeches and hisses for 45 seconds before you could even check your email.
I propose that we need an app that does that every time you try to launch a social media app.
