> Mostly, I send what I consider important messages into the ether and I get them back; I read The New York Times and Washington Post, as I always have; I use Slack to talk to my co-workers, and that’s certainly useful; I check my Google calendar to find out where I should be; I write ideas and notes for columns and podcasts and more; and, best of all these days, I rent scooters.
> All convenient and good, for the most part, which is the balance I think we all have to find as tech keeps eating the world.
This is what an NYT opinion piece writer thinks is good. Checking Slack, reading mediocre news sources and figuring out where you have to be by using a Google Calendar. Real compelling stuff.
Finding that balance in technology use is far more elusive than what the author makes it seem. What about kids and teenagers who very little self control and awareness to keep things in balance.
silent scream
"Think of the children" should surely have its own rhetorical-rejection term (although the mental playback of a Simpsons gif, has made me smile).
And that sort of stupid argument goes all the way back - Socrates ended up drinking the hemlock for a few reasons one of which was "corrupting the young".
I'd always seen it being wider than "just children"
More of a "I'm concerned by the effect of this on minds I consider more feeble than my own (due to some massive superiority complex I'm in possession of)"
i.e. My own massive intellect is capable of withstanding this 'thing' - but we should ban it to protect the feeble-minded (and I'm too chicken to call others that, so instead I'll do it by proxy).
More serious point is that when a democratic process (Brexit, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, Putin, whatever) doesn't return what you what - we all retreat to our talk of "the others" (or you could flip the whole think around depending on your personal beliefs).
It just detest my/others/everybody's unwillingness to examine the lazy/meaningless terms we all bandy around and start pinning our shitty arguments to.
I'm not pro or anti "screen-time" - I just hate the term as it's not anything anybody should have an actual opinion on.
Most adults I know have little self-control, too; and even less when it comes to technology (namely, smartphones and social media). And I don't exclude myself, either: I do have to put out a conscious, sustained effort not to spend the entire day in front of my computer. That, the pervasiveness across generations of addiction to the more mainstream devices and Internet platforms, hints at a problem centered around their very design. That's my take on it, at least.
It's worth the effort though - and don't be afraid to remove yourself from technology that demands too much from you for what it gives... that's why I've seen more friends of mine drop facebook recently - it's a nice place to keep in touch with family, sure, but the cost for that communication is extreme.
Purely anecdotally, it seems like things are the other way around and that young people are very discerning about online news consumption and fact vs fiction; and it's older people who tend to do most of the sharing of viral misinformation and sensationalist journalism.
It's also not at all obvious that a world where we have access to any number of sources of information and claim and counterclaim is worse than one where the cultural narrative happened and was controlled through the same four or five very large media outlets.
As a simple fact of life too, young people are more malleable and given to respond well to 'actually you're wrong about that' or 'that article is misleading' than olds. Olds are more set in their ways and liable to double down.
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.”
“Technopoly is to say that its information immune system is inoperable. Technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS, which I here use as an acronym for Anti-Information Deficiency Syndrome. This is why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words “A study has shown …” or “Scientists now tell us that …” More important, it is why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence. Information is dangerous when it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that it serves. Alfred North Whitehead called such information “inert,” but that metaphor is too passive. Information without regulation can be lethal.”
― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Yes, and that's actually something I do see imprinted on the Internet, all the time. If culture, on global terms, is defined by something right now, that thing is coherence, or homogeneity [0]. Almost everybody shares the same cultural referents and uses the same means of communication and entertainment. Cultural diversity has been (and is being) reduced, not enriched.
Thanks for the link, very interesting! I've always used the term McDonaldization.
If you look at % of people who trend towards similar culture affects, I think you're probably right (but would love to know how/where people are tracking this!) But, if you look at absolute numbers of people who are into something non-mainstream (e.g. not the primary culture), I bet we're way ahead of where we used to be. Also, I bet there are more subcultures flourishing out there -- bronies probably weren't a thing 500 years ago. Finally, I also think we have more acceptance for not being of the primary culture than years ago.
That isn't to invalidate your point, I just have questions about statements that claim something about long term trends.
It's definitely something tangential to McDonaldization. It's kind of Instagramization. IE. When cold brew coffee or whatever new trend gets popular then it's in every metro instantly. It's rare to go to a place that has it's truly unique thing--using the coffee example, Greek or Turkish coffee.
Bronies sounds more like a marketing demo than a subculture.
Woo, giving your random thought the acronym AIDS isn't going to create an immediate bias or anything - it's what I like to see in a neutral unopinionated highly scientific paper.
> This is why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words “A study has shown …” or “Scientists now tell us that …” More important, it is why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence.
I don't think this is really related to the proliferation of internet connected technology, or even technology in general. People have always been using bad sources of information to justify false beliefs.
Before Facebook, people cited the crap they read in tabloid magazines.
Before that people cited untested (or poorly tested) theories like phrenology.
Before that people cited philosophers like Aristotle who claimed that all matter could be infinitely subdivided.
And before that people cited whatever their local priest or shaman told them.
Information may have less regulation but it's erroneous to assume, as this excerpt seems to be doing, that regulation of information makes for better information. There is no shortage of instances in which those in charge of regulating information degraded the quality of information, often to suit their own interest. I'm still willing to defend the claim that in aggregate freer flow and production of information improves the average person's understanding of the world .
Do we really think that people living in regimes with more tightly regulated flows of information have better understanding of the universe than people with freer access to information?
Do we really think that people with lesser access to technology have better understanding of the world than those that have no internet access?
You're entirely missing the point; which is blind faith in technology and scientific authorities, and humiliation and public shaming of anyone who dares to step out of line.
Same, same but different. At least you can hold your local shaman responsible when you learn that he took money to feed you lies.
Are you saying that matter can't be infinitely subdivided? Because I'm pretty sure the jury is still out on that one.
Blind faith in anything is wrong. The difference is scientific process invites peer review, reproduction, and alternative theories.
> At least you can hold your local shaman responsible when you learn that he took money to feed you lies.
Gods work in mysterious ways. The good shaman give advice that is always right no matter what happens, and fault you for misinterpreting the good word.
His broader point is that the medium melds the form of the message. In ancient times we'd have "Old Wive's Tales" that pass the good information around. In a Technopoly you have the same information taking the form of scientific papers. Even for things which may not be science.
The secondary point is when you divorce these pieces of information from their culture they become something else.
> Do we really think that people with lesser access to technology have better understanding of the world than those that have no internet access?
This seems related to what Nassim Taleb would say, "It's easier to macro bullshit than to micro bullshit." IE. Your barber/chef cannot bullshit you, but your economist/software engineer can. Over time the good information gets processed via something like natural selection and you end up with good ideas persisting. So it's not clear to me that a society with the level of information and no clear anchors is full of more understanding than those in the past. See: Lindy Effect
It's a very convincing argument. See Twitter, Facebook (/r/insancepeoplefacebook) et all.
> Your barber/chef cannot bullshit you, but your economist/software engineer can.
I strongly disagree. Nearly all of the serious misunderstandings of the world I have harbored in the past I believed because I trusted the words of key individuals I held in high regard.
Your reference to r/insanepeoplefacebook actually demonstrates that many people are able to recognize false information online.
Eh, so if you get a dinner that taste like shit or a haircut that looks lumpy and terrible you can't tell?
Held in high regard isn't the point, it's that you know what bad food tastes like. It's nearly impossible to tell whether an economist on television making market predictions has done due diligence or is just talking out of his ass.
Perhaps I misunderstood your comparison. I thought your comment was saying that interpersonal interactions in general (like a conversation with your barber) don't spread BS as well as internet apps. It seems like you were referring to the barber's ability to convince you that his skills are up to par?
Postman defines societies as having three distinct stages:
1) Tool-using: where tools are just something humans use to further their basic needs.
2) Technocracy: Where inventing for the sake of inventing starts to happen for the sake of "progress" and the tools start to attack the culture.
3) Technopoly: culture becomes subservient to technology. At this point the reason for technology is to serve technology and not people or culture anymore.
Kara Swisher's recent columns in the New York Times have been one of the most surprising disappointments in tech journalism. It's hard to think of a better-connected person, and one with a good critical eye, working in the field. But what she's written for the NYT in recent months has been meandering and almost completely lacking in substance. I keep hoping she'll snap out of it and use the platform to have a real impact.
Most of the important battles in consumer tech have been fought and won - there's now very little to pick over other than the consequences of the big companies getting really big, and what it means for society for people to be 'extremely online'.
Both have been done to death and there's now very little new to say about either. The screen time one isn't even backed by science.
Even to the casual observer/thinker "screen time" being a concern is quite clearly "bollocks"
For as long as I can remember "society worries about every change" - but at least previously we focused on the content, rather than the conduit.
Online radicalization, porn addiction, violent videogames, video-nasties, metal music played backwards, Elvis's hips, fictional novels, .. , gnostic gospels, .. , overly-optimistic portrayals of mammoth attack on cave walls etc etc
My concern with "screen time" is that we seem to have taken a step back and have got even lazier in our "ill-conceived collective concerns about 'others'".
It blows my mind that a child today, anywhere on the planet, with a $100 phone can access pretty much every thought or concept humanity has ever produced - whether a thousand years ago, or 30 minutes ago.
I'm 42 and what's happened in my lifetime utterly blows away previous milestones like "writing", "printing" or "recording".
What really, really pisses me off is that this isn't celebrated - despite only happening "because of screens"
Now is everything on a screen good? No - of course not.
But maybe a better target would be "asymmetric engagement" or "prevalence of uncited facts" or "Kardashians"
"Too much screen-time" should be taken as the equivalent of "Reads too much" or "Discusses over a beer excessively"
You are not wrong, this is in part good old fashioned moral panic. It's more than that though...
Old media likes to attack "screens" because they are an existential threat to their business model and monopoly on narrative creation. They certainly are using the "think of the children" angle but the reason they're attacking the medium and not the message is because the medium itself levels the playing field and takes the power from their hands.
a fair point - but if it wasn't clear, all opinions expressed were anecdotally happening between a single pair of my ears.
My apologies if you'd adjusted your personal realization of the world around you, based upon my post
(although, I can't pretend my ego wouldn't have fluttered a bit)
can you point me to a few things that are proof of this? I only know her from her yahoo/marissa bashing back in the day, which used sources inside the company. This was weird for me because yahoo and google were nominally competitors, and kara was married to a google vp at that time.
I based the statement on a vague memory of her putting the hot iron tongs to CEOs during on-stage interviews, in a way that suggested she was nobody's fool. But I don't have a specific example; I hope other people chime in.
For sure, Kara has a lot to say and is smart, but opinion writing seems too shallow for her. Tyler Cowen has also fallen into this trap with Bloomberg.
Writing a column for a newspaper four times a month is a thankless job, and almost always makes the writer appear vapid. Because they are writing for the calendar, instead of for the news. When you look at the NYT's other columnists: Friedman, Brooks, Douthat, etc., they have all flirted with banality and sometimes devoted themselves to it for decades.
Nothing facilitates my social life more than technology. It's how I find events to go to, buy tickets to those events and plan how to get there. It's how I keep in touch with people far away from me and how I plan trips to visit them. It's how I find dates.
Without technology my social life would crumble. I'd adapt, sure, just like I'd also adapt to a world without motorized transportation or recorded media.
For people who genuinely worry about technology's impact on their lives, I suggest spending a solid hour or two seizing control of the software you use. Turn off notifications you don't want. Uninstall things that don't provide you utility or joy. Unsubscribe! I have to give myself a digital tune-up along those lines every few months to keep things in check.
I can't help but think I would be much happier if I had never seen a computer or cell phone in my life. Maybe its just my personality type. Maybe its because I started at a very young age. It could be anything but I am fairly certain that the constant stream of stimulation to my brain has done plenty of damage.
This article seems analogous [1] to an article that states "I use hard drugs and I'm not ashamed" authored by someone who manages to keep their use under control. Sure, it works for them. Great, but they are not the failure mode of drug use.
IMO, the constant stream of stimulation happens one way or another. If you were born 50 years before , you could get overstimulated by TV. 50 years before that, and you could be overstimulated by books. Maybe my life would be better if I’d never read a book or seen a cell phone — but I doubt it: I’d probably have just sought out whatever the next-most-stimulating thing was and become addicted to that.
I am a big fan of the "humans are social creatures" mantra. In that regard, if something is more stimulating than social interaction it is likely to be harmful but if something is less stimulating than social interaction it is probably fine. [1]
In this simple model, I would probably say books are definitely less stimulation, TV is probably about equal (I have no idea), and modern videogames and social media are definitely much more stimulating. So, books would only become a problem in the presence of other factors but social media can become a problem for anyone.
In highschool I would play high stimulation PC games while browsing the internet on another monitor while listening to music while using voice chat. I also had almost no desire to socialize while in highschool.
[1] It goes without saying that we probably can't reduce activities to a single metric like "amount of stimulation" but I think this is a useful thought experiment.
My question was meant to be: why is talking to people on voice chat/text/whatever internet technology not considered socializing? What is it if not socializing?
The nuance here is that people are stimulated by different things.
For example, I simply don’t find video games stimulating. I didn’t grow up with them and I never got into them. I’d sooner talk to a human being than play a video game any day.
However, I find books SIGNIFICANTLY more stimulating than social interaction. (Go figure, lol).
I agree with your mental model that humans are social creatures and that if something is more stimulating than social interaction it is likely to be harmful. The nuance is that for some people — like me — video games are LESS stimulating than social interaction, while books are MORE stimulating. That’s why for me personally video games don’t harm me but books — according to your model — do.
Brains are weird. I self-medicate with words and sentences. Am I a “book addict” like some people are “video game addicts”? Or am I just a relatively bookish individual? or both? I think both :)
-non-recovered book addict in the tortured throes of a relapse on literature
Tech was supposed to make life easier but it ended up giving more power to people who make life harder - criminals, bad bosses, corrupt politicians, communist dictators.
The problem with the whole "screen time" premise (and maybe this is her whole point) is that there's no differentiation made between good and bad screen time. Just looking at someone who's looking at a screen, it's impossible to tell what they're doing. Or before that, before phones became smart (but after they became mobile), I can recall just seeing someone in the store, talking loudly on their phone, and being like "what a douche." But it could be their nearly-deaf mother calling them from her deathbed or something.
The NYTimes deserves a better tech journalist than Kara Swisher. She had some good coverage during the dot com era, but she is now a member of the SF technocracy she's supposed to be covering. It's time to make room for some new voices.
One thing to notice in this piece: A guy who just insisted on drugging-up a mother and cutting her stomach open to take the baby out, jokes that she has a problem with technology. I can hardly think of a more complete assertion of the dominion of techne over a natural process, than a caesarean. But that technology is old enough to be invisible and beyond question, while the newer Blackberry apparently merits all sorts of skepticism. Just an interesting dichotomy.
Also beyond the scope of questioning are her diet and lifestyle, which are affected by technology. If her diet is the typical technology-enhanced, sugar-rich diet and her lifestyle is the typical technology-enhanced lifestyle where you're not doing a whole lot of plowing in the fields, much less stalking prey for 36 hours straight on an empty stomach... well then, those are going to be factors that contribute to your "needing" a caesarean in the first place.
Anybody who is "anti-tech" is probably fooling themselves a little bit. Even the most valiant resisters are declaring "OK no tech from this point onward," where that point might be in the 1700s or whenever they choose. If you were completely anti-tech, you wouldn't even be able to pick up a rock and use it as a hammer.
Regardless, while being anti-tech is infinitely debatable, we should probably all be staunchly anti-scummy-predatory-BS-tech, just like you should be anti- their less-advanced scummy-predatory-BS predecessors.
66 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] thread> All convenient and good, for the most part, which is the balance I think we all have to find as tech keeps eating the world.
This is what an NYT opinion piece writer thinks is good. Checking Slack, reading mediocre news sources and figuring out where you have to be by using a Google Calendar. Real compelling stuff.
Or at the very least an accepted English equivalent such as "Straw man"
Basically I'd like something other than Reverend Lovejoy's wife to appear in a google search.
More serious point is that when a democratic process (Brexit, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, Putin, whatever) doesn't return what you what - we all retreat to our talk of "the others" (or you could flip the whole think around depending on your personal beliefs).
It just detest my/others/everybody's unwillingness to examine the lazy/meaningless terms we all bandy around and start pinning our shitty arguments to.
I'm not pro or anti "screen-time" - I just hate the term as it's not anything anybody should have an actual opinion on.
It's also not at all obvious that a world where we have access to any number of sources of information and claim and counterclaim is worse than one where the cultural narrative happened and was controlled through the same four or five very large media outlets.
As a simple fact of life too, young people are more malleable and given to respond well to 'actually you're wrong about that' or 'that article is misleading' than olds. Olds are more set in their ways and liable to double down.
“Technopoly is to say that its information immune system is inoperable. Technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS, which I here use as an acronym for Anti-Information Deficiency Syndrome. This is why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words “A study has shown …” or “Scientists now tell us that …” More important, it is why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence. Information is dangerous when it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that it serves. Alfred North Whitehead called such information “inert,” but that metaphor is too passive. Information without regulation can be lethal.”
― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
https://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_homogenization
If you look at % of people who trend towards similar culture affects, I think you're probably right (but would love to know how/where people are tracking this!) But, if you look at absolute numbers of people who are into something non-mainstream (e.g. not the primary culture), I bet we're way ahead of where we used to be. Also, I bet there are more subcultures flourishing out there -- bronies probably weren't a thing 500 years ago. Finally, I also think we have more acceptance for not being of the primary culture than years ago.
That isn't to invalidate your point, I just have questions about statements that claim something about long term trends.
Bronies sounds more like a marketing demo than a subculture.
It's interesting how the moral panics of a time find their way into unrelated literature, and how jarring they can seem with a little distance (1993)
I don't think this is really related to the proliferation of internet connected technology, or even technology in general. People have always been using bad sources of information to justify false beliefs.
Before Facebook, people cited the crap they read in tabloid magazines.
Before that people cited untested (or poorly tested) theories like phrenology.
Before that people cited philosophers like Aristotle who claimed that all matter could be infinitely subdivided.
And before that people cited whatever their local priest or shaman told them.
Information may have less regulation but it's erroneous to assume, as this excerpt seems to be doing, that regulation of information makes for better information. There is no shortage of instances in which those in charge of regulating information degraded the quality of information, often to suit their own interest. I'm still willing to defend the claim that in aggregate freer flow and production of information improves the average person's understanding of the world .
Do we really think that people living in regimes with more tightly regulated flows of information have better understanding of the universe than people with freer access to information?
Do we really think that people with lesser access to technology have better understanding of the world than those that have no internet access?
Same, same but different. At least you can hold your local shaman responsible when you learn that he took money to feed you lies.
Are you saying that matter can't be infinitely subdivided? Because I'm pretty sure the jury is still out on that one.
> At least you can hold your local shaman responsible when you learn that he took money to feed you lies.
Gods work in mysterious ways. The good shaman give advice that is always right no matter what happens, and fault you for misinterpreting the good word.
The secondary point is when you divorce these pieces of information from their culture they become something else.
> Do we really think that people with lesser access to technology have better understanding of the world than those that have no internet access?
This seems related to what Nassim Taleb would say, "It's easier to macro bullshit than to micro bullshit." IE. Your barber/chef cannot bullshit you, but your economist/software engineer can. Over time the good information gets processed via something like natural selection and you end up with good ideas persisting. So it's not clear to me that a society with the level of information and no clear anchors is full of more understanding than those in the past. See: Lindy Effect
It's a very convincing argument. See Twitter, Facebook (/r/insancepeoplefacebook) et all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
I strongly disagree. Nearly all of the serious misunderstandings of the world I have harbored in the past I believed because I trusted the words of key individuals I held in high regard.
Your reference to r/insanepeoplefacebook actually demonstrates that many people are able to recognize false information online.
Held in high regard isn't the point, it's that you know what bad food tastes like. It's nearly impossible to tell whether an economist on television making market predictions has done due diligence or is just talking out of his ass.
1) Tool-using: where tools are just something humans use to further their basic needs.
2) Technocracy: Where inventing for the sake of inventing starts to happen for the sake of "progress" and the tools start to attack the culture.
3) Technopoly: culture becomes subservient to technology. At this point the reason for technology is to serve technology and not people or culture anymore.
Both have been done to death and there's now very little new to say about either. The screen time one isn't even backed by science.
For as long as I can remember "society worries about every change" - but at least previously we focused on the content, rather than the conduit.
Online radicalization, porn addiction, violent videogames, video-nasties, metal music played backwards, Elvis's hips, fictional novels, .. , gnostic gospels, .. , overly-optimistic portrayals of mammoth attack on cave walls etc etc
My concern with "screen time" is that we seem to have taken a step back and have got even lazier in our "ill-conceived collective concerns about 'others'".
It blows my mind that a child today, anywhere on the planet, with a $100 phone can access pretty much every thought or concept humanity has ever produced - whether a thousand years ago, or 30 minutes ago. I'm 42 and what's happened in my lifetime utterly blows away previous milestones like "writing", "printing" or "recording".
What really, really pisses me off is that this isn't celebrated - despite only happening "because of screens"
Now is everything on a screen good? No - of course not. But maybe a better target would be "asymmetric engagement" or "prevalence of uncited facts" or "Kardashians"
"Too much screen-time" should be taken as the equivalent of "Reads too much" or "Discusses over a beer excessively"
Old media likes to attack "screens" because they are an existential threat to their business model and monopoly on narrative creation. They certainly are using the "think of the children" angle but the reason they're attacking the medium and not the message is because the medium itself levels the playing field and takes the power from their hands.
The 'most important battles' relate to surveillance, identity and privacy - and those battles are just beginning.
> one with a good critical eye
can you point me to a few things that are proof of this? I only know her from her yahoo/marissa bashing back in the day, which used sources inside the company. This was weird for me because yahoo and google were nominally competitors, and kara was married to a google vp at that time.
(i'm ex-yahoo)
Without technology my social life would crumble. I'd adapt, sure, just like I'd also adapt to a world without motorized transportation or recorded media.
For people who genuinely worry about technology's impact on their lives, I suggest spending a solid hour or two seizing control of the software you use. Turn off notifications you don't want. Uninstall things that don't provide you utility or joy. Unsubscribe! I have to give myself a digital tune-up along those lines every few months to keep things in check.
This article seems analogous [1] to an article that states "I use hard drugs and I'm not ashamed" authored by someone who manages to keep their use under control. Sure, it works for them. Great, but they are not the failure mode of drug use.
Fully agree with your second paragraph.
In this simple model, I would probably say books are definitely less stimulation, TV is probably about equal (I have no idea), and modern videogames and social media are definitely much more stimulating. So, books would only become a problem in the presence of other factors but social media can become a problem for anyone.
In highschool I would play high stimulation PC games while browsing the internet on another monitor while listening to music while using voice chat. I also had almost no desire to socialize while in highschool.
[1] It goes without saying that we probably can't reduce activities to a single metric like "amount of stimulation" but I think this is a useful thought experiment.
Rather than technology driving us away from being social, I think being social is driving us to technology.
There are many extremely niche communities that I'd be unable to be a part of if the Internet did not exist.
What is your definition of socialize? What makes voice chat different from voice, other than lack of body language/non verbal cues?
For example, I simply don’t find video games stimulating. I didn’t grow up with them and I never got into them. I’d sooner talk to a human being than play a video game any day.
However, I find books SIGNIFICANTLY more stimulating than social interaction. (Go figure, lol).
I agree with your mental model that humans are social creatures and that if something is more stimulating than social interaction it is likely to be harmful. The nuance is that for some people — like me — video games are LESS stimulating than social interaction, while books are MORE stimulating. That’s why for me personally video games don’t harm me but books — according to your model — do.
Brains are weird. I self-medicate with words and sentences. Am I a “book addict” like some people are “video game addicts”? Or am I just a relatively bookish individual? or both? I think both :)
-non-recovered book addict in the tortured throes of a relapse on literature
Also beyond the scope of questioning are her diet and lifestyle, which are affected by technology. If her diet is the typical technology-enhanced, sugar-rich diet and her lifestyle is the typical technology-enhanced lifestyle where you're not doing a whole lot of plowing in the fields, much less stalking prey for 36 hours straight on an empty stomach... well then, those are going to be factors that contribute to your "needing" a caesarean in the first place.
Anybody who is "anti-tech" is probably fooling themselves a little bit. Even the most valiant resisters are declaring "OK no tech from this point onward," where that point might be in the 1700s or whenever they choose. If you were completely anti-tech, you wouldn't even be able to pick up a rock and use it as a hammer.
Regardless, while being anti-tech is infinitely debatable, we should probably all be staunchly anti-scummy-predatory-BS-tech, just like you should be anti- their less-advanced scummy-predatory-BS predecessors.