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miscellaneous_section) wrote2024-04-12 08:33 pm
miscellaneous_section) wrote2024-04-12 08:33 pm
Entry tags:
I miss how slow everything was...
For the few days I've been feeling nostalgic of the old Internet and 2000's tech. Where you can customize your computer's DE and exploring the web did feel like an adventure; with people's personalized webpages and crazy looking DE. Yeah, I miss the bubbly, shiny aesthetics of the 2000's. Cellphones were just phones with extra features that didn't eat up our attention like no one's business. It felt like the world was our oyster growing up. The Internet was the escape from daily life; where people created things because they wanted to share it with people online. But now, with the corporatization of the Internet for last 20 years or so, it's all so dull and samey. Making money is the main or only reason for making stuff, and nothing else. And, people are finding ways to leave the Internet and go back to daily life just to get away from the virtual nightmare we're all in. The technology is sleek and nice, but there's very little personality to them where it feels like it's yours. Just take a look at smartphones where they're over six inches in length, and they're just slabs of plastic and glass. Overall, it's depressing... So, what am I changing?
I've been filling that time with changing up my DE to be a little more exciting. I'm also browsing around Neocities and Newgrounds a little more; just something to make exploring the Internet a little more fun again. I've added more items with my flip phone to carry with like an old digital camera, notepad, and an iPod mini. It's tough when your brain is addicted with the Internet because that's where the music and videos I enjoy are at! Seriously, I got to stop picking up that tablet in the morning downstairs -I got better things to do with my time-. I'm using websites that are slower and way more chill than the mainstream ones like Pillowfort and Dreamwidth. I would try SpaceHey, since I never used MySpace before, but from what I read from one user (here) that it seems the user base is mostly 14 to 19 year olds. And y'know what? They deserve a space on the Internet to be themselves and it's properly moderated for that age demographic. That's a different topic to talk about some other time, but back on topic. Hell, I would like to learn some HTML or CSS coding to create a Neocities website just for the fun of it. I know a little bit of HTML for bold, italics, and creating paragraphs; and that's it. It gets a little overwhelming after awhile to remember this stuff.
Was the era perfect? No, every era has its flaws -big or small-. I'm impressed with how far tech has come to be more convenient and helpful. But with that convenience, laziness can happen but the real biggest issue is over-reliance that can develop. Where you feel like you can't do anything without it. I'm used to not having a smartphone growing up (and it was probably for the best) since my family couldn't afford them. I got my first smartphone back in community college (about 2018 or something), and buying a new smartphone a couple of years back was eye opening! Just seeing how big it was was something. My hands are small, and my fingers can only stretch so much to tap something. If feature phones were just as common as they were in the 2000's I would use a QWERTY phone just like my old LG phone from Tracfone.
I know Unihertz has the Titans series of phones, but that would be more like a work phone at that point than a daily drive phone since it has Android on it.
I've been filling that time with changing up my DE to be a little more exciting. I'm also browsing around Neocities and Newgrounds a little more; just something to make exploring the Internet a little more fun again. I've added more items with my flip phone to carry with like an old digital camera, notepad, and an iPod mini. It's tough when your brain is addicted with the Internet because that's where the music and videos I enjoy are at! Seriously, I got to stop picking up that tablet in the morning downstairs -I got better things to do with my time-. I'm using websites that are slower and way more chill than the mainstream ones like Pillowfort and Dreamwidth. I would try SpaceHey, since I never used MySpace before, but from what I read from one user (here) that it seems the user base is mostly 14 to 19 year olds. And y'know what? They deserve a space on the Internet to be themselves and it's properly moderated for that age demographic. That's a different topic to talk about some other time, but back on topic. Hell, I would like to learn some HTML or CSS coding to create a Neocities website just for the fun of it. I know a little bit of HTML for bold, italics, and creating paragraphs; and that's it. It gets a little overwhelming after awhile to remember this stuff.
Was the era perfect? No, every era has its flaws -big or small-. I'm impressed with how far tech has come to be more convenient and helpful. But with that convenience, laziness can happen but the real biggest issue is over-reliance that can develop. Where you feel like you can't do anything without it. I'm used to not having a smartphone growing up (and it was probably for the best) since my family couldn't afford them. I got my first smartphone back in community college (about 2018 or something), and buying a new smartphone a couple of years back was eye opening! Just seeing how big it was was something. My hands are small, and my fingers can only stretch so much to tap something. If feature phones were just as common as they were in the 2000's I would use a QWERTY phone just like my old LG phone from Tracfone.
I know Unihertz has the Titans series of phones, but that would be more like a work phone at that point than a daily drive phone since it has Android on it.
Thoughts
I feel that way all the time. Current technology is a very bad fit for me and rapidly growing worse. When things break, it is often impossible to replace them with something that will actually do the job.
>> Was the era perfect? No, every era has its flaws -big or small-. <<
Yeah, but we used to have less people, more birds-amphibians-and-insects, and less global warming. When I was little this area was Zone 5b, then 6a, and now it's on the border of 6b while 7 is blazing up the southern end of the state. Social interpretations are often opinions, but there are a lot of very concrete reasons why the world sucks more now than it used to. And the real killer? This is the least-worse it will ever be on a human timescale. It's just going to keep getting worse.
>> But with that convenience, laziness can happen but the real biggest issue is over-reliance that can develop. Where you feel like you can't do anything without it.<<
I live near Amish territory. While we don't draw the line in the same places, I do use their rule: "Before adopting any new piece of technology, first determine whether it does more harm than good. If so, do not adopt it." So there are a ton of modern things that I either avoid or minimize using, because they're more trouble than they're worth. And if I need a backup tool for when the modern ones don't work -- like oil lamps or hand-powered kitchen equipment -- I can usually find it there.
Re: Thoughts
With all these studies and even videos discussing how these devices are manufactured to grab our attentions (how it's affecting the youngest generation [Gen Alpha]). Yeah, people want their time back and help reverse as much of the damage done to these kids.
The last point about "before adopting a new piece of technology, see how much harm it does than good" is a good piece of advice. I wish more people start thinking this way sooner rather than later.
Re: Thoughts
It's true in social terms, because humanity has safety catches. When things get to a certain point, the emergency features activate to change a bad situation. So for instance, an oppressive regime can only get so far before the rioting starts.
Climate change is dicier. Humanity has survived some previous, very dramatic ones. Downside is, climate change is also one of the leading causes of civilization collapse.
>> But, I have been keeping an eye on a few things, and one of them is the trend with people balancing out their smartphone use, or dropping it entirely and using a "dumbphone" instead, with real life. <<
That's encouraging -- if it's permitted to continue. The market has a tendency to quit supplying things so that people no longer have alternatives, at least not without major lifestyle changes.
>> With all these studies and even videos discussing how these devices are manufactured to grab our attentions <<
It's just like any other habit-forming thing; it hijacks the survival circuits of the brain, and certain other things like the pleasure/reward system. But like drugs, the pleasure burst from playing on the phone is illusory. It doesn't create genuine accomplishments. So if your life contains more concrete sources of safety, affection, pleasure, etc. then the artificial ones don't compete very well. And if you know all this, you quickly become suspicious of products that manipulate your brain and feelings that way. Things that other people find appealing are often downright off-putting for me, and a smartphone is only one example.
>> The last point about "before adopting a new piece of technology, see how much harm it does than good" is a good piece of advice. I wish more people start thinking this way sooner rather than later.<<
Most people learn it only after they've been burned. It's the same with things like "If you don't have a hardcopy in your house, you don't own the thing," with cloud storage or streaming services. People are shocked and upset when a ton of stuff they've bought suddenly disappears. Me, I'm enough of an archivist to understand that ephemera don't last, regardless of their form. You want something to last, fire it on a clay tablet and drop it in a landfill where archaeologists will know to look for it.
This is one of many things I'm deeply grateful to the Amish for providing. Honestly at this point, I like going there because it's familiar and not changing at warp speed like most places. A touchstone of things that are real and important. So when I shop in those stores, it's not just a purchase, it's a deliberate investment in a way of life and a worldview that I value, even though I don't live it all the time myself.
Re: Thoughts
True, it even depends on how long current countries' 2G and 3G will last for older devices. I do know Nokia has been getting back into the feature phone game since, I think, 2017. There's also independent cell phone companies like Sunbeam, Light phone, and Mudita to name a few -last two being major lifestyle changes-.
A part of me wants to hold on to hope that this trend will continue to keep going up as time goes on; I think it'll be better for everyone's mental health in the long run.
Re: Thoughts
There are a few online options. Not as fun as shopping in person, but better than nothing.
https://amishcountrystoreonline.com/
https://www.yodersstore.com/product-category/houseware
https://homestead-store.com/
>> True, it even depends on how long current countries' 2G and 3G will last for older devices.<<
The devil's treadmill of constant update demands has done a good job of discouraging me from technology. I'm more impressed by something that'll still be useful in 50,000 years.
>> A part of me wants to hold on to hope that this trend will continue to keep going up as time goes on; I think it'll be better for everyone's mental health in the long run.<<
Remember that everything is finite. It's not just peak oil or peak lithium. Every fuel or material has a limit, except for renewables like sunlight and bamboo. Look at how much modern technology is built on fossil everything and you can see that it won't be able to continue on this trajectory forever. That's before factoring in the civilization collapses probable from climate change.
Re: Thoughts
Re: Thoughts
So I'm looking around the current mass extinction for what's doing well. Jellyfish, for instance, including box jellyfish and men'o'war, are thriving in warm waters where fish struggle to survive. And they're communal organisms; if the singleton biosphere really crashes, they might just take over. I'm also keeping an eye on carnivorous plants because they've already figured out both survival in harsh conditions and movement; they just need to realize they could move around to avoid hazards or seek resources.
Re: Thoughts
We can look the mass extinctions occurring and rising water temperatures, but how do we slow it down at the very least? The average person is trying their best, but I've learned that a massive overhaul needs to happen. And it's one that people just let it happen over decades long before we were even a thought in people's minds.
The one thing I've noticed time and time again is when governments let corporations lobby for certain things, like road construction, money and profits is the biggest part of equation for there products. Everything else is an after thought to them. And then, you have government officials having stocks in said companies and that's even worse with the bias.
The best solution is to separate the two and corporations should be held accountable like everyone else, and government positions should treated like civic duty; not a career path. But at the current state of things, it can make anyone feel so small staring at the madness of this system.
I guess it's just the stubborn problem-solver in me talking, and I hate to see people give up and get sucked up in constant negativity of the world.
Re: Thoughts
Many plants can spread their seed some distance away. I meant the current plant learning to change its location. For example, a Venus' flytrap can open and close its traps, so it might use that appendage to drag itself along the ground. A bladderwort has bladders to suck in prey; it could use those to squirt water and travel by jet propulsion. And so on.
>> We can look the mass extinctions occurring and rising water temperatures, but how do we slow it down at the very least? <<
* The biggest bang-for-buck: reduce or eliminate eating beef. Cows fart methane, a devastating greenhouse gas, and people are clearcutting rainforests to make more room for cows, mostly beef cattle. But it's entirely driven by economics; if consumers stop buying beef, then companies will quit raising beef cattle.
* Plant trees in places that are still wet enough for trees. In most areas the highest value to wildlife is your local type of oak.
* The usual Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore also applies.
>> The average person is trying their best, but I've learned that a massive overhaul needs to happen.<<
The average person isn't causing the problem, and thus can't solve the problem. Individual efforts just absolve you of moral responsibility for cooking off the planet. Governments and corporations are causing the problem, so if they don't solve it, then it won't get solved. If you look at a pie chart of sources for greenhouse emissions, or water usage, etc. you'll see that by far the biggest portion is megacorps (like factory farms) or municipal or larger governments. They scream at consumers to take shorter showers, but won't tax factory farms or make the government move water-wasting activities to a state with more water.
>> And it's one that people just let it happen over decades long before we were even a thought in people's minds. <<
Most of the worst problems started with the Greatest Generation. They can be excused for some of that because, for instance, they didn't know that plastic doesn't break down, cascades through the ecosystem, and messes with hormones. They couldn't know; it was too new.
It was the Boomers who were supposed to fix things. Gods know, the hippies tried, but they couldn't reach critical mass. They had the right ideas. Diet for a Small Planet is just over 50 years old; if people had listened to the hippies, we wouldn't have millions of cows farting up the atmosphere.
By the time it got down to my generation, the activist branch was falling apart and the resource shortages were starting to make it harder to fight the system. I've spent my life protesting other people's dogged determination to follow the path that Earth is on, and nobody listened. And it's only gotten worse from there.
>>The one thing I've noticed time and time again is when governments let corporations lobby for certain things, like road construction, money and profits is the biggest part of equation for there products. Everything else is an after thought to them. And then, you have government officials having stocks in said companies and that's even worse with the bias.<<
1) Corruption is legal in America. That's behind a lot of problems.
2) Corporations are not obligated to be useful or even avoid destroying people and planet. In today's legal environment, their only obligation, other than following background laws in public, is to make money for their shareholders. And you get what you reward.
>> The best solution is to separate the two and corporations should be held accountable like everyone else, and government positions should treated like civic duty; not a career path. <<
I agree. We need separation of corporations and state. Because when those two merge, that's fascism.
If you want to fight this, there are many useful tools. Favor other economic models, such as cooperatives and credit unions and barter.
>> But at the current state of things, it can make anyone feel so small staring at the madness of this system. <<
There are several common approaches to this:
1) Build a coalition big enough to fight on the same level as governments and corporations.
2) Construct an alternative, from scratch or retrofit. Intentional communities, cooperatives, and Strong Towns or Transition Towns are examples of this.
3) Ignore the large scale and focus on the small. There's work that needs doing on all levels. If you can build a thriving backyard ecosystem, that's valuable. You won't know if you're saving a species, but it could happen.
>> I guess it's just the stubborn problem-solver in me talking, and I hate to see people give up and get sucked up in constant negativity of the world.<<
Acknowledging the direction in which people are currently steering the world is not the same as agreeing with them. I may not be able to stop them, but I can damn well make the bastards work for it.