Society Magazine
The New York Times has three good to great to excellent articles today on the internet and what it's doing to us today.
I will start, too, with the best of the three because I am convinced it is one of the most beautiful, true, poignant, timely and even important columns I've read in a long, long time and that we might read all year:
How Not to Be Alone It is about, yes, computers and our phones and technology and how they do bring us together but also, paradoxically, how they can also separate us physically and even emotionally.
Because the whole thing is that good and, as I said, even important, I'll only put a few quotes of it here:
Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat...
The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits...
Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care... THE problem with accepting — with preferring — diminished substitutes is that over time, we, too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. I say again, it was one good to great article. I would implore nearly anyone and everyone to read it. The second and third articles, totally unintended to be related, I think, show what people are doing in order to stay connected: The 'I Dos,' Unplugged Showing how brides and grooms are having people leave their phones at the door, during weddings, increasingly (and good for them). Student Social Climbing, but on an Indoor Bike
Wherein, students are attending kind of "cycle parties" and not texting, etc.
Interesting stuff.
There's lots more in the Times today, of course, on technology (like on the US and Chinese, negotiating how we'll work together and what will and will not happen with cyberespionage) but these, above, I thought were good and important on how we all act, interpersonally, with the 'puters and what we do and don't do with them.
Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.
