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"Television is more detrimental to humans than telephone ever was."

"Telephone is more detrimental to humans than radio ever was."

"Radio is more detrimental to humans than telegraph ever was."


How is telephone and telegraph detrimental?


I believe the OP's point is that almost every new technology is greeted with accusations of being worse than what came before and what it's assumed it will replace, whether or not that actually proves to be the case. The examples may seem facetious, but they're all real.

I do think a case could be made that the changes in communication driven by the internet actually are different, but it's not the change itself, per se, as much as the speed of change. Pre-internet these changes were generational, and they generally took a generation (or more!) to be fully adopted and integrated into society. Now they're coming every decade or less, sweeping through the world in a matter of years.


My point is, I don't think people really said that about telephone and telegraph. Not every new technology was taken as being worse, so dismissing problems of Twitter just because it's new and "people hated everything new" isn't really good.


> I don't think people really said that about telephone and telegraph

A quick Google search will show that they did in fact say these things about the telephone and telegraph

> In 1858, People Said the Telegraph Was 'Too Fast for the Truth'

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/in-18...

> “The telephone is the instrument of the devil”

https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us/history/communication/h...


I guess courriers and letters are next? Excess is detrimental.


What if it is, but you can’t tell any more, because you don’t know how the world looked without it?


History shows that there is constant, consistent progress no matter what technology people say will ruin everything.


> I'm a member of Parler and expected to see useful interesting content

Well I'm not sure why you expected useful interesting content. The whole point of Parler is to be a home for these far-right extremists.

Good moderation is important on platforms where anyone can post anything otherwise misinformation and conspiracy theories will spread.


I mean, for a good chunk of the last decade, there was plenty of stuff that was pretty squarely in the Overton Window which was being suppressed because it wasn't sufficiently left-wing.

* A progressive data analyst at Civis Analytics Tweeted research on the efficacy of non-violent protests, and left-wing activists pressured his employer into firing him.

* A progressive journalist with The Intercept published an interview with a black man who felt that police brutality was a problem, but would have liked to see more attention for other problems in his community--similarly, activists (including coworkers) pressured his employer to terminate him until he eventually resigned.

* A university professor used a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like a slur in English, and the university was pressured into suspending him.

* A utility worker accidentally made the "OK" gesture, and activists pressured his employer into firing him.

* A boy wore a MAGA hat and the entirety of the mainstream media along with several celebrities sent a frothing mob after him, his parents, and his school falsely claiming (despite hours of publicly available video evidence) that he was participating in a racist tirade against a Native American elder and Vietnam veteran.

* A Google employee responded to a request on an internal message board with criticism of Google's hiring policies (specifically addressing how the company could foster more diversity), and left-wing activist employees pressured Google into firing him, and virtually the whole of the mainstream media falsely claimed he published an "anti-diversity screed" as a memo to the company.

No doubt Parler has become a right-wing hub, but for a good while anything that wasn't toeing the most extreme left-wing party line was considered to be "far-right extremism". There was some pretty legitimate demand for a free-speech platform, and I'm strongly of the opinion that if we were more tolerant to discussing some of these topics out in the open (which is in part to say, if our institutions were more aspirationally neutralist and objectivist), then fewer people would have found answers from far-right folks, and we would have less far-right extremism than we do today.


Just google "Ottawa protests harassment". There are tons of articles.

"Health care workers in Ottawa are being harassed protesters against COVID-19 mandates" - https://www.npr.org/2022/02/12/1080354245/health-care-worker...

"Unruly protesters prompt early closure of two downtown grocery stores" - https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-earl...

"Ottawa police issue 825 more tickets, respond to reports of protesters ‘harassing children’" - https://ottawa.citynews.ca/police-beat/ottawa-police-issue-8...

> Police have said they are concerned about how the convoy has attracted far-right and extremist elements, and on Sunday confirmed they were dealing with more than 60 criminal investigations, with alleged offences including "mischief, thefts, hate crimes and property damage". - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60281088

"Canada: Ottawa protests full of 'hate propaganda'" - https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/canada-ottawa-prot...


Handmade in the sense that they don't use frameworks like React or Angular. Just like how technically a box cake mix cake is "homemade" but usually if someone says "homemade cake" they made it from scratch.


Maybe, but you're still indirectly supporting them.


How?


In any free/freemium product/service, your attention is your primary currency (your wallet and your participation in the network effect are secondary). Marketing to HN viewers happens when a funded company announces hiring.


How does that translate into support for google?


If you spend money or attention on a site that pays Google as a vendor, that is quite obviously indirect support of Google.

Perhaps we are just quibbling about which definition of the word "support"? In which case I agree that there is one definition of support in which you are right and another in which your parent is right.


That's about as much support for Google as if I bought a product from a storefront that's in a building owned by a landlord who supports a cause I don't agree with. First of all, I (as a consumer) would have no idea who owned that building, and secondly the link between my purchase and money flowing to that unsavory cause is so far removed that it's not even worth considering.

Go far enough down any business transaction and you'll find a cause you disagree with. If the tree you planted makes oxygen for your worst enemy, will you cut down the tree to spite them?


> as if I bought a product from a storefront that's in a building owned by a landlord who supports a cause I don't agree with.

There are plenty of people who would look at this situation, and do whatever they can to make sure they don't enable that person.


My understanding is that Firebase is free. However, even if it wasn't I still think the link is tenuous to the point of meaningless. Spending attention on HN does not make google any richer, it stretches the definition of the word "support" in a way that misses the point within the context of boycotting a company. If every HN reader quit the site today only a Firebase SRE would take notice, if every HN reader quit using Gmail it'd cost google a considerable amount of money.


A few years ago I worked at a small-ish company that had to do a mass layoff of about 10% of their employees. The only HR person had to write her own layoff letter. A few days later she had to walk back her own layoff because the company realized they probably shouldn't layoff their only HR person during a mass layoff.


I feel like a skilled HR professional probably could have communicated the error of this decision before it was taken.


I've also got a 2015 Mazda 3 GT and I absolutely love the system. It boots quickly and works really well. I got the CarPlay upgrade done though. Everyone that gets in thinks my car is brand new.


Is that a Mazda installed system? Do you know what version software you have? I know with mine, I had one of the last versions where a Mazda AIO Tweak install was easy. (Later they make it harder.) So maybe there were some improvements made to the official Mazda software in later versions.


Would also like to know if car play upgrade is possible, I'd love to buy the parts and do it myself.


I love that you are using an API to receive applications for developers. So awesome!


Well for one you can transfer money to anyone anywhere without any intermediates.


I don't think that's actually true. How does the sender convert fiat to bitcoin, and then the bitcoin back to fiat?

There's still intermediaries involved and they're not exactly simple to use.


Well - you do have to use an intermediary to exchange bitcoin for fiat, that is correct. I think the vision is that one day fiat will go away and be replaced by bitcoin and other cryptos though.

Everything is quite clunky right now, and not exactly easy but that is true of any new technology.


Why would you want that? What happens if you have a fraudulent transaction? How is it reversed? What about coercion? Blackmail, etc.

By the way, you can transfer cash without any intermediaries. You literally just hand it over.

I think blockchain in general has value, however I'm skeptical of cryptocurrencies vs. a trusted intermediary and the current setup.


>By the way, you can transfer cash without any intermediaries. You literally just hand it over.

Why would you want that? What happens if you have a fraudulent transaction? How is it reversed? What about coercion? Blackmail, etc.


Yeah, that's why you use escrow, or an intermediary service. By the way, I never claimed you should use cash. In fact, most of the criticism I have towards Bitcoin also applies to cash, as you've sarcastically pointed out.


This is one of the growing pains of bitcoin that will have to be worked out. You can send bitcoin to addresses that nobody holds the private keys to and those coins will be gone forever. There are likely already several hundred thousand or millions of bitcoin lost this way.

There is no reversal of a transaction, the ledger is immutable.

With all of that said, bitcoin was not created to solve crime.


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