After his death, my family went through his belongings to sort out what people wanted and what should be included in the estate sale.
In the living room, there was the obligatory wall-sized, floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. You probably know the one from your grandparent's house. Filled with the kind of books you'd expect: encyclopedia, book of the month, condensed versions of great books, random novels, et cetera.
Rifling through the first book, I noticed there were notes written in the margins. About every 5-20 pages. Sometimes short, sometimes longer. I smiled and carefully set the book aside.
But the next one had notes too. And the next. And the next. Almost every book in the entire bookshelf.
My grandfather was a quiet man by the time I knew him. Of the ten words over dinner sort. But whenever I find myself reflexively going through Facebook or whatever other quick fix the internet affords me, I imagine him coming in after a long day of physical work, opening a book to his bookmark, and reading and noting a few more pages. Every day.
Then I try to be more like that person.
But it still tends to have large blind spots where the source is (a) pre-digital or (b) of interest to a relatively small total number of people.
Try heading to your local library or a used book store (Goodwill works in the US), find a technical or history book older than ~1980, then attempt to find the content in Wikipedia. Especially in history, the hit rate isn't good.
My private bookmarks won't get deleted by a zealous reviewer five minutes later.
It can be hard to contribute to Wikipedia without enmeshing yourself in the politics of it to protect your contributions from deletionists. This gets covered every few months on HN.
In the late 19th century there was a strong drive in academic history towards the idea of "total history": comprehensive accounts of everything that mattered from the beginning of recorded history to the current day. All these incredibly well educated German historians started outputting 20 volume world histories.
And no-one except a historiographical specialist would read them now.
They drank an ocean and pissed a cup.
These days most books have a copy online.
Reading a book != reading Wikipedia != watching an educational film
Judging by most of the comments on this article I'd say that people feel like we've lost something in the latter two.
Initial polling was that students hated it from the get go. They wanted, needed textbooks. At the end of the first semester they did the polls again and, surprise, nobody wanted to go back to dead trees. Books are expensive and text search is amazing.
I loved being able to play ROMs during class, but the difference between looking at information on the screen and in a book? Not fundamentally different.
I'd say where digital information shines is in post-secondary education where you're beginning to perform self-directed research, for the reasons you mentioned. And some students have a modicum of self control by then... ;)
6 weeks ago I had my wife change my facebook password and log me out of everything. There was a genuine feeling of loss and withdrawal for the first 2 weeks. I felt very disconnected and felt like I was missing out. I asked my wife to sign me in on Sunday. I had 100+ notifications and a few messages. Only 1 direct message and 1 direct post - both from the same person about the same topic. Everything else was just junk.
It turns out that Facebook was providing nothing of value to me. It wasn't even connecting me to friends in a meaningful way. 2 messages relevant to me in 6 weeks. It is mind blowing how much time I was spending reading status and linked articles and looking at photos. Just wasting time and energy.
My issues suck because I can't simply have my wife reset my password. I can't remove the Google News feed. And as long as I have a browser I can see Hacker News. Sigh.
Probably i should just have more self-control...
I know what you mean with the irrelevant notifications. Lots of tweaking which notifications I get--still more than I'd like but it's an improvement. No games, no groups, no pages.
This is also 100% true of my dogs. As soon as there's a new dog toy in the house and one shows interest the other will begin to fight over it. There are some deeply-ingrained mammalian social behaviors that have nothing to do with technology, and won't change anytime soon. I'd be wary of blaming a phone ahead of instinct (though blaming businesses for exploiting those instincts is a bit different).
That said, I commend your efforts to try to maintain a happy medium for your family, that's really the best way to address these sorts of issues.
I've semi-wild street dogs in that really are not that interested in any new toys that are around the house, but they are clearly following and learning from each other on other things. I'd say this is one of the traits they have in common with us.
What they are mostly concerned is food, sex and fighting over territory with other dogs. When the puppies play the main function of it seems very clear to me (future battles). The dogs belonging to the same pack do not often fight each other since the established hierarchy is rather clear.
b) I've worked with kids for years, and many display the exact same behavior, regardless of the particulars of the "shiny object". Fighting does not necessarily mean a physical altercation.
c) I've studied animal behavioral psychology, and have yet to find anything I learned that fails to apply to humans. We vary by degree, not kind.
The algorithm knows how to make you engage though. I'd get lost in really good debates with people over topics that we've discussed a before...and it just struck me about what a time sink it is because no matter how much we discuss things, nothing changes. All I'm doing it generating ad traffic for Facebook because they're keeping me engaged.
It's a lot easier to like a baby picture and walk away than it is to walk away from a topic you like discussing (and there are a lot of political topics that I like discussing). One of my good friends is a teacher and at some point in our discussion I made an observation that I'd never really thought of before (that had some negative implications)...and he did not take it well and got really, really upset with me. I apologized by phone, we cleared it up...
But at that point it really just finally hit the "enough is enough" point where nothing good is coming from this activity anymore...and I was done. And it's been great...except that now I notice how much time other people spend on it a lot more.
Regarding the observation point of contention, we were discussing the limits of current attempts at implementing school choice where schools had to opt in rather than giving people the money to go wherever they wanted. I realized that by including any type of religious name in a school, it basically legalized discrimination against poorer families since government funds wouldn't allow them to attend those schools. Struck me as an angle of the discussion I hadn't considered before and he took it as implying that he endorsed discrimination against those families - which would understandably upset anyone.
And yes, I was exactly same as you - started programming around 12-13 years old, but when you stopped using the computer you would go and do other things. Now it seems to be literally everywhere.
Children learn some things from peers, no matter what their parents do. For example, kids whose peers speak Standard American English will do the same, and will generally not have an accent — even if their parents do. In this case, it is probably a 'good' thing that kids are picking up skills from friends instead of parents.
But consider smartphone usage. Even if I could, by words and actions, impart to my toddler that technology is a tool and not a master to be heeded, does this attitude stand a chance of sticking once she starts school and sees older/richer kids with smartphones? What are effective strategies for inoculating against influences that you know will be coming?
At home, we are starting to have a 'problem' because my wife is constantly on FB. In the car, on trips, in restaurants, at the dinner table. It's fucking ridiculous. I have said a few times "what can be more important on fb than what's going on in the present moment with your family?". Behavior hasn't changed much.
What is starting to freak me out is the generations coming up. I have two young kids - pre-fb age - and they already have some questionable habits on my wife's iPhone - as soon as it comes out, they wanna look at pictures, go on youtube and fight over it. The second they see it...
I've been programming since I was 13 - a long time ago. Back then, you sat down at a table/desk to use your computer and then when you left, you did other things. You went out to play with friends. Ride bikes around. Go swimming. Go look at bugs. Eat something.
Nowadays, things are different. Different though because we let them be that way. Most parents I know are helicopter and at meet ups I'm always hearing about some bad thing that happened to someone they don't even know or is half way around the world. I'm not saying we embrace ignorance, but unless you can do something about that - and you're willing - then I don't see the point of fb and the news cycle.
As a parent (and developer), I have to be proactive and get the family back into the world. I'm not against tech in general (I'm teaching my son Basic right now), but the pendulum has clearly swung a little too far in one direction and fb/snapchat/etc, with their addictive behaviors, in my mind, are not good things for society.
People, to me, just seem happier when they're not inundated with gossip and negative news. I'ld love to see fb lose its dominance on the people who have their faces buried in their phones constantly. But, I don't think that will happen anytime soon. As long as people are checked out of the real world around them, it will be that much easier for them to get sucked in to fb and the like.