Re:Life before smartphones (2020)
by javajosh on Monday August 02, 2021 @02:04PM
(#28040362)
>When we no longer need each other to learn about that hole in the wall restaurant, that new band
And yet the best information is still person-to-person, old school. It lives in the cracks that software misses and where review systems are gamed. Finding good Indian food is hard - but the locals know. Who has an open mic night? Hard to say without connections. Maybe the ultimate example is real estate - deep knowledge of any given place comes after you've lived there, and understand it's history, is life. And that's impossible to represent online.
>cheap consumer goods
Yes: making everything in Shenzen is a problem because now it's the only community that knows how to make and fix things. (Obviously its not 100% the case, but its mostly the case.) That lack of distributed ability has follow-on effects that we don't understand yet -- most worryingly having to do with national security, but also about agency and curiosity and self-determination. Maybe we should have to pass a test before being allowed to use any particular object, showing that we at least know how its made and where it's constituent parts come from.
And yet the best information is still person-to-person, old school. It lives in the cracks that software misses and where review systems are gamed. Finding good Indian food is hard - but the locals know. Who has an open mic night? Hard to say without connections. Maybe the ultimate example is real estate - deep knowledge of any given place comes after you've lived there, and understand it's history, is life. And that's impossible to represent online.
>cheap consumer goods
Yes: making everything in Shenzen is a problem because now it's the only community that knows how to make and fix things. (Obviously its not 100% the case, but its mostly the case.) That lack of distributed ability has follow-on effects that we don't understand yet -- most worryingly having to do with national security, but also about agency and curiosity and self-determination. Maybe we should have to pass a test before being allowed to use any particular object, showing that we at least know how its made and where it's constituent parts come from.