I'm Giving Up Reading for a Year

Re:I'm Giving Up Reading for a Year by NickPollard on Thursday May 03, 2012 @05:21AM (#3923005)

A few problems Technology solves:

    Starvation (better agriculture, distribution, storage)
    Pathogens and illness (medicine)
    Environmental hazards (heating, shelter)
    Lack of human contact (transportation + communication)
    Censorship (distributed networks)
    Entertainment (media creation, reproduction, storage)

Now, if you define technology as 'The internet-focused startup world of social media and marketing that the buzzword "technology" often refers to', of which Instagram is the current poster-child, then you might have a point. Might. Slamming all technology because of that is to be willfully ignorant of what modern life relies on.

I'll take a world full of pop-up adds, viral marketing videos and spam email over a world in which my parents both died of Malaria in their 30's and I can barely get enough clean water to live on in my dirt-brick house.

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Re:I'm Giving Up Reading for a Year by timwiseman on Thursday May 03, 2012 @03:39PM (#3925388)

Even social media solves problems (though admittedly much more minor ones than what you describe).

I had a problem keeping in touch with my extended family, Facebook has made this much easier.

I used to have issues with loosing touch with old friends (even ones you make a moderate effort to keep in touch with can become unreachable if you and they both move frequently), facebook helps.

Getting pictures of the kids distributed frequently without digital technology would have been difficult. Email made it substantially easier. Facebook makes it very easy.

I used to have a hard time finding resources for the game Go. Services like DragonGoServer let me play online and Google+ lets me find and talk to other Go enthusiasts.

[ Parent | on HN ]