Technology amplifies this, greatly. In a non-digital era our field of view was narrow, expanding either to our immediate physical surroundings or, when we went beyond them, limited by what we could read in a newspaper or see on TV. When I was little, I didn't know who was the most skilled person at my hobby or how popular it was or whether beautiful people online also happened to excel at it, while my teenage hormones wreaked havoc on both my personality and looks. Every single child in the civilized world nowadays is subjected to exactly that. You may be an aspiring dancer and there will be a million like you right there on your phone. It's hard for them to formulate self-worth when that is the case.
Does that mean the internet and digital advances are bad? No, it just means we were unprepared for them in a very meaningful way.
There is no fundamental force of the universal that makes it so, if that's what you're asking. There is however a tremendous amount of psychology that predisposes people to seeking the admiration and respect of others. If you want a deeper reason, it is likely due to a cultural understanding that these things are actually advantageous, and some amount of deeper evolutionary biology
That is understood… but why do you think such a child would have received more ‘admiration and respect of others’ 300 years ago in some tiny peasant village?
Because the stakes and standards were lower. So long as you did what your father did before you, and him before he, then you will get admiration and respect. You will get a family, you will have your job, you will be the shoe cobbler. Or the baker. Or the farmer. That's you, who you are, and we need you.
Things are complicated today. Doing what's always been done is not enough, you need to do better. Having a job is not enough, we no longer view jobs as purpose.
This is looking at the past with extremely rose tinted glasses, in reality life was very nasty and usually short for anyone below the lower gentry. (>90% of the population)
Especially in tiny peasant villages in pretty much every country, except maybe Switzerland and some Polynesian islands.
That's not really how that works. Certain crops are edible but we don't want them to spread too much because they easily overtake other, more fragile species. This applies to blackberries.
Egan is one of those rare writers where reading his book made me realize just how much smarter he is than me. Not even in a negative way, it's simply like listening to a lecture by a brilliant, brilliant man.
Don't want to praise scammers, but that is a very clever trick still. Especially since it preys on the mark being too happy about getting flowers for free to think straight. One could go the extra mile and search up data on people to do it on their birthdays or around significant dates.
Is it a matter of not being able to think straight? "Selfie authentication" is no less legitimate for flower delivery than for anything else. And you wouldn't expect to know anything about the company. We don't know anything about most of these companies that hold so much information on us.
Nowadays it's a good rule to not let delivery people photograph you anyway. Anything I order comes by mail and there's no such nonsense. Unsolicited whatever, lemme just take your pic? You can take it back thanks
Some delivery apps like Rappi sometimes require delivery man to take a photo of the order upon delivery. Unfortunately, mail doesn't deliver a hot cheeseburger in 10 minutes.
"Selfie" authentication, or any data gathering, is not legitimate when it comes to unsolicited things. Just because someone knocks on my door with a surprise gift doesn't mean I owe that person anything.
Couldn't they argue that these royalties don't apply if payments aren't routed through the core platform? Such as saying "oh, well, the user paid through the web version of Spotify, not the iOS one"?
I didn't realize "gobshite" is supposed to be rare, but I guess all the British shows I've seen are to blame. Thinking about it, I probably couldn't name a single person in real life that I've heard say that word.
At least Windows had the decency to make their ridiculous straight-to-LinkedIn keyboard shortcut obscure. Applications auto-launching should not be a thing unless the user set them up to do so or they’re essential to the system’s functioning.
All the discussion is rightfully around the art bits of this article, but I'm an absolute mess thanks to those paragraphs about the author's mom. So gutting to have this juxtaposition of unforgettable art that's fragile and coddled and a woman who's forgetting everything about herself, equally fragile in her old age. Masterful work.
Seems like they will really push VisionOS, which is cool. Hopefully this leads to innovative ways to use it, because those initial videos of pasta timers and "smarter" vacuuming were not at all what I wanted.
If I were within your proximity, I can assure you I have no interest in your minigame progress while you chopped cucumbers. I would however hope that you had avoided physical injury.
Nitpick: The EU didn't mandate intrusive consent popups. That was malicious compliance and/or laziness by advertisers, GDPR "tool" developers, and website owners. Website developers could've put an "opt in to tracking" option in a separate settings page that users would click on a gear icon in the top right corner to access.
Why does it have to be a "distracting" experience? What if the game was showing you where to cut to get uniform slices and grading the uniformity of your cuts? Then you'd be focused on the activitiy at hand while still enjoying that sweet sweet gamified dopamine hit.
I can't wait for the day games like "PowerWash Simulator" or "Supermarket Simulator" come to VR. Imagine, you could wash stuff or work at a supermarket, while also exercising your body!
This sounds like a great way to chop off fingertips. Take it from someone who has done "just the tip" once, a sharp knife will do it with almost no effort, just like slicing through a tomato
I want to force kitchen staff to wear this and have it remind them to change gloves based on what they’ve touched either being a potential allergen or contaminant. Makes me cringe when I see people who work with food also working the register, for instance. Too easy to get lazy and not change the gloves.
We’ve already agreed to certain food standards. The fact that people don’t follow them is enough for me to say we need something more strict. Is it a headset? Maybe not. But periodic training and availability of PPE aren’t doing the job either. The shortage of labor at the low end of the market doesn’t help, either. What I’d rather have than a germophobic headset is for people to take pride in their work (whether you serve food or write code), but that also seems to be a lost cause. I’m lucky if I can get a restaurant to count the number of items in the bag before handing it to the delivery driver.
Well, as someone living in the United States, I live with the saddening understanding that our military spending indicates that we're willing to immiserate large swaths of the world's population for increasingly diminishing returns.
It's authoritarian enough that I have no choice but to support our military decisions through the taxes I pay.
this seems like micromanagement taken to the next level and I hope if any such thing becomes "normal" that legislation will stop it. We aren't robots meant to react to green and red spots on an AR headset.
At this point I'd be satisfied with a Siri is that just a literal link to a command line. It's horribly useless as it is now, 80% or less accuracy on basic things.
Frankly, while it’s obviously terrible if you ever want people to actually use it, I’m glad it’s so convoluted because I’d be majorly pissed if some other shortcut I use in some software lead my PC to accidentally also open LinkedIn.
Does that mean the internet and digital advances are bad? No, it just means we were unprepared for them in a very meaningful way.