electronic gadgets prove more addictive than heroin

[bcbm]

article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/societybookreviews/7942896/One-Hundred-Fears-of-Solitude-by-Hal-Crowther-extract.html) from telegraph

[Dr Mindbender]

article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/societybookreviews/7942896/One-Hundred-Fears-of-Solitude-by-Hal-Crowther-extract.html) from telegraph

Yes, i will trust the telegraph for a unbiased analysis. :rolleyes:

Using buzzwords like heroin just to sell papers doesnt substantiate the point anymore.

Even the article is unable to paint positivity on the 'benefits' of ignorance over progress.

'' If you had an urgent message for someone, you stuffed a note in his box at the student union or trudged half a mile across an icebound campus and hoped you’d find him in''

lol

[MarxSchmarx]

Well all I can say is 'twas ever thus.

I bet when writing was first invented there were the Hal Crowthers of the day running around with "But think of all the indepth face to face conversations we will be missing!", or "what is so important that I can't just tell you?"

Or when the wheel came on the market, surely someone snickered "Humbug! Real men carry their load on their backs."

[ZeroNowhere]

So basically, what he's saying is that heroin relieves addiction somehow, thus making its addictiveness negative? That's probably inaccurate.

[Jazzratt]

What total rot. A desperate print media hack throwing stones at technology. The torygraph, fail and their like do it all the god damn time. Personally I reckon there should be complaints to the paper from people who help heroin addicts and other people with real addictions about this fucking garbage.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Stories like this serve both to diminish the true meaning of "addiction" (which I believe to be a properly defined medical term) and also to medicalise and/or pathologise an increasing range of human activities.

Fucking shit.

[leftace53]

This article brings "crackberry" to a whole new level.

[black magick hustla]

i didnt read the article but to deny that in modern consumer society some people have an unhealthy obsession with gadgets and gizmos is a tad bit silly. people have been pointing this shit since atleast the 60s and for good reason. ive seen people getting financially fucked over by credit card debt because they wanted a bigger tv. i knew this kid who worked in mexico in a construction job and he saved and saved for a ps3 only to realize he has a shit tv and it was not really worth it. i dont think bcbm posted that article as a tirade against technology, theres all sorts of worthless gadgetery out there and some people slave over it for no good reason whatsoever.

[MarxSchmarx]

i didnt read the article but to deny that in modern consumer society some people have an unhealthy obsession with gadgets and gizmos is a tad bit silly. people have been pointing this shit since atleast the 60s and for good reason. ive seen people getting financially fucked over by credit card debt because they wanted a bigger tv. i knew this kid who worked in mexico in a construction job and he saved and saved for a ps3 only to realize he has a shit tv and it was not really worth it. i dont think bcbm posted that article as a tirade against technology, theres all sorts of worthless gadgetery out there and some people slave over it for no good reason whatsoever.

I think a sensible question to ask is whether this is unique to electronic gadgetry. For example the same sort of observations are made routinely for things like shoes, motorcycles, and furniture. There is a lot of hype about gadgets (silliness), sure, but I don't think there is anything unique about the trinkets. It is really just another testament to the raw power of marketing under capitalism. Sure such mindless consumerism is far from benign, kind of like fashion, but there is nothing inherent in the tool that makes it more susceptible to people making buffoons of themselves over it.

[black magick hustla]

actually nvm the article although entertaining its kindof shit

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

i didnt read the article but to deny that in modern consumer society some people have an unhealthy obsession with gadgets and gizmos is a tad bit silly.

At what point does use of electronic devices become excessive? Unlike real addictions such as heroin or nicotine, there aren't any indicators that a physician can detect, which is why I think classifiying intense and/or long-term use of electronics as "addiction" serves only to dilute the term.

How much is too much? That depends on circumstances, I would think.

[ZeroNowhere]

For that matter, 'use of electronics' is vague enough to be completely unhelpful. If a person spends, say, 7 hours reading a book on a computer, isn't this only as excessive or addictive as doing the same with a book? If they use it for 7 hours gambling, then it's pretty ludicrous to say that they're addicted not only to gambling, but also to, say, internet usage. Writing a book on a laptop rather than with paper and pen will involve using electronics for quite a while each day, but saying that it's an addiction to electronics is somewhat bizarre.

Not that I'll be surprised when being diagnosed with Book Addiction Disorder.

[Ravachol]

i didnt read the article but to deny that in modern consumer society some people have an unhealthy obsession with gadgets and gizmos is a tad bit silly.


This is because of commodity-fetishism. Any commodity will do (fashion, cars, gadgets,etc.). Techno-gadgets is just one of many. The real problem is commodity-fetishism and the insane depths it drives us to.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

This is because of commodity-fetishism. Any commodity will do (fashion, cars, gadgets,etc.). Techno-gadgets is just one of many. The real problem is commodity-fetishism and the insane depths it drives us to.

How does "commodity-fetishism" (sounds sexual) differ from a genuine interest in something, that has been hijacked for profit-making purposes?

[Sasha]

if this would be true wouldnt it be way more newsworthy to have the headline
"heroin proves less adictive than electronic gadgets"?

[ComradeOm]

if this would be true wouldnt it be way more newsworthy to have the headline
"heroin proves less adictive than electronic gadgets"?Heroin: Gateway drug to Kindle

[bailey_187]

wait, so you get the shakes and shit yourself when your electronics brake?

[Dean]

At what point does use of electronic devices become excessive? Unlike real addictions such as heroin or nicotine, there aren't any indicators that a physician can detect, which is why I think classifiying intense and/or long-term use of electronics as "addiction" serves only to dilute the term.
Drug addiction is not the convenient boogeyman you can use to disassociate consumer products from their social character.


How much is too much? That depends on circumstances, I would think.
It's not just an amount. Its the presence of a given set of circumstances which can enable or hamper the furtherance of human freedom and productive social activity.

Today, electronic paraphernalia increasingly act as the purveyors of social standards and the like. If you are a follower of Marx, you will note that, in his time, he argued that the family served this function. But today I think that is increasingly changed, for this simple reason: human beings increasingly spend time involved in formulating value sets, opinions, interests and social goals across media and its channels (TVs, video games, cell phones). Historically, this has been increasingly a decentralized, social process.

All technology develops unique characteristics in terms of its social and economic manifestation and environment. For instance, I think that blogging has had the effect of providing an alternative to mainstream narratives. However, insofar as blogs are presented in the mainstream, they must fit into that narrative. Without going into all of the processes, blogs which are a part of this mainstream dialogue, with all of its prejudices and conservatism, ultimately win out. While I couldn't say what the net effect of online journals is, in terms of the political spectrum and the exploration of ideas, I don't think its proved very helpful - you have to already be on the search for truth to find these data.

Furthermore, games, phones, and tv shows all have addictive, episodic content (the successful series do, anyhow) the addiction to which serves to further narrow and entrench ideas. This is the fact even for honestly unbaised content, since unaligned narratives have the effect of a blank slate, which the receiver's worldview will always be written to in a broad, non-deliberate fashion.

In terms of economic activity, I think there can be no real question about the net effect on the working class of consumer electronics. Furthermore, I think the massive cell phone entertainment industry is an incredibly frivolous usage of real engineering power which could be applied to medicine, machinery, and even more direct advances in computing.

The point is that its very naive to discount the social effect of products sold in capitalist markets.

[Ravachol]

How does "commodity-fetishism" (sounds sexual) differ from a genuine interest in something, that has been hijacked for profit-making purposes?

Fetishism isn't sexual per se. A 'fetish' is an object which supposedly holds all kinds of benificial properties and is a condensed expression of some general principle. When it comes to commodity fetishism, the interest in the commodity is usually due to the social structure and the 'sign value' of the object. An expensive car which is just as functional as any other car has a higher 'sign value' because it signifies personal wealth to observers, thus by extension signifying success and social status. As a result, the object is desirable because of it's 'sign value' (and not it's 'use value'), which in turn is derived from the link between social status and personal wealth inherent to capitalism.

There are many more examples of commodity-fetishism however, not all of them related to sign value as such. The process of consumption, for example, can be fetishised as well, where the act of consuming (in the sense of market purchases, not the actual physical consumption of goods) is a stand-in for various socio-psychological processes. The fact that some people actually shop as therapy to 'feel better' is an example of this.

In short, under capitalism, life is reduced to consumption and production for it's own sake, as a mere extension of the profit-drive instead of consumption and production based on needs. This leads to the commodity, the prime subject of the production-consumption cycle, playing a central role in capitalist society and it's structure and, as a result, socio-psychological phenomena.

[ZeroNowhere]

Isn't it easier to just use 'consumerism' or something, rather than phrases which already have far more important uses in the communist movement?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Drug addiction is not the convenient boogeyman you can use to disassociate consumer products from their social character.

I view addiction as a medical condition, not a moral failing. If "internet addiction" or whatever is something that can't be detected physiologically, then it's a fraudulent diagnosis, most likely cooked up by somebody who sees money to be made by "counselling" people who use the internet "too much".


It's not just an amount. Its the presence of a given set of circumstances which can enable or hamper the furtherance of human freedom and productive social activity.

Today, electronic paraphernalia increasingly act as the purveyors of social standards and the like. If you are a follower of Marx, you will note that, in his time, he argued that the family served this function. But today I think that is increasingly changed, for this simple reason: human beings increasingly spend time involved in formulating value sets, opinions, interests and social goals across media and its channels (TVs, video games, cell phones). Historically, this has been increasingly a decentralized, social process.

All technology develops unique characteristics in terms of its social and economic manifestation and environment. For instance, I think that blogging has had the effect of providing an alternative to mainstream narratives. However, insofar as blogs are presented in the mainstream, they must fit into that narrative. Without going into all of the processes, blogs which are a part of this mainstream dialogue, with all of its prejudices and conservatism, ultimately win out. While I couldn't say what the net effect of online journals is, in terms of the political spectrum and the exploration of ideas, I don't think its proved very helpful - you have to already be on the search for truth to find these data.

But it is there to be found. Before the advent of the internet it would have been much harder both to promulgate non-mainstream ideas (due to the cost of printing and the dominance of broadcast conglomerates) and to find them, which would have involved many tedious hours in a well-stocked library (which aren't exactly common).

There are many ideas and ways of looking at the world that I personally would never have encountered were it not for the internet.


Furthermore, games, phones, and tv shows all have addictive, episodic content (the successful series do, anyhow) the addiction to which serves to further narrow and entrench ideas. This is the fact even for honestly unbaised content, since unaligned narratives have the effect of a blank slate, which the receiver's worldview will always be written to in a broad, non-deliberate fashion.

OK, since we're all hopelessly entrapped in the capitalist paradigm, I guess we can forget about all this revolution stuff. If not, then can we at least credit the average person with the capability if not the willingness right at this moment to seek out novelty as well as maybe, just maybe, considering the possibility of a different kind of society.


In terms of economic activity, I think there can be no real question about the net effect on the working class of consumer electronics. Furthermore, I think the massive cell phone entertainment industry is an incredibly frivolous usage of real engineering power which could be applied to medicine, machinery, and even more direct advances in computing.

The point is that its very naive to discount the social effect of products sold in capitalist markets.

OK, maybe I'm not getting it, but what are these social effects exactly? I understand that the pro-capitalist paradigm is the most dominant, but this should be completely unsurprising to everyone since, guess what, we live in a capitalist society.

But even then, there are definate undercurrents of doubt and cynicism about the current order of things. Granted not everyone agrees about what is wrong, but humans have never been an agreeable lot, have they?

It seems to me that complaints about Twitter or iPads or whatever by leftists miss the point - they are concentrating on symptoms rather than the deeper problem. Capitalism won't go away if leftists stop watching television or if Facebook goes out of fashion (like MySpace seems to have done)

As I see it, one of the central problems is the profit motive. I don't think capitalism generates the peer influence that Facebook took advantage of to be so successful - as social animals, our relationships are great influences. But if natural human sociality can be turned to the task of making a profit, then by gum it will happen!

[Adi Shankara]

Lol, this article is going to make all the transhumanists shit themselves.

also, I notice almost all of the criticism regarding the article is ad hominem.

personally, I think the author is spot on. technology is making the future impersonal. it's going to cause a person like me to run away to place like Papua New Guinea as soon as I can. I like computers and stuff, but I do think I'm addicted sometimes, and I really would like to get away from them.

however, I do notice that there is an underlying social problem associated with this: parents don't pay attention to their kids anymore, our Western culture promotes awkwardness if you attempt to reach out to make a friendly conversation with a stranger, etc. etc.

Hell though, that's why I love smoking marijuana--it's a simple activity, a simple pleasure, and often times, you just want to talk to friends or act goofy like a child.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Lol, this article is going to make all the transhumanists shit themselves.

Since I'm an adult, I rolled my eyes instead.


also, I notice almost all of the criticism regarding the article is ad hominem.

I don't think that means what you seem to think it means. I don't even care to remember the author's name.


personally, I think the author is spot on. technology is making the future impersonal. it's going to cause a person like me to run away to place like Papua New Guinea as soon as I can. I like computers and stuff, but I do think I'm addicted sometimes, and I really would like to get away from them.

What kind of "impersonal" future is it where you can talk to real people living across almost the entire planet? If it's face-to-face contact you want, technology isn't stopping you from talking to your neighbours and friends - indeed, one of my neighbours is a good friend of mine, yet I can still find the time to talk about this kind of stuff with people I have never met. It requires no special effort on my part, so I'm sure you can achieve it too.


however, I do notice that there is an underlying social problem associated with this: parents don't pay attention to their kids anymore, our Western culture promotes awkwardness if you attempt to reach out to make a friendly conversation with a stranger, etc. etc.

Every age think that kids/parents are getting worse and worse - take this quote:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers"

That's a quote attributed to Socrates by Plato, which just goes to show old this complaint is.

As for reaching out to others, I find that depends on individual, mood and circumstance more than anything else. Some people are more outgoing than others and will reciprocate more readily if approached. People tend to be more receptive to social advances at a party as opposed to in the street, and so on and so forth.


Hell though, that's why I love smoking marijuana--it's a simple activity, a simple pleasure, and often times, you just want to talk to friends or act goofy like a child.

I enjoy it too, but I also read books and go on the internet. I don't think smoking and being a tech-head are mutually exclusive, far from it.