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The media are the one true global religion

by Dominus

All-knowing, all-encompassing and ever-expanding, the media has managed to infiltrate in every aspect of our lives over the last 15 years or so. What started as a recreational and informational activity that hard-working people used for unwinding after a long day of work, has gradually transformed into an unconscious consuming obsession that eats away countless hours of our lives and offers little in return, except the occasional “like,” “poke,” “thumbs up,” or the number of virtual friends or followers, to show for our efforts.      The radio, newspaper, and television started it, as mediums for spreading important information. With the advance of communication technology, stories were quickly transmitted from one place to far away locations and so, the population was kept in the loop about the pressing events of the time. With the dawn of the internet, a new means for almost instantly conveying information in a visual and auditory form, practically into every home with internet access…
Score: 1.24

Technology has made us into insomniacs

by Dominus

Technology has gained in popularity over the last decade and has secured a fairly central place in our life. While the advantages of using it are obvious and praised more often than the Second Coming, the downsides are not mentioned as often. People have used to stay up late for any number of reasons. This is not something new. Before the internet era, watching television until the late hours of the night was responsible for a good portion of grumpy employees and students in the morning. Things have changed with the introduction of the internet and its subsequent rise to the top of technological marvels. The internet has made us addicted to it. It should come with a warning label saying: “Possible side effects of prolonged use can be, but are not limited to, addiction, a retreat from social life, health issues, a recurring lack of sleep, distorted views of reality, cheering on stupid people and making them famous etc.   Some people can’t sleep without watching a movie. This is a modern…
Score: 1.54

Trashtag - The Day Social Media Became Self-Aware

    Maybe Socialism works after all…  As you've all probably guessed by now, I'm a Star Trek geek amongst my myriad fandoms. But up until now, there's been one aspect of Star Trek that I have shaken my head at, thinking it was too unrealistic. Well, OK, besides the transporters, warp speed space travel, and Kirk is getting lucky with all those green-skinned space babes.    Beyond the advanced technology, which justifiably may or may not happen someday - never say never! - the one aspect of the Star Trek universe that always nagged at me is the economy of Starfleet. See, thanks to technology like the replicator, humans in this future exist in a post-scarcity utopia, wanting for nothing, and hence not motivated by money. So why work? Libertarian Capitalists have seizures at this thought.  The answer, we get explained to us, is that Starfleet members are all volunteers, just motivated to join for the pure idealism. Which is the part that loses me when I think of all those red-shirts who beamed down…
Score: 1.31

Are You Ready For Amazon Prime Day?

  Amazon prime day 2019, July 15th and 16th  A mote back we put up our guide to US holidays for the benefit of people from other countries, so you can tell whether your American staff need the day off or not. But one day got left off the calendar because it's such a new concept that has yet to be fully recognized. That day is Amazon Prime Day. It's a new kind of "holiday" being pushed by Amazon as a kind of Internet shopping festival.  This year, they even decided to do a full blowout by having a "Prime Day Concert 2019" hosted from the Hammersmith Ballroom in New York City. It was broadcast on Amazon Prime Video and headlined Taylor Swift, among many celebrity guests.    It's a good time to step back and ask: What's happening here? Can a corporation, with no other cultural anchor point, force a holiday into existence? Well, while this sounds like a portent of cyberpunk mega-corp behavior, the commercial impetus for holidays actually goes back much farther than you'd think.    A Brief History Of…
Score: 1.54

How I Accidentally Became A Writer

  Hello, and thank you for dropping by to devote these microseconds to a meeting of our minds. That's an appropriate opener for the year 2020. This article was the editor's idea. No really, they said to tell everyone about the life of a writer. I will tell you right now that I press buttons on a flat electronic device in patterns that cause checks to arrive in the mail. Now that I have that dunked, a whole article is left to fill.  I just don't do autobiography well, but as I understand it some of you out there are clamoring to adopt my path to freelance autonomy. And now I'm going to tell you why that's impossible.  History cannot repeat this career path:  As a kid, I was the weird one who read books all the time. The most boring book was more interesting to me than most of the people I had to talk to, so early on I decided I wanted to be a writer. Wait, correct that, I mean to say that I wanted to be an author. Most of what I had read until then was fiction, and genre fiction at that. The…
Score: 1.33

It Is Indeed Time To Police Social Media

    It is time we faced the music, Internet fans: We broke everything. Social Media was a mistake. None of us are close to understanding how or why, but apparently we have created a monster.    Social media seemed harmless enough when it came along.  Social media was nothing but an extension of the exact same Internet we'd had for decades. Believe it or not, there is very little difference between modern Reddit and Usenet circa 1990. There's also very little difference between modern Twitter and an AOL chat room decades ago. Even before the now long-forgotten shared virtual network Second Life (bet you forgot that one!) wasn't that different from a MUD (multi-user dimension) towards the end of the 20th century, only with better graphics.  So WHY has social media been at the forefront of what we can only assume will be the human race's downfall? What is so dangerous about the idea of letting everyone communicate all over the world instantly? Apparently, social and anthropological science has been…
Score: 1.28

Seeking Online Eden : The Quest For An Intelligent Discussion Community

    This is Diogenes the Cynic. He is known for having roamed the world, lantern aloft, on a lifelong quest for just one honest man. (Spoilers: He never did find one by his definition.) Besides that, he was one of those classical philosophers and public intellectuals whose standard delivery represented our modern concept of "performance art" or "stand-up comedy." He was a tart social critic and overall sourpuss. He is, however, credited with helping to found the seeds of stoicism, one of the most enduring schools of Greek philosophy.  He is one of my heroes.  Like Diogenes, I too have been on a lifelong quest to seek something out. This thing I seek is something we all assume exist, all agree would be a nice thing to have, until we think it over. That thing I have fruitlessly sought is "an intelligent Internet discussion community."  Let's flashback right quick: The original purpose of the Internet was to support communication, to the goal of exchanging information, ideas, and media. When…
Score: 1.57