[keithpeter]

No, I agree, it is not the end of the world.

However, it is one of those small changes that shift society's rules of engagement very slightly. The teenagers I teach already order stuff from their phones, and discover music &c entirely through online media. I live near the centre of a large city in the UK and when I'm popping the 50m to the corner shop for more salt or haldi, I have to dodge the swarms Deliveroo bicyclists. Every takeway has the Just Eat sticker and all the radio cars have Uber on the side as well as the local taxi company.

There is a shift in the details of daily living.

[Broken_Hippo]

I read this stuff, read there is a shift in the details of daily living... and for the life of me, I don't understand why this is a bad thing. It isn't like we've not had grand shifts before.

The automobile. Indoor plumbing. Electricity. Stoves and vacuum cleaners. Television, radio. The wheel - but more importantly, the axle. Heck, hand washing shifted some details of life.

It seems very natural for us to move forward and change this stuff. Is some of it necessary? No, but that's just what humans do to an extent.

[linker3000]

> It isn't like we've not had grand shifts before.

This isn't anywhere near a grand shift - it's a clever commercial ploy to increase profits for a narrow range of businesses.

> The automobile. Indoor plumbing. Electricity. Stoves and vacuum cleaners. Television, radio. The wheel - but more importantly, the axle.

Sure, THEY were grand shifts that improved health, sanitation, freed up significant amounts of travel or labour time, brought education and entertainment to the masses etc.

How do we classify Alex's contribution to society: "I can speak some words and receive cat litter the next day".

OK, I jest - the AI behind Alexa will no doubt reap other benefits in time, some may even be societal rather than commercial.

Don't get me wrong; I love gadgets and innovation - I work for an Enterprise Class storage manufacturer and spend all day working with terabyte/petabyte-scale disk and flash array setups, and stuff I can't even tell you about - but let's have some perspective here!

[keithpeter]

I don't know if it is a bad thing or a good thing or something in the middle (some advantages but revealing new problems such as the one in the OA). But there is a shift.

Maths example: place notation and Arabic numerals made adding and subtracting very easy (you try adding numbers in roman numerals without translating) but we lost insight into ratio and proportionality concepts. That was around 1200 or so in Europe.

[appleflaxen]

who cares?

this happens every generation.

the very things that some of us miss as "details shift" (like books) were the reason for the moral panic when first introduced.

http://www.historytoday.com/frank-furedi/media%E2%80%99s-fir...