[SamUK96]

Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. Part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing [citation needed, I know].

Part of me thinks that the easy way now where we can do IRS forms (and everything) online and to our door of our houses, will make us weak.

There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times, but I think i'm going on a tangent from the disappearance of paper IRS forms at local libraries...

[bernardino]

You are definitely onto something. I'm going to skew this comment towards something similar. As an early twenty-something, I'm urging more friends and family to stop using the internet loosely - meaning, use the medium as a tool but not as a form of entertainment. Extensively, use it as little as possible.

I'm not saying reject the medium but rather try to be acutely aware of how it affects things: perception, mind, body, people, culture, etc. Especially, and this doesn't have to do solely with the internet, try to take an objective view of yourself and your life. In my teens, I used to play a lot of video games and surf the internet for 2/3rds of the day, every day. One late evening, I had to take out the trash to my backyard where the trash-bin was. I'm not sure if anyone has noticed but late evenings are one of the greatest times of the day - it's just honeyed indolence. Well, from outside in my backyard, I noticed my room, I saw all the light coming from my television and my computer. It was sad. That was most of my life. That room. Since then, I try to use technology less and try to be outside as much as I can. But to the point, please take notice of things.

Alas, further reading: Don DeLillo's White Noise.

[Bromskloss]

This sounds like thinking I've heard from some Amish people.

[SamUK96]

I sometimes think if the barbarians of the 4th and 5th Century are like today's people who adopt Amish principles, and the rest of the population as 4th and 5th Century Romans. There are extremely identifiable markers.

[bernardino]

The only recollection I have on the Amish is from Family Guy - I'm not close to that. On a serious note, what I was trying to argue, in short, was: 1. Anything in excess is not good. 2. Try to think and be aware of the effects of things like the internet have on you, people, culture, etc.

[icebraining]

Is HN a tool or entertainment?

[bernardino]

Definitely a tool or at least, mostly a tool - I continue to learn a lot from the site, largely from the comments but also from the links to articles, etc. I suppose it's important to define tool and entertainment. As I see it: A tool is something that helps you grow, create, learn, etc. Entertainment, on the other hand, is something with no intention of helping you, it's only for gratification purposes.

For instance, I think, mindlessly scrolling through reddit.com is a form of entertainment. But if you are subscribed to only certain particular subs in order, for example, to become a better writer, that would be a tool. This is a shaky example though.

[Bromskloss]

> I continue to learn a lot from the site

To me, that makes it entertainment, though I guess learning things can be useful for work too. :-)

[reaperducer]

Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already.

I'm not sure why. Libraries are still massively popular, and most have embraced digital media fully. In many of the cities where I've been in the last 10 years, the libraries are struggling to keep up with demand. Many even have coffee shops and internet cafes.

In my estimation, a lot of people under 40 think the library is empty all the time because they've never been to one to see what it offers.

It's like how people say they don't watch PBS because there's nothing good on. But how do they know there's nothing good on if they don't watch?

[jonstaab]

The quote is from Herodotus Book 9 Chapter 122, "Soft lands breed soft men", by Cyrus the Persian.

Reference: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...

[SamUK96]

Oh wow thank you! I have wondered for years where it has come from. I love the following sentence: "...wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil.".

This all is reminding me of another saying, a spartan one. A Spartan woman was asked why they do not submit to their men, and she replied with "strong men are not born from weak women".

If anyone is liking these forms of phrases (short, insightful), there is a word just for it: Laconic [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase

[xvector]

> part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing

And yet we are growing closer together every day because of the internet. Technologies like Skype, Hangouts, and FaceTime enable human interaction like never before. As VR becomes mainstream, along with eye and face tracking, we can expect interaction over the internet to feel 99% as authentic as interaction in real life.

> There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times

Contemporary moral systems look down on suffering. As engineers, we should strive to create a society where suffering and "hard times" are eliminated. The end-goal is everyone being able to enjoy life with tragedies and hardships eliminated.

This is not to say that we should get rid of all intellectual challenges - just that (by any contemporary moral system) it should be the end goal to rid ourselves of suffering.

[reaperducer]

And yet we are growing closer together every day because of the internet. Technologies like Skype, Hangouts, and FaceTime enable human interaction like never before.

I don't find looking at a person on a screen makes me feel "close" to them anymore than watching a person on a television show.

The people I feel "close" to are people I see in real life. But maybe I have a different definition of "close" than other people.

[yourduskquibble]

Worry not my friend, for you are not alone.

[xvector]

This was intended more towards people you don't normally see face to face. My parents live across the country. I can maybe see them twice a year. My college friends have moved elsewhere, but we can definitely play a game of DnD over Hangouts and Roll20. My relatives live abroad, but I still get (virtual) face-to-face time with them.

This would have been incomprehensible 100 years ago, and is a huge innovation in terms of bringing humans closer together. Sure, if you decide to start communicating with your roommate over FaceTime rather than actually talking to them in person, you're going to experience a decline in "closeness", but if you use these technologies normally, I think they absolutely have the potential to maintain strong connections where none could have existed before.

[nine_k]

> suffering and "hard times" are eliminated

There's an ancient intellectual tradition of Buddhism, very much concerned with elimination of suffering. What they came up with is that to stop suffering, one has to stop existing ("break the circle of re-incarnation").

What we can realistically hope for using engineering is to eliminate gross material causes of suffering, like famines, or large-scale warfare, or various illnesses. We can hope to eliminate hardships, but not tragedies, which are endogenous.

Just saying.

[xvector]

Agreed. Elimination of material causes is the best we can do given our current lack of insight into the brain. The discussion becomes much more interesting when we do begin to gain that insight when coupled with the ability precisely and extensively modify it.

[wuliwong]

I've never heard that quote before but it's pretty solid. :)