Must humans evolve to outshine the next great viral video?
Asked by
ETpro (
34605
)
August 19th, 2013
Present company excepted, of course, but most humans—even our friends and family—are less interesting than the games, media and content available on our smartphones. And so we increasingly live in a world where the loneliest place on Earth is a crowd. Everybody is jacked into connections that are remote in location and often also in time. Do we all need to learn to be even more bizarre and entertaining in person than the latest viral video, or do we just resign ourselves to today’s world consisting of humans connected to a virtual people in a virtual world but all-to-often oblivious to those real people standing right beside them in the real world?
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7 Answers
I am not going to fall into this trap. I am perfectly happy with my dumb phone for making calls and texts when I need to. I don’t need an internet connection attached to my hip. This topic really depresses me. I find it so sad when I see parents staring at their phone when they are at their child’s ball game or dance recital. Why can’t these people put their phone down? That won’t be me.
I don’t know if most humans are less interesting that the games and media content on our phones. I don’t know if the crowd is the loneliest place. I think it’s not as black and white as just saying people are plugged in and they can’t communicate any longer, with each other – I’ve seen some studies here and there indicating something like it, though, but didn’t put much stock into them.
I wonder we could get an electronic connection directly to the brain, a la Dr Jak in Phantom 2949 (see Dr. Jak at 32:25). ”...
what you see, I see!”
You could rail against it and try to change but all you would hear is baaaaaaa!
Why is this a bad thing. I hear many people who are older than me remarking that the world is poorer because people focus on virtual worlds. I see no evidence of it. Seems like the same “The world is going to hell because the younger generation does x” people have been saying since the dawn of civilization.
I often wonder about the crippling loneliness Gay kids must have felt a few generations back, wondering who they could trust to talk to in their town, who would beat them for being different. I often ask questions on this forum about lifestyles I know nothing about, and people share surprisingly intimate things with me, things they would never tell me face to face.
I do not think you need to resign yourself to living in a virtual world that is sadder because people are oblivious to those standing next to them. We have evolved. Those viral videos are just a goofy feature of us evolving. Those viral videos are people sharing something they found ephemerally amusing with the whole world. The question is, do you want to evolve with us, or pretend that things used to be better?
@ETpro People who are out of touch will always be so, tech or not. Of course, with constant tech around, things have gotten unsafe (texting and driving, etc.)
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