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Discussion (65 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
My main pushback is solitude. I don't actually want to timemaxx family interaction or any human interaction. I don't want to be the only one on the planet either, we need one another. But a life well-lived includes deep experiences in solitude if you ask me.
EDIT: and another thing! human interaction here focuses entirely on the living and the related. Why? Human connection can span all of humanity. And it should.
Is there any way to make the profession a family affair again?
> The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.
One of the reasons why children, teens, and young adults have become so infantalised is because they are socialised mostly around each other, and spend a lot of time being told "no you can't, you are a child". This is not a call for children to enter the mines, and I do not wish to see child labour laws repealed (as they are apparently being in some parts of the USA). But for children to be socialised correctly, they must maintain connections with people of all ages, both older and younger — all benefit from such an arrangement. For them to grow up, they must be treated as people, and given age-appropriate responsibility and inclusion in the tasks that adults do. It is harder to teach a teenager to wash the dishes and their clothes, than it is to ask for a child's help washing the dishes and your/their clothes. The children are happy to help and to be included, you get to teach them rudimentary tasks, and it counts as family bonding time. The alienation of children from adults, and the alienation of children from their parents' work, is a great loss to society as a whole.
[1]: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
I agree,but this has become so normalised that people think that spending time with kids one's own age is then only way to be properly socialised. People say kids who do anything else will be "weird". It is the single commonest objection to home education that children cannot be socialised except by spending the most if their time with their own age group (rather than with adults or kids of a range of ages).
I found my kids loved helping with whatever I did, whether cooking or installing an OS. There is always something they can do: fetch something or pour something or keep an eyebon something. It was more fun for me too.
I can sit with my butt touching someone else's on the subway for an hour, but would hardly call that "spending time together", or presume to know anything about them other than their smell.
And they'd spend a lot more time doing all the things we don't need to do anymore. The money I get from work buys a lot of convenient _not_ needing to do a lot of menial labor.
As you said, everything in moderation. But many people far exceed the level of moderation.
I see couples/families often sitting in restaurants on their phones.
I see people sitting at intersections on their phones.
I see people driving while on their phones.
People often walk from point A to point B but spending much of that walk on their phones.
I rarely see people waiting somewhere without having to jump on their phones.
Again, moderation is fine, but I’d argue many are well beyond that point.
if kids are sitting on bikes, riding together
or sitting on the couch, playing games together...
is one better than the other?
if I sit with my partner and we read books together
or we're on our phone together...
is it ok to be in our heads, but together?
Both of these problem spaces run the gamut from solvable to intractable. Either way you have to put in some work.
He calculates that when a person reaches age 18, they have spent more than 90% of their in-person parent time. As a parent and a son, that hits pretty hard.
Obviously, YMMV.
[1]:https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
For white-collar jobs typically translates to, computer = work.
It’s uncontroversial that sleep is necessary and healthy, walking is necessary and/or healthy, working is (mostly) necessary (regardless of whether it’s healthy), and blinking is necessary and healthy.
The implication is that there’s almost zero about screen time that is healthy or necessary, with some exceptions.
And that this has become recently common. Prior to the Information Age, it was less common that we spent this much time on screens.
People that did were called “couch potatoes”.
God bless Debian.
Mind you this was solo video game so I wasn't even spending quality time with friends online or anything.
I agree with the sentiment of the other comments here that its been like this for longer than OP gives credit for (10 years). But I don't think that makes it right. As hunter-gatherers, when we weren't hunting or gathering, I feel like people were probably just spending time with each other? If we take that 40 hour/week figure as canon for how much hunter/gatherers worked, anyways.
I recall having the TV on all evening when I was growing up in the 80s. I just checked and the average family had it for just over 7 hours according to an '84 study. I hardly watch any TV now aside from streaming one or two shows at any given time, and my personal use of a computer outside of work is likely a fraction of how much I used to space out in front of a TV in the years leading up to university.
Computers have consolidated work, media, and entertainment all within the same "box" and even a good deal of close friend interactions are now mediated "on the screen".
I'm certain early hunter/gatherers would've been equally as shocked seeing factory workers "leave the home" and "constantly meet strangers".
Different praxis for different eras.
Sure, I can rot away and do things on the computer that doesn't really bring me joy beyond the Skinner box it can be, but that's at least somewhat on me if I fall into that trap (although we probably don't need to make more Skinner boxes for people to feel trapped by). There's a lot of things I really want to do on the computer, and I don't really see an inherent problem with that.
Yes! Thank you for making this distinction. The problem is that some people's perceptions have not kept up, not that screens are inherently bad. Not all screen time is equal, and everyone chooses how to spend it.
This constant purity testing needs to end already. The thinly veiled politics on HN is getting more absurd by the day.
But if you spend all those hours building a retro/modern sim city game pair programming with your 12yo, designing the artwork, crafting the story arc, writing the music, finding and fixing bugs, building new levels -- you don't need to regret that you weren't idling around at the park all that time.
I'm from the United States. I'm not sure about you, but smartphones took-over my social circles in 2011. So it definitely was like this 15 years go for us. Before that, laptops were everywhere by 2007 and people spent a huge amount of time with those. Before that, people had been spending tons of time playing video games, watching movies, and reading books. This is how life was from as early as I could remember (the late 80s, early 90s) to be honest. Maybe just the family I grew up in? We all seemed to love to read and tinker with computers and video games.
If anything, I spend less time in front of a screen or a book today than I did 20 years ago. Just as a personal preference to spend more time with my wife and kids and more time in nature.
It's because my dad always forgets exactly when and what channel his (our) sports team play. He has a phone but push notifications, texts, opening an app or website is too much friction, ultimately, for someone that can read yahoo, check email, and make calls, but not good with texting.
Anyway, a widget is the most immediate visual cue I could think of aside from a push notification but pushes are too fleeting. The idea is my dad just has to "swipe" to see today's games and I can curate it exactly to our teams and whether or not he can see it on the TV or needs to open streaming service X and so on.
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Is this a good use of my time connecting with my dad? Is it better to call him instead of touching the keyboard? Should I be talking to him now rather than about him?
This is breathless polemic.
As for Newspapers, how long would you really spend reading them on any given day?
The newspaper? On the computer now. TV? On the computer. (YouTube feels much more like old TV than streaming services, to me.) Games? Computer. Work? Computer. Shopping? Computer. Keeping up with distant family and friends? Computer. Banking and bills? Computer. Investing? Believe it or not, computer.
This has its downsides—it can be harder to consciously allocate time—but it also allows you to be more flexible with the ever-decreasing square footage per person allotted in the modern world.
Usage should really be broken down by activity, not lumped under “computer time”.
Time with family is valuable, but so is time doing other things. You don't need everyone involved in everything 24/7.
The two weekend days don't seem enough to catch up to the accumulated work-time, especially if your commute is relatively long (which is true for a large chunk of the USA), so you're just constantly in a deficit until you retire... which is more of an "if" than a "when" in many cases.
Which is clearly a problem, but I don't think computers are the cause.
Of course I spend more time looking at a screen - it's my job description. It's never been different in the past. But outside of work, that's a different story.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40375906
What a tragedy. What a horrible revelation - work can often take more time than being with your family. Oh no. Horrible horrible computers, how can this happen to us. It's not like the same is true in many other occupations.
On the other hand, the world outside computers was mostly bad—people who deceived me when I was just starting out, fraudulent contracts, and all the physical pain I went through in manual labor. Looking at it from the other side, people with real-world capital tend to have good relationships and good people around them. But for those without that capital, the world inside a computer can actually feel more real than the outside.
I've come to realize that trustworthy colleagues and respectful relationships largely depend on social status. And it feels like I don't really belong there.
Computers don't get angry when I can't do something. They don't ask me to meet some standard, and they don't get frustrated when I fail to meet it. I can learn at my own pace, doing what I want. In the past, I had to reach out to people online and exchange emails during that process, but now even that's been replaced by AI giving me answers.
For me, computers aren't a cheap substitute for human relationships. They're the infrastructure that gave me the autonomy, knowledge, and productive capability I never got from the real world.
A shelter and a prison can look the same from the outside. But I chose to be here, because this world inside the computer has been less painful than what I experienced outside.
When code fails, at least I can investigate why it failed. People, on the other hand, can twist the same words depending on relationships and power, and exclude you without ever explaining why.
That's why I like computers. At least when I turn on my computer, work on something, and see it run, I feel a sense of accomplishment, whether it's AI generated or hand written code.
Honestly, I'm not sure if having my own home or meeting someone compatible would change anything.
So on sheer level of time spent on computer, other humans don't stand a chance. Time spend on something doesn't tell much about how much we feel emotionally positively connected with this thing though.