"Our Wire Mothers" - It's important for us to be careful that our technology does not supplant the human need for socialization.

Comments

• Candelestine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Oh, he nailed it. Surrogate connection, that’s what we’re getting. And since it’s clearly distinct from the real thing in several ways, it’s only logical that it would be a poor substitute for irl connections. Where you can actually hug someone.

  I know this isn’t a novel idea, but the wire-mother analogy is a particularly effective way to communicate it, and this is the first I’m seeing it.

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  • JustinHanagan@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Absolutely. The essay does actually address that towards the end (the two paragraphs just after the black and white photo).

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    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Having been the gay teenager in a rural southern town, I can absolutely affirm that being able to connect with other gay guys online was massively helpful to me.

      At the same time, now that I'm in a much better place, I can also affirm how much worse it is than actual real-life connection with a real community, and I do think that that's something that's quite a lot harder to access nowadays since so much social activity has shifted online.

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    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      A gay teenager stuck in rural Alabama. A woman born into a controlled religious society. A New York sports fan in Boston.

      One of these things is not like the other, unless Boston is killing New York fans regularly. (Which wouldn't surprise me. My sister's a Red Sox fan.)

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  • pavnilschanda@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is true. Even amongst humans, there’s a concept called “surrogate partners”, who work with sex therapists who help patients deal with barriers in intimate relationships.

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• nodsocket@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I don’t need family. Everyone I need in my life is a streamer on Twitch.

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  • shiroininja@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    With some families, and areas, this may be better

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• war@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Anyone who uses the word healthful to mean healthy is so mentally derailed that anything else they might write or say drowns completely in the chasm of their psychotic disconnection from ordinary human life.

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  • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Here’s a shorthand way to think about healthful technology use.

    www.merriam-webster.com/…/healthy-or-healthful

    Is it ‘Healthy’ or ‘Healthful’? You don’t win friends with arbitrary usage rules from the 1880s

    Do you like healthy food? Or do you think green vegetables only qualify as “healthful”? Those in the latter camp believe that healthful means “good for your health” (which is true), and that healthy means “having or showing good health” (which is also true), and that one word can never be used for the other. . .which, well, isn’t true.

    These vegetables are healthful. They are also healthy. Both words are correct.

    Let’s look at the histories of these two words. Healthful is older. It dates to the late 14th century, when it was used exclusively to mean “conducive to health” or “good for you.” Within about 150 years, though, healthful was also being used to mean “having or showing good health.”

    Around the same time this alternate meaning of healthful developed—in the mid-1500s—the word healthy came on the scene—and it was used with both meanings that healthful had.

    Since then it’s all been pretty much downhill for healthful. The word is now only rarely used as a synonym for “well,” and it’s not very frequently used to mean “good for you” either. Yep, since its introduction more than 450 years ago, healthy has been the more common word for both meanings.

    For a long time it seems no one cared about which word people used. The distinction between healthful and healthy was first prescribed as a rule in the 1880s. The rule, though, never had much of an impact on actual usage. In American English, healthy is far more common than healthful, and in British English healthful is downright rare. You can of course observe the distinction if you want to, and call vegetables healthful and your well friends healthy. You’ll be correct if you do, and in the minority. You can also ignore the distinction and say that both vegetables and well people are healthy. You’ll also be correct, and in the majority. It’s up to you.

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  • radix@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Why do you say this?

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• sour@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  am have friend instead

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• PP_BOY_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It already has

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