Returning to analog and putting digital in its place
rtalbert.orgQuick, what goes in the blank?
The free access which many young people have to *BLANK* has poisoned the mind and
corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving
their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with
wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether
they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?
I'm all for carefully considering which tools you use every day, but spare me the moralizing - it was gauche in 1790 and it hasn't improved with age.
> it was gauche in 1790 and it hasn't improved with age
You imply, but give no evidence, that the writer in 1790 was wrong. Maybe the young people in question were poisoning their minds. The fact that a quote is Old Timey™ doesn't make it wrong.
Do you not believe that art and literature have the capacity to change the audience? That is the stated goal of much of it. And if it has that power, wouldn't you be careful what you allow to shape you?
As far as digital media, there is at least some evidence that screen time can be harmful.
> The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to be nationally representative, has asked 12th-graders more than 1,000 questions every year since 1975 and queried eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. The survey asks teens how happy they are and also how much of their leisure time they spend on various activities, including nonscreen activities such as in-person social interaction and exercise, and, in recent years, screen activities such as using social media, texting, and browsing the web. The results could not be clearer: Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy. -- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...
You might have the causation backward, though. Maybe many teens spend so much time interacting with a screen because they're unhappy, not the other way around. Another top-level comment on this thread gives a possible reason: lack of autonomy.
Another quote from the same article, a paragraph or two later:
> Of course, these analyses don’t unequivocally prove that screen time causes unhappiness; it’s possible that unhappy teens spend more time online. But recent research suggests that screen time, in particular social-media use, does indeed cause unhappiness. One study asked college students with a Facebook page to complete short surveys on their phone over the course of two weeks. They’d get a text message with a link five times a day, and report on their mood and how much they’d used Facebook. The more they’d used Facebook, the unhappier they felt, but feeling unhappy did not subsequently lead to more Facebook use. -- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...
Computer screens are literally addicting. They actually alter how your brain works in negative ways [0]. If reading has the same effect, it's much smaller and the benefits probably outweigh it.
[0]: http://nypost.com/2016/08/27/its-digital-heroin-how-screens-...
Socrates went into a similar rant on the written word in general.
> [Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
John Philip Souza said that recorded music would destroy music, as amateur musicians would be so disheartened by hearing the performances of virtuosos that they would feel any practice would be futile. He also described a person listening to music by themselves as a sort of craven masturbation, using great imagery to have people imagine an emaciated antisocial hollow person curled up next to a phonograph.
Next up: VR is craven masturbation, and the increased immersion will turn children into psychopathic killers incapable of human kindness!
And yet amateur musicians are still practicing and performing. In fact, digital technology is enabling us amateur musicians to practice and get together in new ways. To give just one example (in which I recently participated) that's enabled by the Internet and the ease of repeatedly listening to a recording for reference: https://www.festivaloffriendsevents.com/ Edit: A little more explanation is in order. The event organizer announces a date, a theme, and a set list. We amateur musicians register, each stating our primary part and reserving our songs. Then we practice at home, using the studio recordings for reference. Finally, we get together and just play the songs. WIth no group rehearsal, sometimes it's not perfect, but it's fun.
And yet amateur musicians are still practicing and performing.
Of course they, because parent's point was that Sousa was horrendously wrong (obviously). Sousa's problem was a one-dimensional view of musical performance. He was foremost speaking from the POV of a professional performer. Therefore, the goal of all amateur musicians is to become professional performers, but once they hear a pro on a record they'll get discouraged and give up. This, of course, is poppycock. I play a lot of music and have little desire to make money from it. What's that about taking a fun hobby and turning it into work?
Second, I'm sure Sousa viewed recorded music as a threat to his job as a professional live performer, while ignoring that records scale and live performances don't. (Ignore for the moment the part where record companies keep most of the profits.)
WIth no group rehearsal, sometimes it's not perfect, but it's fun.
Heh, try a bluegrass jam. Someone calls a tune that I might, or might not, know. They'll give a key, maybe a chord progression. Hell, if I'm lucky, I might not only know the tune, I might have even played it in the last month so I stand a chance of coming up with a solo (or "break" in bluegrass terms) on the fly when it comes my turn. If I've never even heard the tune, but it's in (say) G with some variation of a I-IV-V progression, I can probably improvise with something that follows the melody. Or not.
Needless to say, I've had some solos/breaks that only were "not perfect", I corkscrewed into the ground with my tail on fire. That's the topsy-turvy world of jamming. But similar to your setup, even when I've completely embarrassed myself, it's always fun.
(As an aside, though it sounds like something I'd not participate in, your setup sounds like a fun way to get to play with people.)
> using great imagery to have people imagine an emaciated antisocial hollow person curled up next to a phonograph.
http://i.imgur.com/7rPcaft.jpg
...somewhat apropos to your final sentence.
If we had a time machine, it would be interesting to test the recall ability of Socrates and those of his ilk vs those who focused on written words. Perhaps there are indeed tradeoffs.
It was thought in the 1850s that chess would destroy the minds of young generations
https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your-mind-...
How is it bad advice to avoid gorging the mind and body on garbage, no matter the technology at one's disposal?
Reading an awful novel to avoid the people or duties in your life is clearly as bad as using Twitter for the same reason.
Your argument is basically: "Don't make me think about the ethics of my actions, regardless of the calendar year."
That's not the advice. The advice is 'avoid this particular form of expression/communication' with the 'garbage' aspect only tossed in as an intellectually bankrupt attempt to form negative associations in the mind of uncritical readers with the form discussed.
Speaking of uncritical readers, you clearly didn't read the same article as I did.
It's worth pointing out that Reverend Enos Hitchcock is complaining about the content of the books, not necessarily the medium of books. This is a different kind of moralizing from what the parent is talking about IMO (personally didn't think he was really moralizing, but perhaps that's just me). The parent article seems to be more worried about the medium of the Internet, and the tools being used.
Arguments against the book (e.g. Plato) may have largely been wrong in their day, but it seems short sighted to dismiss any criticisms about the Internet and the tools we use today simply on this basis. We can perhaps be cautious as a result, but that's about it.
> but spare me the moralizing
I doesn't have to be a moral argument. Some people think its simply a waste of time to stare at a screen while browsing facebook. and you get more out of life by being bored and finding something else to do thats more fulfilling.
I have to agree with what others here have said: the moralizing rubs me the wrong way and, in this case, I don't think it serves any purpose but to move blame away from the author and onto the technology that he perceives as his primary problem.
I have a child and they have access to a Kindle, our television (with Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.) as well as our Nintendo 3DS. These all (in my opinion) serve much the same purpose: entertain, distract and in some circumstances help people relax. Since the beginning my partner and I have been clear that it's not okay to sit in front of one (or cycle through them all) for hours at a time. At this point our child is seven and they rarely exceed more than 30 minutes at a time of screen interaction. For the most part, they move onto something else on their own.
Clearly part of it is personality, but I do think some part was the establishment of clear boundaries from the start. Perhaps when my child hits the teen years, I'll have to revisit this battle but for now keeping screen time at a minimum is a fairly low friction activity.
As this author demonstrates, there's a very real challenge as parents to make the time to schedule activities or to encourage children to get out and play. This strikes me as eternal problems: no seven year old is great at planning ahead or has the ability to schedule their own play dates. But, unlike when I was a child, there are more options than staring at a blank wall or digging deep holes in the backyard.
> Clearly part of it is personality, but I do think some part was the establishment of clear boundaries from the start. Perhaps when my child hits the teen years, I'll have to revisit this battle but for now keeping screen time at a minimum is a fairly low friction activity.
I think this is absolutely key. I see screens like I see sugary foods. Not inherently bad for kids, but best consumed in moderation AND something that kids will over-consume if left to their own devices.
Based on title I first assumed that this is about signal processing, but then came the disappointment.
I thought it was about analog computing like [1] but sadly not...
[1] https://blog.degruyter.com/algorithms-suck-analog-computers-...
Yeah, that's what I was expecting as well.
This is what I was going to say, but no, it's another one of these articles.
There was a great article on here about analog computing making a comeback, and I thought this may have been another article about that.
> Vinyl records, board games, paper notebooks, brick-and-mortar bookstores
All of which are less accessible to people with disabilities than their digital counterparts (at least when the digital counterparts are done right). For the latter three, I'm thinking in particular of blind people (and people with severely limited vision like me). True, a lot of computer and mobile games are not accessible to us, but some are.
All of these tools are also inaccessible to people with mobility impairments. For example, in his book _Hit Refresh_, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella writes about how some high school students helped his oldest son, who has severe cerebral palsy, more easily enjoy a wide range of music, by developing a Windows app that uses a sensor in the wheelchair. That would have been impractical with vinyl records.
> Using analog tools in teaching
This is where the author's preference for analog may inadvertently exclude some students that are there in the room. True, putting something up on a screen doesn't automatically make it accessible. But at least there are possibilities, without requiring someone to transcribe. For example, when a teacher has prepared a slide deck in advance, they can make it available to a blind student by email before the class period, and the student can then review it with a screen reader. Accessibility for content being shown on a screen in real time is still a largely unsolved problem, but a solution is feasible.
Having said all that, I certainly agree that we need to moderate our content consumption for our mental and social well-being, and moderate screen time for a good night's sleep if nothing else. I spend a lot of time in front of a screen, though I can only read it up close and use a screen reader most of the time for web browsing. I think I'll start spending some time away from the screen before I go to bed. Yes, I'll be listening to music in digital format, but as far as I know, the ear can't really tell the difference.
My issue here is that screen content today often of very low quality.
It's even worse than TV was 25 years ago (actual TV became worse too during that period).
Even what I'm having on my screen, non-work-related, is information equivalent of trash food.
I now have doubts whether I am comfortable in letting my kid on this crapfest. Case in point: games that have no gameplay, no difficulty, no plot, no information, and exist solely to make spend money via in-app purchases. This of course lets them kill off everything else on market by putting half of that money into advertising.
I agree that there's a lot of crap out there, but I'm not entirely sure that the crap to not-crap ratio is larger than it has always been. I remember saving up dimes and quarters to buy discounted Atari 2600 cartridges only to find re-hashed versions of games that I already had played. Television, in particular, I remember as being pretty terrible and repetitive. That it's so much easier to get at the stuff, that seems like the biggest change to me.
Children aren't particularly great at ferreting out the best content, but I think that when they work together with parents (or older siblings, etc.) that are at least somewhat interested then they can find some real gems. The Toca Boca games (so far) have lacked in-app purchases and can be a lot of fun. There's some really good content out on Amazon and Netflix, I find that if I spend a little time working with my child every so often, we find some really fun stuff.
There's still plenty of really excellent tv and games out there, there's just also a lot more crap too.
It seems that I am unable to navigate the offerings.
There used to be forums, there used to be communities, there used to be journals if it comes to that. Now it's nothing of that. It's awful tops from Google Play and even awfuler advertising. I don't understand how one searches for something of value.
With TV it's easier because there's at least IMDB.
It seems that I am unable to navigate the offerings.
I don't navigate them at all. I hear about shows from coworkers, or occasionally trip across something right here on HN. As a recent example, I present The Orville. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15333242) I mean, I'd heard of it, but it didn't sound like it was for me. As the thread shows, I was wrong. Now my wife and I are hooked. Or sometimes a show will just get mentioned in passing here, I'll look it up, watch an episode to find out if we'll like it. Once in a great while Netflix or iTunes will come up with something "you might like, mikestew!" that's worth watching. Not very often, though.
That's it, we just watch what I've tripped across serendipitously. And we can't keep up (just now getting to the third season of 12 Monkeys). Granted, our viewing habits might not match most (if there's nothing on, then we do something else). But if we want to sit down and watch something, we rarely lack for something of quality.
Contrast that with the "25 years ago" you use as a comparison. My memory of TV in the 90s was using the TV set to watch movies and ST:NG. I don't think we watched much, if any, actual TV shows because I recall that there was nothing worth watching except ST:NG.
Games are the same for me, whatever my circle mentions, and whatever Bethesda has put out recently. That might or might not work for others, especially if you don't like RPGs like Bethesda puts out. I've tried paying attention to IGN and the like, but, yeah...
That's not to argue that it isn't a crapfest out there. It's partially why I quit paying attention. Let's take Modern Family as an example. Seems to get rave reviews, it's been on for a while. Hmm, might be decent. I didn't even know that shows still did laugh tracks. And the jokes were recycled versions of what was on TV 40 years ago in the 70s. Drop an episode in a time machine to 1978, and the only difference viewers would notice are those strange glass hand-held devices the characters keep staring at, and wow, their microwave sure is small.
With shows it's easier. With apps it's harder because it's now what usually gets discussed and tastes vary a great deal.
There are still forums, communities, and journals. They just aren't on the Play store.
You are missing my point. There's no longer an obvious source of information about what information is not a waste of time.
Analog beats digital for some things because it's only 2017. In 2047, our tech will seem as clunky and limited as 1987 looks to us today.
Paper notebooks still beat computers in some ways. Acknowledging this is the key to keep moving forward. Computer screens are rigid, paper is flexible. Computers take Wi-Fi and batteries, paper doesn't. Screens often cut up their space with sticky navbars at the top, disclaimers at the bottom, ads on the right and even in the middle. Computer input is by a rigid and limited keyboard or by a blunt stylus across a slippery screen. Pen on paper provides friction for feedback and control.
Relevant quote from article: " [...] I got out an unused Moleskine notebook. [...] I instantly remembered how much I love writing, just the physical sensation of it and the flexibility of analog tools. [...] It's been a revelation to use a paper notebook for this. Before [...] I would try to take handwritten notes using my iPad, or use Evernote. It was always fussy and frustrating: The wifi wouldn’t connect, for example. Or, the pen would lag on my iPad and the resulting notes were illegible. Or, I was using Evernote and couldn’t easily hand-annotate what I was typing; or using OneNote and experiencing horrific data corruption and sync issues."
Am I the only one having a problem with the term "analog" for everything non-digital? First of all digits can very well be analog to something, e.g. a CD contains digits analogous to sound pressure in a similar way a vinyl records has grooves analogous to sound. Furthermore analog means quite the opposite of the "real thing" - as the name says, it is an analogy of something, not the thing itself. I could just let go and accept the new meaning of analog, but I think the implication of using it this way leads to the false impression that everything digital is just fake and a mere approximation of the-real-thing. As someone who breathes digitally, this makes me a bit sad.
I would argue that while there's nothing wrong with digital and I still do plenty of things digitally, there's something to be said for the analog as well. Digital still doesn't offer a few things that can be valuable: in-person social interaction (pretty much by definition), flexibility (I can write literally anything on a piece of paper, it doesn't have to conform to any particular structure or require I load a drawing app to make a diagram, etc), and having a physical artifact of your efforts.
I used to make a bunch of attempts at keeping journals digital only in the past, and in the past year I started keeping a physical design diary where I recorded all my game design ideas. It's hard work keeping up with it, but seeing the result of those efforts is very much worth it to me. Then in addition to that I spend a little extra time digitizing it (basically when my brain is mush and I don't want to think about things), so I have both the artifact and a digital copy of it for reference on the go.
I have a gazillion files on my hard drive, and all those things can easily get buried into archives or deep nests of folders and become 'out of sight, out of mind' for me. But I can pick up the diary, browse through it, go "Oh yeah, that thing! I should think about that some more", and if I happen to die, I bet most of my digital files will be completely overlooked, whereas people will see the design diaries and potentially do something with them.
It is a lot more work to write everything physically though. I seem to be perpetually a month behind on recording in it nowadays.
Secondly, I used to work in video games, and I really got tired of everything I worked on eventually being unable to be enjoyed by friends because it was trapped on an old platform, or the company no longer supported it, it disappeared from an app store (sometimes after only two years), the format stops being supported (in the case of my old Flash games), etc.
Meanwhile, most of my board game designs are all cards, tokens, etc that are completely self-contained, don't require system or platform upgrades, and can easily survive 50 years or more (I know, because I own board games still in excellent condition that are that old).
> Then in addition to that I spend a little extra time digitizing it (basically when my brain is mush and I don't want to think about things), so I have both the artifact and a digital copy of it for reference on the go.
That's why I use LiveScribe, it handles that step automatically.
It's not an either or...
So it detects your handwriting pretty well? I don't have any experience with smartpens.
> For the kids, they get their screens back before they leave for school
Is this the norm now for kids to have smart devices? Are there more benefits than dangers in letting a pre-teen/early teen have a smart device?
Analog is more intimate than digital. When I look at the night sky through my binoculars, the photons of distant stars land upon my retina. They touch me, and I touch them, despite the stars being light years away.
When I look through a digital camera, I see the stars but I know the photons are fraudulent. The information is there, but it's lost something.
With analog, if I could focus better, I'd see more and more detail, until it's inseparable from noise, but it's still in there somewhere
With digital, if I zoom, I know I'll find just a pixel or a cold dead square wave.
Does the author have children... or pets? Because it doesn't sound like he acknowledges his children as people at all. Perhaps the reason the children resort to screens is because it's the only way he's made possible for them to have any degree of autonomy or independence? He makes it clear that he walks around the neighborhood WITH them, he goes to visit their friends from school WITH them, etc. The reason many kids don't like to go outside isn't because outside isn't interesting - it's because the parents expect to go WITH them.
Back. Off. The kids are 8, 11, and 13. The 8 year old might still need some hand-holding, but the 11 and 13 year old should be developing independence and autonomy and figuring out who they are going to be. They're PEOPLE.
I'm a child of the 90's, I'll preface this with that.
The problem isn't the freedom from the screen - its the societal expectation that parents need to go outside with their children, and that children cannot be left alone for a fear of the unknown.
At 8, I spent hours away from adults, I listened to the radio, to music, read books, spent time with my cohorts - at age 10-11-12 - I was riding my bike miles from home alone - and this was in the age before kids had cellphones too, I always carried change for a payphone, and had phone numbers for my mom at work, and my grandparents (who lived about 6 miles away) memorized.
I see nothing wrong with reducing to eliminating screen time - digital devices are pervasive and have a stunting effect on socialization and people skills (in my opinion) - the issue is, is the presumption that children shouldn't otherwise be left alone unsupervised.
> The 8 year old might still need some hand-holding, but the 11 and 13 year old
I grew up in the 1980s - so I know this might not translate, but...
...when I was 8, my parents allowed me to do all kinds of things "by myself"; ride my bike around the block, go down to the corner Circle K for a candybar, play with friends next door, etc.
...when I was 11, I'd ride my bike much further away, and my friends and I would shoot bb guns at birds (horror!), explore farmer's fields, and more.
...when I was 13, I'd ride my bike with friends, and we'd complete multi-mile circuits around our small city, heading out to "far off places" and exploring (and falling, and getting back up).
I dunno...to me, it sounds like parents don't let their kids do these things anymore? Granted, I lived in a small city at the time (bigger today, and where I grew up is much less rural than it was back then), so maybe in a more urban context it might or might not be as safe (if nothing else than dangers from more automobile traffic).
I can't really say one way or the other which is better, but those experiences shaped me in a certain way; it's disheartening to think that kids in general don't get to experience that any longer (or as much)?