India village goes offline daily to help people talk
bbc.co.ukIt's easy to romanticize this decision from a distance, but it's actually quite authoritarian and a bad take at solving the tech addiction problem.
What authoritarian ? The article states that the village council installed a siren which goes off at 7 P.M. everyday and they urged people to switch off their devices. Nobody is being forced to do anything here. There is a difference between urging one to do something and coercing.
It's really interesting to me that the BBC romanticizes the actions of a state known for using utilities and communication as a means of controlling it's citizens.
Which state is not doing it?
At least in the US we don't generally turn off communications infrastructure just as a response to criticism or political unrest. Or if it does happen, the government is exceptionally good at preventing that fact from surfacing.
Most recent protests in the US, until 2020, have been fairly soft and lacking the vigor behind movements like the Arab Spring.
If we the people become enough of a threat, you can bet there are strategies in place to disrupt our communication infrastructure.
Nah US is too advanced for that, they would rather intercept those communications and send UAV/SWAT teams to directly handle them with accuracy.
People turn to the internet when real life is not very stimulating. Banning the internet does not remove that problem.
That being said, it's a small village, and it's only for a few hours. I find the measure authoritarian, but then again my context is that of individualism and urban Western culture. The village did agree to it in a communal sense, and being less reliant on entertainment could make life better there. We would have to know about more about the community and its inhabitants.
I think adults shouldn't have to be told what's bad and what's not. Not to mention that it's almost impossible to enforce and it shouldn't be anyway!