Remote Amazon tribe connects to internet – wind up hooked on porn, social media
nypost.com>"It’s already saved lives," Enoque Marubo, 40, stated.
I too would take the risk of getting addicted to Internet porn if it also means immediate access to authorities and medical personnel to treat venomous snake bites, etc. much sooner. This seems like an acceptable trade-off to me.
I think it is the same as with cars. Introducing cars improves the access times of a lot of things, but as a result, supermarkets, hospitals etc. are now more sparsely distributed than ever. Everyone has a car anyways, so it makes sense to increase the actual distance.
Same goes for internet access. Every bank used to have offices with customer service in every small village. Now only some of the larger cities have an office if you're lucky. We make things as accessible as we need it to be, so reducing time to access does not necessarily improve the situation in all perspectives.
I agree with the example about cars, but will point out that the ability to distribute things much more sparsely in space is a massive upside, because it means space itself gets so much cheaper.
You can pretty reliably half your mortgage in most parts of the developed world by accepting an extra half hour on your commute - if you commute. This trend is likely to only intensify as incomes rise, the Linder Theorem [1] becomes stronger, and people become less willing to accept even a 5 minute addition to their commute in exchange for saving tens of thousands of dollars over the course of their life. (Which makes sense - 5 minutes over a 40 year career for a $100/hr salaried professional comes at a cost somewhere north of $150,000).
[1]: https://www.opus1journal.org/articles/article.asp?docID=145
This makes sense to me, but my impression (not backed by hard data mind you, just years of glancing at housing prices) is that the step increase in remote work triggered by COVID simply caused housing (i.e., residential space) prices to skyrocket in most places relative to their pre-COVID trends, surely due in part to the sudden influx of people who could make longer or no commutes work for their remote jobs. Metropolitan rents did see a temporary drop that lasted through something like mid-2020 through mid-2021, but housing prices continue to set all-time highs.
Anecdotally I definitely saw the same patterns. If I had more time I would dive deep into the economics papers generated by this natural experiment, because I would be fascinated to see what kinds of real estate ripples it caused.
Intuitively, I don't think most fully remote workers who moved moved to genuinely remote areas - maybe to smaller cities, and the outskirts of those smaller cities at that, but the amenities of any city above 100,000 or so genuinely are quite nice to have handy. I wonder if rural areas saw much of an uptick in absolute, but even in relative, terms.
“Everyone is so connected that sometimes they don’t even talk to their own family.”
Powerful words, and am sure all of us has experienced this as well.
Is there ever going to be a solution or will it just continue worsening?
The problem is the boring, insulated tribal family members suddenly need to compete with the entire world for their families attention.
Of course they’re gunna struggle
And to some extend this is a good thing.
You just need to carefully balance everything but ultimately as a 50 yo I appreciate Internet. It helps me to learn and to prepare for discussions (including the boring ones about UK royals and whatnot)
A double edged sword though. A tribal member could be overcome by jealousy if they see a idealised western lifestyle on tap
Quoting the late Charlie Munger:
Envy and jealousy kills rationality. I've heard Warren say a half a dozen times, 'It's not greed that drives the world, but envy.
What does that even mean? I can't imagine anyone in any culture is talking to their family all of the time. That would be tiresome for everyone.
Cults seem to have a fine time with this.
We’re upvoting links to NY Post now? This place is spiraling fast. Have a look at the author’s archive to get an idea of the level of journalism that just ended up on the front page:
How was the Nyt's take on it?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/americas/starlink-i...
That's not a take, that's a primary source
Here's a gift link
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/americas/starlink-i...
One of the quirks of HN (and a good one IMO most of the time) is that people tend to reply to the title and not the source. I didn’t even realize the source of the article before you mentioned it.
That’s not a quirk of HN. It’s a quirk of lazy humans, and I don’t understand how replying to titles would ever be a good thing.
Because it short circuits the tendency to only allow articles from “the right kind” of sites. It also opens up conversation on topics tangentially related to the link, but not directly about it - which end up being the best comments more often than not.
I was saddened to see that :/ It supports some of my current beliefs, so wanted it to be true. But yeah, I'm not taking the NY Post's word for it.
Hopefully Jeff Bezos will make delivery drones available for them. It'd be really bad if they have internet, but cannot order things from amazon
Does Amazon deliver to the Amazon?
Well, I hope so. Consumerism is an international human right and access to Amazon should be granted to every human in the world
In return he gets Amazon
> Flora Dutra, a Brazilian activist who works with indigenous tribes
This made it almost sound like the effort was led by an NGO but she's the co-founder of an investment company that claims to support "conservation efforts" in the rainforest and "connect indigenous communities". After digging a bit further into their website, this is what they say about ROI:
> We are committed to returning capital and giving 100% returns within 1 decade. With long-term returns of up to 300% within 25 years, for those who are seeking portfolio options. We are open to exclusivity agreements and long-term contracts linked to all project commodities (Offsets, ESG certified products, farming outputs, etc.)
So in other words they are less about "empowering indigenous communities" and more about opening up investment opportunities by privatizing indigenous land and resources.
In this light it's clear why Flora sees only positives in connecting Amazon tribes to the Internet: because it's a necessity for doing business with them.
That said, the article does bury the lede that the tribe was previously extremely prudish to the point of frowning on kissing in public. Not to defend pornography nor promote liberalism as a panacea but I wonder what role sexual repression plays in this story and to what degree it might lead to the social harm being overstated.
So instead of going to war with them because they don't want to give up land they just get a bunch of smartphones and soon they'll want porn and pizza hut instead of casava and culture ?
The tech dystopia of the past 20 years condensed in to one simple experiment
1) why would they do that to them !?
Creating investment opportunities. Also green-washing.
From the "activist"'s company's website:
> We are committed to returning capital and giving 100% returns within 1 decade. With long-term returns of up to 300% within 25 years, for those who are seeking portfolio options. We are open to exclusivity agreements and long-term contracts linked to all project commodities (Offsets, ESG certified products, farming outputs, etc.)
Note "farming outputs". A big problem with the Amazon has been rainforest being burned down to make room for farmland and pasture used for exports, so having the indigenous groups do it instead of standing in the way makes it more palatable, especially when you can also point to "conservation efforts" like turning their existing sustainable forestry into carbon offset processes and scaling up their subsistence farming for export.
So in short, they're sustainable subsistence farmers living comfortably on a GDP of zero while caring for their environment and we need to change that because a GDP of zero means you can't make money off of them. Give it twenty years and their land will be fully privatized and sold off to some external corporation and they'll all be impoverished because they can't use their land anymore and are now "unemployed" and own nothing.
decades of our immoral consumption condensed down to nine month
We’re probably way too early for it, but I expect there to be offline resorts in the future, or even entire living centers. The resort changes the connection you have to the networked world into a manageable one, by for example having a limited-use Internet cafe instead of personal cell phones. It’ll probably be a luxury too expensive for most people at first though.
Sounds like my house.
It's like a little microcosm of what the rest of us are dealing with.
Missed opportunity to research how internet influences violence and SA.
The title is very clickbait.
They also fail to mention in it how it has saved lives and had other positive impact.
> They also fail to mention in it how it has saved lives and had other positive impact.
Nonsense, it does.
"Initially, the internet was heralded as a positive for the remote tribe who were able to quickly contact authorities for help with emergencies, including potentially deadly snake bites. “It’s already saved lives,” Enoque Marubo, 40, stated. Members are also able to share educational resources with other Amazonian tribes and connect with friends and family who now live elsewhere. It has also opened up a world of possibilities for young Marubo, some of whom have been unable to conceptualize what lays beyond their immediate surrounds."
Yeah, "they also fail to mention __in it__", as in "in the title", the thing I was mentioning just before...
razing their jungle to eliminate snakes and other dangers would also save lives. throw in some chain link fences for good measure. they'll be posting on HN in no time.