Lexicus
Deity
Yes, I know about this lol, I am a meme god
[RD] Individualism of Responsibility: shifting the burden to consumers
- Thread starter aimeeandbeatles
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Yes, I know about this lol, I am a meme god
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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Grilled cheese is far better anyways.
Lexicus
Deity
Pretty sure you can actually find "grilled cheese" with things like avocado and tomatoes. IMO it's false advertising to have a menu item called "grilled cheese" and have it come with anything but bread and cheese.
Timsup2nothin
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I look out the window at a thermometer outside. I actually don't need my phone to tell me what the temperature is inside, where the phone is. Taking it outside to find out the temperature outside sort of defeats the purpose of looking out the window at the thermometer.
If my phone doesn't have enough charge to make it through the night it can't wake me up in the morning. If I plug it in in the bedroom it wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me that it is fully charged. I have an alarm clock.
I don't personally own a flashlight, but I cannot even guess how many my gf has, and I have access to them. All of them are much easier to hold on target and have much greater range than the light in my phone.
What I'm getting at is that the idea that "I can do that with my phone so those things can cease to exist" is an extreme stretch, and real world events seem to be proving it inaccurate.
Lexicus
Deity
This too kinda
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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Even if you stop using a fleshlight, it doesn't mean that companies are going to stop making them.
Lexicus
Deity
*giggles like a schoolgirl*
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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...
Vowels are hard!
Vowels are hard!
Lexicus
Deity
I'm seriously not trying to be snide, but I don't see those as major problems, with all due respect. The phone gets the temperature from weather data, probably from your nearest airport. It's not measuring the temperature inside. No need for a thermometer. I don't know what type of phone you have, but you can almost definitely keep it from waking you up at night. For example, do not disturb mode. No need for an alarm clock. I own one flashlight in case the power goes out and my phone dies. I'd probably own another one if I didn't have a smart phone. All the other things remain undeniably true: our consumption of lots of random junk from CDs to GPS devices, has gone way down because computers are general-purpose machines. The other stuff doesn't cease to exist, but our consumption of those things has been in decline since the advent of the iPhone because CPUs are nifty machines.
Timsup2nothin
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Relax man, I don't bite. No due respect needs to be pointed out, I recognize it.
I'll cheerfully grant you an "in decline," so long as you acknowledge that such is a vastly different thing than "ceasing to exist." It just makes it very much harder to measure whether the net effect is really to the good.
I do have to wonder how "do not disturb" mode would interact with my alarm clock app...and I'm honestly not sure that it would override the "I am fully charged unplug me before my battery bursts into flames" warning because that might be a high priority safety feature. Experimentation pending.
Lexicus
Deity
I've had my current smartphone since 2016 and the other night I first made the acquaintance of the "water has been detected in the charging port, now take the charger out before you fry yourself" sound!
Like Aimee said though this has been extended to all sorts of areas of life.
Why are you unhappy? Not because you have a bleep job, live in a bleep area etc. Because you are depressed. We can sell you a pill for that.
Unemployed? How are your jobsearch skills? Are you selling yourself enough? Considered retraining?
Everything is the individuals fault, the system is just fine.
Why are you unhappy? Not because you have a bleep job, live in a bleep area etc. Because you are depressed. We can sell you a pill for that.
Unemployed? How are your jobsearch skills? Are you selling yourself enough? Considered retraining?
Everything is the individuals fault, the system is just fine.
Zardnaar
Deity
What they overlook is the baby boomers had access to things like free university education so they double dipped in the social benefits available then tax cuts in the 80s.
"My dad was a truck driver" and you got a free law degree plus allowance then voted for student loans in the 90s. Cheap housing, rent, and free dentist, school, free doctor, free healthcare, and a house cost 2-3 years wages (how's your property investment portfolio coming along).
Greatest generation paid for their raising and gen X/millennials will pay for their retirement.
Lexicus
Deity
Mark Fisher has some very interesting insights about the relationship between depression and political economy.
Some baby boomers had access to free university education, most never went. It was only free if you got a place.
A house costing 2-3 years wages, never happened, don't have a property portfolio and paid taxes all my life.
Not that any of that has anything to do with this topic.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That still relates to what Amy was saying, though. People seeing themselves primarily as consumers prevents them from understanding themselves as either workers or citizens. (In a way which neither of those identities preclude each other.) The problem is ultimately that a lot of problems can only be addressed through large-scale collective action, whether this action is taken through government or through unions, and the consumerist model pushes people into avenues which presupposes that large scale-collective action is either impossible, or undesirable.
Heck, even the consumerism frame ultimately concedes that insofar as it treats consumption choice as a way of pressuring corporations, who will take large-scale collective action on the consumers behalf. It just denies the greater mass of the public any direct or even meaningfully indirect role in this action. As per yooze in capitalism, only the tiny minority of big brained genius boys running major corporate entities can be trusted to make important decisions; the most anyone outside of that elite should even consider is exerting gentle pressure on them in one or other direction.
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I don't think this is a great summary of how computer hardware companies like Apple or Intel operate. They come out with new products every year and they'd love it for you to upgrade your iPhone or whatever you have and shell out some more cash. But for one, a lot computers and smart phones are excellent quality and will last a long time if you take care of them. I've had the same iPhone for several years and have no intention of buying a new one for several more. Two, a lot of new models actually have new things to offer, as opposed to the legendary superficial upgrades to GM cars from back in the 50s. I mean, Moore's law is the most obvious driver of this and consumer demand has been the driver of Moore's law. But that was 50 years of amazing, world-changing, and world-improving leaps in tech. But even since the "end of Moore's law", we've seen a lot of hardware improvements. For example, the neural net-based image processing accelerators from recent Apple products (and other companies). Not to mention all the software improvements. In fact, many of the improvements are all explicitly intended to improve energy efficiency of your devices. Sure, some changes are superficial. For example, ever-higher quality photos with more pixels than any screen you'll use to view the photo is a bit unnecessary (though it's still nice you probably don't need to buy a separate camera). But if you ask me, the trend is not "planned obsolescence" a la Alfred P Sloan.
And as for my broader point: we are currently living through a decoupling (to an extent) of economic growth/consumption from material usage and environmental impact thanks to the creative destruction of the tech sector. Energy usage per dollar GDP is in decline. For example: if I want to listen to new music or watch a new movie, the material impact is negligible. My computer, some Spotify servers, and some network infrastructure will expend a tiny amount of energy on clock cycles performing that data transfer and download. That's it. I don't need to drive to the store or buy an entire new manufactured item (DVD, CD, VHS, vinyl record, etc) to feed into some other totally separate manufactured item, both of which will eventually end up in the ocean or in a landfill in China when I'm done with them.
I know I'm not going to win any friends around here with pro-tech sector arguments, but what I'm saying I think is very obvious: there are a lot of reasons for doom and gloom in the modern world, but tech is making many things better without coordinated solutions. Coordinated solutions are very, very hard. Movements are very, very hard. I don't think we live in a world of magical, non-contentious, non-adversarial, non-inertial political solutions. Political action and social incentives are only part of almost any solution. So we should appreciate the benefits we reap from "individual" solutions and try to understand what they can do moving forward as one of our tools.
Sure, I'll agree to that. And I'll grant you the picture is a lot more complicated than what can be presented in my pithy internet posts.
With my iPhone, I turn the ringer off and place my phone screen side down on a folded handkerchief at night. The alarm goes off just fine and on time. Any action while I'm sleeping (vibrating, lighting up, etc.) are essentially eliminated.
Best of all worlds!
But I did work for 40+ years.
Consumer spending is about 75% of GDP in the US and China (likely elsewhere too). It creates most of the jobs and income for most of the world. Within the context of our current world, ending consumerism would be economically disastrous for many millions of people. But change is coming and most of you will see it: AI; workforce requirements change, 3d printing capability expansion; more tech; better tech; aging populations; all coupled with climate change, migrations, less privacy; expansion of income disparity, extremism everywhere; and resistance to change. You will live in exciting times. Embrace it.
