You open YouTube and the feed presents itself as a single surface. A man ranks the worst genetics for building muscle. Beside him a historian stands before a bronze statue and speaks of open-source weeks at the United Nations. A boxer faces a six-foot-seven opponent called a psychopath.
I will make some defense in the Internet's usefulness as a learning tool. Thanks to the internet, I have learned cooking, carpentry, small engine repair, appliance repair, basic electrical wiring, drywalling, automotive maintenance, computer software application and uses, computer hardware knowledge, and a number of other things I'm probably forgetting.
However, the total hours I have spent wasted online in roughly three decades since AOL rolled out its unlimited plan is staggering. If I'd used it with better moderation, taking the good, rejecting the bad, what a man I might have become.
Not just YouTube, but the Internet as a whole is everything Aldous Huxley predicted in Brave New World: an overwhelming source of irrelevant information, constant distraction, highly pleasurable sensory stimulation, games, entertainment, gossip, trivia, and worst of all, conditioned thought and slavish dependency.
George Orwell and 1984 are constantly name-dropped because the rigid bootheel he predicted was easier to see, understand, and reject. in truth though, we've become ruled not by an iron heel, but by a velvet glove, a reality far too few are willing to escape, even if they understand their captivity. (For example, I should be sanding joint compound and readying another skim coat right now, but I haven't even gotten out of bed to put my phone down and start my day.)
The internet has turned out to be the worst invention ever, and when you consider the potential it had, that is incredibly sad.
This...
Still, it's an incredibly powerful tool, but the damage is massive.
I will make some defense in the Internet's usefulness as a learning tool. Thanks to the internet, I have learned cooking, carpentry, small engine repair, appliance repair, basic electrical wiring, drywalling, automotive maintenance, computer software application and uses, computer hardware knowledge, and a number of other things I'm probably forgetting.
However, the total hours I have spent wasted online in roughly three decades since AOL rolled out its unlimited plan is staggering. If I'd used it with better moderation, taking the good, rejecting the bad, what a man I might have become.
Not just YouTube, but the Internet as a whole is everything Aldous Huxley predicted in Brave New World: an overwhelming source of irrelevant information, constant distraction, highly pleasurable sensory stimulation, games, entertainment, gossip, trivia, and worst of all, conditioned thought and slavish dependency.
George Orwell and 1984 are constantly name-dropped because the rigid bootheel he predicted was easier to see, understand, and reject. in truth though, we've become ruled not by an iron heel, but by a velvet glove, a reality far too few are willing to escape, even if they understand their captivity. (For example, I should be sanding joint compound and readying another skim coat right now, but I haven't even gotten out of bed to put my phone down and start my day.)