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ArishMell · 70-79, M
It can do either depedning how it is used.
It is not our natural behaviour to lock ourselves away from normal social contact as if in some digitial version of a Mediaeval hermetic order. We need meet and know other people in real-life - typically by any or all of education, work, social-clubs and pubs, hobby clubs.
Social media such as this site allows us to talk to people who are still strangers but whom we would never meet in reality, mainly by geographical distance. It should not replace our normal circles of relatives, colleagues, friends, though; and the wider the total of those circles the better.
On-line shopping may be convenient and for house-bound people really the only practical way they can buy necessities including food. Trawling round a supermarket - likely one that has wiped out the local independent shops - is a chore anyway, at least many shoppers would see it that way. Nevertheless the service is robbing its users of small but important pleasures like chance meetings with friends.
Even when in physcial gatherings, noticed how many people are terrified to switch their 'phones off, to concentrate on the real people around them rather than on a little box of electronics?
One of the most eerie experiences I have, which illustrates all this, came when I was the sole member in a club's accommodation, among a guest group of about a dozen young people. One on a lap-top on her own (work or study, probably), a couple sharing another (a film?); the rest intent on their 'phones. No-one dared say a word to anyone else, even look at each other, for some two hours. At that point I put down whatever I had found to read and sloped off to the pub, seeking real conversation with real people; not the Unholy Order of the Most Unilluminated Hermetic.
....
That's social use. (social?)
I worry, as does the world of the arts, of the way Artificial Intelligence is being developed to end one of humanity's greatest assets: creativity.
We have had for years now, people making ephemeral pop music by "sampling" others' work, in doing so celebrating low talent and effort to become talented. AI now is a growing threat to even the talented by taking their work to create essentially large-scale samples, be they of music or literature. To do so too, with no acknowledgements to the real creators, let alone royalties.
The UK Government is presently debating this and other IT-related matters, and what has seriously worried musicians and writers is that it seems minded not to stand up to the AI companies demanding the right to offer writers, composers and perfomers to opt-out of their work being used. Not to allow them to opt-in, i.e. so the creator retains control, and the company needs his or her specific permission to use the work: a huge, vital difference. If the AI corporations are given the upper hand by being allowed to use opting-out, I think they would make that as difficult as possible; but either way might well ignore any laws and ethics that obstruct their greed anyway.
.....
Elsewhere, the Internet is being used to destroy proper service. Notice how disingenuous are the banks and other organisations are when they use "customers' changing habits" as an excuse to close branches, to limit methods of obtaining services and paying for them, to limit and obstruct information or help?
The customers are not changing their habits themselves. The companies are changing and limiting what is available to the customers.
It is not our natural behaviour to lock ourselves away from normal social contact as if in some digitial version of a Mediaeval hermetic order. We need meet and know other people in real-life - typically by any or all of education, work, social-clubs and pubs, hobby clubs.
Social media such as this site allows us to talk to people who are still strangers but whom we would never meet in reality, mainly by geographical distance. It should not replace our normal circles of relatives, colleagues, friends, though; and the wider the total of those circles the better.
On-line shopping may be convenient and for house-bound people really the only practical way they can buy necessities including food. Trawling round a supermarket - likely one that has wiped out the local independent shops - is a chore anyway, at least many shoppers would see it that way. Nevertheless the service is robbing its users of small but important pleasures like chance meetings with friends.
Even when in physcial gatherings, noticed how many people are terrified to switch their 'phones off, to concentrate on the real people around them rather than on a little box of electronics?
One of the most eerie experiences I have, which illustrates all this, came when I was the sole member in a club's accommodation, among a guest group of about a dozen young people. One on a lap-top on her own (work or study, probably), a couple sharing another (a film?); the rest intent on their 'phones. No-one dared say a word to anyone else, even look at each other, for some two hours. At that point I put down whatever I had found to read and sloped off to the pub, seeking real conversation with real people; not the Unholy Order of the Most Unilluminated Hermetic.
....
That's social use. (social?)
I worry, as does the world of the arts, of the way Artificial Intelligence is being developed to end one of humanity's greatest assets: creativity.
We have had for years now, people making ephemeral pop music by "sampling" others' work, in doing so celebrating low talent and effort to become talented. AI now is a growing threat to even the talented by taking their work to create essentially large-scale samples, be they of music or literature. To do so too, with no acknowledgements to the real creators, let alone royalties.
The UK Government is presently debating this and other IT-related matters, and what has seriously worried musicians and writers is that it seems minded not to stand up to the AI companies demanding the right to offer writers, composers and perfomers to opt-out of their work being used. Not to allow them to opt-in, i.e. so the creator retains control, and the company needs his or her specific permission to use the work: a huge, vital difference. If the AI corporations are given the upper hand by being allowed to use opting-out, I think they would make that as difficult as possible; but either way might well ignore any laws and ethics that obstruct their greed anyway.
.....
Elsewhere, the Internet is being used to destroy proper service. Notice how disingenuous are the banks and other organisations are when they use "customers' changing habits" as an excuse to close branches, to limit methods of obtaining services and paying for them, to limit and obstruct information or help?
The customers are not changing their habits themselves. The companies are changing and limiting what is available to the customers.