Today in Nifty Stuff Other People Made

[browngirl]

I have been meaning to write a post about this topic for a long time, but a picture is worth a thousand words. (Plus, I'm too fried to give today's planned Blogember post its proper due.)



(With thanks to dsudis)

Commentary from the artist, HugTheRobots on Tumblr:

I know it’s trendy to fight the system and cry that we are all becoming slaves of technology, but this attitude overlooks that computers and phones are tools for communicating. When someone thinks I’m an idiot smiling at a machine, I’m actually smiling at my girlfriend who is 10000 miles away and whom I would have never met if not for these newfangled electronics. As they say: when the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger.

I was thinking about this recently after reading some author's comment about how the Internet divides us, bla bla bla, as if he were saying anything new, original, and/or remotely true (but of course his latest glurgy book brings us together). If I started listing all the people in my life whom I met over the Internet, and all the people I know who met each other over the Internet, and all the people who exist because of those meetings… I'd never finish the list, it would be so long. So I was going to rant when I had time, but HugTheRobots has drawn and written everything I wanted to say in a calm and lovely little package.

Comments

[zelda888.livejournal.com]

But you treat people on the internet like people. The comments on any news site will demonstrate that masses of people treat the internet like their personal dumping grounds and echo chamber, and people they meet or read about there as figments who may be dismissed, diagnosed, accused, or abused at will. The technology is a tool for communicating, but it is also a tool for fostering infantile solipsism in people who should be compassionate adults.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I try, at least. :) I'm absolutely not saying that the Internet is magically benign -- I've cried myself sick and held decade-long grudges over things people said to me online, and on occasion have hurt people badly with things I've said online. The Internet is just a series of tubes a massive set of communication tools, which people can use to communicate for good or ill or cats or whatever.

The idea I'm disagreeing with is the one that people using the Internet through a phone or computer or whatnot are communing with the devices (that's what games are for) and that this is necessarily a bad thing. I think we're communicating with other people via the devices, and it's up to us to make that a good thing.