Choosing not to use a technology - impossible?
 

Just read this one here:
http://mashable.com/2012/08/07/no-facebook-psychopath/
It refers to an article in a german magazine. The interesting bits are, that 90% of employers check your social network accounts. Apparently to not have one and being under a certain age is suspicious, one can even be labelled a possibly psychopath. In addition at this years ccc congress there was a part on how many employers ask applicants for their facebook passwords as a background check. Now while the latter really is just plain intrusive, the former is hard to catch legally. It is another example on how it is increasingly becoming impossible to not use certain technologies when one wants to keep basic parts of life, like getting work, a bank account (in some cases you need a mobile phone to do online money transfers - and the bank only offers online banking anymore) or using public telephone (in many cities, public phones are going away as it is assumed that everyone has a mobile phone anyways)...
So it is a myth to say that it is a personal choice not to use a certain technology and thus evade the problems with it (privacy and data leaking in the case of facebook) at the expense of the regular services it provides (facebook social networking, messaging, sharing) because additional non-intentional services that are critical become attached to it (e.g. getting a job).

This is a counterargument against what some people claim - that if one does not want to have the bad parts of a technology, one can choose not to use it without major problems.

I find this genuinely funny, that you are not on facebook makes you 'suspicious'. One can use that to one's advantage, after all it would take a brave man to reject a possible murderer O.o

What a sad sad world we live in these days.

It's incredibly offensive IMO.

And title is so true. :(

No sh*t. You said it all.

Heard some news on TV today about an English woman which have chosen to live in the wild after a sudden change of heart. She thought that this world isn't enough for her wishes, she had a husband, she has two children which come to visit her and even tourists. There is something fishy about her, each person that visits her isn't allowed to use mobile phone/ tablet/ laptop etc in that place because she said "those are negative energies to the environment, and those who come around, for a little while, got to try and get rid of that as long as they're around me".

I left Facebook and Twitter, after a while some friends and colleagues started to hate on this, because "ain't no life without Facebook". Well, bullsh*t, I told them to call me on my phone or come and visit me if they want something.. no more sharing statuses, no more taggin', no more photo sharing, no more corporation makin' money on my back. My girlfriend did the same, she left Fb at the same time with me. Too stressing and you forget about your life, about your duties, responsabilities, real things and meaningful things.

I use technology to keep up with the modern world, but I couldn't give up technology because that's what I do, in architecture you need technology, industry. We need to learn how to make a balance between technology and nature, because technology can't live without nature.

That is so chool! :D How did she do it? Just walk out to the forest or did she buy land?

That's really something personal, doesn't apply to everyone the same.

I wouldn't really say its "impossible" to live without technology, because I'm sure in some sense it isn't impossible... unless we take into the account of just walking out into the wilderness to live, suddenly... how do you live out there? you've had to have learned something with the use of technology to make it able for you to live out there. TV shows, internet, ect. So it could go either way, and I'm not one to say, "everybody" because I dont know if everyone has or hasnt... if that makes sense...

I'm very lacking of sleep right now so I might not have made sense xP

Bows, arrows, and knives are also technology. Technology is intrinsically tied to our evolution, almost as much as our being bipedal. Thus, I don't view nature as separate from technology.

As a side note, auroraglacias, what is that Ghandi quote in your sig about?

Well in this case I was not that much referring to technology in general, but more or less to the "advances" that are made these days. So I know that it is hard to give up technology that one got used to - thats not news - almost everyone would have a hard time hunting and gathering food or even live from subsistence farming or fishing.... and even no electricity and no running water may be a challenge to many. But that was not my point - the point was that it is not even possible to easily say "no" to participating in the "progress trap". To say something like "I will just stick to the technology I am using now and not increase my impact on the world, give up my privacy to a corporation or any of that". I used to have no cellphone, no twitter, no facebook. And I did not want it and people told me when I ranted about how all of this can ruin so much, I was laughed at and told that I have the choice to not use it if I dont want to and that it is possible that they choose to have it while I dont and we can coexist. Thats sadly not true because all is connected and so I eventually got a cellphone when people just stopped calling me because they would have to call me on the more expensive (from cellphones) landline and maybe even try 2 or 3 locations to find me. Also no more public phones were available, so no way to call someone while in the city. People did not make up a meeting point and time anymore (19:00 at the entrance of the cinema), but started to say that we go to the city and then call each other to meet. So I got a cellphone. Then a smartphone because people started to send me photos and because some other issues like that. I still refuse to have a facebook, but already people keep sending me invites and photolinks I cannot open without an account, so I feel that I am already loosing contact to real friends just because I dont do facebook. So what choice is that then - of course I can refuse to participate in a new technology, but if I get sidetracked because of that and loose contacts or possibilities means that choosing not to go ahead with it actually means to go backwards in a bad way. This is what bugs me and this article shows it again.

The Ghandi quote - well it is something from the department "know your idols". People keep talking about the great Ghandi and how he was so good and peaceful - the quote shows the underside of radical pacifism. He would rather have millions of people go quietly to their deaths than to help them just because helping would mean violence? That is similar to the plastic-shaman "little grandmother", who once said that she would pass by and not help a woman that is getting raped even if she had the chance to do so, but that helping her would mean to hurt the rapist (e.g. by using a nonlethal weapon on him), because she is a radical pacifist and doing such a violent act would "hurt her vibrations". I am a pacifist, I like peace, but I think that in some situations, this option does not exist.

That news is... disgusting.

What we need more than technologists are people who can heal broken human spirits. I believe that the world will soon enter an era where that kind of career choice will be a lot easier than it has been, thanks to so much technology solving so many more basic problems. I hope I am right, because if we do not evolve more spiritually as a species it will be too likely that we will destroy ourselves with the easier access to weaponizable technology that is coming down the road.

I hope you are right, Sempu, but its a very double edged sword. Surely technology has for many (but not the majority) solved basic problems, but it also created many more problems that never existed before and that actually seem to draw us away from any kind of spiritual or intelligent emotional behaviour. Why else would it be, that less technologized societies consistently show more capabilities on the spiritual and emotional side than highly industrialized societies. I don't think it is a matter of using more technology to deliver us from "menial work" in order to free us to finally have time for spiritual or social or emotional matters. Technology seems to do the opposite. Like Facebook in the original post. I tried to stay off it precisely because it would eat much more of my time and it does not really provide much back except entertainment. Plus all that time spent there eventually is delivered to a company that uses whatever I would do there to make money, sell ads, build up a very valuable database etc.
Or take the TV - I saw a docu once about some people living in a small rural village - they had a community, did farming and had rituals and a spiritual awareness of the land. People came to bring them beneficial technology - solar panels and LED lights and books and eventually a TV. People there thought it would be great - the day could be extended by lights, people learned to read books in that time and the kids loved TV. I found it horrible to see the implications of that with the kids already starting to loose many hours to the TV. Overall it had an isolating effect on the community - people stayed more in their own houses and I am pretty sure that eventually they would feel like they have less time for spiritual, emotional and social matters. But of course once these technologies got a hold there, people not participating are "out", they cannot read, they dont know what was on TV, they are less productive because their days are shorter and so on. So eventually they or their kids will want to participate in all this because they dont want to be outcasts. This is the same principle as in the OP when it comes to facebook and cell phones...

Now I really wished that technology would somehow help us, get rid of "work" so that we all can enjoy plenty of free time to be spiritual or scientific or just lazy or doing arts or music. But that myth is almost as old as modern technology and for some reason it has not really fulfilled that promise. One would expect that it would at least have moved into that direction, but it has not. People now on average work more than in the 1970ies in the industrialized countries. And all agricultural or industrial societies work more hours per person and day than hunter gatherers. Some people blame capitalism for that, because it uses any gain in productivity to improve the wealth of a few at the cost of the working class who does not get to work less. Others blame the rebound effect on it - people basically unconsciously taking any gains in productivity and turning them into different living conditions and entertainment instead of more free time. I dont know what it is, but something is happening there. A farmer now can do the work of several tens of people in 1800 - yet he does not work only a few percent of the time - he actually works more than in 1800 - why? Because otherwise he would loose his farmland to the bank that gave him the credit for his machines? Because he and his kids want iPhonies to be on Failbook all day long?

Lovely sensationalist article ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circul...nd_consequence

Some 'journalism' is simply a joke, to be honest. This is like claiming that school shootings cause gun ownership bvecause a high rate of one equals a high rate of the other, instead of the other way round for actual causation.

I'd be interested in the link - IIRC, it was one place that did this, the person refused, and they now don't any more (it is even violating facebook's terms).

This article names several employers requiring access to social media profiles.

Yes, of course with some clothes and some textile materials to build her new home.

Not necessarily true.

That's bad. It's personal information right there and it would end with a lawsuit.

What's not true? Please explain. Do you mean to say facebook is bad for everyone, that it makes everyone forget their afk lives? Besides being wrong, that's something you can't know from a single perspective anyway. If anything, facebook reminds me of my afk life more than I would be reminded if I didn't use it.