I don't feel like this argument holds up as soon as he goes into examples.
AirBnB: this might be a Euro vs US thing, but my Airbnb experiences have involved a lot more human interaction than I'd expect at a hotel, as my hosts show me around.
Fiverr, Upwork, et al: if you're expecting to use these with no human interaction you're going to have a very bad time. Detailed and frequent communication is a must if you want to get good work out.
Self-driving cars: for me and a lot of other people, the primary interaction they replace is between my hands and the steering wheel. Yes, they will, if they work, also eliminate the taxi, but that's very much a side-product.
Video games: OK, this one just feels like him being a Luddite. As a frequent DOTA2 player, I can assure him that the interactions I have, whilst not always pleasant, are most definitely human in nature - and often even involve human voices! Single-player video games obviously don't involve interaction, but they compete for time with other non-interactive leisure activities like TV or reading.
It's an interesting thesis - and his points on recommender systems and music are probably the most interesting part of the article - but I don't think he proves his case very well.
Exactly, I think it deserves a whole article on its own but Airbnb is TOTALLY different in Europe, Asia and US (though I have little experience in the latter).
In Europe it's super friendly and human interaction is awesome and it feels like what Airbnb claims to be. In Japan they all do this lock key thing which is super weird and impersonal for me but I can see how it fits with their privacy-focuses culture. In the rest of Asia where I've been it's basically just a business and they leave the key with the building staff so it's almost like a hotel check-in.
The single time I was in a US Airbnb it was like in Europe just a bit more "giving us space" so to speak.
Although to be fair human interactions in DOTA2 in the 2K tier is definitely something I would aim to eliminate. Impossible to have a game without at least one player being rude. It's not as bad as LOL, but still the community is in a sad state. It's shame given that the game requires you to communicate by design.
I think this is a common misbelief. It has been proven again and again that this is not related to MMR - you will have pricks in every "tier". I can only vouch for the 3.5k range, but friends of mine in 4k-5k say the same thing. There are also a lot of threads on reddit which show that it's not exclusive to "the trenches".
My girlfriend is around 1k and her games are mostly friendly, which is interesting to say the least.
I think there is a point (after a certain amount of matches/playtime) where people start to believe they know everything about the game and start telling people how to behave and how to play, because they just "know it better". This is where it gets ugly.
I don't know. When I watch games of 4k on youtube, people seems more civil honestly. But maybe there is just a filter effect.
What's annoying is that I don't think you can pinpoint a factor that triggers rudeness. Yes, you have the typical insult following a failure to play up to the standard of some of the players. But you also have people just being uneducated: playing music with auto mic on, gaming like they are alone, feeding because they didn't get mid, trashing the enemy team... It's like being in high school all over again.
The article distinguishes human interaction per se from the mediated, channeled experience provided by Facebook, and by trivial extension other social media. This is far from the only article to posit that such a distinction exists, and has significance to the question of whether we're building a more connected world, or instead a world that only seems so.
AirBnB: this might be a Euro vs US thing, but my Airbnb experiences have involved a lot more human interaction than I'd expect at a hotel, as my hosts show me around.
Fiverr, Upwork, et al: if you're expecting to use these with no human interaction you're going to have a very bad time. Detailed and frequent communication is a must if you want to get good work out.
Self-driving cars: for me and a lot of other people, the primary interaction they replace is between my hands and the steering wheel. Yes, they will, if they work, also eliminate the taxi, but that's very much a side-product.
Video games: OK, this one just feels like him being a Luddite. As a frequent DOTA2 player, I can assure him that the interactions I have, whilst not always pleasant, are most definitely human in nature - and often even involve human voices! Single-player video games obviously don't involve interaction, but they compete for time with other non-interactive leisure activities like TV or reading.
It's an interesting thesis - and his points on recommender systems and music are probably the most interesting part of the article - but I don't think he proves his case very well.