Honestly I'm getting to the point where I'm beginning to think computing was a bad idea.

Sand was never meant to do this. Every day we stray further from the light.

Or water invented man to carry itself up the hill.

Reza Negarestani likes this idea

I think 90% of society would probably be better without having easy every day access to advanced computers. Let the HPC people keep running their physics and chemistry experiments, but maybe we dont all need to have 10 computers surrounding us 24/7.

The drawbacks of accessible computing (e.g. shortened attention span, low-quality media consumption) are vastly outweighed by its potential to allow people social mobility and learn new skills they wouldn't have otherwise.

If I were born in an era before computers and the internet, it's unlikely I would have experienced the best works of classical music and hip hop; explored poetry and the great classical books; and taught myself professional skills and improved academically with access to textbooks and online lecture courses.

I suppose it's possible I could have looked for real-life pockets of communities where these are celebrated, went to a physical library, and asked for help at a community college. But more likely, I would've just copied what my family and peers were doing when I was younger and missed out on so much growth, because of a lack of connection to people passionate about these things that the internet provided.

The democratization of information and discussion is invaluable really. Comes with downsides, which have to be addressed of course.

There's a joke I heard a long time ago that I always found amusing, though a lot of my friends I think are sick of

"If you went back 300 years and told people you taught rocks to think by blasting them with lightning, they'd burn you at the stake as a witch"

Around Spectre and other microarchitecture vulnerabilities there was a comment along the lines of "we now forced rocks to think so hard they're getting stress disorders :/"

The average quality of life and life expectancy improved a lot thanks to computing. I'm sorry you don't like emails though.

This resonated so hard for me. Sounds like depression

Delete all business applications but keep video games.

You won't like what comes next.

Purchase orders via Twitter?

Fax machines.

Much prefer e-mail, which is async over messaging which isn't. Also, my e-mail has programmable filters...

Why is messaging not async? No one is forcing you to reply right away.

Some people treat messaging as having a sync social contract. I’ve had a few people ask me within a min why I’m not responding. I’ve had to set expectations and they thought I was weird.

I really like this idea, until I consider all the other options.

This would be a great New Years resolution. No emails.