https://www.objc.io/issues/9-strings/string-localization/#Pl...

It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for WhatsApplebees.

But never once have I felt powerless against it. I have one simple rule: don't use it when I'm talking to people. (Unless we want to look something up on Wikipedia, in which case we do it together). This is enough. Maybe I just don't know what all you other people are doing with your phones that make them so irresistible, but I am able to move fluidly between online and offline action in the world with no second thought. If I get a notification, I take the phone out for a second to read it and put it right back away.

Many times, the phone could be anything: If I have a magazine nearby instead, I read that. Or subway map. Or shampoo bottle.

What's the real complaint here? I've seen articles like this 100 times and frankly none of them ever brings anything original to the table. I actually think this is because they derive their clickability through their vagueness. Everyone knows some jackass who brings his phone out during thanksgiving dinner with grandma, and everyone has almost run into someone who has been looking at their phone instead if the street. Is this really all you're complaining about? I'd call these minor inconveniences at best, rude behavior at worst.

Predictably, In an effort to fill the void left by actual specific examples and details, these arguments/videos take on some sort of mystical "not enjoying the world" vibe. How do they make this leap so readily? It's easy to do because everyone loves to think the rest of the world is made up of zombies. But does it even logically follow?!

That video he references has come up everywhere and seems to resonate with a lot of people. It seems to focus on the idea of savoring the moment, whatever that means. Our Galtian heroine can do it, no one else can.

I see this woman as desperately and reactionarily clinging to a past that never existed, or at best an artisan-crafted inconvenience-sporting charming paradise.

Let's get to specifics. Let's discuss specific times when we think it's not ok to talk on the phone -- at dinner, when walking on a crowded street, with grandma -- and let's give up on this high-blown pretentious rhetoric about connecting with the world and savoring the moment. It's frankly counterproductive--instead of discussing the new norms that always-connected technology dictates in specific detail, these articles have wandered into mystical, unrefutable territory that is usually the subject of religious belief, not pragmatic policy-setting.

There's a weird kind of "back in the idealistic days of yore" element to this. Texting during meals, for example, isn't something I regularly do. But. I can think of many situations where it's been important in solving a social problem. For example, if someone got lost en route and needs a little help. Or is running late and just wants to politely let you know to go ahead and order. To ignore those messages would be kind of an asshole move.

Remember when not everyone carried mobile phones? Basic communication when people were out-and-about was wildly inconvenient if not completely impossible. Tons of time and energy got wasted doing basic tasks we now completely take for granted.

What we call "tense" is actually a pretty fuzzy category, and at a general level is just the "grammaticalization of time reference", meaning the transition of a word from the expression of concrete content to an abstract time-related function word. This in all languages is a constantly evolving process and can occur over a long period of time and to different degrees. English hasn't even fully grammaticalized the notion of the future, as our future and present tenses are morphologically identical.

Which brings up another point: both English and Mandarin lack elaborate morphological change, relying on auxiliaries to convey tense rather than explicit verbal modifications. Where do we draw the line here? At the end of the day, was the collapse of the Roman empire due to the richness of the morphological tense marking of Latin?

This reminds me of the part in The Hobbit (the book, not the movie) where Gandalf takes the dwarves to meet Beorn, the skin-changer. Before entering his house, Gandalf warns the dwarves that Beorn is tempermental, and that in order to get him to help them, they should stagger their entrances.

Gandalf initially only enters with Bilbo, but as he tells Beorn about the adventures they have had so far, he repeatedly references an increasingly large number of dwarves. e.g. "You have mentioned a dozen, yet there are only ten dwarves here!", to which Gandalf replies by having two more dwarves enter.

In the end, master businessman Gandalf gets Beorn to house all 16 in their party, by means of exactly this "nibbles"-like negotiation strategy.

I really do think Gandalf has a lot to offer the business community as an astute and personable negotiator.

"Wait, no, I have a better idea, how about this. You sell me the gray Prius for 2.5% under factory invoice with the 2% APR financing we talked about earlier, or I summon the great worm Catyrpelius from his resting place in the Abyss to digest your entrails over a thousand years. What? Sure, I'll wait here while you run it by the sales manager."

This basic idea, that you can't even get the women you were entitled to by your birthright, is based on fundamentally flawed assumptions.

This is probably what you're responding to. Read this as the perception held by some asian guys. I don't mean that asian girls should feel obligated in any way to "their group". It's just that they sometimes go out of their way to associate outside of it. It's not to their detriment because everyone's preference is their right. I'm merely noting that the demographic most likely to connect with asian males due to physical/cultural familiarity is still somewhat disinclined to accept them. This situation does not need correction; I'm only trying to identify with the parent commenter.

This isn't "neo-Luddism," this is people questioning whether all of those things are actually important enough to us to warrant a context switch. As I get older, the context switches hurt more and more, and I desire a higher SNR throughout my life. That means less Facebook, less Twitter, and a lot less HN. All push notifications are off on my phone. I wouldn't recommend my system to everyone, but I do derive a tangible benefit from being less connected. (There is also something to be said for keeping the constant, mostly inane chatter of random Internet denizens out of your mind, but it's too early to draw any conclusions there).

Generally, if it happens on the Internet, it probably doesn't matter very much. I'll see it when I need to see it.

Your envy reminds me of an old man wishing he were younger.

The real wisdom comes from the realization that the only reason people are consuming so much information today is because it's a habit that feels like a necessity.

Are you a mind reader, that you can see what this person does or does not know?

I am disinclined to accept "wisdom" alongside such presumptions.

When scarcity quickly turns to abundance, people take a while to adapt. That's most obvious right now with food; people are learning how to live with a vast surplus of unnaturally delicious things.

The same thing is happening with information. When I was a kid, I was a vacuum cleaner. I read every word on every cereal box, because that was only thing I could find to read at breakfast. My first 300-baud modem was a gateway to miracles. Now there is more text available to me than I will ever finish.

Once abundance forces you to start making choices, you must ask yourself "how much of this do I need?" I don't keep cookies and chips in the house for the same reason I've blocked Facebook on my work machine: I want more than is good for me.

Or, so I can be more specific, remember that we're made out of meat. The meat wants more than the more thoughtful part of me wants. If I want more thoughtfulness, that means less distraction. Fewer blogs, less Facebook, disabling notification sounds and blinks and rumbles. More quiet.

I love technology, but I don't always love what it does to me.

I did explore the library extensively, some portions in depth, others not at all. Our consumption of information is by necessity highly selective. The real key is in who makes the selections.

In an economy of information abundance, most of the information you're presented with is selected for you by someone else, with their own agenda and motivations as for why you should read it.

This is among the most crucial reasons that I care very much about the ability for me to be able to exclude (and occasionally preferentially include) specific information sources. Advertising and marketing in particular.

What would happen if nobody ever resisted? If nobody did what the Amish do? Is there no value in questioning the trajectory of technology in society? In experimenting with alternative ways of living?

My case is boringly simple. A big part of my life is something I could call "internet addiction." It's not uncommon. You can say it's purely my personal responsibility and so on. Sure. But I'm a real person and I'm affected by technological conditions.

I don't fear technology. But pretty much everything is technology. Looking around me: furniture, cheese graters, toasters, candles, tea pots — it's all technology, no? It all has its purposes. It all shapes my life. The toaster is much simpler than my iPhone. I'm never tempted to sit and play with the toaster past when I should go to bed.

I dunno, I can only write clichés today, but I really don't think it's fair of you to call this "neo-Luddism" a "fashion." It's the way a lot of people who got turned onto tech in their youth are now beginning to perform some kind of resistance. Just because it doesn't resonate with you, because you don't need it, doesn't mean it's stupid or silly.

You clearly are self-aware of the impact when it comes to things like push notifications, but many aren't, or at least not until the trickle hits tsunami levels.

Much of the "war over little pings from inboxes" strikes me as similarly deliberate. It's not a fear of technology, it's just a recognition of certain consequences we wish to avoid -- excessive distraction, possibly even addiction. So we reason about which technologies are really worthwhile, and reject the ones with too much downside.