Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/sunday-review/human-contact-luxury-screens.html

"Not only are screens themselves cheap to make, but they also make things cheaper. Any place that can fit a screen in (classrooms, hospitals, airports, restaurants) can cut costs. And any activity that can happen on a screen becomes cheaper. The texture of life, the tactile experience, is becoming smooth glass."

"The rich have grown afraid of screens. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools are booming. Humans are more expensive, and rich people are willing and able to pay for them. Conspicuous human interaction — living without a phone for a day, quitting social networks and not answering email — has become a status symbol."

"All of this has led to a curious new reality: Human contact is becoming a luxury good."

"As more screens appear in the lives of the poor, screens are disappearing from the lives of the rich. The richer you are, the more you spend to be offscreen."

"The positive behaviors and emotions human engagement elicits — think the joy of a massage. Now education, health care stores, everyone, is starting to look at how to make experiences human,” Mr. Pedraza said. “The human is very important right now."

"Pagers were important to have because it was a signal that you were an important, busy person"

"Today, he said, the opposite is true: “If you’re truly at the top of the hierarchy, you don’t have to answer to anyone. They have to answer to you.”

"The wealthy can afford to opt out of having their data and their attention sold as a product."

"Screen exposure starts young. And children who spent more than two hours a day looking at a screen got lower scores on thinking and language tests."

"Most disturbingly, the study is finding that the brains of children who spend a lot of time on screens are different. For some kids, there is premature thinning of their cerebral cortex."

"A toddler who learns to build with virtual blocks in an iPad game gains no ability to build with actual blocks"

"In Silicon Valley, time on screens is increasingly seen as unhealthy. Here, the popular elementary school is the local Waldorf School, which promises a back-to-nature, nearly screen-free education."

"So as wealthy kids are growing up with less screen time, poor kids are growing up with more. How comfortable someone is with human engagement could become a new class marker."

"there has been a concerted effort on the part of Silicon Valley behemoths to confuse the public. The poor and the middle class are told that screens are good and important for them and their children. There are fleets of psychologists and neuroscientists on staff at big tech companies working to hook eyes and minds to the screen as fast as possible and for as long as possible."

A few good comments on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19475492

I firmly believe that Co-living is the antidote to "Big Tech". 📵 (trading privacy for "status updates" and manufactured isolation to fuel the surveillance economy!) Everything we do needs to be 100% Open Source so that others can replicate it and create their own communities without having to pay a Silicon Valley investor a Tax for the privilege of human interaction. We are building the future and restoring hope to humanity! 🏡 ❤️ ✅

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Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good #60