1) What is your problem? I am a heavy internet user.
2) What is your fear? I think I fear genuine intimacy. I fear trusting others. We lived through a serious betrayal and it seems we're not coming out the other side of that.
3) What is your hope? I have to say I hope in Christ. Being new to faith and church life I can't say I believe yet. But I do hope.
My number one problem is trying to navigate my life around people that are addicted to their devices. I gave up my smart phone for a very simple flip phone and I am the only one I know that has done this. I refuse to be chained to that flip phone either, but oh boy, does it create an issue in others that want the instant gratification of everyone being at their beck and call. I can work around the inability to use apps and use cash a lot for payment (my preference) but the people part of this is difficult. I have taken to leaving the room if someone I am speaking with includes checking their phone in our conversation. Some days I feel like an old dinosaur that won't step into the future, then I remind myself that what I am fighting for is my humanity that is being infiltrated and changed by something non organic.
I think when Nietzsche said "God is dead" what he meant is that people aren't able to have a relationship or communicate with God effectively, since they lost touch with the relationship with themselves and Nature, and grew more materialistic.
My aspiration this year is to finish building out a Wireless Health & Safety 101 Course to help educators and parents understand why they need to hardwire their schools and homes, and teach them why cell phones are more than just addictive, but are a form of radiation that is destroying the Earth, and the brains of our children:
I wouldn’t say it’s a fear, but I am trying to be attentive regarding my use of Substack- a platform that is bringing me a lot of joy and fulfilment in connecting to others who are interested in discussing similar things- but it’s still a digital platform that I access through a device and therefore a pull away from my real, everyday life in some ways. My concern regards the temptation for it to become an unhealthy form of escapism. I’d like it to enhance my life and not replace it, but that’s a fine line and I’m trying to tread carefully.
Really looking forward to reading comments/questions here and seeing what fruit 2024 bears for School of the Unconformed! The discussion here is always so rich. Happy New Year!
Problem: In spite of all my various efforts, I still find myself addicted to the computer. Meanwhile, my older two children are beginning to do some word-processing and so need to use the computer for a few minutes on many days. How to effect this when we don't have a family computer and can't yet buy one, so we just have my protable laptop and no rules yet exactly about where it can be used?
After thinking about it for a few weeks, I decided to move a small desk into one of our living rooms, placing it facing the wall. Two machines now live on this desk: my laptop (screen facing the room, so nothing hidden can be done on it) and the sewing machine my daughter got for Christmas. Our chairs do not really fit into this small desk so we have put a three-legged stool made by my grandpa there; it works well but it not as cozy and comfy as sitting back in the couch with the computer on my lap.
So, my daughter now has her machine located somewhere where I can help her with it easily, without having to go downstairs; we have a public place for the computer; and using the computer is no longer physically relaxing for me. I'm hoping this physically less-relaxing position will help me use the computer only for work!!
Has anyone else tried to add some discomfort in order to control device use?
At the moment, I’m not overwhelmed by problems in my everyday life, and for the most part I find life both enjoyable and meaningful. Existentially:
I didn’t grow up with a cultural or religious tradition. And looking back at my life, I’ve always been trying to find something like it or assemble something like it from the fragments I have been given (from many sources), while not being certain such a thing is possible or even what success would look like exactly, should I ever achieve it.
2. What fears do you have?
I have young children (under 10) and I wonder how to help them grow up with competence, meaning, and a healthy sense of identity. I worry about their cultural and spiritual inheritance being even weaker and more diluted than mine (see point one).
3. What hopes do you have?
Relationships give me hope. I’ve challenged myself (especially since the insanity of the Covid-era) to focus on people in my life, to try to be present for them in a real way, e.g. asking people when they need help and following up. I’m not perfect but the effort matters. As my children have gotten old enough to be involved in activities (dance in our case) I’ve taken on more volunteer roles. As an introvert and often lacking the social background and confidence (see point one again) this is by necessity a very deliberate action on my part. But in a way disadvantage can be an advantage, because you bring an poignant awareness of value that people who may be immersed in something don’t always have.
Publications like yours give me hope because I see that other people have similar questions. My husband and I discuss these questions as a couple but sometimes you need a broader perspective than what two people can bring, especially two people constantly busy with the business of surviving.
I like your blogs in part because they are a bit uncomfortable to read: I am challenged always to think about what I’m really doing. Happy new year and thanks!
1a) Too much personal information is collected by molochs
1b) Deluge of apps for every imaginable activity
1c) Decline of tangible, tactile analog instruments (radio, ergonomic workstations) in favour of slippery touchscreens of phones and tablets
2. Fears:
2a) Worldwide information chaos, post-truth society
2b) Decline of refined, respectful debate.
3. Hope:
People reconsider, and evolve from the state of being technology's slaves to its careful, considerate users, in other words: that we reject the pressure from Big Tech, and start using its inventions selectively, modestly, and wisely, where, and only where, it truly helps.
***
I am not against technology, it helps me at work and in everyday life. I am against indiscriminate use of every novelty, and against dismissal of old tools, which do their job well.
Delete social media from your smartphone, but don't discard the device altogether. In an emergency, it may save your, or somebody else's life.
1. What is your problem? I think it is rightly distinguishing between concerns that are TRULY urgent, and concerns that the online community wants me to FEEL urgent about. The high dudgeon that online communities expect their participants to maintain is simply not sustainably consistent with mental and emotional health. And so being able to distinguish histrionics from issues of genuine and practical concern is a big deal I think.
2. What is your fear? That the mystical conceptual lens for understanding artificial intelligence, which the media and some tech companies promote incessantly, will actually be believed by most people. That AI propaganda will fuel the transhumanist zeitgeist of our current moment. AI is computational, not cognitive. But AI reality is notably at odds with what people are being hectored to believe. The widespread failure of experts, and the corresponding loss of trust in institutions, is being "remedied" by encouraging people to transfer their trust to AI. An important component of nudging people along this path involves cultivating a kind of popular mystical reverence toward the machine. As if AI's have some sort of agency. As if these mere statistical models are digital life-forms, conjured from the digital abyss by uber-expert tech companies. The sophisticated complexity of these models is being used to encourage their veneration by the unsophisticated hairy unwashed. AI models are really nothing more that massively scaled statistical databases. Actual human agency, on the other hand, is neither computational nor digital. Human agency cannot be reduced to the technician's affinity for computation and math.
3. What is your hope? That the scales are starting to fall from people's eyes, and that many are starting to see that social media is to mental health as cigarettes are to physical health. i.e. Social media is the psycho-social tar and nicotine of the 21st century.
Biggest Problem(s): Learning how to navigate community life with my kids when there is such a varying degree of opinions on technology. My kids are just becoming aware that (some) of their classmates have iPads/video games etc. and I don’t want it to be a constant source of contention. I also don’t know how to navigate it smoothly with other parents in a social setting. But I am very wary of circling the wagons or isolating ourselves (if you run in Christian circles long enough you know how toxic this can become). My other biggest problem is my own technology use and how I know I will appear hypocritical when my kids catch on that mom seems to use her phone a lot but limits their technology use!! 😬
Biggest Fear: Definitely emerging technologies and how easy/difficult it will be to avoid them: AI, the thing next to the cash register at Whole Foods that wants to scan my palm 🥴
Biggest Hope(s): Christ, church community, family, the fact that so many people seem to be evaluating their relationships with technology and desiring to make changes
1. What’s your problem- being distracted or taking ‘too much time’ by the good, true & beautiful things on my phone, not available elsewhere, like Substack, homeschooling resources & my fitness business inspiration
2. Fear - being mandated to use it exclusively, with no analog options for ‘healthcare’, travel, gov & banking services. I really dislike being tracked, traced & my profile commoditized.
3. Hope - Jesus’ inevitable return and all you wonderful people
In relation to devices or any new/emerging technology
1) my problem is we are reaching or have reached a point where these devices or technologies as so ubiquitously used by employers, governments and average citizens that people are not aware they have the choice not to use them.
2) I fear that these devices and technologies will be sold or marketed to consumers as rights and not privileges. I fear they are or will be seen as tools necessary to our basic survival and it will become harder and harder to convince anyone that they can survive and even thrive without depending on such technology.
3) I have hope that truly good, well meaning people will live lives of digital minimalism and quietly but effectively show others that a good life is possible as a digital minimalist. I’ve recently been studying different Christian saints from the early years of the Church. Their stories of silent but strong resilience in the face of harsh adversity has taught me that it is completely possible to stand up to oppression or the forces of the world in a way that is at steadfast yet graceful. I’ve learned that a life lived in such a way accomplishes much because when we live that way, we decrease while God increases.
I have de-wormed myself from all apps except this one and YouTube; I write music for several hunting shows and enjoy them. But I still go down the YouTube rabbit hole. So that is an occasional problem for me. The other problem I have is accepting that the grandkids have a different connection to each other and social media - sometimes I wanna tell em NO PHONES! But acceptance and “live and let live” are my answers today so that is not a real problem. But it’s a cloud.
Fear is a combo of TMI and FOMO. I don’t want overload but don’t like to miss things. I’m afraid legacy media has exposed itself as what I’ve seen to be state sponsored media. Both “sides” too, btw. I fear I’ll never know the truth beyond my home and wonder if I ever have sometimes.
My hope is that I’ll be able to let go more with time on the two social media apps I still have. I also hope that I do NOT isolate as I get older. I have zero desire “to leave a mark on the world” or to leave any kind of digital legacy. I’m fine with my ashes blowing in the wind and to be forever forgotten in one or two generations after I pass.
I use social media too much (especially Substack Notes!).
2) What is your fear?
That we slip further down the road of discontent. At least 64 countries have elections in 2024 and our online infrastructure remains set up to reward those who are intellectually unserious at best, cynical hucksters at worst.
3) What is your hope?
That we learned the lessons of the 2010s unrest that culminated in 2020. The public is more aware than ever that algorithmic feeds, the advertising model, and click-hungry media publications are designed in a way that harms our discourse, democracy, and mental health. Hopefully, this greater awareness of the problem will stop the slide into the discord we saw the previous decade.
1) What is your problem? I am a heavy internet user.
2) What is your fear? I think I fear genuine intimacy. I fear trusting others. We lived through a serious betrayal and it seems we're not coming out the other side of that.
3) What is your hope? I have to say I hope in Christ. Being new to faith and church life I can't say I believe yet. But I do hope.
My number one problem is trying to navigate my life around people that are addicted to their devices. I gave up my smart phone for a very simple flip phone and I am the only one I know that has done this. I refuse to be chained to that flip phone either, but oh boy, does it create an issue in others that want the instant gratification of everyone being at their beck and call. I can work around the inability to use apps and use cash a lot for payment (my preference) but the people part of this is difficult. I have taken to leaving the room if someone I am speaking with includes checking their phone in our conversation. Some days I feel like an old dinosaur that won't step into the future, then I remind myself that what I am fighting for is my humanity that is being infiltrated and changed by something non organic.
I think when Nietzsche said "God is dead" what he meant is that people aren't able to have a relationship or communicate with God effectively, since they lost touch with the relationship with themselves and Nature, and grew more materialistic.
My aspiration this year is to finish building out a Wireless Health & Safety 101 Course to help educators and parents understand why they need to hardwire their schools and homes, and teach them why cell phones are more than just addictive, but are a form of radiation that is destroying the Earth, and the brains of our children:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/how-does-emf-affect-children
I wouldn’t say it’s a fear, but I am trying to be attentive regarding my use of Substack- a platform that is bringing me a lot of joy and fulfilment in connecting to others who are interested in discussing similar things- but it’s still a digital platform that I access through a device and therefore a pull away from my real, everyday life in some ways. My concern regards the temptation for it to become an unhealthy form of escapism. I’d like it to enhance my life and not replace it, but that’s a fine line and I’m trying to tread carefully.
Thanks so much for the plug, Ruth!
My hope for the New Year: That we can direct new developments in ways that enhance our humanity, rather than diminish or marginalize it.
Really looking forward to reading comments/questions here and seeing what fruit 2024 bears for School of the Unconformed! The discussion here is always so rich. Happy New Year!
Here's something interesting that has happened.
Problem: In spite of all my various efforts, I still find myself addicted to the computer. Meanwhile, my older two children are beginning to do some word-processing and so need to use the computer for a few minutes on many days. How to effect this when we don't have a family computer and can't yet buy one, so we just have my protable laptop and no rules yet exactly about where it can be used?
After thinking about it for a few weeks, I decided to move a small desk into one of our living rooms, placing it facing the wall. Two machines now live on this desk: my laptop (screen facing the room, so nothing hidden can be done on it) and the sewing machine my daughter got for Christmas. Our chairs do not really fit into this small desk so we have put a three-legged stool made by my grandpa there; it works well but it not as cozy and comfy as sitting back in the couch with the computer on my lap.
So, my daughter now has her machine located somewhere where I can help her with it easily, without having to go downstairs; we have a public place for the computer; and using the computer is no longer physically relaxing for me. I'm hoping this physically less-relaxing position will help me use the computer only for work!!
Has anyone else tried to add some discomfort in order to control device use?
1. What is your problem?
At the moment, I’m not overwhelmed by problems in my everyday life, and for the most part I find life both enjoyable and meaningful. Existentially:
I didn’t grow up with a cultural or religious tradition. And looking back at my life, I’ve always been trying to find something like it or assemble something like it from the fragments I have been given (from many sources), while not being certain such a thing is possible or even what success would look like exactly, should I ever achieve it.
2. What fears do you have?
I have young children (under 10) and I wonder how to help them grow up with competence, meaning, and a healthy sense of identity. I worry about their cultural and spiritual inheritance being even weaker and more diluted than mine (see point one).
3. What hopes do you have?
Relationships give me hope. I’ve challenged myself (especially since the insanity of the Covid-era) to focus on people in my life, to try to be present for them in a real way, e.g. asking people when they need help and following up. I’m not perfect but the effort matters. As my children have gotten old enough to be involved in activities (dance in our case) I’ve taken on more volunteer roles. As an introvert and often lacking the social background and confidence (see point one again) this is by necessity a very deliberate action on my part. But in a way disadvantage can be an advantage, because you bring an poignant awareness of value that people who may be immersed in something don’t always have.
Publications like yours give me hope because I see that other people have similar questions. My husband and I discuss these questions as a couple but sometimes you need a broader perspective than what two people can bring, especially two people constantly busy with the business of surviving.
I like your blogs in part because they are a bit uncomfortable to read: I am challenged always to think about what I’m really doing. Happy new year and thanks!
1. Problems (trends I do not accept):
1a) Too much personal information is collected by molochs
1b) Deluge of apps for every imaginable activity
1c) Decline of tangible, tactile analog instruments (radio, ergonomic workstations) in favour of slippery touchscreens of phones and tablets
2. Fears:
2a) Worldwide information chaos, post-truth society
2b) Decline of refined, respectful debate.
3. Hope:
People reconsider, and evolve from the state of being technology's slaves to its careful, considerate users, in other words: that we reject the pressure from Big Tech, and start using its inventions selectively, modestly, and wisely, where, and only where, it truly helps.
***
I am not against technology, it helps me at work and in everyday life. I am against indiscriminate use of every novelty, and against dismissal of old tools, which do their job well.
Delete social media from your smartphone, but don't discard the device altogether. In an emergency, it may save your, or somebody else's life.
1. What is your problem? I think it is rightly distinguishing between concerns that are TRULY urgent, and concerns that the online community wants me to FEEL urgent about. The high dudgeon that online communities expect their participants to maintain is simply not sustainably consistent with mental and emotional health. And so being able to distinguish histrionics from issues of genuine and practical concern is a big deal I think.
2. What is your fear? That the mystical conceptual lens for understanding artificial intelligence, which the media and some tech companies promote incessantly, will actually be believed by most people. That AI propaganda will fuel the transhumanist zeitgeist of our current moment. AI is computational, not cognitive. But AI reality is notably at odds with what people are being hectored to believe. The widespread failure of experts, and the corresponding loss of trust in institutions, is being "remedied" by encouraging people to transfer their trust to AI. An important component of nudging people along this path involves cultivating a kind of popular mystical reverence toward the machine. As if AI's have some sort of agency. As if these mere statistical models are digital life-forms, conjured from the digital abyss by uber-expert tech companies. The sophisticated complexity of these models is being used to encourage their veneration by the unsophisticated hairy unwashed. AI models are really nothing more that massively scaled statistical databases. Actual human agency, on the other hand, is neither computational nor digital. Human agency cannot be reduced to the technician's affinity for computation and math.
3. What is your hope? That the scales are starting to fall from people's eyes, and that many are starting to see that social media is to mental health as cigarettes are to physical health. i.e. Social media is the psycho-social tar and nicotine of the 21st century.
Biggest Problem(s): Learning how to navigate community life with my kids when there is such a varying degree of opinions on technology. My kids are just becoming aware that (some) of their classmates have iPads/video games etc. and I don’t want it to be a constant source of contention. I also don’t know how to navigate it smoothly with other parents in a social setting. But I am very wary of circling the wagons or isolating ourselves (if you run in Christian circles long enough you know how toxic this can become). My other biggest problem is my own technology use and how I know I will appear hypocritical when my kids catch on that mom seems to use her phone a lot but limits their technology use!! 😬
Biggest Fear: Definitely emerging technologies and how easy/difficult it will be to avoid them: AI, the thing next to the cash register at Whole Foods that wants to scan my palm 🥴
Biggest Hope(s): Christ, church community, family, the fact that so many people seem to be evaluating their relationships with technology and desiring to make changes
1. What’s your problem- being distracted or taking ‘too much time’ by the good, true & beautiful things on my phone, not available elsewhere, like Substack, homeschooling resources & my fitness business inspiration
2. Fear - being mandated to use it exclusively, with no analog options for ‘healthcare’, travel, gov & banking services. I really dislike being tracked, traced & my profile commoditized.
3. Hope - Jesus’ inevitable return and all you wonderful people
In relation to devices or any new/emerging technology
1) my problem is we are reaching or have reached a point where these devices or technologies as so ubiquitously used by employers, governments and average citizens that people are not aware they have the choice not to use them.
2) I fear that these devices and technologies will be sold or marketed to consumers as rights and not privileges. I fear they are or will be seen as tools necessary to our basic survival and it will become harder and harder to convince anyone that they can survive and even thrive without depending on such technology.
3) I have hope that truly good, well meaning people will live lives of digital minimalism and quietly but effectively show others that a good life is possible as a digital minimalist. I’ve recently been studying different Christian saints from the early years of the Church. Their stories of silent but strong resilience in the face of harsh adversity has taught me that it is completely possible to stand up to oppression or the forces of the world in a way that is at steadfast yet graceful. I’ve learned that a life lived in such a way accomplishes much because when we live that way, we decrease while God increases.
That opening quote is helping me reframe all of today, this week, and this year
I have de-wormed myself from all apps except this one and YouTube; I write music for several hunting shows and enjoy them. But I still go down the YouTube rabbit hole. So that is an occasional problem for me. The other problem I have is accepting that the grandkids have a different connection to each other and social media - sometimes I wanna tell em NO PHONES! But acceptance and “live and let live” are my answers today so that is not a real problem. But it’s a cloud.
Fear is a combo of TMI and FOMO. I don’t want overload but don’t like to miss things. I’m afraid legacy media has exposed itself as what I’ve seen to be state sponsored media. Both “sides” too, btw. I fear I’ll never know the truth beyond my home and wonder if I ever have sometimes.
My hope is that I’ll be able to let go more with time on the two social media apps I still have. I also hope that I do NOT isolate as I get older. I have zero desire “to leave a mark on the world” or to leave any kind of digital legacy. I’m fine with my ashes blowing in the wind and to be forever forgotten in one or two generations after I pass.
1) What is your problem?
I use social media too much (especially Substack Notes!).
2) What is your fear?
That we slip further down the road of discontent. At least 64 countries have elections in 2024 and our online infrastructure remains set up to reward those who are intellectually unserious at best, cynical hucksters at worst.
3) What is your hope?
That we learned the lessons of the 2010s unrest that culminated in 2020. The public is more aware than ever that algorithmic feeds, the advertising model, and click-hungry media publications are designed in a way that harms our discourse, democracy, and mental health. Hopefully, this greater awareness of the problem will stop the slide into the discord we saw the previous decade.