~/bookshelf/the-extinction-of-experience
Today, many of us choose to live in a form of pseudo-reality governed by algorithmically-enabled individual experiences. Much of what passes for authentic experience today is vicarious and virtual.
The problem is our collective complacence in assuming that change brings improvement.
we now spend as much time consuming the experiences of others as we do having experiences of our own.
In embracing the technologies that mediate so much of our experience, we have certainly made our lives more comfortable and convenient, but it has come at a cost.
Areas of life that used to be off-limits to technological mediation and manipulation are now saturated by it.
Our experiences of pleasure, hands-on skills, self-reliance, relationships, and connection to nature are all threatened by mediating technology.
many people now bring their devices with them into the bathroom as company. In pursuing these kinds of mediated experiences so zealously, we undermine our own humanity.
Has the primacy of the face and body as humans' most powerful communication tool ended? And if so, how do our interactions change when a skill evolution fitted us for—face-to-face communication—gives way to mediated forms of interaction?
Facial expression is our primal language. The fact that our faces have less fur or hair than other mammals means that our expressions are more visible and our emotions can be more easily read.
our growing preference for mediated forms of communication impacts our ability to assess the trustworthiness of others.
Researchers who study computer-mediated communication have found that when we communicate via text or email and our bodily signals are muted, we alter our behavior to adapt to our new tools.
they found that men and women in the online conversations asked fewer questions about the other person and referred to themselves more frequently than the couples meeting face-to-face.
risk compensation effect—the documented reality that when people add safety precautions, they become bolder in their actions. You don a helmet and ski more aggressively, negating the added security the helmet provides.
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,"
Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa argues that drafting by hand represents a link between the architect and the "physical materiality" of the object he is designing. By contrast, computer design exists in an "abstract immaterial world" where "false precision" can mislead the designer.