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Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the d

Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.

jdietrich 6y ago
>Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology? Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Partial damage to a paper book leaves the rest of it functional. Partial damage to a digital book leaves it unable to boot.
  - WalterSear 6y ago
    Partial damage to a paper book leaves you with a partially damaged book that costs as much time and money as a new one to replace. Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less time than it took me to type up this reply.
  - jdietrich 6y ago
    It's quite hard to back up a paper book.
- grugagag 6y ago
  Best features to paper books are the deep focus that they confer, the durability of the books, ability to scribble on them, make outlines. You can also share paper books with your friends or even sell them. Ebooks aren’t bad at all because of the portability but theres something we loose compared to traditional books.
- naavis 6y ago
  Despite both achieving roughly the same goals, I would argue that writing on a tangible piece of paper with a pen or a pencil is wholly different from writing on an electronic device with an electronic pen, and I suspect they stimulate different areas of the brain. I might be biased by growing up with paper, but writing on my iPad with an Apple Pencil makes me feel very different things compared to writing in my notebook. Paper is physical. I can rip paper, I can spread my paper notes on the floor, I can put them away and find them 30 years later etc. To me comparing writing on paper and writing on an iPad feels like comparing walking to travelling with an electric scooter. Yes, both take you from place A to place B, but they have very different implications and are very different experiences.
- Lammy 6y ago
  I think paper books are not obsolete because I don’t want to live in a future where every copy of a certain piece of information can disappear or be rewritten instantly.
enobrev 6y ago
I don't understand why it's sad. Isn't it an attempt at approaching new things with an understanding of previous interactions? Say you give a child a maraca, and s/he learns that s/he can shake the maraca to make noise. Then you hand a child a block, s/he is going to shake the block to see if it makes noise. The interesting bit and teachable moment is that these things have different features and properties and we interact with them differently, and thus we use them for different things. How does a touchscreen fall outside of that? I say this as a recent parent who is hesitant to introduce screens and approaching the subject carefully. Also, that video is hilarious, and it's clearly for the best that he's been pulled over.
- ajford 6y ago
  This! So many people attribute this "failed attempt" to bad parenting or stunted development and fail to realize it is only the natural progression of development. Children (and adults) learn from their interactions with items, be it technology or not. Attempting to use "touchscreen behaviors" on something that isn't a touch interface is just another learning moment. They're attempting to use their knowledge and experiences to explore the world around them, as each generation did before us. We're just more connected than we ever were, so this behavior is now more noticeable due to that connectivity and sharing.
  - grugagag 6y ago
    The problem is the prolonged exposure to technology at a young age when they have to learn a myriad of other things. And the danger lies in how addictive these things are - needless to say a lot of things are designed that way. The technology is unevitable, my grandparents wrote on slates in school and our parents used to do caligraphy, etc. Tech changes, thats allright but because of its pace of acceleration some kids fall prey to other’s schemes to make money on their behalf.
- closetohome 6y ago
  Exactly. The counterpart to this is walking up to a touchscreen credit card reader ten years ago and going "uhh..." while looking for physical buttons to push.

jdietrich 6y ago

>Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology? Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Partial damage to a paper book leaves the rest of it functional. Partial damage to a digital book leaves it unable to boot.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  Partial damage to a paper book leaves you with a partially damaged book that costs as much time and money as a new one to replace. Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less time than it took me to type up this reply.
- jdietrich 6y ago
  It's quite hard to back up a paper book.
grugagag 6y ago
Best features to paper books are the deep focus that they confer, the durability of the books, ability to scribble on them, make outlines. You can also share paper books with your friends or even sell them. Ebooks aren’t bad at all because of the portability but theres something we loose compared to traditional books.
naavis 6y ago
Despite both achieving roughly the same goals, I would argue that writing on a tangible piece of paper with a pen or a pencil is wholly different from writing on an electronic device with an electronic pen, and I suspect they stimulate different areas of the brain. I might be biased by growing up with paper, but writing on my iPad with an Apple Pencil makes me feel very different things compared to writing in my notebook. Paper is physical. I can rip paper, I can spread my paper notes on the floor, I can put them away and find them 30 years later etc. To me comparing writing on paper and writing on an iPad feels like comparing walking to travelling with an electric scooter. Yes, both take you from place A to place B, but they have very different implications and are very different experiences.
Lammy 6y ago
I think paper books are not obsolete because I don’t want to live in a future where every copy of a certain piece of information can disappear or be rewritten instantly.

enobrev 6y ago

I don't understand why it's sad. Isn't it an attempt at approaching new things with an understanding of previous interactions? Say you give a child a maraca, and s/he learns that s/he can shake the maraca to make noise. Then you hand a child a block, s/he is going to shake the block to see if it makes noise. The interesting bit and teachable moment is that these things have different features and properties and we interact with them differently, and thus we use them for different things. How does a touchscreen fall outside of that? I say this as a recent parent who is hesitant to introduce screens and approaching the subject carefully. Also, that video is hilarious, and it's clearly for the best that he's been pulled over.

ajford 6y ago
This! So many people attribute this "failed attempt" to bad parenting or stunted development and fail to realize it is only the natural progression of development. Children (and adults) learn from their interactions with items, be it technology or not. Attempting to use "touchscreen behaviors" on something that isn't a touch interface is just another learning moment. They're attempting to use their knowledge and experiences to explore the world around them, as each generation did before us. We're just more connected than we ever were, so this behavior is now more noticeable due to that connectivity and sharing.
- grugagag 6y ago
  The problem is the prolonged exposure to technology at a young age when they have to learn a myriad of other things. And the danger lies in how addictive these things are - needless to say a lot of things are designed that way. The technology is unevitable, my grandparents wrote on slates in school and our parents used to do caligraphy, etc. Tech changes, thats allright but because of its pace of acceleration some kids fall prey to other’s schemes to make money on their behalf.
closetohome 6y ago
Exactly. The counterpart to this is walking up to a touchscreen credit card reader ten years ago and going "uhh..." while looking for physical buttons to push.