Chrome and friends (Edge, Opera) are basically the new IE6 and only people who are new or forgetful will disagree. I hate Mozilla for missing up so bad with their stewardship of Firefox time and again, but alas, it is the only reasonable option on the table.
And while I do hate Mozilla, Google is to be disliked even more.
IE6 stagnated after MS won the browser wars. It didn't get an update for like 6 years. Chrome has become a monoculture too but I think it's one of another kind.
IE6 stagnated because that was ideal for Microsoft who was mainly in the business of desktop; Chrome is now eroding user privacy and becoming a rubbish OS because that is ideal for a Google's Ad revenue and web based business. It is the same.
It is because you think the contention is about being identifiable, while that is hardly the case.
Most people understand or at least accept that in order to facilitate payments and a company to follow various laws that are generally understood as "good for all" (like AML and tax avoidance), but require ID to access is not the same.
It is identical to accepting to paying for National Parks car pass or camp ground fees but protesting access fees. Not the same thing.
> We’ve had export restrictions on different chips and even cryptography software in the past. It doesn’t last forever.
Yeah, in the long everything will happen, from 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 being the winning Powerball numbers to heat death of the universe, but as the colloquial goes "ain't nobody got time for that!"
Once an institution or person has proven that they will take adverse action against you, it is foolish to bank on them again.
I live out in the countryside. If I run into someone in the road, I will nod my head, maybe introduce myself, and maybe chat, if the other person is interested. (To be fair, I know about 80% of the people I see in the road.) This is normal behavior. Sometimes, two cars will pass each other and stop to talk.
I have also lived in the city. If a stranger wants to talk to me in the city, either they're looking for directions (happy to help!), or they are deeply confused about appropriate social behavior in crowded spaces. In the latter case, I'm lucky if the stranger-with-no-boundaries merely wants to warn me about the dangers of the lizard people. So I've learned to ignore strangers.
> If a stranger wants to talk to me in the city, either they're looking for directions (happy to help!), or they are deeply confused about appropriate social behavior in crowded spaces
A neat summary of the article.
Talk to the old fogies in said city and they will saddle you with complaints of how people used to say good morning, how are you doing, etc. It didn’t used to be this way. Alas, we probably won’t be talking to the old fogies either.
We used to have a much more rigid system of social enforcement - for good and for bad. People used to feel bad when they did things society disliked. It had real consequences. People knew what you did and you wouldn't be invited to events or be hired. The downside was that people who lived alternative lifestyles (such as those who were gay) were also ostracised.
Unfortunately we threw the baby out with the bathwater, and decided that all actions are equally socially acceptable and there should be no social repercussions for living "differently."
This is why I prefer smaller, culturally homogenous communities. We all understand the rules and we generally abide.
> People knew what you did and you wouldn't be invited to events or be hired.
I feel like this has almost never been true in big cities: it's impossible to know everyone and unless they made the news for what they did word wouldn't travel very far.
Besides that, I also haven't observed what you're describing in both the smaller communities and the cities I've lived in. People absolutely do still get socially ostracized all the time in real life.
Isolating yourself in certain situations isn't the same as not having human interaction and sticking 10 million humans in a small area and expecting them to always interact with all of the others is in no way normal or natural. Sometimes interacting with ~100ish people (within an order of magnitude) over your month is natural. Too many is both exhausting and diluting of the meaning, too few is lonely and over isolating.
You're trying to follow an out-of-date map. Our technology-infused growth of the past 50 years has produced more widespread mental illness and psycopathy than someone in the 80's could have even imagined. At this point in our societal evolution, you cannot assume that HUMANS THEMSELVES are either normal or natural.
Human interaction, sure.
Human interaction with complete strangers, 10 inches away from you, enclosed in a metal tube you cannot escape from easily... not so much.
As they explain, living in such close proximity to thousands of strangers is also not how we evolved. The earphones are an adaptive strategy. Like masks on public transport during pandemics. We don't have to adapt to modern society, but we can make it more pleasant in various ways, depending on our preferences.
This is a very un-nuanced and combative take on a lot of people's lives. It reminds me of it being socially acceptable for the extrovert to say to the introvert, "Why don't you talk more?" while it is not acceptable for the introvert to say to the extrovert, "Why don't you talk less?"
I'd agree in general terms, but I don't think city life or existing in busy and noisy spaces is either. Isolating as described (by putting on noise-canceling earphones) is a way to manage and reduce sensory input to something within your own control.
Some people are comfortable with that, some people (say they) are used to it, but a lot of people find that blocking it out works better for them.
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