I suppose. Those this tends to be romanticism by people with internet day dreaming the world would be better without it. Much like “post apocalyptic fantasy,” which usually focuses more on the “cool” sides of “the end of civilization” and asides outliers like “the road” or games like “day Z” don’t usually focus on the real mundane struggles and long boring stretches. The idea of a world like that appeals to people because it’s less complicated and you don’t have to “deal with peoples shit.”
I mean- I am old enough to remember and to have lived and worked in a world without internet. It wasn’t paradise. We still had problems, we still had stress. We still had blight and urbanization. We still got in arguments and had to deal with obnoxious people. We couldn’t play games online with friends or call our loved ones across the globe (without it costing hundreds of dollars) to hear their voice and chat. We couldn’t text- basically at all. I mean- there were telegraphs and HAM and…
.. later on pagers and pager code- so some people could do some of these things to some degree- but most people couldn’t, even if you had HAM radio or some obscure machine, most people you’d know and want to talk to probably didn’t. So I mean- yeah- the internet brings problems and it brings changes. The internet was invented, and caught on and became what it is today because no matter how you romanticize it, things without the internet weren’t all sunshine and good living. In fact, since there was less access- less access to information and opportunity such as finding jobs or making income, the internet has given more people the opportunity to live the life in the bottom picture. People can now live places and do a wide range of jobs from places that previously living there may have required living in poverty or traveling long distances and being away from home long periods to get work.
We romanticize what we don’t have. Any technology that increases efficiency will cause potential problems. Self driving cars- in a world of self driving cars a car doesn’t have to look like the cars we know inside. It could be basically an office with seat belts because you don’t need to sit where you can control the car or see the road. You don’t need the controls laid out like they are. So your 2 hour commute isn’t a commute anymore. It’s free time. You can read, watch shows, take classes, scroll funsub etc. So how long after self driving cars become the norm does it become the norm to expect office workers to attend meetings or do work on their commute? How long until kids are expected to do school work or lessons on the trip and so forth? We invent super markets and quick prep food and microwaves and laundry machines and dish washers and robot vacuums and all these things that save you time- it isn’t an hour or a day to get water, it takes 15 seconds. It isn’t 8-12 hours to hunt…
.. gather, and prep food (anyone who has ever had a meal prepared from a freshly hunted/slaughtered animal can appreciate that it takes a bit longer than defrosting some chicken or opening a pack of steaks…) So where is all this free time? Well- for starters, once people didn’t need to spend all day in their fields or out hunting, taking care of basic needs- we started to expect they spend all day at their jobs instead doing other work to produce things and support or advance society. Beyond that, most people don’t live with 4-10 people who split these jobs up. Remember, families used to be CRITICAL to survival. “Living on your own” wasn’t so much a thing through much of history- even modern history, unless you had servants or could pay people to take over tasks for you. It’s easy to not realize that modern convenience allows one person to do the work of a medieval family of 10 and then some. Someone would have done the wash and while that was going on maybe cleaned house all day…
A regular vacuum and a washer drier can turn that into maybe 20-60 minutes of effort. A robot vacuum can but that down every more. You’d need at least one person to hunt and at least one person to tend a garden or gather, you can do it in 5-30 minutes at the store for an entire week or months of food, or in seconds or minutes ordering online. One or two people would have to go to market for what couldn’t be made at home, Amazon and it’s done. Selling goods? eBay, Etsy, etc. done.
You don’t need someone at home to knit and sew and mend. You buy replacements for cheap or can drop off at a tailor. No problem. An answer that might takes months to get via mail or years to travel and find is here in seconds with Google.
So most of the time, if we are living in the modern world and we don’t have that peace, we don’t have the time to enjoy a beautiful view or some alone time etc- it’s our priorities. It’s very hard to die in the modern developed world. We have fat homeless people and throw away enough food to feed the rest of the world. The stuff we throw away is often better than anything the average person could get 300 years ago or even 100. So I mean- priorities. If You work and stress for a middle class or better life, that’s your priority. Not being middle class doesn’t mean not surviving. Not having iPads and traveling vacations and a car less than 10 years old aren’t going to kill you. We have the option to unplug when and if we want to a good deal of the time. We have the ability to set the expectations of others as to what is our time and what isn’t. Or- to be fair not everyone can do so practically- but most have some ability to do this.
So the world without internet isn’t some ideal if place. Don’t forget that many of the things that cause the most anger and hurt today are things that occurred in a world without internet. Many of them are things that probably wouldn’t or couldn’t have occurred in a post internet society. There is a romance to the idea of being unplugged and isolated- but isn’t that a major problem with so many? Isn’t that what drives incels and much of the depression of our times and many hate groups- that even with all the digital connections people feel isolated, or that people who are or feel isolated have trouble adapting when they are faced with a world larger than they are used to understanding?
I mean- I am old enough to remember and to have lived and worked in a world without internet. It wasn’t paradise. We still had problems, we still had stress. We still had blight and urbanization. We still got in arguments and had to deal with obnoxious people. We couldn’t play games online with friends or call our loved ones across the globe (without it costing hundreds of dollars) to hear their voice and chat. We couldn’t text- basically at all. I mean- there were telegraphs and HAM and…
You don’t need someone at home to knit and sew and mend. You buy replacements for cheap or can drop off at a tailor. No problem. An answer that might takes months to get via mail or years to travel and find is here in seconds with Google.