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Majority of Americans Would Like to Return to Time Before Cell Phones, Internet, According to New Poll (www.thewrap.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Seventy-seven percent of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage. As told by a new Harris Poll (via Fast Company), 63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy.

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[–] 22 points 3 years ago (8 children)

Do people really want to go back to the dark ages before Wikipedia existed? I know I don't. Knowledge is power, and the Internet is a treasure trove of it, if you know where to look.

That said, I do want to go back to computers that obeyed only their users and no one else. Malicious hardware like TPM and Pluton is really scary.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    I interpret this as really "people want to go back to a time before income inequality had ramped up as much as it has" but in their minds the overall feeling that the US is worse now for the non-elites is associated with other things

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    I think this is a part of it. Also, sprinkle in a good amount of wanting to go back to being younger.

    But yeah, the golden era of the internet (whichever you deem that to be) felt way less fucky than what we’re dealing with now.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    The people who think this apparently think the middle class lived differently than they actually did in the 1970s. I am solidly poor and lower class and I live better than middle class people did then.
    Servers and service workers weren't saving up and flying to Europe or South America back then.
    And while poverty has increased and the middle class has shrunk, that isn't necessarily because of income inequality. They are two different things. There is not a set amount of money or wealth that is divided up.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Servers and service workers weren’t saving up and flying to Europe or South America back then.

    They still aren't. They're barely keeping roofs over their heads, let alone taking expensive vacations.

    And while poverty has increased and the middle class has shrunk, that isn’t necessarily because of income inequality.

    I can't think of any other plausible explanation.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    I worked as a server and in coffee shops and yes, they most certainly are. Not all, but plenty. People generally fly to other countries much, much more than they used to. It's not just the wealthy any more, at all.

    undefined> I can’t think of any other plausible explanation.

    Housing is scarce and much more expensive for starters. Middle class people like using housing as an investment and vote to keep housing scarce because of that. It's not just the .1% that are voting for those policies.
    China has a whole lot more income inequality too but much less poverty and a much larger middle class than before. The world as a whole does. Those two dynamics are not that related. Income inequality can grow whether the middle class is growing or not and can grow or decline whether there are more people in poverty or less.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    As much as I share your centiment about tech. I don't quite realize how is TPM scary? It physically separates security-critical operation from the main CPU.

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