Sorry about that. Didn't mean to imply anything untoward by likening the two to each other. My mind was thinking about how often sci-fi presents a compelling view of the future, and then young scientists who read that sci-fi as children eventually make it a real thing; Asimov's multiple inventions that became reality later, etc. I'd only gotten to read the jacket blurb: Which is essentially the elemental plot of the movie: if our experience with the world is completely mediated by technology, how does that affect our base humanity? In the movie people essentially drive absolutely realistic robots around in their place, while sitting safely at home in their VR rig. This absolves you of responsibility for all your actions, because if your robot dies, you just get another one. Also, everyone in the movie is perfect, flawless, and beautiful, because your robot avatar can literally be anything at all. So everyone is perfect and flawless and has big tits, etc. Like social media... where we present ourselves in an idealized form that glosses over the messy reality of who we actually are, and covers up the icky bits. Which seems to me - from your comments, and the cover matter on this book - to be what it is delving into; how a mediated interface between you and the world can allow you to try on different personality traits, styles, ways of being, genders, etc., to explore who you are. This especially hit me when you mentioned how kids try on different personality traits to see how they "fit" as they grow... and they shouldn't be penalized by the long-tail of the internet by wearing dresses for a year when they were 7, or whatever. (Which, I realize, is basically the takeaway from my goofy position that everyone needs to "own their shit" and not be able to delete their name or posts from Hubski.) So no; I'm taking your comments seriously and am actually interested in this book. I know when KB suggests something, he does so with intention and thought... it's not an off-the-cuff comment to be ignored. Sorry I gave you the wrong impression. Hasn't been my best week... I've been a grumpy motherfucker, and it being my birthday today makes it all suck even more. "...Life on the Screen is a book not about computers, but about people and how computers are causing us to reevaluate our identities in the age of the Internet. We are using life on the screen to engage in new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, politics, sex, and the self. Life on the Screen traces a set of boundary negotiations, telling the story of the changing impact of the computer on our psychological lives and our evolving ideas about minds, bodies, and machines..."
It's like how every discussion of AI goes from zero to Skynet in ten seconds: There's deep study here, deep scholarship, deep insights and we have this natural tendency to go "whoa so what if my Instagram account could go to my job instead" "here's 80 million Bruce Willis works for cheap". It's a particular sore spot for me because anonymity and what it means is something I actually went to Reddit HQ a couple times to discuss with the guys in charge. The world could have been a better place. They never offered me the community manager position; they mentioned that the pay was terrible and that they didn't see me working for that little (which says a lot about their priorities). Erik Martin made Time Magazine making $15 an hour. Life on the Screen is particularly poignant because it's Book 2 of a trilogy. Second Self came out in '84 and was basically "whoa our self-image has no fuckin' idea what to do with computer interaction." Life on the Screen is "there's a bunch of shit here we're completely unprepared for and it might be awesome but the potential for a cataclysm is high." Alone Together is "yep we're all fucked lemme count the ways since I've been tracking this shit since '83" and then her publisher said okay Cassandra turn that frown upside down and she tried to paint a happy picture with Reclaiming Conversation which is basically "put down your phone forever or you will become a pod person." And here we are, with Matt Yglesias arguing that phone calls are barbaric.