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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
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completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
xmpp fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel @gtbray Sure, but is that the case for everyone else in the chain? Maybe, maybe not. The notification system doesn't care either way. And I bet we're all less thoughtful than we would be if we were conversing by email, or some other less real time medium. Because even Mastodon, the least exploitative of all possible social media, is not designed to promote thinking about replies. Speed first. When I send an email, I spend 15-30 minutes proofreading. When I post on social media, I'm lucky if I read it over more than once. Velocity is the only thing rewarded. Again, because of real time notifications and multi-tasking. And that leads to a lot of completely avoidable drama, conflict, and nonsense.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel @gtbray And yet, here you are. Responding to my messages almost instantly. Even though they're not in any way urgent, or even important. I mean, I'm doing the exact same thing! Because that's how social media works now. But I'm not convinced it's a good thing. This conversation would probably be more productive, less distracting, and easier on all of us as a series of emails over several days. But that's not how the world works now. And that's not how any of the tools are designed to function. So we just don't interact that way. Even if it would be better for everyone involved.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@jscholes @ppatel I'd agree if it was "get fired". But usually it's "Get yelled at. Get no promotion. Get put on a performence improvement plan. Don't get the raise. Get called not a team player." If companies would just fire people for that it'd be way easier to fight in court. But they don't.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@matt @miki I mean I'm sure I was more productive in class with my Braille 'n Speak than modern students are with a laptop. Because I was actually taking notes. Well, I was actually playing battle.bas via run.bns. But I could have been taking notes. And I was absolutely crushing battle.bas because the only thing distracting me was the teacher, and she was far easier to ignore than modern social media.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@miki I dunno, apps open and close so fast that it wouldn't really be a problem. As long as they save state to disc before closing, it wouldn't be an issue.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@alexchapman @emassey0135 It probably has a lot to do with what you do for work.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel I doubt you could re-train them today, then. I'm increasingly convinced that the thing that'll destroy civilization isn't climate change, or AI. It's the expectation that everyone is always available at all times, and that we can all multi-task everything all at once. Notifications and multi-tasking are the sickness that's going to kill us all.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel That works if you don't depend on them for income/livelyhood, I guess.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel Must be nice. Whereas I got an email from someone I have to deal with angry that he'd sent me a message at 2:37 AM, and it had been an hour with no answer from me. Yes, we were in the same timezone. And no, this is not a one-off; there are multiple people who do this sort of thing multiple times in my life. And based on the people I know, everyone else has people like this, too.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel Accept that it doesn't, because the rest of society expects you to answer every message you receive within five minutes. The problem with instant notifications is that they exist and are expected. So everyone has to have them on. Opting out isn't a choice your boss, co-workers, or family will permit.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@matt @emassey0135 @alexchapman Customer support is bad for mental health because companies make it that way on purpose. If I’m going to sit on hold for 2 hours I’d rather just send an email.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@FreakyFwoof @emassey0135 @alexchapman You could argue that if people instead had to engage with the world around them while traveling, all of society would be better off. And my point isn’t so much that we can actually do this. Just that the things like notification spam and the 24 hour workday are already destroying humanity. The effect of things like AI and crypto are pretty much zero in comparison. If we could be saved it’d require a lot more than banning some random technology as a scapegoat. It’d take a complete rethink of how computers and phones work.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@FreakyFwoof @emassey0135 @alexchapman You probably already have a mixer with a bunch of devices on it. Heck, even I do and I’m not an audio guy. Because having a single device playing multiple audio streams kind of sucks. Multiple devices and a mixer makes adjusting the volume of each thing, with actual physical mobs and sliders, way easier.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@ppatel Accept that the notification spam is endless. And often your phone decides to do god knows what in the background, and now your battery is unexpectedly dead.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@FreakyFwoof @emassey0135 @alexchapman The radio would still exist, though.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@emassey0135 @alexchapman But phoning friends and actually talking to them is far better for your mental health.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@alexchapman @emassey0135 Both of those should already be phone calls though.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@emassey0135 @alexchapman Notifications are way too distracting. They've also poisoned society with the idea that everyone should always be available, at all times. If we had no notifications, everyone would just check email and social media once a day. Life would be much better all around! There is literally nothing that happens on the internet that you need to know about instantly. It can all wait 24-48 hours.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
@emassey0135 @alexchapman Sure it is. Take notes in Braille while in your first app, then when you have the notes you need, move to the second app. There's never any reason anyone needs any more than a single app open at one time.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1w
Here's omnivoice entirely failing to read the poem "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité. I used all default settings, with auto voice. I'm surprised it was this bad! I have no idea where the random noises and skipped words came from. And it gets well over half of the words wrong.
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