Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.
Interpretation
Separation anxiety can be reduced through consistent communication and connection, especially among young people who often share their lives online.
This quote by Jaron Lanier highlights the modern phenomenon of young people maintaining a constant online presence as a means to cope with feelings of loneliness and separation. Instead of merely seeking attention, their sharing on social media platforms is a defensive reaction to the isolation they may feel, particularly at vulnerable times like bedtime. The 'empty room' and 'isolated mind' illustrate the profound emotional challenges they face when disconnected from others.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, one might say, 'As Jaron Lanier noted, separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection, reminding us to stay engaged with our loved ones.'
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.
I mean, you can't have advertising be the only official business of the information economy if the information economy is going to take over.
When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.
We're reminded yet again: we are stronger, we are smarter, we have more fun when we include each other - when we include as many perspectives as possible.
Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.
Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses; they last while they last.
As she brought prospective buyers through, the realtor said it was an oil stain, but it was me, seeping out of the bag.
If you wear a different perfume every day, I do not recognize you.
My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved.
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