Let me explain. So imagine this tv show with the plot taking place about like a few decades before the internet was invented. If I see that, I suddenly feel some sort of anxiety as in: “Damn, how did people even get information?”, like I suddenly imagine myself, there, as a child, and not having access to this seemlingly unlimited access to information that I currently have, and not to mention, entertainment content. So like, that feeling of feeling like I’m in the past (as in: I’m imagining myself being in the past), but not have access to the internet just gives me a very bad feeling. Idk how to describe it. As an introvert, I’d hate the pre-internet era.
For context, I’m Gen Z (I mean like birth year around 2000-2005), and I grew up reading a lot of Wikipedia and educational Youtube videos, and variety of news articles, and reading through a lot of internet forums. I hate imagining a world where I didn’t have that. Like Growing up 100 years ago, I would feel even more lonely and isolated, I’d probably have ended my own life out of boredom, if it weren’t for the endless amount of information I am able to obtain.
What is this weird feeling that I’m feeling?
Reverse-Nostalgia?
History-Phobia?
Techno-philia?
(Am I being weird? 🤔)
I look at TV shows like OP is talking about and think it might be kind of nice to live in an era where things are slower. If a library book might take weeks and you need to go into town to get a comic book, or there’s nothing to do until dinner except maybe some activity with the people in your close vicinity, it feels like a much more intimate way to experience the world. But I do remember in my early teens when the first wave of Personal Data Assistants came out, and I was wowed by the technology. I can edit a computer document right here in the palm of my hand. Keep my contacts with me, a calendar, a calculator, simple drawing programs. It felt like that device could do everything, years before smartphone was a word. Now I carry two phones around on two different carriers because I too fear a world without service. I sometimes want to go back to the slower world, so I do at times relish long waits at the DMV with nothing to do, or a power outage on a stormy night. But I hate feeling like I’m wasting my time. Even when there’s nothing to do, I’m always trying to do something, it’s just that being constrained forces me to pick different things. So, I’m not sure if it would help or hurt OP to hear that if they grew up before any of this existed, there’s every possibility they would have felt more fulfilled. Because time was something you could still get a handle on and not feel like it’s always slipping away. At least, not so much. In that sense, ignorance can really be bliss.
I disagree that ignorance can be bliss in this case.
Look up the Carrington Event.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing that would prevent that from happening again at literally any time.
And if the Carrington Event happened now, it would most likely knock out the vast majority of the world’s power systems and telecommunication systems… possibly for a very long time, depending on how much chaos ensued.
Even without a one in a million even like that… the world is literally on fire. Climate change is out of control, and it is consistently worse that consensus projections from 5 or 10 years ago.
Disasters will intensify, infrastructure will be knocked out, the food supply system will buckle, governments will become more authoritarian, and be more likely to go to war with each other.
It will be a very rude wakeup call for the totally smart device dependent people when their region goes offline… they will have as much of a mental breakdown from not having access to tech and the web as they will from ‘how will i eat, where will i live?’
I guess there’s two kinds of ignorance at play here.
The kind I was referring to is the ignorance of high standards. If you don’t know that you can live in a state of constant dopamine drip supplied by your cellular device, because cellular devices haven’t been invented yet, you wouldn’t miss those dopamine hits that you don’t even know will exist. I think OP would have been just fine if they were born into an earlier generation. Because they would have the bliss of not knowing what future they’re missing out on.
But to your point, the constantly supplied bliss from our internet bubbles does make us more ignorant to the things outside our bubble. And these days, the things we focus on are often dictated by the corporations who make the addictive apps. So, those corporations will profit by directing away from knowledge about how those same corporations are destroying so many parts of our world. In this case, I would argue that the ignorance is still bliss. It’s just a malignant harmful bliss that distracts from the real things we should be concerned about. And in a way, if it could snap us out the destructive path we’re on, I could see how another Carrington event might actually act as a wake-up call regarding our blatant hubris in thinking that society is ever safe from collapse.
As you mentioned, there are those who live in parts of the world where they have no access to technology, still living in that blissful ignorance of pre-computerized times. But that is a social bliss. They will still be hurt by the geological effects that the industrial age has wrought. And it won’t be pretty.
So, I think I would agree with your assertion, plus an addendum. Ignorance isn’t bliss. But it was.