zlacker

>>chagha+(OP)
I love my Pebble, my phone is always on completely silent mode and nobody but me feels or hears the Pebble. It feels quite private. I can ignore it during conversions and see what it has to say whenever I look at my wrist later. I can blindly dismiss notifications, knowing they are still open on my phone for later. I never miss important calls but I can also refuse calls without looking away from someone I have a conversation with just by touching my wrist.

But oh man is it infuriating when the Pebble shows me a spam message, for some reason it evokes hate against the spamming company to a much larger the degree than it does on my phone. I'm much more selective about what app can have notification on the Pebble. It's strange, the smartwatch just feel closer to me and it feels like people mess with me when "they use it" to disturb me for useless things.

Sorry, not really a point in this comment but it felt significant to the point of the website.

>>teeker+pc
I think it's relevant. I think there should be an addendum: the human should have total control over "how important" a given technology is to it. So for example, there's maybe 3 apps on my phone out of 50 that are allowed to use notifications. I'm always horrified when I pick up my mom's phone and it's swamped with notifications, popups in the status bar, lock screen flooded over, yuck.

>>komali+3k
Consider, when describing an arbitrary and even perhaps notional human in the singular, using literally any pronoun other than 'it'. Neuter humans are very rare, and, at least in English, using grammatically neutral pronouns to refer to humans has a long and unlovely history.

Use the singular 'they' instead. If you find that too grammatically egregious to be borne (as I do), alternate masculine and feminine pronouns (as I do). Or default to the feminine pronoun except when speaking specifically of someone male. Or default to the grammatical, if presently unfashionable, collective use of masculine pronouns. Just, seriously, do something that doesn't entail referring to a human as 'it'.

>>throwa+mp
Why does it matter when the meaning is clear and unambiguous?

>>burkam+nF
Why doesn't it?

>>throwa+mH
Because the point of language is to communicate, and if you've communicated effectively then you're done. What is the history you were referring to? Does using "it" offend some people, or something?

>>burkam+5N
Does it make your communication more effective to structure it in a fashion which distracts from its substance?

>>throwa+hO
No, so I guess I'm asking why you think it distracts from the substance. It seems unambiguously clear to me, and I can't immediately think of a way to take offense, especially in this context where the subject is just an abstract non-specific person.

I get that objectification and dehumanization have been and continue to be huge problems, I just don't see an issue here. If you're talking about a specific person, it's weird and possibly offensive, but that's not the case here.

>>burkam+9R
I think it distracts from the substance because this is the latest comment in a moderately sized and growing conversation which has nothing to do with the substance. To be sure, that conversation is one I started, but consider the possibility that other people, who are unlike me not obstreperous asses, might just quietly ignore whatever you have to say as a result of the linguistic choice with which I've taken such vocal issue.

>>throwa+oS
Yes, I did consider that possibility, that's why I asked. legodt's comment about why it might be offensive is all I was looking for, I genuinely did not think of that interpretation.

>>burkam+571
That's reasonable.

I do try to avoid basing arguments on the concept of offense, because there seem to be a lot of people for whom that is a red flag that terminates the possibility of further meaningful discussion, and also because I have some qualms of my own around the way it's used in modern discourse.

I nonetheless feel I should apologize for having, apparently without justice, taken you to be such a person, and felt it necessary as a result to argue with more care, and more circumlocution, than the situation apparently required. I'm sorry for that. Thanks for not being that guy.