Smartphones: C or D?

flip phones blow treeship, don't get one, i had one for 9 years until i got an iphone last year and everything is way easier. i thought i was happier before bc i was less connected but it was more just a pain in the ass

like even if you text w/ friends more than once every couple of days you should at least get a phone w/ some kind of keyboard feature

Classic, despite people under-utilizing them. Being able to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world and having immediate access to the sum of human knowledge and information, it feels like magic.

i would still like to use my phone less especially in the evenings after work but overall i like having a smartphone more than not having one

it's so easy to just be looking at it all fucking day though

I like having one but I think it really is possible -- at least this is what I do -- to have a system of "when I'm out and about during the day the phone is with me in my pocket, but once I'm home the phone is elsewhere and I'm not staring at it." Best practice here is to keep your phone in your pants pocket and then remove pants for the night immediately upon entering the house. #lifehack

i think its power is paralyzing and it'll take a while for people to adjust

btw, despite the fact that I take smartphones to be basically classic, what's really dud is people who insist that the downside doesn't exist, and that if you find yourself checking your phone all day it can only be because checking your phone is actually and truly what is good in life

image of four friends at bar all staring at phones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7_TbMIVnA

i mean on one hand, seeing a bunch of people out in public staring at their phones sometimes seems like a glimpse into dystopia. but you could also point to a long line of behavioral changes in response to tech advances in the past, so it's probably not worth freaking out

i really have come to resent smartphones, and to a lesser extent the internet itself, but part of this is obviously just a projection of anger with myself for squandering my time

i do think that the phone has eroded some of my coping mechanisms, like when i am anxious now i just go on the internet and distract myself and end up not dealing with the things that are bothering me

I've gotten pretty good at not taking my phone out when I don't need to.

before smartphones i just didn't leave my computer ever, and now i can go out and about with the knowledge that i can still get my fix if i need it

so, classic

my inclination is to want to throw my phone into a river, but only if everyone else tossed them in at the same time. ok everyone! one...two....

but i have to temper that by remembering that new communication technologies rarely represent a 100% improvement over the existing paradigm. smartphones can represent an improvement in quality of life for people while still making some things worse. i guess it's only with time that the balance becomes apparent, though. i mean i bet socrates would probably want to revise his thoughts that books would lead to the destruction of human memory

I had an iphone until two or three years ago when I lost it. I went around a year without a phone of any kind and didn't miss it at all. I had to get a replacement phone eventually after people insisted they wanted to be able to get hold of me, this induced high levels of anxiety as this is anathema to serenity and reverie. I went into EE in Rhyl and got the cheapest smartphone they had. I also got a stick-on-back-of-phone wallet which is for people who forget their cards all the time, which I think is a good idea for people who like phones and looking at them.

I dont like cards, wallets, phones or looking at them, however I do like that smartphones exist, especially when people look at them instead of asking me questions or disrupting reverie in other ways

http://i.imgur.com/5PmRX4a.jpg

xp karl i used to be all in with derrida in saying that the perennial tendency to disparage the various technological "supplements" people use to augment their limited abilities is the wrong way to go, that "supplementing" our limitations with tools of various kinds is just what human beings do. there was never really a "state of nature" as far as humans were concerned; there is nothing to long for.

i no longer agree with this position. i think our society bombards people with too much information for them to handle. i feel overwhelmed all the time, but i am also addicted to the stimulation.

ultimately, though, i think my general thought is that it's ok to look at yr phone but maybe don't do it when you're out with friends and it's conversation time (esp. not when you're out with grandma). and i also try to keep in mind that it's inevitable that some people will persist in staring at their phone all the time and it will be incredibly annoying, just like people will still do annoying things at all times everywhere, what else is new

grandma otm

chuck 'em

xpost to treeship

things to seem to be heading in a depressing direction, overall...but the other thing is: what can we do about it?

i have to admit that my last several posts have just been an attempt to recreate this

looooooooooooooooool

your earlier post, though - i think our society bombards people with too much information for them to handle. i feel overwhelmed all the time, but i am also addicted to the stimulation - is close my own views. i feel completely overwhelmed, and also recognize that i'm probably in the minority on that. the kids seem to be completely comfortable and i feel like a dinosaur complaining about it.

i feel this way and i am young though! i am 26!

when i was a kid i watched too much tv though... i think i just have a dysfunctional relationship to technology

Posting from my phone to say this q sucks

no way, it's a good question.

It's a hatefully privileged q imo shame on anyone blames incredible technology for anything ever

why are they so great?

is life better now that your computer is in your pocket all the time?

a few xps if it was the 1800s you'd probably be diminishing your relationship to the real world by reading too many books, heaven forbid

i think that is also an issue for me though

I love mine. I do not care much about what's happening on social media or on ilx or on planet earth so that's not a problem. I just hate that I'm so readily available/reachable, but this has been the problem since I first got a cell in the 90s.

the issue comes down to having enough willpower to regulate your attention in a way that is satisfying to you, personally. but some technologies can wear down willpower more efficiently than others.

rip van wanko otm about not wanting to be reached.... in high school and college i used to leave my cell phone at home on purpose all the time but i was also kind of a weird shut in then and resented getting texts from people

i held out w a flip phone for years and marcos is otm that they're just not worth what texting's like on them, and texting is great imo

also often nice to have a map in your pocket

the part that gets on my nerves about smartphone culture is everyone's immediate, reflexive googling at the first hint of ambiguity or confusion in conversation (from "who was that guy in that thing" to "when was the march on rome again") partly because i think of socrates' warning against writing -- that it would outsource memory and thought -- but mostly because nine times out of ten the conversation would really do better to stall (or to proceed untroubled)

but really the thing that does all the things smartphones/the internet/the information era are allegedly doing to me is definitely ilx.

like if i were banned from ilx i'd only touch my smartphone when it made a noise

I still carry a "feature phone" - mainly because I'm cheap and I don't want to pay for a data plan. It has other pluses though, such as the fact that it's a better form factor for actually making phone calls, and the battery lasts for weeks. Last time I went to Verizon to get a new phone, they only had one model in the entire store that didn't require a data plan, so selection was easy as well.

last year when i lost my 4th flip phone or whatever i actually was considering just buying another one, but iirc there wasn't even a huge savings over a smartphone

also often nice to have a map in your pocket

yea having a map is killer

There was a phone so bad in EE that it was free even on a Pay As You Go plan. I was briefly tempted but in the end i put down the £15 on the cheapest smartphone instead (£15 I could have spent on records or put towards a hat)

i used to have a gold-plated motorola razr which i'd bought cheap long after razrs of any metal had ceased to be luxurious. the buttons on this phone were unusuably elegant. at the time i was much mocked for my brokerish ostentation by radical leftists w iphones.

really i should have said a magic map! a piece of fairy-tale equipment.

Having the Internet/maps/books/music in my pocket at all times is the best.

I can see social media being draining and negative but the key there is to either not use them or use them peripherally. I have an Instagram account but I just browse chefs and food porn and travel stuff while I poop. Ditto Twitter, but with musicians instead of travel.

if you live in a big city and rely on public transportation then a smartphone is amazing, you can map your path to see what route is best, check on when the next bus will show up, see what track your train will be on, etc.

if you have a long commute on public transportation then a smartphone is amazing, you can goof around, deal with email, etc.

people who check phones while talking to people are jerks but imo so are people who look at watches or clocks during convos for the most part & we all do that sometimes so being a jerk = part of "modern "busy" life"

i was hoping to find more luddites on here tbh

jes' me

ipod touch + flip phone was actually not a bad combination for me a long while, but it got frustrating enough trying to find wifi w/ the touch that getting a smartphone became a much better option

people misunderstand my lifelong mobile-phone avoidance as some kind of Luddite-elitism. if i had a smartphone i'd have it out all the time; that's what i want to avoid.

I dont like cards, wallets, phones or looking at them, however I do like that smartphones exist, especially when people look at them instead of asking me questions or disrupting reverie in other ways

― saer, Thursday, March 31, 2016 6:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

Have no need for a smartphone but cool if other people do. Have no need for a pocket sized map/book/internet either.

but then again i don't live in the city or take public transport

You Luddites are an inspiration. I hate my smartphone.

But does anyone else see possession of it as a kind of evolutionary advantage over those who don't? Difficult to give concrete examples, but the mobile communication abilities + Google knowledge + personal assistant functions might equal something substantial.

i was hoping to find more luddites on here tbh

Im not a luddite, Im a developer and take my laptop with me most places to write code, I just think phones are an invasion of privacy and dislike the feelings of entitlement that people have about my time, and that I must somehow always be reachable. Its a concerted attack on reverie by the forces of capitalism and traditionalism, by people who don't understand the need for the dreamstate, and want to nail down every fleeting second of respite, and know where you are. The smartphone is an abomination, its only use to distract people and give them something to occupy themselves while i look out the window dreaming I was somewhere else

treeship this is the post you've been looking for ^

yeah, i was looking for some of that anger toward the modern world, some fire in the belly

Except you can turn all notifications off if you want and just use it when one feels the need to invade someone else's space...

yeah but i have no self control

the part that gets on my nerves about smartphone culture is everyone's immediate, reflexive googling at the first hint of ambiguity or confusion in conversation (from "who was that guy in that thing" to "when was the march on rome again")

otm ive pretty much stopped looking stuff up in face-to-face conversations because i feel like the uninterrupted flow of the conversation is infinitely more enjoyable than knowing for sure what that guy was in

i spent a lot of time as a kid worried sick about where my parents were if they were out, if they were late i always worried there had been an accident. it was such a relief when cell phones became ubiquitous and that anxiety of knowing your loved ones were safe just evaporated.

of *not knowing if

Smartphones & cell phones are classic if only for their function in emergencies & crises

just replaced by the anxiety of not getting a text back from a loved one even though you know they should have their phone on them

xp

yes save research for alonetime

i am too poor to afford the recharge on my smahtphone now so mostly i just let it lapse for months and then occasionally recharge it as little as possible when i need to have a normal-feeling conversation with someone (i sometimes make calls through my computer but that feels weird for personal conversation)

when i leave home is when i am away from the computer and after a brief investigation of phone lyfe i do not find that much is gained by having access to my digital life in my pocket. it's nicer when you're on the go a lot, or maybe occasionally feel like checking in on a break, but i am not, and i don't, so.

xp that's not nearly as bad though, i mean i remember feeling totally helpless with absolutely no way to reach someone.

i have a smartphone. it's prety good for things.

smartphones are duds. i only use mine for its gps functions and music

however getting rid of mine would mean people can't text me, and having no social media, my family and close friends would probably be very upset

i use yelp on occasions but i'm finding it to be increasingly unreliable

It's a hatefully privileged q imo shame on anyone blames incredible technology for anything ever

― Ecomigrant gnomics (darraghmac), Thursday, March 31, 2016 8:16 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

memories of travelling through south america and sketchy dudes just handing out mobile phones with prepaid plans as you walk out of the washroom

felt like even the homeless had one whilst over there

my smahtphone has a real keyboard and a few years ago i installed an ssh app on it so that i could log in to my remote, decades-old shell account, send proper emails, perform filesystem operations and whatnot, and doing that on a smahtphone is, i must say, extremely satisfying

after a brief investigation of phone lyfe i do not find that much is gained by having access to my digital life in my pocket.

― j., Thursday, March 31, 2016 4:16 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, not at all. it is the total triumph of the virtual. the end of the world.

http://www.mindful.org/addicted-to-your-phone-try-this-practice-phone-in-hand/

^^ have not tried that but it doesn't seem like a waste of time.

i am with Treeship pretty much. I feel profoundly troubled by my phone to a far greater degree than I am by the internet in general. on the other hand a meditation app has finally led to me having a regular daily meditation practice (which I now do on my own), and i am really grateful for that.

thing with smartphones is you are held accountable for every fb invitation, semi "important" social media goings-on, and texts. you can never said i don't know or escape anything. you either remain active on it or not; any middle-ground is treated with suspicion

say even

boomin' truth; what horror!

the whole "mindfulness" approach to technology kind of fascinates me since it mostly represents a doomed attempt to re-orient the reversal of means and ends that Weber observed in the workings of technology on society. Franco Berardi makes a kind of outlandish connection between the dinging of your smartphone and the whistle that used to call workers back to work. maybe it's not that extreme, but in some ways smartphones just seem to represent the ever more complete diffusion of the protestant ethic into every aspect of our lives.

well it's a good thing mine is always on mute

i think that's a good practice

a kind of outlandish connection between the dinging of your smartphone and the whistle that used to call workers back to work ... the ever more complete diffusion of the protestant ethic

the bolsheviks made a less outlandish connection between the factory whistle and the church bell

but otm wrt protestant ethic. throw in good old fashion remorse and you got yourself a slave

xp

xp but they were talking as much about communal division of time as anything else -- this is the sound that structures people's days, and it structures them all at once -- and this of course has fractured into the freelance piecework hyperindividualist ethic

all phones should be muted unless it's your birthday

Possibly the issues you guys have is with work calling u

Don't give work yr smartphone no youse tools

I've got a 4 year old Samsung C3350. The battery still lasts for days on one charge, it has a built in LED flashlight and is waterproof to an IP67 rating. Pretty fucking smart phone!

What meditation app do you use ryan?

it was called Headspace and i liked it because it was relatively simple--but i am sure there are tons of others out there as well.

Technology is awesome. My phone is great. And I will look at it while talking to you. And at dinner. It's ok if you do too, I don't mind.

Just friend me on Miitomo if you want to discuss further.

if i'm talking to you and i'm in the middle of a sentence and your phone buzzes, will you completely forget i exist and give priority to whatever is on the phone?

because that's the shit that drives me crazy. the hierarchy that places whatever is happening on the phone at the very top

I guess it large depends on the group of friends you hang around. Most people that I'm around frequently function in the same way.

I used to feel that way about landlines too, my parents would always run to answer the ringing phone when I was growing up no matter what they were doing.

i mean, imagine you have a friend that regularly stops listening to you mid-sentence and walks away to talk to someone else whenever anyone else enters the room. unless you have crazy levels of confidence, you would probably think "i guess i'm not very important"

the looking at the phone while talking thing i can handle, as long as they're making some sort of bare minimum effort to keep a conversation going. that's annoying but not the confidence destroying. but with some people, you could be talking to them about how crappy you've felt since someone close to you passed away, and how it's been especially tough to handle given the other things going on that ----**BZZZZ BZZZZ* *xylophone ditty* *BBZZZ BBZZZ* "hello? hiiiiiiiii wassssup!? no I'm not doing anything, what's going on with you?!"

Yeah I agree, that's the worst

it's most egregious when it's a phone call, but sometimes people completely abandon you irl so that they can immediately attend to whatever text they just got, in the same kind of situation. when people do shit like that to me i want puke all over the place

I hate this decade

Don't hate the decade, hate the people. If I ever have a kid I'm gonna pass that on

Handset wringing

tommy texters

**BZZZZ BZZZZ* *xylophone ditty* *BBZZZ BBZZZ* "hello? hiiiiiiiii wassssup!? no I'm not doing anything, what's going on with you?!"

always completely hated+feared phones tbh, even when they had curly wires; whatever the other problems with our "devices" i wish their telephone function would just dry up and flake away like the vestige it is. aside from the crippling dread of having to place a call to anyone about anything (the waiting -- the cold sound of the ring -- the unreadable void from which the voice suddenly issues), there's the trapped, sweating rage i used to feel whenever my best friend would call me in the summer of eighth grade. for no reason! with no plan, and no apparent limit on how long he was willing to continue this faceless, anxious, excruciating conversation. he just wanted to "talk". as if that were possible. now no matter what i change my ringtone to that's still the feeling i get when i hear it -- OH GOD NO NOT NOW PLEASE NO NOT NOW PLEASE GO AWAY. don't call me unless you have a really specific ~90-second discussion in mind or there's a chance i could prevent a death; if the death's already happened, that'd be a text. anyway, line to be my friend starts back there everybody! don't push.

I used to feel that way about landlines too, my parents would always run to answer the ringing phone when I was growing up no matter what they were doing.

― Treeship, Thursday, March 31, 2016 6:12 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the pre-answering machine days this made sense, because you had no idea who was calling or why. Every call could be an emergency!

I get what y'all are saying here but smartphone doesn't necessarily mean other people encroaching on your personal time, or other people assuming you will be available. (You could, y'know, not answer when you didn't feel like it.)

For me it's been quite the opposite. I used to go to an office Monday through Friday 8:30-5. Large chunks of that time aren't used wisely - coffee breaks, water cooler chitchat, etc. And when I had a deadline or other urgent situation, it was expected that I would be able to stay late or come in on the weekend, Office Space-style, in addition to the M-F 9-5 stuff. That time too had a lot of slack in it - waiting for things to come back from an editor, waiting for layout to be done, etc.

You know what that was? A pretty major fucking incursion on my personal time. People would come by my desk and assume I was available to talk to them.

Nowadays I can go about my business: drinking beer, noodling around with a guitar, playing my children. People don't call me until they need something specific from me - I don't have to wait at my desk or be tied at home waiting for a phone call. We have the conversation we need to, and I either go do some work or I go back to doing what I was doing. The combination of a mobile phone and remote work has given me *better* work-life balance, not worse.

The efficiency gains are legion. One time I was out of town, and some poor coworker spent all day recreating a file that would have taken me 10 seconds to tell her how to find.

for me they're classic, not so classic for others

treezy

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/orthodox-judaism-millennials/476118/

'I find meaning within the practice of Shabbat and not touching my phone.'

everyone always having a camera still trips me out

it's cool having a ton of stuff to read at any moment

pretty much everything else i could do without

xp j.,

I know millennial jews who abstain from technology during shabbat. I think it's a good life plan.

It was annoying, last year, when I wanted to meet up with one friend who did that. We would have to arrange everything beforehand.

is life better now that your computer is in your pocket all the time?

I am akin to grandma upthread.

I recently acquired a smartphone to replace a flip phone that was about a decade old or more. I have a no-contract phone and it can do all I want it to for $100/year. The smartphone is more capable and I appreciate the extra ease of use and extra features, so I will vote classic, because it really is a better tool now than before.

Is that smartphone in my pocket all the time? Hell, no. It's in my pocket exactly as often as I feel like I want it in my pocket, which amounts to maybe 3% of my waking life. Fuck being umbilically attached to my phone or to the internet. I never miss them when I don't want them, which is most of the time.

Being without the phone is considered a crime in polite society, you must be with us and plugged in at all times, a deference and desire to be monitored by the machine. Recently i sat on a bench overlooking the Lune, and felt respite from the grinding oppression of capitalism as I enjoyed the view, reverie's warming embrace approaching when suddenly I felt a cold shiver, and i turned around and for a brief second there were hundreds of benches behind me, each one with someone I knew, had known, or had approached me once looking for directions. They were all with me also looking at the view. My old boss, the kid that fired rubber bands at the teacher in primary school, the recruiter on linkedin,, all the airbnb hosts, husbands, wives, neighbours, man-managers and property developers, Thankfully it was just a brief imagining, but what an invasion of privacy, reverie trampled underfoot like a copse by a new housing development. This happened even though my phone was turned off and at the bottom of a bag in a house somewhere. There is no escape, even without the phone they wanted to be there, filling their reach as far as it would go

I got home and there was a Linkedin request from an ex-girlfriends brother and a woman who works in the same coworking space as me, who I didnt know the name of and had never spoken to. She was overlooking the Lune as well.

and some messages. "where are you?" they said. I never ask where they are!

g. The combination of a mobile phone and remote work has given me *better* work-life balance, not worse.

Yes, i agree with this. Remote work is fantastic, I love my work (building web stuff!), and love that ALL of my work is either productive or learning. Im always working on something if im not in reverie. And then some people pay me, its not even work!

although it is a butt dialing/caught cheating ballad, I would like to repurpose the trey songz song chorus to add "Smartphones, dumb shit"

Having a small child means I now have my phone with me even at work meetings. I feel quite self-conscious about that but nursery have called a couple of times because he's bumped his head or something.
Actually I'm not sure i'd have survived the early months without my smartphone. Most of my parenting knowledge I got at 3am from others in the same boat/friendly forums. Or while sitting pushing a pram back and forth.

i have some friends who make their living writing software for phones, it's nice to always be able to check basketball scores if im away, and portable music has kept me from murdering my coworkers but on the flip i can never escape work bc my email is forwarded to me wherever i am, since im not on social media i feel like i really have to work hard to keep up social relationships, and my phone is heavy so i have to hitch my pants up tighter which is suboptimal, oh and cell service is prob my biggest single monthly expense next to health insurance

in measure i guess closer to c than d but i sometimes wish it would just go away

Having work email and docs on my smartphone is actually my favorite thing about it - given the nature of my job it's more freeing than enslaving because it means I can go do a long workout or meet a friend for a leisurely lunch knowing that if something comes up I'll find out. It means I can dash off quick email responses on the subway as they come in instead of showing up at the office like "ugh now I have this pile of email."

Also can take care of little things like ordering more diapers or paying a bill.

What I do miss is that mental quiet time with a book or long form magazine article.

What I do miss is that mental quiet time with a book or long form magazine article.

if you miss it enough.......you can still do it, I give you permission

yeah sure, free will

But the reality is, when you have a block of time such as a Subway ride in which it's not realistic to perform certain tasks, you're freed to do other things. When you are able to do more "pressing" things during that time, however, it's sort of the natural flow of things that you do the more pressing things. I think a lot of people ITT overestimate how deliberately every moment of life can be lived. We have limited amounts of willpower, we develop habits, we have demands placed on us, etc.

I don't see it as all that different from the fact that I don't keep certain foods in the house, because I know I'll eat too much of them. Sure I could "control myself" but that takes a lot more mental energy every time I see the box of whatever thing. So I just don't buy them. Similarly, I think what I'd really like is just an hour or two a day when my smartphone was completely inaccessible.

I generally deplore what seems to me to be the over-use of smartphones by those I see around me. For my own part, I had a Blackberry for about five years and resisted upgrading it to a touchscreen phone because I was convinced I would dislike the lack of a real keyboard. I have been surprised to find that I really quite enjoy the sensation of tapping on the virtual keyboard when typing on my new phone.

I also find having the fast internet connection available at all times to be very handy when I'm out and need to look up train times or find pubs and other places, as well as look up things on Wikipedia if I'm particularly curious about something.

I wouldn't want to switch to using the maps on the phone for general purposes as I prefer, when hiking, or even just walking around town, to use a paper map (Ordnance Survey map, or London A-Z atlas) and work out from it where to go, rather than simply going where the phone map and Google directions tell me to go.

When I'm on a bus or train, I do now find myself 'checking' emails and other notifications from time to time, but not to the extent that I feel it's an addiction. I have much more of a problem with that kind of addiction when using my computer at home.

A few things that do annoy me about my new (Android) phone are the constant updates (virtually every day or so) to installed apps; how heavily Google services and data collection are built into the thing; and the fact that apps are constantly running in the background unless you expressly log out or force stop them.

i went to molasses books last night without my phone. i wrote some things in a journal, i read a short story by flannery o'connor, and i had some conversations with people at the bar area. all in all a success.

you're like a person who decides to start writing real letters to people, like that person on that day i mean

i might do that who knows.

added Jeff on miitomo as requested

Can't wait for the next time you visit and we can go get a beer and interact through Miitomo exclusively.

funny i just sent a letter to my cousin who lives in the next city over

it read

"Dearest cousin,

I hope this letter finds you well. It would seem as though curiosity got the best of me and so I rummaged through the desk drawer, grasped a pen, and am now writing to you in hopes that I may discover what, in Heaven's name, you are up to at time of receiving.

I am, Madame, your most humble and obedient servant,

Infinity"

i let out a chuckle at the end

heck yeah xxp

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/480240/adventures-in-grayscale/

cool to learn that f sharp has amorous designs upon a blood relative

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

we're all blood relatives in some way right

can i get yr sister's number?

sure

strangely, even though I spend every second I'm at home or in work F5ing the internet constantly instead of whatever I should be doing in a horrible compulsion which makes me hate myself, I mostly find the lure of internet-in-pocket quite resistable when I'm out and about

I know this prob sounds a bit of a sanctimonious "I don't even own a TV!" answer but seriously I would like to bottle whatever I find relatively non-addictive about internet in phone form and sprinkle it over my laptop (plus sell it for profit share it for the good of humanity)

PS I will take all this back tomorrow as I'll be at my parents' house and when they spend the evening slumped in front of 5 hours of TV I will be twitching and craving my internet dose in any form it's available to me in, i.e. the phone, and no amount of trying to be polite or even reading a book will do

strangely, even though I spend every second I'm at home or in work F5ing the internet constantly instead of whatever I should be doing in a horrible compulsion which makes me hate myself, I mostly find the lure of internet-in-pocket quite resistable when I'm out and about

this is me as well. occasionally i remember to look at instagram. but the smartphone era happened a hair too late to break me of the compulsion to be carrying a book everywhere so that's still usually the way i avoid living in the moment. at home yeah f5 zombie.

forgot my phone at home when I went to dinner last night, didn't care at all

I can't think of a scenario where I wouldn't go back and get my phone.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I finally had to have my work phone replaced this week. The touch ID sensor and the lock button were shot. After I had to resort to using the Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network "soft boot" trick to power it down so they could switch the number & service package over to my new phone's SIM and IMEI, it went into a reboot loop which it was no longer able to complete. Just every 20 seconds or so, the boot screen would appear and then fade away as the startup sequence failed, again and again. Finally I killed it dead by just popping the SIM out.

I used to hate smartphones, hate hate hate, went without a personal phone for like 5 years because I refused to get one other than whatever the job deigned to issue me. Now I'm all sentimental.

http://i.imgur.com/TePqnHV.png

https://np.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/4i36z9/how_you_use_your_android_to_the_maximum/d2uq24i?context=3

9:00pm: brush my teeth and log it because I'm trying to make a habit of doing so every day (Loop Habit Tracker).

9:30pm: open random apps over and over thinking "I could be reading my Kindle right now".

http://i.imgur.com/O2jIop1.png

i'm crying

I hate this fucking thing

today i saw a guy, crossing a busy intersection w smartphone in one hand, head staring down reading the phone, the other hand cupped over it to shadow it from the sun all while ON A SKATEBOARD

i've seen the same except he was 'walking' his dog too

Found out i can trade in my nefarious iphone for a flip phone for $1. Told the dude I'd think it over but my plan now is to go back there and pull the trigger. It won't fix everything but I think it eill be a step in the right direction.

If I back out someone please beat me up or email me a computer virus.

Is this iPhone at all recent? I mean, even a couple generations old one will get you a few dollars, and most flip phones are either given away or insanely cheap

It's a 5 but i think the earpiece is messed up. Everyone sounds muffled.

the deal the dude offered for the flip phone -- $1 -- seemed pretty good. He said "one person every three days" comes in to that midtown Verizon store and asks to downgrade, citing distraction. This seemed oddly specific.

Youll find something else.

Keep yr awesome technology and learn boundaries

Typing this in bed btw

Nooo technology is awful... Or at least it is evolving faster than I am able to keep up with

have you considered working in a retirement home

please do this and report to us on how it goes!

I thought about downgrading not long ago. I remember back in 2009-2011 or so I ilx'd quite successfully from a slider phone. So I stepped into a Verizon store and checked out their selection of low-tech phones and I decided the technology really didn't work for me anymore. The keyboards were so annoying for me! I was a little bummed, because I thought it would be a good step toward solving my problems. Anyway, I removed some of the worse time-sucking apps like facebook and twitter. I've also been bringing paper books with me on my commute and getting sucked into them instead of my phone.

If you do this and pull it off though, let me know!

I recommend the Nokia 100 - costs around 10 euros and works very well, good menus, battery +1 week

my friend thought he was getting too addicted to his phone so he got a flip phone
now he texts himself all the things he wants to look up, and it's kind of sad, I wish he could just look them up
and he can't date really because he doesn't get emojis in texts
every time I am hanging out with him he gets a text and says "I don't know what she means, it's just two boxes"

also everyone gives him shit all the time about being a drug dealer or a terrorist especially me

haha I do get a lot of boxes

if you get a flip phone you will be mad every time you see something cute or incongruous or funny and you can't take a picture of it
i am pretty inconsistent about bringing my phone out with me and i experience this a lot
there are just too many cute things and weird things not to photograph

also how the fuck are you gonna get directions??

i held out on not getting a smartphone, did not get one until 2012 and i would never go back, ever
you can translate languages with them! text to speech! it is like the greatest classroom tool for working with ell/exed kids

AND in my experience NOT just with phones if you are really addicted to something you will find a way to still do it...even if you have to take the hard way...

I mean, Treeship drafts his ilx posts in a little notebook so this isn't much of a change

flip phones (can) have cameras, if not very good ones

smartphones are worth it for the ease of texting alone imo, fuck texting on a flip phone that shit was horrible

i am totally distracted by my phone and i spend way too much time on it but i 100% feel that my life is easier now that i have one

especially if you are in an unfamiliar place!!!!

Is any place really unfamiliar with gps-enabled maps

If you want to get lost, put it in your pocket

If you just want to get notified when someone wants to contact you, you can get a little watch or something that notifies you when something important comes through and keep your actual phone in your bag, pocket, or next room

getting lost pretty much sucks imo

happens when you take a literal approach to détournement when you didn't finish reading the literature

every time I am hanging out with him he gets a text and says "I don't know what she means, it's just two boxes"

i get this all the time on facebook now bc my computer is old : /

Korea does not support granular phone mapping for walking or driving directions, apparently on purpose? You can get decent public transit directions but trying to coordinate directions on foot in Seoul is a scavenger hunt + orienteering challenge. Fun though

Anybody else checked out "Pinpoint" by Greg Milner? I loved the "Death by GPS" excerpt I read somewhere, and his previous book on recording technology was really good too imo

and he can't date really because he doesn't get emojis in texts

rip

thus was ended the house of flip phone

I switched back and forth between regular, non-internet capable phone and smartphones. But the past couple years I've been using a crappy flip phone. I love the internet (and technology in general), but I'd rather use that $50 data plan somewhere else in my life. There are specific moments in my life where I miss having a smartphone. But those moments add up to like an hour or so a week.

My thought process usually goes like this:

If only there were a limited feature smartphone that just had like texting and email...and uh, directions. Definitely would want the directions. And a really good camera, snaps of the kids, priceless. But no facebook. Oh except then how would I share the pics of the kids with family. But no browser. Except maybe a limited one that could look up the answers to questions. And some sort of restaurant finder app. Would need a way to hail Ubers once in a while....

Actually one of the surprising things about smartphones though, I think, is how few different apps I really use on a regular basis. It's almost like when I go over some certain number (maybe 10?) I just forget they're there or have a purpose.

even if I gave up a personal smartphone my office has started issuing the iphone 6 as standard gear, so y'know

My thinking is, I never asked for all that stuff. I never wanted a computer in my pocket before it existed. In fact, in the pre-smartphone days I still desperately wished I used the Internet less. So I feel like I was dragged into this era against my will.

I understand how you feel. People who say it's all up to your choice underestimate the ways norms limit the parameters of our choices. Report back on how it goes. Sometimes the internet is my alcohol, so I guess a smartphone is like a pocket flask.

fucking hate that i can't permanently remove all this android shit. cant even move it to the sd card, so my phone's always running out of space and periodically i learn i've been signed into some fucking chat service against my will

yes i've tried rooting it etc

Can't choose the era you were born into, just have to accept it and be glad you don't have polio

So true

You can choose everything. I am the curator of my life.

new on ios10

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204221

remove builtin apps

time to upgrade

"The apps built into iOS are designed to be very space efficient, so all of them together use less than 150MB. "

lol this is part of why companies are so deranged about letting you remove them -- they're thin wrappers on top of system frameworks that everything uses so it makes no sense to them that you'd want to "remove" "notes"

like yeah buddy let me wipe that lil' icon right off there

hell, I'm fine with removing the app store icon even, as long as there's some way to bring it back. maybe an "install app store" link in settings

Dude at the williamsburg verizon store wouldn't do the deal I had made with a midtown Verizon salesperson yesterday - a $1 downgrade, using the upgrade on this device called a "jetpack" that's fallen out of use. He said I couldn't upgrade that and so would need to pay full retail for a flip phone, which seemed insane. Headed back to midtown tomorrow to see if I can find that salesman again.

Should have pulled the trigger on this yesterday but was too afraid of never recognizing emojis or being part of group chats.

Foolish.

Might just order this online and have the Verizon people hook it up

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E9W7SN2/ref=mp_s_a_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1467143216&sr=1-9&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65

verizon might be among the most expensive ways to have a flip phone plan. if you need verizon's networks try looking at a verizon mvno, which are typically much cheaper.

otm, if you just need a flip phone and no features, just buy a friggin burner from a discount store

been trying out a new app called "Freedom" and i quite like it so far. fulfills my dream of having GPS, Texting, and the non-Social Internet at my disposal without the stuff I don't want access to. it also syncs with your laptop/desktop. it's nice to be able to take advantage of a momentary impulse to ban yourself from the internet.

finally ditched the iphone for a flip phone

the LG Revere 3 to be precise.

http://ensignal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/lg_revere3-555x555.jpg

Looks nice!

1998 called

and it wants TO PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999

got brick breaker?

so i've reached that horrible time in my phone's lifespan where it is basically obsolete and apps can hardly run on it and the battery dies fast

been getting gradually worse, but holding out just because i don't like smartphones. still need gps and some type of mp3 player though, and i'm not a fan of clutter, so the sad irony is i will probably buy a new smartphone, possibly the latest iphone lol

me too. which version are you on? 4s for me. everything was actually ok until a few weeks ago when the phone froze with a full charge and then completely shut off. i couldn't get it to turn back on so i had to restore it, which forced me to finally update to the newest iOS. i had resisted the new one for a couple years because i assumed my 4s wouldn't really be able to handle it, and i was right. :(

i've owned iphones before but my current phone is actually a samsung galaxy s4

i can't run dolphin (browser) on it and i've been using firefox for the last few months and i do not like it one bit

i'll probably wait til apple announces their new model some time this month

which one are you getting?

announcement most likely tomorrow's press conference fyi

w00t

that's nice to hear

I had a samsung galaxy s2 until a few months ago and am still bitter that eventually I was forced to buy a new phone because nothing worked any more and nothing was supported. I've got an s5 now because I don't like the idea of a sealed-body phone. It's much better in some ways but I swear it's slower than the flip phone I had 10 years ago. I just restart it every so often.

finally ditched the iphone for a flip phone

― Treeship, Sunday, September 4, 2016 5:40 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, looks almost identical to my new one. I've never had a smartphone, seems too stressful.

still really happy with Freedom and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants to keep a smartphone but also wants to cut down on how much they use it.

I had a samsung galaxy s2 until a few months ago and am still bitter that eventually I was forced to buy a new phone because nothing worked any more and nothing was supported. I've got an s5 now because I don't like the idea of a sealed-body phone. It's much better in some ways but I swear it's slower than the flip phone I had 10 years ago. I just restart it every so often.

otm

looked at new phones the other day, all sealed units, and the sales kid was very excited to tell me that some had "excellent battery life" of not even two days, which to me is distinctly not excellent

basically I am old now so mobile phone generations seem like approx 5 minutes to me and I don't want to do anything that I couldn't do with my phone several five minuteses ago so why is doing that stuff so expensive and sluggish and battery-hungry

yes old

toss em in the ocean

Get a job

nb i am still using tinder on my old iphone on wifi. now i just wait until i get home to answer messages.

that can be your new line: "can I get your number? I would like to text/chat but have a flip phone"

oh man, texting on this thing is awful. have u noticed that now ppl text in full sentences and paragraphs? the evolution was so seamless, i didn't realize how reliant i was on the stupid touchscreen keyboard

my new phone is best equipped to type messages like "l8r" and "where r u?"

but u can't do that when ppl text you wanting to discuss articles they've written and stuff

still really happy with Freedom and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants to keep a smartphone but also wants to cut down on how much they use it.

― ryan, Tuesday, September 6, 2016 5:59 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark

real dudes go to system32/etc and set all their favorite websites to 127.0.0.1

^ fortunately that news does not crush my sense of self-esteem

yeah flip phone sounds like a nice idea until you think about texting on it

you shd make one of your tinder profile pics a picture of your flipphone, or you posing/talking on your flipphone w an expression of ecstasy

idk. i don't want to make the flip phone that central to my identity

http://diversitywoman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/MobilePhones_WallStreet-300x180.jpg

the irony being I've gone to minimalism with friends and tap three times to txt "hmm yes" or emoji and TS needs full sentences

just txt "gd article dude"

yeah, I learned the txting lesson last time I had to use an old flip phone during an in-between-smartphones period. It was such a pain in the ass when people would try to make plans with me via text.

http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mOYxdyjHUxJaz4vlJIQyqCA.jpg

they didn't have one like that. i would have taken it for the keyboard.

Thinking about going back to Windows 98

I remember how great it was around 2006/7 when you could finally store music on your phone. That was a huge deal

Slvr w/ iTunes

none of these things were ever great

the more you try to outrun boredom the less equipped you get at dealing with it. you end up weaker, lonelier and more afraid. (substituted "you" for "i" there to make the statement more contentious)

I'm kind of remembering now how much my phone usage went up just in the last two years, i.e. since I got the 6. That's pretty much the transition point for me from just using the phone when I needed it to constantly checking facebook, browsing, using random apps and games, etc.

I had a nice Nokia candybar phone less than six months before the iPhone existed that I was doing location-based check-in (no gps, some web services could approximate via cell tower), lots of predictive texting, twitter, and mobile web on. reading longer articles was a chore but there was decent paging. Read e-texts (lol) on devices before that.

the best part of that era was that the screen was low res enough you could pull a phone from your pocket and glance at it without raising it very far above hip level

now I want to design a text message app that somehow detects distance from your eye and scales text size accordingly

The future scares me

I remember twere all NFC around here

3 days in and i am ecstatically happy about my decision.

I broke my android phone and am now using an older android phone which struggles to run twitter. i don't/basically can't afford to buy a dece smartphone now, maybe i will go all neo-like like yer man trees

hav u herd of the neu iphone 7

xp

3 days in and i am ecstatically happy about my decision.

tell us more!

the main thing is that i feel like i can keep a train of thought more easily. even when i kept the smartphone off before, i was aware that it was there and that i was just a touch away from my digital life. it was just as distracting off as it was on.

Wondering if maybe just going to like an iPhone SE which has a smaller, less entertainment-prone screen, would cut down on my smartphone usage. I have really started to feel like it interferes with my brain function.

you could also turn the phone to grayscale, which makes it less alluring. i tried to do that but the thing that i was addicted to was text anyway.

I don't play games on my smartphone (so many of the popular ones are hard to use for me on a screen, give me a controller by God), maybe browse Facebook & Twitter too much when I'm bored but I wouldn't trade access to all the maps and knowledge and music and podcasts for that time back.

the access to knowledge is the biggest drawback. it wasn't so much that i was concerned about "wasting time." i felt like it made me into a cyborg. instead of being someone who used the internet too much, the internet and i became one.

getting lost is part of life. encountering a word you don't know and not being able to look it up is part of life too. god intended for people to listen to music while lying in bed in their rooms.

I feel you on that fusing with the internet sensation.

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html

andrew sullivan has obviously been lurking on this thread and ripped off some ilxors' insights and/or experienced some of the same things himself

yo treesh have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Comsumption/dp/1491933399

might be up your alley. I'm notably skeptical of prescriptive lifestyle books but liked it.

The only time I've regretted what technology has brought me is last 10 minutes I spent hate reading that Andrew Sullivan article.

thanks for the tip mh, that seems interesting.

having a dumb phone has been incredible. the only problem is that i just don't respond to messages now -- even fb messages, which i could do on my laptop -- and i think i might have angered people.

Sullivan is just experiencing his come-to-Jesus moment -- noticing that his unhealthy relationship with his smartphone and the web was reducing him to quivering jelly. He's right in describing his own experience as ultimately debilitating, but he betrays himself by saying his experience is "our" experience, his addiction is "our" addiction, and "we" now interact with "one another" in these grotesque ways.

Everyone whose experience matches Sully's will nod and feel deep kinship, while those who don't share his perspective will think, "what's with this "we" thing, buster?"

he tends to write in this sweeping, generalizing way that can be infuriating. i appreciate that he is exploring this topic though. it often feels like an elephant in the room, like no one remembers that just a few years ago people weren't on their smartphones all day

I very much remember that smartphones didn't used to exist. That's one advantage of being over 60 years old. You can remember how it once was and can compare it with how it is now.

The only time I've regretted what technology has brought me is last 10 minutes I spent hate reading that Andrew Sullivan article.

― Jeff, Tuesday, September 20, 2016 3:08 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You don't have to waste time posting either because we can fill in the blanks of your one opinion at this point.

Got a better smartphone life's good

Smartphones don't kill people, people do

Aimless's take on it reminds me of a self-improvement books or speech you start reading or listening to without realizing that's their angle, only to get completely lost in the phase where they try to build a rapport with the audience.

Like, I'll buy your first couple points with some skepticism, but this thesis makes no sense, buddy.

Everyone whose experience matches Sully's will nod and feel deep kinship, while those who don't share his perspective will think, "what's with this "we" thing, buster?"

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Monday, September 19, 2016 10:38 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM -- I forget if I posted this in another thread, but I started to pay a lot more attention in public to how much people used their smartphones, and what I noticed is that it's actually a very small percentage of people who are on them constantly. On my morning subway ride it's like 1/10 to 1/20 people using a smartphone at a given time, and most people don't seem to touch one the entire ride (I guess they just like enjoy their thoughts or something).

I *am* one of those people constantly using my phone, but I noticed that there are only a couple of other people in my office who also do, and, perhaps not coincidentally, they seem like the most miserable people.

i used up like 95% of my data early this month so i just turned off cellular data and that's been a big improvement. i was a latecomer to smartphones - i had a flip phone until last year - and while i generally love having one there are a few times i don't like using it and find it hard to stop:

1) in the car, stopped in traffic
2) when i'm with my kids

#1 has been easy to stop w/ cellular data off, my commute is way more enjoyable tbh, i have a beautiful drive along the lake and through some cool neighborhoods in cleveland and when there is traffic i am happier looking around then looking at my phone
#2 is tough, i don't see my kids a ton during the week b/c of work and it just feels like i am missing out on small but v important moments when i'm looking at my phone at home

On my morning subway ride it's like 1/10 to 1/20 people using a smartphone at a given time, and most people don't seem to touch one the entire ride (I guess they just like enjoy their thoughts or something).

really???? I'm going to have to pay a more granular kind of attention but I feel like the percentage is way way higher on my commute (L from Lorimer to E from 8th to 23rd ave). And among people walking on the sidewalks in brooklyn and chelsea I feel like it's at least 30% of walkers who are glued to their phones.

imo the people using their phones in the office all the time are miserable because they're trying to type responses on ilx when there's a perfectly usable computer at their desk but they're afraid of getting busted

(I guess they just like enjoy their thoughts or something)

surely these are the people on the train to be suspicious of

Maybe it's something about the demographics coming from my part of Queens, idk. But also walking to the office from the train I don't see *that* many people on phones, it's just that the ones who are stand out.

maybe you're right. again, I'm going to try to observe this more soberly on my next trip

Not sure where else to ask this.

I have a Galaxy S5. A few days ago my phone stopped connecting to the cellular network for data. I can phone and text, but no internet unless I'm on wifi.

I've toggled Airplane mode and Mobile Data on and off. I've restarted and power cycled. I've uninstalled my antivirus/firwall. I've tried different browsers. Nothing works.

I'd appreciate any help or guidance.

throw it away and get a flip phone

otm

Your carrier is the best place to start.

Went back to the iphone :(

I was ignoring too many text messages and no longer able to participate in longstanding zingful group texts. I learned a lot from this experiment -- mainly that simply removing a piece of gadgetry cant give me the mental clarity i am looking for

which iphone

Just the one i had before. 5? Before they became humungous.

welcome back to 2016?

welcome back brother

now you gotta upgrade to the se and you're golden

tris i love to say i hate to say i told you so so i told you so

godspeed, young man

sellout

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

it's tough out there for a millennial

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

There’s not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time.

...

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and “I often wish I had more good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.

This doesn’t always mean that, on an individual level, kids who spend more time online are lonelier than kids who spend less time online. Teens who spend more time on social media also spend more time with their friends in person, on average—highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less social teens are less so. But at the generational level, when teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities is unmistakable: The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression. Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk significantly.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan. (That’s much more than the risk related to, say, watching TV.) One piece of data that indirectly but stunningly captures kids’ growing isolation, for good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate.

Other parts of the article show that teens, since 2012, became less likely to do things in person, cutting their risk factor for drugs and alcohol and things like that but significantly increasing their feelings of isolation and depression and their suicide risk. This squares with my impression of the climate of the social internet, which veers from braggy faux positivity to withering irony to the straight up poison proffered by trolls. The internet feels like home so much of the time that it is jarring to take a step back and think about what it really is, or has become, and how alienating that is.

scary stuff, isn't correlation mistaken for causality tho?

The article is more rigorous than the headline suggests. They say that the mechanism by which smartphones are related to these things is unclear. They are definitely related to less sleep and worse sleep quality which alone could explain at least some of the mental health outcomes.

The charts in this article of different mental health indicators show profound discontinuities starting in 2012, when the gadgets became omnipresent. Anecdotally, I totally feel like these things have transformed social life in ways that are more profound than usually recognized. Whether this means they are altogether harmful idk, i suspect there are serious harms and this data seems to support that.

I don't buy it. American children have plenty of reasons to be increasingly isolated and depressed since 2012. Without comparisons to epidemiological data from other countries (e.g. japan is fucked up!) I don't know if I buy any screen-time-is-terrible doomsaying. "Screen time" and electronic interaction has been consuming a greater proportion of American waking moments for five generations. We accidentally elected a crappy Andrew Jackson knock-off, but we also elected Obama twice. We put a man on the moon and built the Internet (so that a Brit could invent the Web - can't win 'em all). Wake me when these kids are bigger assholes than Boomers.

people tend to get really defensive about stuff like this, if I were a therapist I'd tent my fingers and then scribble meaningfully in my notepad

but to that our current society's use of social media is equivalent to the family watching Ed Sullivan because it's both technically "screen time" is a false equivalency

smells like bullshit to me, we're a lot better / more open about diagnosing mental illness now. & tbh "the internet" is a step up from dropping spit hangers on people at the mall or the other low level criminal-ish stuff we used to do to "hang out" before smartphones

The problem isn't that they are assholes, the problem is they've been roped into an insidious kind of digital addiction before their brains were fully developed, an immersive environment that promises them connection and social approbation but that is also, fundamentally, a front for data mining and targeted advertising.

Xp Thomas

I feel like the internet is less dangerous, but worse -- as in weirder and more alienating -- than smoking cigarettes outside the skatepark. We have these stupid half experiences now.

I could be wrong. I don't want to seem like an alarmist, and I've made a lot of friends through the internet, discovered a lot of music, etc. But there has to be drawbacks to living this way, especially for young people.

you're right, ums, it is a false equivalency, the families that grew up watching Ed Sullivan together also breathed in unhealthy amounts of lead from diesel motor exhaust, and the kids glued to snapchat on their phones are getting to endure the hottest summers the planet has seen in millenia

Treeship it is practically your job to be an alarmist

I haven't had a smartphone since i lost it 3 years ago. Missed it for the first couple of weeks but never replaced it. I'm on the internet a lot as I'm a developer and i take my laptop with me most places, so I'm not 'off the grid' in any way.

There does feel something different about now to when I lost my phone. A feeling of people doing battle with their enemies on their phones, the Trump effect seems to have magnified it so its difficult to disentangle from that too. People seem as addicted to Trump as they are to phones and/or internet. But when I get on the bus in the middle of the day its full of pensioners on their phones casually advocating for mass internment of people.

Last time I visited my parents my mums smartphone buzzed with some kind of notification seemingly every 3 minutes.

people tend to get really defensive about stuff like this

not so much defensive as suspicious. each generation likes to assume that this time the latest thing that has captivated the young really is to be our downfall, makes life more exciting if you're not just another grain of sand.

I understand that but we are conducting a mass experiment wrt how we interact with the world, not saying there's not accusation alarmism but writing off everything with the old "THEY SAID THE SAME THING ABOUT ELVIS" seems disingenuous

yeah i see what you're saying - i guess i'd still lean towards scepticism but obv trends have some negative effects. i just tend to think society is a bit like a huge game of whack-a-mole, very hard to assess the pluses and minuses all at once.

As a parent of a near teen, can confirm screen stress. She is smart enough to know when to disconnect, but also aware enough to know what she is missing. She and her friends (and I assume all tweens/teens) treat texting (for example) as a never ending game, which makes them hyper attuned to all phone noises/buzzes/alerts. At the same time, you should see how hard it is for them to actually communicate, to get together or get stuff done. Which leads to more time on or by the phone, waiting for friends to get back to her, if they respond at all. Leads to lots of anxious idling and less in person interaction, which is not healthy.

Are adults guilty of some of this, too? Sure. And did we survive stuff like this? Yeah. But the immediacy and omniscence and limitlessness of smart phones makes things worse, imo.

this will be the first generation that is unable to adapt to the technology invented by their parents that their parents didn't grow up with

side note: remember these

https://www.amazon.com/Yealink-Black-Foot-Handset-Cord/dp/B00M8EDBLQ

i must be old cuz i remember when the atlantic articles were all about how the kids were fucking too much

Based on discussions with students and my cousin's oldest children, I think one part of the article is true in my experience: this generation is less...obsessed? with Friday and Saturday nights as social rituals. Until fairly recently, even I struggled with the high school and college ethos that demanded I Do Something on weekend nights.

in the uk at least i think the stats all show a big reduction in drinking/drugs

can't help but feel we failed them

young people no longer able to afford drinks and drugs iirc

Self diagnosing polls being treated as reliable scientific information are certainly the worst thing in the universe with the possible exception of articles by humans

is that article using 'screen time' and 'social media' interchangeably?

I finally read that article instead of just commenting on it... it is scary and makes me consider what I can do to spend less time online. Anyway, apart from the correlations between screen time and feeling unhappy, the portrait (which of course needs to be expanded upon with data from other countries etc etc) of a generation doing fewer things IRL was pretty convincing:

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2017/08/WEL_Twenge_iGen_Web_GraphsBlock_Revised/c42ed8709.jpg

for personal purposes I find it a good reminder that doing stuff with friends and family irl makes me happy

sadly most of those points describe me as a teen in the late 90s, but I don't think being glued to the computer was completely to blame

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

the good part is that probably it would be possible to design our way out of this

Thanks for the article treeship

the good part is that probably it would be possible to design our way out of this

yes but in who's interest would this be accomplished?

I thought niels was being thoroughly sarcastic

oh ha.

there's an app for that

Between 2010 and 2016, the number of adolescents who experienced at least one major depressive episode leapt by 60%, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 2016 survey of 17,000 kids found that about 13% of them had a major depressive episode, compared to 8% of the kids surveyed in 2010. Suicide deaths among people age 10 to 19 have also risen sharply, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Young women are suffering most; a CDC report released earlier this year showed suicide among teen girls has reached 40-year highs. All this followed a period during the late-1990s and early 2000s when rates of adolescent depression and suicide mostly held steady or declined.

Using data collected between 2010 and 2015 from more than 500,000 adolescents nationwide, Twenge’s study found kids who spent three hours or more a day on smartphones or other electronic devices were 34% more likely to suffer at least one suicide-related outcome—including feeling hopeless or seriously considering suicide—than kids who used devices two hours a day or less. Among kids who used electronic devices five or more hours a day, 48% had at least one suicide-related outcome.

As always...which comes before which

I think the fact that they all left notes saying "heckin worlb ur doin me a sad" speaks for itself

another one to add to the reading list

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/your-smartphone-is-making-you-stupid/article37511900/

https://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/1fb/news/national/article37511448.ece/BINARY/w780/punch-cartoon.jpg
A caption reads: "These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results."

Yes, people are always put off by the strange power of new technologies. Socrates thought writing would melt the brains of Athenian youths by undermining their ability to memorize. Erasmus cursed the "swarm of new books" plaguing post-Gutenberg Europe. In its infancy, TV was derided as a "vast wasteland."

But while previous generations may have cried wolf about new media, "it's different this time," Mr. Harris says. Unlike TVs and desktop computers, which are typically relegated to a den or home office, smartphones go with us everywhere. And they know us. The stories that pop up in your iPhone newsfeed and your social media apps are selected by algorithms to grab your eye.

Smartphones are "literally using the power of billion-dollar computers to figure out what to feed you," Mr. Harris said. That's why you can't look away.

Socrates was wrong about writing and Erasmus was wrong about books. But after all, the boy who cried wolf was eaten in the end. And in smartphones, our brains may have finally met their match.

"It's Homo sapiens minds against the most powerful supercomputers and billions of dollars …. It's like bringing a knife to a space laser fight," Mr. Harris said. "We're going to look back and say, 'Why on earth did we do this?'"

...

These companies have persuaded us to give over so much of our lives by exploiting a handful of human frailties. One of them is called novelty bias. It means our brains are suckers for the new. As the McGill neuroscientist Daniel Levitin explains, we're wired this way to survive. In the infancy of our species, novelty bias kept us alert to dubious red berries and the growls of sabre-toothed tigers. But now it makes us twig helplessly to Facebook notifications and the buzz of incoming e-mail. That's why social media apps nag you to turn notifications on. They know that once the icons start flashing onto your lock screen, you won't be able to ignore them. It's also why Facebook switched the colour of its notifications from a mild blue to attention-grabbing red.

App designers know that nagging works. In Persuasive Technology, one of the most quietly influential books to come out of Silicon Valley in the past two decades, the Stanford psychologist B.J. Fogg predicted that computers could and would take massive advantage of our susceptibility to prodding. "People get tired of saying no; everyone has a moment of weakness when it's easier to comply than to resist," he wrote. Published in 2002, Prof. Fogg's book now seems eerily prescient.

The makers of smartphone apps rightly believe that part of the reason we're so curious about those notifications is that people are desperately insecure and crave positive feedback with a kneejerk desperation. Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine Labs, says it's common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding "likes" from certain users. If the photo-sharing app decides you need to use the service more often, it'll show only a fraction of the likes you've received on a given post at first, hoping you'll be disappointed with your haul and check back again in a minute or two. "They're tying in to your greatest insecurities," Mr. Mayberry said.

Some of the mental quirks smartphones exploit are obvious, others counterintuitive. The principle of "variable rewards" falls into the second camp. Discovered by the psychologist B.F. Skinner and his acolytes in a series of experiments on rats and pigeons, it predicts that creatures are likelier to seek out a reward if they aren't sure how often it will be doled out. Pigeons, for example, were found to peck a button for food more frequently if the food was dispensed inconsistently rather than reliably each time, the Columbia University law professor Tim Wu recounts in his recent book The Attention Merchants. So it is with social media apps: Though four out of five Facebook posts may be inane, the "bottomless," automatically refreshing feed always promises a good quip or bit of telling gossip just below the threshold of the screen, accessible with the rhythmic flick of thumb on glass. Likewise the hungry need to check email with every inbox buzz.

...

In the smartphone era, that figure can only have grown. Our brains just aren't built for the geysers of information our devices train at them. Inevitably, we end up paying attention to all kinds of things that aren't valuable or interesting, just because they flash up on our iPhone screens.

"Our attentional systems evolved over tens of thousands of years when the world was much slower," Dr. Levitin explained in an interview.

All that distraction adds up to a loss of raw brain power. Workers at a British company who multitasked on electronic media – a decent proxy for frequent smartphone use – were found in a 2014 study to lose about the same quantity of IQ as people who had smoked cannabis or lost a night's sleep.

bad writing and overlong imo, but I think we can all agree by now that smartphones are very, very dud

it is too long actually

which is probably why the writing isn't very good

but there is some info on there that is worth highlighting

yeah, definitely

Socrates and Erasmus both otm as it goes.

And most negative prognistications about tv have been borne out as well.

that's something I find kinda weird about the "people were also afraid of shellac records and similar harmless technologies" arguments, because even if records did not have a decidedly negative impact on society they still had a huge impact, rendering tons of musicians unemployed, bringing about a decline in musicianship in general

tbh I don't see any reason to believe smartphones wouldn't have an impact on public health

We really shouldn't exist, civilization is harmful in general. Let's just wait for the big crunch.

I'm going to play Peggle until that happens.

no species will miss us

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/22/mobile-phones-french-school-ban

right on!

im actually for this

no species will miss us

definitely head lice will. dogs maybe, but they'd get over it.

just got my first smartphone, it's pretty good fun tbh. I got this Map My Walk app though, and walked 10.03 KM's this evening in just under 3 hours, and according this thing I have burnt 0 calories. It's obv not gauging all the hills involved, and how much I'm sweating like a bastard. Unless it's so smart it's been talking to my fridge today.

i've had a flip phone for the better of the last year after about 4 years with a smartphone. the lack of spotify/music streaming in the car does stink, and although my flip phone can play mp3s i just haven't been bothered to load more than a couple of albums on it. i thought i would miss having maps, but ive only been lost going someplace once and i figured out where i was eventually. ive generally taken to looking up directions before hand and either memorizing them or jotting them down if it's someplace totally out of the way (caveat: my wife still has her iphone, so this only applies when i'm driving by myself.)

there is a camera and it's not as bad as you might think (2MP i think) but it pales in comparison to what smartphones can do now.

the flip phone i have does have a basic browser, 4G, and can be a mobile hotspot. this came in handy when i had my laptop with me but no wifi on a couple of occasions. i check ilx on the broswer every so often when im out. more graphically-intensive sites are harder to use but are accessible in a pinch. the inconvenience is nice because im way less likely to mindlessly browse which was the primary impetus for downgrading (that and denying Alphabet my sweet sweet personal data).

tl;dr i got rid of my smartphone and i listen to streaming less, take fewer pictures, and do way less impulsive interneting. now i play more with my son and play guitar more and read more books so it's probably for the best.

Phones are clothes

I’m back on the kick of thinking these little gadgets are evil

They work great if you almost never turn them on.

would ye stop ffs

everyone needs a hobby

Smartphones have been a gamechanger for me. The local taxi company app prioritises people that order with it over phone bookings and the bus app tells me when the next bus is due from wherever the nearest bus stops are - within 20 metres or so. This stuff is amazing when you have an autistic travelling companion.

I am watching the movie eighth grade right now. Gotta say, it is not making smartphones look great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4r9-AmfaDs

the questioners at the end are people my age and they're such assholes. they think he is attacking millennials for some reason.

younger than me i guess-- they're like college kids but this was recorded several years ago.

probly shoulda put this here

"[Someone] leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.

An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.

The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office for a minor procedure. It followed her hiking with her dog and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing. . . .

The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html

if someone can extract a transcript of that Mark Fisher talk I'd be interested in reading it

presumably you have to have your 'location' setting switched on for this?

Ms. Lee had given apps on her iPhone access to her location only for certain purposes — helping her find parking spaces, sending her weather alerts — and only if they did not indicate that the information would be used for anything else, she said. Ms. Magrin had allowed about a dozen apps on her Android phone access to her whereabouts for services like traffic notifications.

But it is easy to share information without realizing it. Of the 17 apps that The Times saw sending precise location data, just three on iOS and one on Android told users in a prompt during the permission process that the information could be used for advertising. Only one app, GasBuddy, which identifies nearby gas stations, indicated that data could also be shared to “analyze industry trends.”

More typical was theScore, a sports app: When prompting users to grant access to their location, it said the data would help “recommend local teams and players that are relevant to you.” The app passed precise coordinates to 16 advertising and location companies.

A spokesman for theScore said that the language in the prompt was intended only as a “quick introduction to certain key product features” and that the full uses of the data were described in the app’s privacy policy.

The Weather Channel app, owned by an IBM subsidiary, told users that sharing their locations would let them get personalized local weather reports. IBM said the subsidiary, the Weather Company, discussed other uses in its privacy policy and in a separate “privacy settings” section of the app. Information on advertising was included there, but a part of the app called “location settings” made no mention of it.

she should fix those settings eh

It’s amazing this data hasn’t been abused more than it has. The tech companies could basically blackmail anyone if they wanted to, right?

Ms Magrin could tell her phone to only allow those apps access to her location when she has the app open, like anyone who doesn't want their location tracked 24-7 by anonymous tech companies. It seems she didn't find the notion alarming until the Times told her it was happening?

actually strike that, I can't be bothered to read the article, so I don't deserve to have an opinion

yeah i read the article. I just never switch my location setting on unless I want something to actually access it. So I'm assuming the apps I've given permission to access my location can only do this when the location setting is switched on?

I'm amazed that ppl leave this switched on tbh

https://thebaffler.com/latest/busy-doing-nothing-marz?fbclid=IwAR2fzWOPshz96LHU7UODZMLpdbgomGIOyWBq8hNgnU8I6v2VzW9zjAfB21Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRqswoCVcM

the relevance becomes clear in the second half of the talk. just ordered her book

she quotes something deleuze wrote in 1995:

…we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.

Like

On the other hand, don’t be bored, because it’s absolutely the most exciting time to be alive

deleuze: 'I think we'd all be better off if we were more silent, so I'd like you all to be quiet while I explain at length why I think this is true.'

yeah, we should just give ourselves over to an overwhelming flood of information that leaves us feeling scattered and lost.

what -- your worryposts?

if you feel like thats the human condition now then im not convinced that wouldnt have been your human condition whenever

"are we spending too long listening to bards?"

I need a new smartphone. my current one doesnt turn on anymore, and was a donation. I'm not sure what it is (definintely a Samsung, but i dont know the model, maybe a J4?). Anyway it was reasonably good. I have a crappy Alcatel PAYG as backup but its horrible to use!

Basically i dont want a piece of shit. I'll tether wifi to laptop so battery life is a consideration. Is 3GB ram suitable? is €150ish going to get me something that isn't a piece of shit?

There are some Samsung A6's for around €180 in the shop in the station. What i don't understand is there seem to be lots of different phones all called A6. This is far too irritating. They also have a Nokia 5.1 for around €150. Can i get anything cheaper than this or does it start to be a piece of shit again

moto g, xiaomi or huawei in or around that price point prob decent bets

Thanks, i saw some from the latter two brands. Is that a reasonable pricepoint? I'm worried the cheaper ones are just going to be garbage to use and I really want to avoid any irritation. Some are nearly €1000! unless it comes with more interesting callers I can't imagine what you're getting for that

everything available now

i tend to stay a few years behind cutting edge and unimaginative about what i need the phone to do.

android
decent processor
32gb internal storage
sd slot of at least that again
usb c, decent battery, quick charge a bonus

etc etc, ymmv

I think that describes exactly what I'm looking for! (and i totally forgot about usb-c, good shout). Only thing is i dont knonw what a good processor is (or how to know if it has decent battery / quick charge)

Got my first smartphone, a Huawei a couple of months ago and I really like it, and it was 200 quid

xiaomi mi a2 is worth a look. not underpowered, good quality, easily comparable to phones twice the price in the basics and a few premium touches.

dunno your buying options or location but id imagine €175 gets you 4gb/64gb version which is a good base model to do a few years without falling on its arse

Lisbon - and the shop here has that model for $187. Its now in pole position, just a case of if its in stock!

idk if its already widely discredited or just not that known, but i find trustedreviews do pretty helpful and niche lists to point me towards this kind of stuff so thats worth a look too.

I bought the Moto G7 Plus a couple of weeks ago - about £230 sim free. Decent smartphone at that price. You can get the G7 Power which has huge battery life for about £170.

Previously had the G5 which is still going strong and has been passed on to my daughter.

i had a g....2 i think back in about 2014 and it was a beast for the money alright, if i see a g6 even on offer in the next while id prob jump

idk if its already widely discredited or just not that known, but i find trustedreviews do pretty helpful and niche lists to point me towards this kind of stuff so thats worth a look too.

― deemsthelarker (darraghmac),

Part of my problem with this is the dizzying array of options is overload. Worten has 42 pages of smartphones! I'd try trustedreviews but thats just going to be more overload! I just want someone to tell me what phone to buy. At the end of the day, this has now happened and I'm going to (try and) buy a xiaomi mi a2!

nah listen, thats the thing, theyve prob got a list that sets out 'ten best budget android phones to buy 2019" or and end of year "best android budget phone" and maybe only one or two in that price bracket, and the full review will break down what it is and isnt good at, so its more a "three options, and in depth look for what might suit you" site- thats how i find it anyway

anyways, there yare youve enough to go on id say

Is everything 'sealed body' or whatever it's called now? I deliberately got the most recent phone where you can take the back off, take the battery out etc if it goes wrong as I'm wary of not being able to do this, but it's getting a bit past it now. or am I worrying about nothing?

agree that phone shopping is the worst, w/ probably deliberately confusing names w/ no easy way of comparing stuff and compounded by the fact I can't decide if it makes more sense to pay for some £100-£200 medium phone now while money is tight or get something good for £30+ a month

Alright, i went in! trustedreviews is giving your boy the xiaomi mi a2 the thumbs up. Moto G7 also does well, so I think whichever of those two is in stock

Groovypanda, they have your boy the G7 Power in there, but its not going to make the weight class, looks about $50-60 overweight, the chances of it shedding that and making the cut by 5pm today don't look good, this is looking like a routine win for darraghmac at the moment

oops it was the G7 Play that trustedreviews liked and is in the correct weightclass, and the G7 Power that is not

The Guardian's updated list of best smartphones is not as helpful as it could be.

For example: Apple iPhone XS:

Buy if: you want the best iPhone

Don’t buy if: you don’t want to spend £999 or want to use Android

if you Google smartphone search, there are some databases where you can find phones based on features you're looking for...

... anyone know which of these is best? :)

I am typing on my new Xiaomi A2 phone!

It's huge! I feel like I'm going to drop it. How on earth do people walk around with €900 phones and not worry about dropping them

they don't worry because they just buy another one

A case, bro

get a case, not least because theyre a slippery bugger

Probably pushing it to ask for a case recommendation as well!

amazon prob as good a bet for you there as any rly, should ensure you get a compatible one by searching the phone and seeing what accessories come up

Based on personal and work experience, get a flip style case that covers the screen when not in use. I've had my S4 for three years and it looks like new because the case covers the screen. Also the phones we have at work last considerably less than three years because we supply them with cases that only cover the sides and back.

Why don’t they have a black and white phone with no features but the ability to use group messaging?

I tried making my phone that by disabling all the featuees but I restored them. I need someone to use the childproof features I think and not tell me the password—but then again, no one I know irl agrees with me that this is a distraction machine/emotional anaesthetic.

I will need to somehow take drastic action before the election really gets started though. I think i might die if I try to flow news coverage of this one like I did in 2016.

The iPhone has a greyscale display option. Helps reduce distraction for sure.

oh yeah. i did that and then set it back to color when i had the great idea to re-install instagram.

i am kind of addicted to this thing, which is why i resent it. i use it as an emotional crutch. but it's insidious because i go to it for comfort but then get wrapped up in the wave of bullshit and political outrage. at some level i must find that kind of manufactured anxiety appealing--probably because it's a powerful distraction.

i don't think what i want is to be "less distracted" or "more productive." i want to feel free from the pavlovian reward cycle. i also aspire to know less about american politics--as little as possible.

i'm reading "how to do nothing" by jenny odell. she cautions against this kind of renunciation drive--advocating learning to spend time with one's own thoughts, but not forsaking civic responsibility. that seems chill--maybe that's like, level 20 and i'm at level 1 in terms of how much control i feel i can exert over this machine.

also i think it's odd how these things just dropped form the sky ten years ago or whatever and transformed everyone's life on a granular, minute to minute level yet we never truly had a conversation about them. or it doesn't feel like we did.

again, these are old themes for this thread, and i'd apologize, but you know--that's what you're getting into when you open this thread

we should eradicate twitter before worrying about smartphones

all you zombies

twitter is a part of smartphones

i consider it all one thing

this like, psychotic fragmentation of the social mind

I have no social media on my phone. It didn't even occur to me to add it. I don't like to cross any accounts on any devices.

I access social media via safari on my phone

Yeah, I won't even log into facebook via a browser on my phone.

i think youre throwing everything you dont like at 'smartphones'

sometimes i also blame new york city

what lives in nyc and has a smartphone

I don't know if it's nyc. I started using only a cellphone, getting completely rid of a landline, on the early side, 1999. So maybe that molded my behaviour before smartphones because it had seemed unbearably rude to have your phone out in public when not many people used them. I generally don't walk while looking at it, I don't display it on tables while out in public or at work, and I don't look at it while actively talking to people (unless there is a very specific thing I am waiting for and I will excuse it in advance). I think it's rude and I only try to do deliberate rudeness.

new york city and smartphones aren't related. it's just the other thing i like to blame for my unhappiness.

get a flip phone!

i had one but i went back out of weakness.

also i need to do social media stuff for my company sometimes.

another thing i want: a job far away from the culture industry.

idk man a year or so ago I decided twitter and Facebook were making me sad and angry so I deleted my Facebook account and just kinda stopped looking at twitter pretty much ever. just get one iota of discipline about it. get other stuff to do

I kind of want to hang out with treeship but I feel like I might traumatize you.

treesh, it's high time you started to meditate. nyc surrounds you with false consciousness, but you can learn to see past that and let go of it. you will be happier.

just stop looking at your phone. bring a book with you. delete/deactivate your accounts from social media unless you absolutely require to have it. move to a less big city. find god. get married. start jogging.

Surprised I didn't weigh in on this thread. I'm not trying to be contrarian, or trying to adopt a self-consciously curmudgeonly stance: I honestly believe they're the single worst thing ever invented in terms of what they've done to public space and personal behavior. I say that as someone without kids; if you have kids, I guess I can understand how important they are. (Although somehow our parents raised us and kept us safe without them.) And sometimes I'm perfectly hypocritical: a question comes up in conversation, no one can recall the name or date or quote or actor or whatever, I'll ask someone to look it up on their cell phone. But when I'm reading somewhere over a coffee and someone sits close by and takes or makes a call and I'm forced to listen to that, I want to strangle them; when someone I'm with is half paying attention to me and half paying attention to their phone, I want to strangle them; when I see people walking around the city gazing at their cell phone and never looking up, I want to strangle them. I realize that someone much younger than me who views cell phones as part of life is going to find such complaints laughable. But I really do hate what they've done to the world.

a question comes up in conversation, no one can recall the name or date or quote or actor or whatever, I'll ask someone to look it up on their cell phone.

haha i hate this. it's exactly what socrates said would happen if we started writing shit down

agree about most of the rest tho obv, mindfulness is real

People were horrible even before they became slaves to their smartphones. If you exclude things like comments sections and Yelp reviews, it can be argued that the slack-jawed passivity induced by smartphone addiction has made people somewhat less actively horrible than they were in, say, 1990.

But this opinion is merely based upon my very limited experience of life and it well to keep in mind that I am, by native inclination, a hermit who views society through dark grey lenses.

people walking around the city gazing at their cell phone and never looking up

http://i68.tinypic.com/2wghhfc.jpg

phantom tollbooth, one of my all time favorites

iirc

:)

I realize that someone much younger than me who views cell phones as part of life is going to find such complaints laughable. But I really do hate what they've done to the world.

what's crazy about smartphones is that they are not even that old. when i graduated from college in 2011 they were not yet ubiquitous. but now everyone is addicted to them.

perhaps someday you can have one city, as easy to see as illusions, and as hard to forget as reality (xp)

not everyone

the phaedrus writing thing isn't a good example for smartphones. socrates was actually right that writing caused a fundamental shift in not just society but consciousness. oral societies worked in a totally different way. it happened, though, that this development was actually an advance. but the smartphone is just plugging people into this capitalist entertainment matrix thing. it's not a neutral technology but something connects to a network that is owned and controlled--it seems more ominous for something similarly game changing

socrates imo feared that writing would serve power, that scribes would be owned and controlled, that every deferment to the facts on the page would be an abdication of the power of ordinary human discourse, the only tool he believed in. plato's genius escape from this was to commemorate his teacher as a character in drama rather than as a sage in prose. i think modern comm tech makes this possible too-- obviously there's plenty of room for drama. but you are correct that power is still power.

nationalize tech obv.

like this-- this development was actually an advance-- seems as reductive as a panglossian view of smartphones. more power, new dangers. what has to be maintained even as our tech improves is listening to each other and thinking about what we say.

(it's true tho that i don't really consider interrupting a conversation to nail down what year the lion king came out a sign of creeping authoritarianism. it's just annoying.)

1994

lol

i guess what's newly creepy about web2.0 that wasn't creepy about papyrus is that the latter is v clearly, for better or worse, a guy telling you how it is; but the former has the appearance of infinitely multidirectional and endlessly renewed dialogue but is arranged in such a way that it keeps reducing to nothing but profitable noise and passivity

i think a lot about a passage of john reed's where he enthuses about the omnipresence of political argument in petrograd 1917-- couldn't take a tram ride without excitedly discussing kerensky with strangers. he'd never seen anything like it. nor had i the first time i read it. now i feel like i live there and it's hell. but only because so much of the discourse is so disconnected from anything like actually wielding power. power, when it comes, is still exhilarating.

anyway treesh wish we could hang

u could text

i'm a rly bad correspondent

people walking around the city gazing at their cell phone and never looking up

This makes me angry too but then I keep having to remind myself that I was doing this with books way before smart phones

me too except my feet

Anyway, originally I did not get a data plan for my phone because I was cheap, now I'm thinking this has mostly saved me from smart phone addiction. I'm gonna try and stay without a data plan as long as possible.

update: I am very happy with this phone!

one thing not mentioned above(I don't think) is the fact it seems to charge very quickly (maybe they all do now, or its something to do with the usb-c charging?

I may have been equally happy with the other contenders too, but this is passing the test

USB-c can deliver a lot more power Than previous iterations of the standard. It depends on the phone and the charger but charging can be very quick.

yep thats a given with usb c

I also like I can charge with same charger as my macbook, one less cable to lose

the old type of usb seemed completely tempremental, though maybe that was using pieces of shit no name chargers and cables due to last minute replacements of previous pieces of shit no name chargers and cables.

Before i bought this my old phone just wouldn't charge then i was in a phone shop in the airport looking at phones and there was a cable sticking out. i put my would not charge anywhere dead phone on it, and it started charging. i had to tell the man sorry its charging now so i wont be buying that other phone, I'm going to buy something else I'm just going to take a long time about it so my phone charges enough that i can get an uber at the other end of this flight. he said ok

I spoke too soon

The phone is still good but the power supply I used for the macbookno linger works (or maybe the MacBook forsnt)?)

I went to get another power supply but it doesn't charge the MacBook and charges the phone at like 1 pet cent a day this is terrible. Cheap pieces of CRA agai. 54 euros ffs

Oh wow types Ng on a phone is notgood

I don't quite understand what's happened but the xaomi is now dead and so is the MacBook

I am nowthe proud owner of a 70 euronokia and a 299 lenovotbinkpafindteax

Thisspac varproblenIsannoyingad fick

This Nokia is straight up garbage!

I have now replaced the Nokia (it kept turning itself off and was just generally straight up garbage, as they say when talking about phones)

I have a Motoroller G7. It is good, it was cheap. It doesn't feel like I am going to drop it at any minute. Lets see how long this one lasts before blowing up

I use a first gen Moto G, which has been a very solid if unremarkable phone. It's frustratingly slow nowadays though, so I'm thinking of moving to whatever of the newer iterations I can afford.

I am on my second Moto G (over 5 years). The first was ~$80 and the second was ~$100. The first one was the first phone I ever cracked the screen on and i just put some tape over it and kept using it for another year until it stopped charging.

people walking around the city gazing at their cell phone and never looking up

This makes me angry too but then I keep having to remind myself that I was doing this with books way before smart phones

― silverfish, Wednesday, May 1, 2019 3:00 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah it me.

Y'all are really mad about phones though. May I suggest that the kids are all right? They'll speak a language of split-second images and sub-sub-sub text in like a year from now and we oldsters can keep our "Roman alphabet" that requires speaking a discrete language in order to communicate. In the meantime I'm so happy to have infinite books and news and vehicles for social connection in my pocket at all times, I would never willingly give up a smartphone now.

An irl friend once said that one of the things he liked most about visiting NYC was the high percentage of ppl on the subway who were quietly READING--a book, a newspaper. I just prefer to assume that a significant amount of time ppl spend on their phones is reading/writing/communication time, all of which I think are general goods!

i am skeptical

stunned

I have some version of this argument with my father every few years.

Him: How come the kids today are always staring at a device instead of doing real stuff and interacting with real people?

Me: Ah but they _are_ doing stuff! Lots of stuff! And interacting with people constantly! Every time they look at a device they are interacting with people all over the world. The device is more than anything a window with people on the other side. They are playing games that were created by people. They are watching videos made by people. They are chatting with people. They are experiencing art and literature and music, all of it made by... people.

Him: Okay yeah but why don't they just interact with people directly?

Me: Aha, so says the guy who is a professor of literature and reads BOOKS so that he can communicate with Shakespeare and Austen and Cervantes. This is like that.

You can't call your wish to commune with people who are distant in time is an exalted pursuit, while also saying that communing with people who are distant in space is a lowly pursuit. That is some Boomer bullshit.

they're playing games or scrolling thru endless memes and lookit me posts on facebook/snapchat/whatever the new shit is. if someone pulled out a book during a lull in conversation that'd be pretty gauche.

After a certain hour (8pm?) my parents are as glued to their devices or TV as any millenial might be.

a recent fave is the people who take forever to get on/off the elevator because they're looking at their phones. and by fave i mean i've considered killing them

Ban smartphones and vaping and those chunky dad sneakers zoomers wear.

Parents are worse than their kids. At least kids drive better and can function. Parents are more apt to be rude.

That said, I get strange looks when I'm at a bar reading. Admiring ones too, to be fair. Bartenders usually ask what I'm reading and offer a variant on, "Wow, I wish customers wouldn't just play with their phones."

If I play with my phone at all, I'm on ILX.

mookie otm

see also the subway, from stairs to train doors and everywhere else

This DOT study failed to take into account that if i am behind you on the sidewalk, you may get kicked up the ass.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-dot-report-distracted-pedestrians-20190902-fwlzxg6rlzhzhh3imotu3ll3l4-story.html

I also read in bars but it tends to be on my phone

I just read the bartenders' tats

My phone is somewhere inside an airport X-ray scanning machine. I have a replacement sim and bought a cheap set for now to put it in. But its locked to the network (EE). I didn't know this was a thing that they were able to do

I have another flight in 90 minutes.

Has anyone jailbroken a phone so they can switch networks? How difficult is it?

I just read the bartenders' tats

Unlocked phones are widely available for 60-100 usbux

I don't want yet another one! I want to unlock the one in my pocket!

switched to black and white.

deleted every inessential app, including email. i just have text and maps.

keep it in my bag.

so far so good. i missed a lot of calls and texts yesterday, but that is for the best.

good luck, I think about doing that all the time

hero

I need another number. I used my phone to get my son onto UC and now I'm getting migrated onto UC myself and cannot use the same phone number as a base for my application. Is there any way to get another number on the same sim? Fuck it there probably isn't!

Do Google Voice numbers exist in the UK?

eSIM ? or just ask your provider?

Yeah esim. Just add another number to your account and then use an eSIM to access it on your regular phone

eSIMs sound good but I've got an android phone with a physical sim card contract on 02. I'll ring them, no doubt they will be useless and say the only option is ANOTHER one.

I've got a galaxy A12 which apparently supports eSims. Are they reliable? Like could the number be permanently deleted if I only used it occassionally or just when required a few times a year. I did find a provider that does rolling contracts for £2.50 per month.

recently been coming to terms with how much these things have fucked my brain up. concentration, memory, being able to be in the moment, the constant feeling of restlessness, the inability to really engage with music in a deep way, the decline in the quantity and quality of my reading, my ability to think.

otm

deleted social media apps and turned off notifications for all other apps this week

still too much on the fucking thing but its a start

I only got my first smartphone about 6-7 years ago, the only apps I use are twitter and flagging and not really much else. Never really got too addicted to it to that point of concern.

the latest read max has a nice perspective on smartphones https://maxread.substack.com/p/platform-temperance

My phone is pretty locked down in terms of notifications and other aspects that draw my attention. Though I do have a simmering anxiety that the proverbial powers that be will one day just shut down or seriously limit access to the internet and we will all be fucked.

just shut down or seriously limit access to the internet and we will all be fucked.

would we?

the latest read max has a nice perspective on smartphones https://maxread.substack.com/p/platform-temperance

― 龜, Tuesday, November 4, 2025 8:24 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I also want to be clear, I wasn't making a political point or a larger point about social media, politics, society, etc. I, personally, am very certain that my current relationship with my phone has made me flat out less intelligent that I was before. My attention span is worse, I have more difficulty reading, I'm more anxious, more restless. To be honest, I'm having trouble getting through Max's essay right now. I know for a fact that wouldn't have been the case 10 or 15 years ago.

I know I am not the only one who feels this. I've started doing simple math on paper again just to see if I can still do it. Or - and I have no idea why I do this - using Google Maps in the car to places I've been a million times. I think these "conveniences" slowly eat away at your cognitive ability in ways that are hard to perceive at first but accumulate. With generative AI, god knows how bad this is going to get. Like I saw a fucking commercial where a woman asked her phone what the weather was like and then it said it was 58 degrees out and then she asks "How should I dress?" and it said "You might want to pack a light jacket", like no shit sherlock

oh yeah i wasn't saying you were - linking because i think the view that smartphones are literally hazardous for your health is one that landed with me, at least the way max presents the argument.

it took me about 5 years of incremental steps to wean the phone from my hands. i just deleted zing and instagram a few days ago, which were the last social media type apps on my phone that i check. i still go to ilxor.com in the browser even though the font is really small and scrolling all the way down to the end of a thread is annoying. but it's good that it's annoying.

on amtrak yesterday and noticed a guy in front of me had his phone set to black and white. that's a common tip people give to try and lessen smartphone addiction. but i think most people just get used to it, the phone being in black and white.

To be honest, I'm having trouble getting through Max's essay right now. I know for a fact that wouldn't have been the case 10 or 15 years ago.

I weirdly have a hard time reading through any kind of longform thing on a screen, but still have no issues with actual books (whether real or on an e-reader). I think it's just too tempting to play around with things on a screen, check out another tab, etc.