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Life before smartphones (2020)

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Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#231

Post by woko »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #208
pugets wrote: post #142

What I miss more than anything else is having an attention span. Years of abusing social media has left my brain pinballing all over the place. I am a collection of unfinished thoughts. Even as I write this, I can feel my mind needing to latch onto something new.

As a parent, I've been watching this play out in real time among other peoples' children. Most parents I know are deliberate about limiting screen time and ensuring their children don't substitute screen time for other activities. It's actually not that difficult to do so as kids are really good at finding entertainment in their environment even without electronics. However, some parents give their kids all the table…

I'd argue that I've been watching this play out in real time among other... parents. It is actually sad when you go outside and start noticing that people are glued to their phone screens, including parents who would rather look at their smartphones rather than their kids. I can tell you that little kids notice that they lost the attention war to their parents' smartphones.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#232

Post by container »

jhgb wrote: post #193
krylon wrote: post #57

Now I feel old. I remember vividly running around with my first camera, looking for objects worthy of being photographed. The film cost money, so did developing it into pictures. I really had to weigh the pros and cons of taking a particular picture. And in a class of ~25 kids, I was one of three who owned a camera. Not that it was such a luxury item, but most people weren't into that. These days, (nearly) everyone c…

> These days, (nearly) everyone carries a camera around all the time, and one that is quite probably much better than the one I had in 1992. They can take dozens, even hundreds of pictures without breaking a sweat, and it does not cost anything. ...and despite that, pictures of UFOs are as awful as ever. ;)

I tried taking a photo of the moon a while ago on my phone, and I couldn't really get it to look decent. I don't know if most smartphone users even know how to adjust the exposure setting even if any of that helped. And if they saw something as interesting as a UFO, I don't think they would figure it out on the spot either. I'm not sure if automatic settings would cut it on a fancier phone.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#233

Post by sylens »

I think there is definitely something I miss from the pre-smartphone era, and that is that the Internet was something akin to an appointment activity. You 'signed on' in the morning and maybe again after school or work. Logging into AIM was like broadcasting to your social circle that you were home and free to chat. You welcomed the instant messages, the interruptions, the socialization - because you knew you could sign off and be unreachable again.

I think that era of having widespread, but not ubiquitous, access to the internet is a time period I would like to have back. For every useful or Maps or food delivery application on my phone, there's three more that steal my attention with an unwanted notification

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#234

Post by Twixes »

sylens wrote: post #233

I think there is definitely something I miss from the pre-smartphone era, and that is that the Internet was something akin to an appointment activity. You 'signed on' in the morning and maybe again after school or work. Logging into AIM was like broadcasting to your social circle that you were home and free to chat. You welcomed the instant messages, the interruptions, the socialization - because you knew you could s…

Can't you uninstall or limit the apps that try to steal your attention?

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#235

Post by xtracto »

krylon wrote: post #57

Now I feel old. I remember vividly running around with my first camera, looking for objects worthy of being photographed. The film cost money, so did developing it into pictures. I really had to weigh the pros and cons of taking a particular picture. And in a class of ~25 kids, I was one of three who owned a camera. Not that it was such a luxury item, but most people weren't into that. These days, (nearly) everyone c…

Back in 1992 when I was 10 years old we went to Disney World with my family (as a middle class Mexican family, that was one of 2 out of the country trips in our childhood).

My brother (2 years older) and I had a mechanical camera with rolls of I think 12 or 20 photos (with this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_film ) . We've got at most 30 pictures of that trip in our family albums. I wish we had taken more pictures as my memory of the trip has faded away quite a bit.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#236

Post by Sebb767 »

kshacker wrote: post #205
oceanghost wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to say this. I hate how small the world has become and how we're supposed to be "reachable" all the time. Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts within 10 minutes. I said "hard no" explaining that it meant that it meant that I could never watch a movie uninterrupted, rea…

> I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. Even for work. I do find time to focus 4 hours on some work activities but those are just the high priority visible stuff otherwise maybe if someo…

> I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never.

The secret is to not be interrupted. If you're already reading the text, you might as well go and answer.

If you want to change something you will need to stop being interrupted (close the IM window, put your phone on silent, ...) and check once you have time. If you don't have time for a while, possibly give it a quick skim in case something important happened.

Things will always slip through the cracks. If you attend every interruption, it will once in a while interrupt an interruption itself and you're at status quo. At worst, put things on a todo list.

It's possible to do it.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#237

Post by qwertox »

freshdonut wrote: post #187
paxys wrote: post #171

The second paragraph is funny to me: > I memorized phone numbers, jotted things down in notebooks, had conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at bars, wrote checks, went to the bank, and daydreamed. I did all of these (except the phone number one) in the last week. More than technological advancements or anything else, all of this nostalgia is really just about getting old. "The human civilization p…

Have you been to a college campus in the last two or three years? There is a serious smartphone addiction problem. It is seriously worrying to see so many of my peers craning their necks, starting at their phone for hours on end. On the bus, in class, while hanging out, it is an observable fact that everyone is almost always on their phone. I personally believe we are in a watershed moment for human civilization. The…

We don't really know how this turns out in the long run. These kids do have an IRL social life, even if they're constantly staring at a screen.

I wonder how they will live their day by day when they are pensioners and their old friends which they haven't seen in decades still will be around inside their phones, asking how they're doing, how their day was.

Then they'll make a trip and visit them because they are nearby. Not much different as it was in the past, but better connected.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#238

Post by Pyrodogg »

lordnacho wrote: post #83

IMO the big thing is not being bored. Someone is late for a meeting? Doesn't matter, you've got HN to read. On the back seat for a long drive? Doesn't matter, you can answer emails. Or play a game. The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have vanished. I'm not sure what people prefer more though. Say you're waiting for a date, do you feel best…

"Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime" - Welcome to the Internet by Bo Burnham[1]

This new song from Bo's covid-lockdown inspired special "Inside" hits this right on head. The Internet, particularly when paired with mobile devices just tries to suck up so much attention, because that's exactly what we made it do.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#239

Post by swayvil »

Sebb767 wrote: post #229
swayvil wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon they will replace the "phone ring" with an electric shock. Mark my words. Like in 1984. People who want to "spend time alone" are deviant, diseased and antisocial. And must be stopped.

You're missing the tree in the forest. No one is forced to look at their phone, the reality is that people have trained themselves to want it.

There are 6 anecdotes in this thread where friends and family apply force to get a person to look at their phone. Social force, but still. Force.

Consider the soft forces of marketing, distraction, conformity, attraction and temptation. They are as real as a twisted arm.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#240

Post by gms7777 »

kshacker wrote: post #205
oceanghost wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to say this. I hate how small the world has become and how we're supposed to be "reachable" all the time. Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts within 10 minutes. I said "hard no" explaining that it meant that it meant that I could never watch a movie uninterrupted, rea…

> I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. Even for work. I do find time to focus 4 hours on some work activities but those are just the high priority visible stuff otherwise maybe if someo…

I make heavy use of email scheduling (and more recently Slack message scheduling) and will often schedule messages to go out in a few hours or the next day. That way, I can get my thoughts down in the moment, but not get sucked into a back-and-forth when I don't have time for it. I work with students and have found that delaying my responses tends set their expectation that they're not going to get a quick answer and train them over time to spend a bit more time trying to find an answer themselves because they can't depend on me for an immediate response.
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