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Life before smartphones (2020)

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Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#311

Post by ghaff »

ngngngng wrote: post #218
kshacker wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. As someone that lives life like this, yes, that's the point. If it's really important, they can ping me again and remind me to respond. Or when I have some downtime I'll peruse through my messages and emails again and stumble upon it and remember to reply.

Pinging me again sometimes makes sense (if we have a relationship and it's important) but it doesn't scale well. As someone who gets a lot of outside requests to do things, second and third emails to ask "did you miss my email?" get tiresome in a hurry.

(Sometimes I genuinely missed something interesting but this is rare.)

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#312

Post by derwiki »

Gunax wrote: post #87
legrande wrote: post #40

You can still live like what's described in this article. Get yourself a dumbphone and a paper atlas, only pay with cash, avoid loyalty cards, read paper books, newspapers, etc Now and then I do that, just to switch off from our hyper-connected world. Switching off is the new peace of mind.

The thing about technology is that even if you don't change everyone else will. Sure, it might still be technically legal to ride a horse down the street. But soon enough, people started putting in multi-lane highways. Also, stores took out their hitching posts. Then we started designing cities around the car, so what used to be a mile away is now 10. And half of that distance is consumed by parking lots.

I grew up near Amish country and it wasn’t unusual to see a horse and buggy hitched to a light post at Walmart.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#313

Post by ghaff »

gnicholas wrote: post #308
ghaff wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email? IMO, no one should have have email that sends notifications.

When we're on our computers, email notifications come up unless we're in DND (and even then, they show up whenever your email client is visible regardless).

For me, I have to open my email browser window to see new emails. No notifications. (And no client which I would set to 100% DND if I had one.)

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#314

Post by hellbannedguy »

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 many employers who feel they can contact you at anytime.

When I had a smartphone, I never told my employer. I told him I only had a Landline, and I had a chatty roommate.

On the days I felt they might call, I just took the phone off the hook.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#315

Post by wrycoder »

aalam wrote: post #280
random_kris wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What to do to fix this?

I got mileage out of replacing habits of checking social media with reading longer-form articles. I picked up the idea from books on habits (Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, Atomic Habits by James Clear). To replace a habit, it helps to understand the prompt that causes it. When I feel tired, or worried about something, I found myself opening social media apps. Behaviour-wise, following the prompt, I've replaced checking Redd…

It’s like an ear worm. The fix is more music, but of a different type.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#316

Post by derwiki »

sneak wrote: post #175
bee_rider wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the world knows that everybody has a smartphone. The last restaurant I went to had QR codes on the tables rather than paper menus. Of course, I could have asked for a paper menu but they didn't provide one by default and it would have added a new extra step. It isn't a big deal of course, just slightly slower restaurant service, but a million little deals like that add up to a hassle.

Chat up a pretty girl and she's likely to ask for your Instagram username. That's usually the point where I go into my "facebook is spyware" spiel, with predictable results.

If you say “I don’t use Instagram” without the spyware spiel, does it go any better? Or is not having Instagram alone enough to have things go south?

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#317

Post by SonnyTark »

On paper, I'm younger than most of these but I've lived in a closed-in country under an authoritarian regime that actively blocked technology from getting in as it saw free information as a threat to its survival. When I used the internet for the first time, it was already the era of messengers and mmos. It took several years until I saw the first Nokia mobile phone, they already had a color display one out at the time so it was marvelous. Computers were seen as a luxury, classified the same as typewriters and/or game consoles so very few people understood what they were and fewer had one that's usually a decade or two old.

I've experienced most of what this blog post describes despite the fact it was after 2000! and when change came it was abrupt and violent, almost like being surrounded by a technological theme-park all of a sudden. It was at times funny to see how some people who have never owned anything more advanced than a CRT tv try to figure out how to use a smart phone, I distinctly remember this one older guy who hit the breaks in the middle of the road then pulled over and got out of his car to receive what must have been one of the first mobile phone calls of his life.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#318

Post by wrycoder »

dilap wrote: post #123
varjag wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (legally) smoked on a plane!

smoking on a plane sounds like simultaneously the most wonderful and most terrible thing ever similarly it was amazing to smoke in bars, but it's great to not have smoke filled bars

Smoke smells different on a plane, for some reason.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#319

Post by the_af »

psychomugs wrote: post #165
theyellowkid wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, I wish everyone had taken pictures of everyday life (probably with an Instamatic). Christmas pictures, awards, meh. What I really want are pictures of the halls in high school, street racing, parties with giant bonfires and beer.

I feel like the optimal living-documenting ratio was right before the advent of digital cameras: photography was accessible enough, but there was enough disconnect between the event and the record to be present. Now it's much easier to live through the phone's what-you-see-is-what-you-get viewfinder [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697921

Related to this: it worries me that on vacation it seems my relationship with sight seeing is mainly through the phone's camera. I'm constantly seeing opportunities to take pretty snapshots, I worry that people "get in the way", I wonder about the sun messing with my photo...

...and in the end I forget to enjoy the view. Before digital cameras and mobile phones, I would just marvel at the view and enjoy it. Now I only really see it when I'm back home, flipping through digital photos (and sometimes not even that, how many photos we take that we never look at again?).

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#320

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

That was refreshing to read. Though I'd disagree on the non- existent surveillance, depending on the location. Maybe a bad example because movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes from 1971, but some have a core of truth in them. In case you havn't seen it, I'd recommend to do so.

Also regarding the news being 'non-breaking':

Uhm... Watergate? Kennedy? Maybe Apollo? And so on...

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