Life before smartphones (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#361

Post by serf » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

solaceb wrote: post #261

swayvil wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I agree, it's all very coercive. But I think the point really is... physical force isn't even necessary. We're already addicted

even if you ignore addiction , mobile phones have been integrated into society in so many infrastructure-like roles that they are hardly at all optional or 'ignorable' at this point.

When you live in a world that requires bills to be paid via mobile, rent to be paid via mobile, mass transit tickets bought via mobile, physical location reservation via mobile, as well as any customer service only available via mobile... who cares about personal addiction; normal life isn't feasible without a mobile phone at that point, and very few (if any at all) mobile phones are designed from the premise that they should respect your attention.

The mobile phones that are designed to preserve the users attention are widely incompatible with any functions that the user needs (billpay/specific group apps, whatever) to stay integrated with the systems being forced upon them, so those options are already non-starter.

That means this problem is worth discussing -- non-compulsive normal people as well as compulsive addicts are being affected by the lack of 'respect for attention' that mobile phones have, and this problem intersects with the 'required prevalence' of mobile phones across the world.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#362

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

> I read cereal boxes while eating breakfast and shampoo bottles while sitting on the toilet.

Clearly not everyone had a Reader’s Digest subscription like my family did.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#363

Post by selimthegrim » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

SonnyTark wrote: post #317

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 ti…

Serbia? Syria?

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#364

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #296

hughrr wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ex wife was like that. One reason she's an ex wife. I lost a job due to her once because she phoned the office after I didn't respond to an SMS while I was in a very tough meeting with a client. I now have my phone on do not disturb 24/7. I will choose when I participate in messaging. I also disable iMessage on my Mac. If someone comes up to me and talks to me, I may not even respond immediately. I took this to ex…

Once upon a time it was rude to look at your watch at certain events as it implied that you were bored or keen to get home.

Famously got George H W Bush into trouble during a Presidential debate.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#365

Post by selimthegrim » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

mateo411 wrote: post #24

m0ngr31 wrote: post #17

I've been working my way through Seinfeld, and I realized most of the plot lines couldn't have happened if cell phones were commonplace back then.

There's a modern Seinfeld twitter account, which has a bunch of zany plot lines that are only possible in the smart phone era.

Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t modern Seinfeld?

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#366

Post by animanoir » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

We need to embrace metamodernism to revive those days.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#367

Post by ratsforhorses » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #195

freshdonut wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is any of this backed by real facts or just your "kids these days" observations? Today's youth is better suited for dealing with smartphones and the overall connected world than we could ever be. All the people I know with real technological addiction problems (whether to smartphones, social media, scams, online radicalization or anything else) are like 45+.

https://stareintothelightsmypretties.jore.cc/ have you seen this? Also really recommend reading "what the internet is doing to our brains" by N. Carr

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#368

Post by serf » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #283

rapnie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he doesn't even mention that you could just be outside, and be unreachable and not able to reach other people too. As a kid I used to play outside a lot, and my mother had no clue where I was, nor could she easily find out. I could be outside all day without her worrying that I'd be abducted or involved in an accident. Now that all has completely changed, and my mother has too. Some years ago when I walked into t…

I’m sorry man. I’m on silent 100% of the time (though I could imagine turning the ringer on for a specific phone call) Almost everyone texts or emails and I’ve never had anyone freak out if I didn’t reply quickly.

>Almost everyone texts or emails and I’ve never had anyone freak out if I didn’t reply quickly.

email/text response time is very much a metric on many employee evaluation systems.

you might not have gotten anyone to 'freak out', but I guarantee that slow response times will get you lower performance reviews at many establishments.

(should it? absolutely not, I am entirely against the practice.)

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#369

Post by dboreham » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

oceanghost wrote: post #307

hughrr wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ex wife was like that. One reason she's an ex wife. I lost a job due to her once because she phoned the office after I didn't respond to an SMS while I was in a very tough meeting with a client. I now have my phone on do not disturb 24/7. I will choose when I participate in messaging. I also disable iMessage on my Mac. If someone comes up to me and talks to me, I may not even respond immediately. I took this to ex…

So I left one story out of my little rant-- which was my ex-wife would do exactly what you described. She would text and then if I hadn't responded in a few minutes she'd call the receptionist and/or my desk phone. It was infuriating because she rarely answered a text in less than a few hours. She said that it upset her when she couldn't reach me--and that's one of the reasons she's an ex-wife. Her go to manipulation…

Quick note (probably too late) that the behavior you describe is a classic symptom of something the DSM-5 calls "Borderline Personality Disorder".

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#370

Post by II2II » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

rapnie wrote: post #131

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…

And he doesn't even mention that you could just be outside, and be unreachable and not able to reach other people too. As a kid I used to play outside a lot, and my mother had no clue where I was, nor could she easily find out. I could be outside all day without her worrying that I'd be abducted or involved in an accident. Now that all has completely changed, and my mother has too. Some years ago when I walked into t…

> And he doesn't even mention that you could just be outside, and be unreachable and not able to reach other people too.

Or you could be at home and ignore the phone. People used to arrange a time to call or know when to call. It used to be considered impolite to let the phone ring more than 4 or 6 times unless the call was urgent. People never expected you to call back after an unanswered call, since answering machines and caller ID were rare.

> Now that all has completely changed

I find the change immensely frustrating. It isn't so much the expectation of others for an immediate response that bothers me as an internal desire for an immediate response from others. Sure, those feelings may only pop up when something genuinely important pops up. On the other hand, the other person doesn't know that until they check their messages.