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Life before smartphones (2020)

mattruby.substack.com

411–420 of 495 posts

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has not, but she's living with someone. I have not met him, but I can tell he's falling for the manipulation because I'm picking up my daughter from HIM most days instead of her (meaning, he's doing her dirtywork like driving our daughter places). She was the kind of person, if you weren't doing exactly what she wanted you to, you were a piece of shit. Once I realized what was going on (our early relationship was…

Wow , so many similarities. I don’t know about the cheating angle. It is possible she is but in wouldn’t know when she’s have the time for it.

I am sorry to hear that. If I can be a resource for you at all let me know. It might be better for you to learn from my mistakes than yours.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#412
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…

As my first camera was a Kodak Disc, I have the nice experience that literally every digital camera has been better than my first film camera.

I can second that - My first camera was a 110 toy camera (I once got a flip flash for it!). My second camera was a point-and-shoot APS camera. Even many of the photos I took with my early Sony Ericsson phone cameras (K800) were better

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#413
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't answer texts while I'm driving because I literally got in an accident texting (it was a freak circumstance, but these things do happen) I'd like to address this in a non-judgemental way: not answering texts while driving should be the norm. It's not possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text simultaneously in a safe manner.

Where I live, Ireland, it is illegal to operate a phone while driving and you will get a fine + penalty points on your license if you are seen. This includes holding the phone up to your ear on a call. I assumed it was the same in most countries, at least I'd expect so for other European countries.

I live in California and it has been illegal since 2009, but our society is in shambles as you are no doubt aware, enforcing cell phone laws is the least of our worries...

This was also probably no more than 2009 anyways as I was literally trying to get a date with my now ex-wife.

That being said it was a dumb thing to do.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#414
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the actual...? One would hope the cops at least apologized for nearly destroying your front door all because you didn't answer the door. It's not like they had a warrant for your arrest or something!

Did you read the part where his mother made the 911 call?

So? Why should "my son hasn't answered his phone" escalate to an armed response?

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#415
Prime example of how our brains trick us with the rosy retrospection cognitive bias.

"Everything was better in the past."

It's also closely related to declinism.

A rather dangerous development is the right wing's favourite narrative of "everything is getting worse in our world", which is in fact the opposite of what we measure with most indicators like corruption perception index, GDP per capita, happiness index, etc.

I think cherry picking negative aspects of today's world and compare it to positive aspects of the past draws a very subjective picture of how the past was.

--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declinism

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2020/06/20/things-kee...

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#416

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…

My million dollar app idea-- which I can't write because the OS's won't allow it... is I'd like fine grained control over my notifications. I used to do the Pomodoro thing and found it quite effective-- Id like to apply the idea to notifications as well.

It would work like this:

A list of firewall rules about who/what was able to send notifications. The firewall would be able to bump up or down the priority of a message, or discard them. Including rules being able to match say a regex inside the text, sender, time of day filtering.

And then at some specified interval (I would use 25 mins), I get all my notifications that didn't meet the emergency criteria in the firewall.

The iOS Focus mode does seem promising though.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#417

Prime example of how our brains trick us with the rosy retrospection cognitive bias. "Everything was better in the past." It's also closely related to declinism. A rather dangerous development is the right wing's favourite narrative of "everything is getting worse in our world", which is in fact the opposite of what we measure with most indicators like corruption perception index, GDP per capita, happiness index, etc…

There is of course a classic xkcd about this [0]. I think these help a little with perspective. But my favourite is the rise in syphilis cases leading early psychologists/psychiatrists to think we were in civilizational decline because so many people would go insane from stage 4. You can read a nuanced and thoughfull take on this idea on page 6 of "The Mind Fixers" which is a pretty academic book about the history of psychiatry.

0. https://xkcd.com/1227/

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#418
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…

Im planning on getting an old-school non-smart phone to take with me sometimes, just to disconnect without being uncontactable for this reason.

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#419
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…

Exactly! We're never old, we're new, constantly. :)

Re: Life before smartphones (2020)

#420
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.

This is a huge problem with smart watches.
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