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Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

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Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#81

Post by mechanical_bear »

carom wrote: post #71
manachar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has become blinded by metrics focused on giving people what an algorithm things most people want. It's the digital equivalent of going to a restaurant and looking for vegetarian food only to be inundated with gluten-free and other health-fad foods. I suspect their algorithm is in a bit of a doom loop as it's being trained on people clicking worse and worse results of pages that seem clearly written to game the…

Gluten free isn't a health fad. Please learn about celiacs.

It is a health fad for most. People with actual diagnosed celiac's disease are rare. Self diagnosed… that is another deal…

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#82

Post by mysterydip »

ryanchoi wrote: post #56

Yeah, I opted for a smaller phone this last upgrade (in what, four years) in hopes of using it less and being less noticeable in the pocket. Used to have this big screen phone with which I wouldn’t have much issue watching or reading stuff on. Now with a much smaller one, “not” having a huge screen to consume media on, making it less attractive to do so, and it’s been working pretty well I think. Couldn’t bring mysel…

I find it funny that the 13 mini (2.53"x5.18") is bigger than the iphone 4 (2.31"x4.5") of yesteryear.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#84

Post by spullara »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #30
dsr_ wrote: post #14

"Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age, or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another. A terminal, in the shape of a ring, button, bracelet or pen or whatever, was your link with everybody and e…

So I had a feeling "without a terminal" was a typo and I wanted to look up the exact quote. I googled the sentence and expected the right quote to be at the top, but all Google gave me was results for helping people with terminal cancer cope with their coming death. It was only after I appended "Ian M Banks" that I got the result I was looking for. I'm honestly surprised Google failed that search so hard.

People are constantly saying these things about google and when I search for:

"Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal"

I get the exact answer as a snippet at the top of the search. I am beginning to think everyone that has bad search results has some kind of malware installed on their computer since their searches always work for me.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#85

Post by Apocryphon »

b112 wrote: post #64
Apocryphon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also didn’t live under the expectation of being reachable 24/7. Similarly, people used paper maps while driving which were cumbersome, but didn’t live under the expectation or the opportunity of traveling to new locations regularly.

I find it nicer to look at a huge map, when visiting a city. Maybe a 100" TV would be about the same. But sadly, it is harder to get paper maps now, for obvious reasons.

By traveling to new places, I even just mean that Yelp and Google, coupled with GPS navigation, allow people to more regularly patronize new businesses in the localities they reside in. So it’s much more frequent to be driving to somewhere unfamiliar.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#86

Post by karencarits »

aiisjustanif wrote: post #18
sysadm1n wrote: post #11

Well not that I live in a bad neighborhood or anything like that, but you really don't know what could happen at any given moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn't work retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid. If you're concerned about privacy buy one of those cheap Nokia dumbphones that old people use. Keep your smartphone at home, and swa…

> but you really don't know what could happen at any given moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn't work retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid. It would be nice to not live that way sometimes you know? There are places where people aren’t conditioned to feel that way.

You could read his post as him living with constant threats of victimization (this is how I read your comment) but it applies equally well to medical emergencies. I happened to be in such a situation once and it was stressful enough with medical guidance on the phone and assurances that the ambulance was on its way

I will not risk to have to face such a situation alone or have to leave a person in distress just to call for help

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#87

Post by dougmccune »

I recently got my first Apple Watch with a cellular plan specifically so I can leave my phone at home and still be reachable via phone and text message. Mostly it’s great. The watch barely works well enough as a phone, I can play Spotify, Apple Maps kind of works for directions (not nearly as well as Google maps on the phone IMO), and that’s basically all that’s usable, which is nice.

However, when dropping off my kid at school they require a Covid screening app (phone only) that you have to show every morning. I got half way to Whole Foods before turning back realizing I needed my phone to scan the Amazon Prime code to get better prices.

I expect more and more everyday activities will require smartphones sadly.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#88

Post by hedora »

b112 wrote: post #35
bobthepanda wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least individual spot meters were reduced to block meters so that there was less physical infrastructure to maintain. in my city part of the motivation is data collection; rates are adjusted block by block based on the last quarter's occupancy relative to targets, and among other things the app nudges people towards slightly less optimal parking spots that are either cheaper or more available.

This data collection doesn't require a smartphone to pay, though.

How would you sell the result to marketers, or warrantlessly track people after the fact without the app?

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#89

Post by lupire »

panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

What kind of god, though? What are you missing that only exists in meat space?

When you get older you might grow bored of the virtual stimulation trapped inside a screen.

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