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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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

b112 wrote: post #31
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…

I'm not really blaming you here, this attidue is very normal these days, but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. (Inconvenience is not what I call a mishap) I grew up in the country, and a few times had to walk 20 miles home, due to a dead car. Being a rural area, after 10pm, I might see 1 or 2 cars the entire walk home (4 hours and a bit).…

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by _23sd »

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.

(I misunderstood your comment initially so corrected this sentence) The problem is that the sentence is typo'd so searching for the exact quote (not keywords) doesn't work correctly. For the record the actual quote is:

>With a terminal, you were never more than a question or a shout away from almost anything you wanted to know, or almost any help you could possibly need

When you Google that in quotes you get actual results from Google Books and Goodreads, while Bing/DuckDuckGo only returns an archive from a random blog that quotes it halfway down the page, and the new hot search engine Brave finds nothing. I agree it's a little disappointing that one mistaken word throws Google so far off the trail.

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

#103

Post by mikewarot »

My phone is how my family reaches me in an emergency. How can I help them if they can't reach me? It would be irresponsible to leave home without it.

Internet on the phone is nice to have, but it's phone calls and texts that need to work for me. (I prefer actual phone calls, because that's what I grew up with)

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

#104

Post by alar44 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #50
cnelsenmilt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25 years ago there was a pay phone in every gas station, and in denser areas in every corner market, bus terminal, grocery store, hotel, ..., not mentioning those installed directly along the street.

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.

Stop. Projecting.

I don't know anyone who expects me to be available 24/7.

Most people I know text don't text back immediately either.

It's a you problem, not a societal one.

Set some fucking boundaries and start acting like an adult.

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

#105

Post by exolymph »

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.

You won't give your own mind space to be creative or think deeply if you're constantly getting microhits of novelty every 30 seconds.

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

#106

Post by everyone »

I think it's interesting how everyone is addicted to their phones nowadays. I'm a computer guy but I am 100% not addicted to my phone, I really don't get the appeal. I do have an Android phone, but I mainly use it as mp3-player/GPS/phone, it clearly beats carrying / charging separate phone, mp3 player, gps device etc.

But aside from that I have always thought that smartphones utterly suck, the awful OS and proprietary nature of the hardware, also the core design is fundamentally flawed, using a touchscreen for both input and display means the interface has no texture or haptic feedback, and also your fingers are covering the display. They are extremely awkward and slow to use. Theyre not even a good shape to fit in a human hand for crying out loud! So I just use my smartphone as much I would have used those devices it has replaced. I just really dont want to use it any more than necessary as it's so awful.

Smartphones are like those "leatherman" tools, I call them do-everything-badly-devices. Its handy to carry a leatherman rather than always carry seperate pliers/screwdrivers/knife etc. but you really dont want to be using it if a real tool is available.

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

#107

Post by noasaservice »

The energy behind this line of complaint about cellphone/pocket internet connected computers has the same feel as people loudly proclaiming that they "do not watch TV" from the 2000's.

I'm going to chalk it up to neo-ludditeism without the actual labor component that Ned Ludd was fighting against. (protip: he too was antiwork)

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

#108

Post by alar44 »

CommanderData wrote: post #5

Being forced to pay for council parking in the UK using a mobile app is completely astonishing to me, and leaving home without your mobile, or no data or a broken phone can cause you a world of difficulties. I didn't agree to wanting to normalise the removal of parking meters and mandatory app usage just to park your car in a park or highsteet. I'm not sure where this motivation started.

It's way more efficient on a number of levels.

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

#109

Post by sidpatil »

throwawayboise wrote: post #95
beefee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loss of pay phones over the last 20 years is a loss to society. We used to have widespread access to cheap and anonymous emergency calling.

I lived to my mid-30s before I ever carried a mobile phone. In that time I do not recall ever needing to call 911 on a pay phone. How often has a mobile phone helped you in an emergency? For me, never. I think this is one of those easy-to-imagine-but-in-reality-rarely-happens justifications. The local university here has these emergency call-for-help stations all over campus. They have a blue light on top so they are…

> A couple of years ago there was a little feature story in the newspaper about how they had never--not once--been used in a real emergency. But the university did not want to take them down because they provided a feeling of security.

How many real emergencies occurred near one of these boxes?

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