Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by dylan604 » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #39

b112 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Nobody is unhappy for not having what he doesn’t know that he can have.

No no, life is much better with FOMO. Keeping up with the Jones used to be a local thing. Now its global, and that's so much better. /s

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

#122

Post by svnpenn » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

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.

That seems really unhealthy. By your own admission, you are obsessed with it.

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

#123

Post by Animats » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

It's now abnormal to not have a phone handy. I was once reading a paperback book in a restaurant while waiting for my meal, and some woman approached me and started talking about ebooks. If you're sitting someplace in public and not looking at a phone, it's suspicious behavior.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

_23sd wrote: post #102

mostlysimilar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by tomilola39 » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #84

mostlysimilar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sea…

Parent likely searched without hard quotes; leading to the bad results.

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

#126

Post by lolinder » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

alar44 wrote: post #93

lupire wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Literally all of human knowledge.

In this community we tend to overestimate just how much knowledge is found on the internet because essentially everything to do with tech happens here. In the bigger picture, even if you restrict yourself to only intellectual knowledge, there are entire fields that are extremely poorly documented on the internet. Either information isn't there at all, or the information that is readily accessible is plain wrong.

Further, if you consider human experience to be part and parcel with human knowledge, the internet starts to look like a rather hollow shell. Just because you can read huge portions of the body of human literature doesn't mean you're in a position to understand what those authors were saying, and the more you isolate yourself from the physical world the more detached you'll be from their experiences.

This isn't to downplay how much knowledge there is to be found here. It's just that to say that it has "literally all" knowledge or conveys "literally god-like powers" is over the top. I'd normally leave such hyperbole alone, but in a thread that is glorifying smartphones as the savior of mankind I feel it's important to point out that what we have in a smartphone isn't all that it's being made out to be.

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

#127

Post by rootusrootus » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

mechanical_bear wrote: post #81

carom wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work with a guy who is a real, fully diagnosed celiac sufferer. The gluten-free fad has had serious consequences for him. Some restaurants don't take him seriously, claim gluten-free food when it isn't, and he gets seriously ill when that happens. He doesn't eat out so much any more because it's not worth the risk.

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

#128

Post by Apocryphon » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

alar44 wrote: post #104

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.

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.

You are the one projecting here. I don’t feel like I’m personally under those expectations, but I definitely see that in other people’s lives. Try to use less inflammatory language on this forum.

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

#129

Post by nonrandomstring » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #60

nonrandomstring wrote: post #40

I don't think it's healthy or normal to feel uncomfortable without a communications device. It's a sign of dependency. One should be able to put it out of mind and focus on deep tasks, leisure, interpersonal commitments and general real-life living without a neurotic impulse to check and inhabit a digital world. I don't have a smartphone (prefer a landline but keep an old Nokia around too), so my life is more organis…

That's nice and all, but when I travel overseas having a universal translator with me is super cool . Being able to order a safe reliable taxi in most major cities, also super cool. If you don't want email on your phone, don't set it up. But having a map that redirects me around traffic accidents in real time saves me a lot of time. I'm not going to argue against smartphones being horrible little dopamine boxes, beca…

> purely utilitarian device

You're absolutely right kid. Sincerely. I look forward to the day when the real utility shines through again. And I come from a time (as a now well bearded computer nerd) when it was all utility and coolness.

But we're in some weird in-between days [1] where motivations have gotten distorted, ideals have got lost, and the utility just isn't enough any more to stave of the wrongness.

FWIW I'm an optimist and beleieve we'll make it through and take back tech, but right now we need to take a long look at this.

[1] The fancy word is "interregnum" - a period "caught between two times, one world that is already dead, and the other waiting to be born."

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

#130

Post by saurik » Sun, May 08, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

This uncomfortable feeling though was just because it wasn't in your pants, providing a specific sensory input you are used to, not because "oh no! I need Twitter!". One has the same feeling about objects like wallets and keys.

I have carried a shoulder bag since I was a kid, before I had ever even used the Internet. Recently, indirectly due to the pandemic, I have stopped using my shoulder bag very much... I am constantly freaked out by its lack.

I haven't worn a watch in decades: I used to wear a watch only when I was a kid, and I stopped in college. And yet, to do this day--not often! maybe once a year, tops--I will suddenly have this visceral feeling "I lost my watch".

I have worn the same jacket for the past four years. This jacket puts a bit of weight on the back of my neck. I recently went out for a whole day wearing a hoodie and I kept feeling confused as "I am not wearing my jacket".

FWIW, I keep notifications off on my phone at all times. I think the entire idea that I can be randomly interrupted insane. I thereby often just disappear from being able to be contacted by anyone for a day because "I was having fun".

And yet, if I don't know where my phone is, I start freaking out... not because "I need my fix", but because it is an expensive object that has a lot of personal data on it and (as mine are old/jailbroken) might not even be replaceable.

I thereby disagree with the idea here: your phone is simply a tool, and it is probably one of the most powerful tools you have ever owned. The feeling of making it part of yourself is extremely human: we love to build and use tools.

What isn't reasonable is one way you have chosen to use that tool, but that's entirely unrelated to the very normal feelings you have when you suddenly don't have it in your pocket: move it to your other pocket and you will also feel bad.

Just think: your phone is also a clock, a map (compete with GPS and compass), a camera (photo and video), a calculator, a tricorder, and the hitchhicker's guide to the galaxy all at once... what a shame to feel you can't carry one.