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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

#251

Post by deergomoo »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #149
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…

What do you imagine people 30 years ago did, during a time when crime was a lot worse?

A lot of them died, or suffered some horrible attack, unnecessarily. I don’t understand what the argument is here. We survived without antibiotics, but I sure wouldn’t like to have been seriously ill in a time without them.

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

#252

Post by [deleted] »

Baeocystin wrote: post #247
dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

Well said. It is disappointing to see such black and white thinking in discussion of the role of technology in daily life. Do I think there is a real problem with how social media brings out the worst in society? Very much so. But that is almost entirely orthogonal to how I use the (frankly amazing) pocket supercomputer I now carry with me every day. When I was a kid, mail back home when we lived overseas was a three…

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by shkkmo »

Grim-444 wrote: post #218
dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

I recently started intentionally leaving my phone behind precisely to get those uncomfortable feelings back again, albeit to some controlled degree. I enjoy having to problem solve, I enjoy navigating novel situations, I enjoy feeling real accomplishment after solving problems rather than just having the answers given to me. Of course there's other ways to get those feelings in life, but I was in general just finding…

I find the value of a smart phone irreplacable, it allows me to do all kinds of things and live all kinds of ways that were impossible before.

Yet I also love leaving my smart phone at home, or in my pocket, and trying to get lost and then get home.

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

#254

Post by throwntoday »

Wistar wrote: post #211
throwntoday wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Years ago I decided to stop texting people as the primary form of contact and instead call them. Now everyone I know calls me cause they know I don't text. This cut down my phone usage by a lot. I also don't pull it out to pass time, instead I just try to think about my schedule and sort out thoughts. I remember reading someones comment on HN where they said it's ok to be bored, that down time is the best for…

> And although I hardly use my phone I still feel some anxiety not having it when I leave the house. Edge case anxiety?

I feel the same anxiety if I don't have my wristwatch so maybe it's more like the dread of missing something

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

#255

Post by gatgeagent »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #201
ericlewis wrote: post #144

I’ll read the article but I’ll admit that my first reaction to this was… do they know how folks use their phone? My phone is my entire wallet now, in every way. Wether flying the country (boarding passes, I have clear), or purchasing something (I nearly exclusively use Apple Pay) I’ve long left behind needing to carry a proper wallet. I do make sure to carry a couple of $20s just in case there is some oddball reason…

What country does not require you to carry an id at all times where outside your house? Most countries do and most don't even accept alternate id's like driver's license.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... Lots of countries don't even require citizens to own some special id card.

In my case (Austria, EU), when the police is required to check your identity, and if you aren't carrying some allowed form of identification (id card [most people don't have one around here, no one needs it but it costs as much as renewing your passport], passport [who carries their passport around, might even be expired], drivers license [you might not have one]) they have to follow you home or wherever an recognized identity document of yours may be (e.g. some people store them at a safe deposit box at a bank).

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by kitsunesoba »

dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

This pretty much nails it, though in my case I wasn't a child.

In my early 20s I lived in Japan for a few years. Early on, before I had a phone of any type (let alone a smartphone), it was incredibly stressful – even though I had studied the language prior to arriving, it wasn't enough to handle more than the most basic situations and trying to meet and coordinate with others was a nightmare. If anything deviated from the plan, including me getting lost somewhere along the way, it all fell apart.

After having been there for a couple of months I got an iPhone 3GS and it was transformative, even though things like map apps were nowhere near as good as they are now (for example, all the location names were still in Japanese even in the English version of the app, and couldn't handle transit instructions). With it I felt much more confident in going places and doing things. Being able to text or be texted, "hey I'm going to be late" or see where I am on a map instantly such a huge thing.

This effect isn't going to be strong in one's own country of course, but it's still going to be there whenever visiting an unfamiliar area.

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

#258

Post by [deleted] »

Baeocystin wrote: post #247
dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

Well said. It is disappointing to see such black and white thinking in discussion of the role of technology in daily life. Do I think there is a real problem with how social media brings out the worst in society? Very much so. But that is almost entirely orthogonal to how I use the (frankly amazing) pocket supercomputer I now carry with me every day. When I was a kid, mail back home when we lived overseas was a three…

[deleted]

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

#259

Post by datadata »

ipaddr wrote: post #246

In this day and age of openly tracking everyone's movement by government departments I'm surprised anyone brings there cellphone with them when they travel. Unless you accept creating a forever digital footprint of everyplace you go leave your cellphone at home. We know better but we pretend it doesn't matter because it's easier.

If you don't take your phone everyplace and leave it at home often, you'll probably also end up in some list of suspicion people at some point in the future. Absence of data together with an identity is also a footprint.

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

#260

Post by jader201 »

dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

To put it another way, consider if you have a significant other (where you share bank accounts, for example):

Are you uncomfortable without your phone even if they have theirs?

I’ve been in this situation and it’s not a problem at all. In some situations, it may be an inconvenience, but I wouldn’t call it “uncomfortable”.

But with my SO having her phone, we have all emergency situations covered (directions, contacting others, money, etc.), and that doesn’t — and _shouldn’t_ — bother me.

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