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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

#271

Post by delusional »

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 want to just dive into a little bit of a tangent.

It's interesting to me that you're liberated by having access to everything all the time. Personally I find it pretty constraining. It makes me feel like there's nothing to discover, no mystery, no journey. If I wanted to find the best restaurant, I wouldn't have to go out and explore the local options or discuss it with friends. The more efficient and correct way would be to just search for it in the database. There's no excuse for going someplace without knowing anything about it, since all the information is so easily accessible.

While yes, google maps has allowed me to always know where I am, it does so at the cost of defining a "correct" path to any destination. Any deviation from the "correct" way is no longer happenstance, but a deliberate inefficiency that demands explanation.

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

#272

Post by standardUser »

I wouldn't leave the house without my wallet and my phone is vastly more useful and important than my wallet in most cases. I would rightly feel uncomfortable without either and be glad that I did! That way I'd notice and go back and get them (or decide consciously I don't need them at the moment).

As for feeling "uncomfortable" without something on your body that is almost always on your body, the same is true of an almost endless list of items. Jewelry, clothes, lotion, facial hair, piercings, makeup, keys, watch, wallet. I recall the feeling I'd get when a car would vibrate just the right way and make me think my pager was going off, years past when I had last owned a pager.

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

#273

Post by spullara »

tyrfing wrote: post #146
spullara wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It fails if you search for the incorrect quote; the last sentence should start "With" and not "Without". Checking competitors, Bing fails to find any variation of the quote, Yandex returns 5 results if you remove the incorrect word and quote it, but returns garbage otherwise. Considering the single-digit number of results for an apparently very obscure quote, and that it was incorrect, this does seem reasonable. I'm…

Trying this:

Without a terminal, you were never more than a question or a shout away from almost anything you wanted to know

It suggests results that don't include terminal (but of course that is a critical word for this quote), selecting must include terminal, gives the quote as the top results.

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

#274

Post by travisporter »

hooande wrote: post #169
lavoiems wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an interesting perspective. My personal opinion is that this constant stimulation is costing me focus when I need to do work and ultimately hurts my capacity to do things. While the internet and computing is a strong power, it does not yet replaces our cognitive capabilities to solve problem and interact with others. I hope it never will!

I don't blame my phone or the internet for this. Before smart phones the joke was that people would procrastinate by cleaning their room or organizing their desk. It's not about the technology. When it's time to focus, focus.

Yeah but now it’s like organize millions of desks worth of distraction

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

#275

Post by golergka »

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 had to leave my country a couple of months ago because of the war. If not for the modern technology, I would become a poor refugee, locked out of my money, without any income and social connections and would be relying on finding benevolent strangers.

But with it, I almost painfully transitioned to digital nomad lifestyle. My remote job didn't suffer except for a single week long absence, I have access to all of my savings, I'm in contact with everybody I know, and I just go from living in Hilton to the next airbnb.

Finding yourself in a new country where you don't know a single soul used to be terrifying. Now I it's the most natural thing.

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

#276

Post by travisporter »

rootusrootus wrote: post #131
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 sound serious. > have access to billions of ... memes But this is where I think maybe I'm getting trolled.

I think the younger generations may actually be able to pull off sarcasm on the internet.

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

#277

Post by MrJohz »

_uy6i wrote: post #210
MrJohz wrote: post #190

I'm unconvinced by this. I keep all my "on the go" stuff (keys, money, water, some important documents, etc) in a bag, and I almost always keep that bag on me, wherever I go, even if I don't think I'm actually going to need all that stuff. For example, if I go to a friend's house, and we go for a walk, I don't really need that stuff, but my instinct is to take the bag anyway. At this point, it's such an ingrained hab…

I think there is a difference between being thrown off by your routine (I have the same feeling if I’m not carrying my wallet or keys with me) and being “addicted” (for lack of a better word) to your phone and going into withdrawal - the number of situations I’m constantly in where people are incapable of being “present” because they are on their phones is depressing and astonishing

Sure, I guess it ultimately comes down to what specifically the author finds uncomfortable about not having their phone. But I think this narrative of addiction (and the implication that people should be comfortable leaving possibly the most powerful tool that have at their disposal at home) largely feels like fear-mongering.

For example, you talk about people being incapable of being present - this seems very far from my experience. I know a couple of people who might check their phone obsessively, or will get distracted looking something up, but generally most people that I hang out with show no signs of difficulty engaging with something - work, a game, a conversation - for long periods of time. That's not to say that carrying around a portable endorphin generator doesn't have its own risks and complexities, but overall, this techno-nihilistic narrative of addiction and incapability rings quite false to me.

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

#278

Post by rglullis »

delusional wrote: post #271
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 want to just dive into a little bit of a tangent. It's interesting to me that you're liberated by having access to everything all the time. Personally I find it pretty constraining. It makes me feel like there's nothing to discover, no mystery, no journey. If I wanted to find the best restaurant, I wouldn't have to go out and explore the local options or discuss it with friends. The more efficient and correct way w…

I agree. You are describing the concept of flaneuring, which is something that is getting lost on this hyperconnected culture.

My worry is that by removing all chance of variability in our lives, we become automatons.

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

#279

Post by philosopher1234 »

delusional wrote: post #271
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 want to just dive into a little bit of a tangent. It's interesting to me that you're liberated by having access to everything all the time. Personally I find it pretty constraining. It makes me feel like there's nothing to discover, no mystery, no journey. If I wanted to find the best restaurant, I wouldn't have to go out and explore the local options or discuss it with friends. The more efficient and correct way w…

You don’t need an excuse to explore blindly. I agree that you no longer have one, but I think that is simply a fact of the modern world that requires adaptation. We have to be more honest with ourselves about why we explore.

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

#280

Post by pessimizer »

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 must be like when in threads about Uber, people describe taxis as a traumatizing hellscape. When I was a child, I figured out how my city was shaped, and figured out how to get around. Knowing how to get around one's own city is a skill worth learning, and is less of a time investment than fishing around for a phone to spend minutes futzing around with for the rest of your life.

> The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a country you've never been before and without having a good command of the local language is stressful.

Not a problem most people have often. For the pretty well-traveled, maybe a few times a year.

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