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The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

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Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#111

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

drenvuk wrote: post #95
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same thing! The difficult part is looking up kanji I encounter in app UIs, you can't exactly copy+paste them and manual lookup is annoying.

I feel no shame suggesting that you get the Pleco app. It is the best Character/Kanji dictionary that exists today. You can also draw them to look them up + tons of other stuff.

I only run open source software on my phone. However, I think there are some similar FOSS apps for Japanese on F-Droid, I'll have to take another look.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#112

Post by throwanem »

kowdermeister wrote: post #94
sharkweek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always struggle with the photo thing. It's fun to review old photos, so I enjoy taking lots of them. But anytime I put my camera between myself and whatever I'm photographing, it also feels like a removal of being in the present moment and just enjoying it for what it is.

This argument get brought up quite a lot, but rarely by someone sharing his own experience which is interesting. I never really felt like this. Snapping a photo takes a few seconds and I can continue enjoying whatever I was doing, not that I'm not enjoying taking a photo :) To me it's just shrink-wrapping my mood.

I used to feel more as GP describes, but that's changed since I started carrying a DSLR every day - not that I don't still use my phone's camera, but I find there's a distinct and very palpable difference between taking quick snapshots as aides-memoires, and the much more mindful and absorbing state that, at least in my experience, is part and parcel of photography for its own sake.

I can do the former without removing myself from the moment, while I find the latter requires it - at least thus far, I haven't worked out a way to both remain present in an experience, and also engage in the kind of analytical thought and modeling that goes into producing photographs which are (or at least strive to be) worthy in their own right, whichever camera I happen to be using to do so.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#113

Post by quacker »

thesagan wrote: post #23

I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…

Do you not have a phone now? Does it affect your relationships with people at all?

I have family and friends in other cities and a girlfriend across town. Texts are just too convenient not to have when you need to coordinate. Just last week a friend passed through town looking for a new car and we met up for dinner - never would have happened without a phone. GF gets into a minor accident (not her fault, she would like to point out) and I can be over there in minutes thanks to a couple of texts. Father breaks his knee and I can follow how he's doing in real time, rather than finding out at the next family gathering.

I could do without the "smart" part of the phone. I really just need texting/calling (mainly texting). But I don't want a land line, and I'm pretty sure my relationships with friends and family would quickly deteriorate without my cell phone.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#114

Post by jxramos »

throwawaycopy wrote: post #41
thesagan wrote: post #23

I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…

Try keeping a sketch pad for quick illustrations or perhaps a notebook for poems. The world is filled with inspiration! Not only will you be more present, but you'll be turning your seemingly humdrum life into a work of art!

I love that interpretation of jotting down information as creating a mindfulness work of art. What a thought! I used to do the cliche "note to self" with a voice recorder, that I've recently been desiring again. My cell phone is too slow to respond to my inspirations having to log in past the keycode, launch the app, dump mental information. Stepping through those hoops seems to decay my inspiration. You make me think about reverting back to old technology like the pen and paper. Come to think of it I get the sense that the mental decay from fishing for those materials in my pocket is less than futzing with a cell phone.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#115

Post by etherdeath »

nwatson wrote: post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

I agree, however, the introspection may be useful. Knowing about this effect may help those who have had a nagging suspicion this was the case.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#116

Post by prophesi »

wdewind wrote: post #47
nwatson wrote: post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

> But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. Socrates absolutely did. > for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth,…

For anyone who wishes to delve deeper into Socrates' arguments and the effects technologies have on our attention spans/memories, I recommend "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr. I read it for a book report in a computer ethics course, and it does a great job at laying out the pros and cons of our constantly connected society.

It was written 7 years ago, but it's still relevant as Android and 4G were rapidly rising in usage around then.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#117

Post by thesagan »

quacker wrote: post #113
thesagan wrote: post #23

I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…

Do you not have a phone now? Does it affect your relationships with people at all? I have family and friends in other cities and a girlfriend across town. Texts are just too convenient not to have when you need to coordinate. Just last week a friend passed through town looking for a new car and we met up for dinner - never would have happened without a phone. GF gets into a minor accident (not her fault, she would li…

I have a cheap-as-costanza dumb phone with texting which has served me very well. I definitely need a phone! Can't whistle that loudly.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#118

Post by throwanem »

sizzle wrote: post #107
thesagan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do miss the camera sometimes. :(

get a dedicated pocket cam

This is good advice - point-and-shoot cameras are really good these days! For $90 you can get one [1] that's the equal of any smartphone camera ever made, and the better of the vast majority - you might find a >16MP sensor on a smartphone, but you'll have a very hard time finding a smartphone with a 5x optical zoom capability. Spend a few hundred dollars more and you can get one [2] with an almost absurdly broad range of capabilities, including a 20-megapixel sensor and a 35x optical zoom capability that'll cover a broader range of use cases than any smartphone camera could ever hope to manage.

[1] http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-di...

[2] http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-di...

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#119

Post by d0100 »

holografix wrote: post #81
wdewind wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. Socrates absolutely did. > for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth,…

The insights and characterisations of human behaviour found in ancient records sometime shock me with their accuracy and depth. Human nature has not changed and it was well, if not better understood, Millenia ago.

Wouldn't that mean, then, that most all "doom and gloom" we get today is as irrelevant as those of old?

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#120

Post by cracell »

jonbarker wrote: post #92

A simple demonstration of the inefficiency of task switching. Time yourself writing the letters of the alphabet in order from a to z followed by the numbers 1-26. Then try the same task only instead switching from numbers to letters, like this a,1,b,2,c,3, etc. Compare the two times. They should be the same, but the second version takes much more time for most people. It seems that whether you sit next to a giant boo…

On the flip side my smart phone often allows me to look up needed information about something I'm currently thinking about or working on. So I can stay in the same task instead of noting it and having to come back to it later after I've looked it up from a laptop or in a library prior to the modern internet.

I think the effects of a smart phone on someone varies greatly depending on how exactly the individual uses it.

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