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Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

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Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#21

Post by jfengel »

tw04 wrote: post #17
XorNot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

>People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. I have to vehemently disagree with this one. Since the advent of Twitter, news has become "who is first" over "who is most accurate", and it has become a cancer on all of mankind. The q…

There was always a "who is first" element to the news, but it seems categorically different when "first" was a full day rather than minutes. And it meant you were roundly shamed if you got it wrong, because everyone else had a chance to refute it during the publication cycle.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#22

Post by smolder »

TylerE wrote: post #5

Kind of funny how for decades people were wishing for some sort of Star Trek device that put the world's knowledge literally in your pocket. Now that we have it...

We have a substantial portion of the worlds knowledge available via smartphones, but it's obscured by a bunch of dishonesty, misinfo, attempts at manipulation, etc. In aggregate it's more like a battleground of thought than a utopian collection of knowledge. I'd say that's pretty far off from what Roddenberry imagined.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#23

Post by mysterydip »

Muromec wrote: post #19
XorNot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

I recently subscribed to a newspaper as in printed on paper and delivered to my mailbox once a week. It's pretty interesting experience. Main thing about it is it's finitness. There is only so much information in the weekly issue. It's deliberately slow. It's local and it's more than 140 symbols too.

Finite feeds are something I really miss. I can never finish reading modern social media, more content is always loaded for me.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#24

Post by irrational »

Levitz wrote: post #12
XorNot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

People didn't pull out a magazine while in a group and read an article for 5 minutes. a bus wouldn't be literally filled with nothing but people reading magazines and books, nobody punished their children by taking their magazines away. We did have, say, "portable entertainment". music players were kinda similar to this too, but yeah there is a massive difference.

I used to carry a book with me everywhere. If I was standing in line at the store, I read my book, doctor’s office? read my book. And yes, when I was younger my parents would punish me by taking my book away. The phone has just made it more convenient to carry books around with me.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#25

Post by Muromec »

mysterydip wrote: post #23
Muromec wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently subscribed to a newspaper as in printed on paper and delivered to my mailbox once a week. It's pretty interesting experience. Main thing about it is it's finitness. There is only so much information in the weekly issue. It's deliberately slow. It's local and it's more than 140 symbols too.

Finite feeds are something I really miss. I can never finish reading modern social media, more content is always loaded for me.

There is so much obvious stuff to do when not refreshing the feed:

- playing video games;

- reading a book;

- going for a walk;

- preparing food;

- looking out of the window;

- calling people on the phone;

- doing drugs;

Literally anything is better than the default option of mindlessly taking the the thing out of the pocket and diving into entropy.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#26

Post by LegitShady »

XorNot wrote: post #8
vasco wrote: post #2

We'll forever be addicted to the shared global (or interplanetary at some point) information network, but the phone itself won't be needed forever. I don't think there's a way to get a human to not want to know what other people think about stuff or to more generally get information for free in real time. This plus access to computational power is a pretty good combo. If the interface is a brain chip or a phone or wh…

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

I see the difference when I drive home - so many people looking at phones when driving instead of paying attention to the road.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#27

Post by Mtinie »

Levitz wrote: post #12
XorNot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

People didn't pull out a magazine while in a group and read an article for 5 minutes. a bus wouldn't be literally filled with nothing but people reading magazines and books, nobody punished their children by taking their magazines away. We did have, say, "portable entertainment". music players were kinda similar to this too, but yeah there is a massive difference.

You are mistaken. I distinctly remember attending gatherings with friends of my parents’ when I was a kid (1980s). At some point in the night, usually after dinner, someone would pull out the latest issue of “People” or “Cosmopolitan” and narrate their favorite article(s) to the rest of the group.

Now, this is much more communal than you posited but if that was happening I have no doubt people were sneaking an article or two while out with friends.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#28

Post by SethMurphy »

Levitz wrote: post #12
XorNot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

People didn't pull out a magazine while in a group and read an article for 5 minutes. a bus wouldn't be literally filled with nothing but people reading magazines and books, nobody punished their children by taking their magazines away. We did have, say, "portable entertainment". music players were kinda similar to this too, but yeah there is a massive difference.

When paperback books came out they too were looked at with disdain. Too inexpensive to produce, therefore not trustworthy. Too easy for anyone to read, anytime. They were designed to fit into pockets. Then, even cheaper and disposable comics were created. They were taken away by parents for being junk, a waste of time. Then they got rebranded as graphic novels in order to give them more legitimatcy.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#29

Post by ben_w »

jdiez17 wrote: post #16
XorNot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain all the time about "being addicted to our phones" but my memory of the world pre-smartphone was that newspapers and magazines were everywhere and frankly...I'm not really seeing the difference - in quality or content. Because while "the newspaper" was always considered respectable...that's ignoring the endless mounds of gossip magazines, fashion magazines, lifestyle...basically every category which ha…

While it's true that there were always ways to entertain oneself, I'd argue that the the ease of consumption (or alternatively, "effort required to consume") and potency of the effect on dopaminergic networks in the brain have increased _dramatically_. And unfortunately, it turns out that this kind of entertainment is directly related to the biggest money firehose that humanity has ever invented: targeted advertising…

> And unfortunately, it turns out that this kind of entertainment consumption is directly related to the biggest money firehose that humanity has ever invented: targeted advertising

I'm not convinced they target any better than the newspapers. I'm British and FB's targeting showed me an ad for how to renounce "Your US Citizenship for tax purposes", local news for a city I've never been to in Florida, and my response to the Brexit referendum result was to move to Berlin yet FB is showing me UK-specific ads. YouTube is no better, showing me an ad fronted by Nigel Farage, and a lot of obvious scams that couldn't (at the time) be reported. Twitter, back when it was that, classified me as being interested in three languages I can't speak and spectator sports I've never once watched.

It is of course possible that I'm merely weird enough that the optimisers can't figure me out. Anecdotes don't make for good datasets.

Re: Will we be addicted to our phones forever? An optimistic outlook

#30

Post by Krasnol »

TylerE wrote: post #5

Kind of funny how for decades people were wishing for some sort of Star Trek device that put the world's knowledge literally in your pocket. Now that we have it...

It reminds me more of the TNG episode "The Game" where Wesley Crusher brings back that addictive game device: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Game_(episode)
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