Re:I wish mum's phone was never invented
by titzer on Thursday May 24, 2018 @04:32AM
(#17142155)
> All of these things are—at least in my opinion—unalloyed goods.
Sure, many of these things are nice, but phrasing them as "unalloyed goods" I think it extremely one-sided and comes only from a techno-centric perspective. You don't have to be a Luddite to actually consider downsides of the things you mentioned and upsides of their alternatives.
• ride-sharing apps
Call a Taxi, ride a bike, get a ride from a friend, walk. How is a ride sharing app an unalloyed good on a glorious day for a bike ride?
• WordLens (and its incarnation in Google Translate)
Effort put into foreign languages "the hard way"--study, recall, practice--actually strengthens your mental capacity, rather than being spoonfed answers by an AR system automatically that never leaves space for you to grow, never challenges, and instead treats you like a complete know-nothing, which you will remain if you fully rely on it. Learn some language! It's fun!
• password managers and TOTP 2FA (and mobile cryptocurrency wallets, if you like)
I am not sure how a password manager is an unalloyed good? It allows you to have more accounts and more passwords and not remember anything, but it presents a security risk...
• podcasts
Radio. Books. Talking to people.
• maps with buildings and travel-times on them, and solid public-transit routing models
Learning the streets, navigation skills, learning how to read a bus timetable, asking people, talking to people on the subway--asking for directions!!!?
• competent voice-recognition (and thus the leaps-and-bounds-better accessibility for blind users we have today)
People are pretty good voice recognizers. Who do you want to talk to and what for?
• the eBook ecosystem
You got me there. Books are heavy.
• DSLR-quality phone cameras
• VoIP apps (and thus, the commoditization of cellular providers)
I dunno. People pretend like phones didn't exist before mobile phones. There used to be such a thing as payphones on many street corners, if you really really needed to call from somewhere. Hotel lobbies, bars, your friend's house, etc.
• streaming video-service mobile apps (and thus, demand for 4G cellular infrastructure)
For what really? I mean, so you can ignore everything else around you? I don't get it. Why do you just assume this is so much better than the real world? It just isn't!
Sure, many of these things are nice, but phrasing them as "unalloyed goods" I think it extremely one-sided and comes only from a techno-centric perspective. You don't have to be a Luddite to actually consider downsides of the things you mentioned and upsides of their alternatives.
• ride-sharing apps
Call a Taxi, ride a bike, get a ride from a friend, walk. How is a ride sharing app an unalloyed good on a glorious day for a bike ride?
• WordLens (and its incarnation in Google Translate)
Effort put into foreign languages "the hard way"--study, recall, practice--actually strengthens your mental capacity, rather than being spoonfed answers by an AR system automatically that never leaves space for you to grow, never challenges, and instead treats you like a complete know-nothing, which you will remain if you fully rely on it. Learn some language! It's fun!
• password managers and TOTP 2FA (and mobile cryptocurrency wallets, if you like)
I am not sure how a password manager is an unalloyed good? It allows you to have more accounts and more passwords and not remember anything, but it presents a security risk...
• podcasts
Radio. Books. Talking to people.
• maps with buildings and travel-times on them, and solid public-transit routing models
Learning the streets, navigation skills, learning how to read a bus timetable, asking people, talking to people on the subway--asking for directions!!!?
• competent voice-recognition (and thus the leaps-and-bounds-better accessibility for blind users we have today)
People are pretty good voice recognizers. Who do you want to talk to and what for?
• the eBook ecosystem
You got me there. Books are heavy.
• DSLR-quality phone cameras
• VoIP apps (and thus, the commoditization of cellular providers)
I dunno. People pretend like phones didn't exist before mobile phones. There used to be such a thing as payphones on many street corners, if you really really needed to call from somewhere. Hotel lobbies, bars, your friend's house, etc.
• streaming video-service mobile apps (and thus, demand for 4G cellular infrastructure)
For what really? I mean, so you can ignore everything else around you? I don't get it. Why do you just assume this is so much better than the real world? It just isn't!