> I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail).
It facilitates instant communications. Email across the planet has been around since day one.
> I can have a fiancee who's in another country.
I can assure you this was possible pre-smart phone.
> When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me.
The counter point to this is millions of man years wasted streaming mind numbing video.
> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either.
> If I'm having a discussion with friends I can call up the information I'm missing.
I’m probably showing my age but I miss having a pointless yet heated argument that couldn’t be settled in 15 seconds on a smart phone. The feeling of being right when you finally do get to confirm the answer is worth so much more.
> I can listen to music and podcasts while I go for a walk or a ride.
You don’t need internet for that, just some planning to have the content downloaded in advance.
> I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
If you’re describing zoning out of the real world people around you to doodle on your phone that’s sad.
> I can take nice photos when I didn't expect it.
Okay this one I agree. The best camera is the one you actually have. Counterpoint is we’re approaching peak photo.
>> I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail).
> It facilitates instant communications. Email across the planet has been around since day one.
Do you even need instant communication in that case? It's not like you're going to have a quick unexpected meetup or some "hey I'm quite busy can you go get the kids?" Not to mention time zone issues.
>> When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me.
People didn't die of boredom before. Read a book, magazine, work on something on your laptop if you must. Also people seem to lose the ability to just take a short timeout from everything, just to think about your life for a bit, remember some good old times with friends or family you might have lost, and so on.
>> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
There will we information displayed at the platform and inside the station. Plus announcements on the speaker system, which are faster, more accurate, and I don't have to pull out my phone. Fun fact: at least in Germany, it's not that the train company is obliged to adhere to the prognosed delay. So if your smartphone tells you the train is an hour late and you decide to visit the nearest paintball establishment for an hour you might find yourself missing the train since it only arrived 45 minutes late in the end.
"help, I'm being detained in Paris!" "I was mugged and need a passport!" "My plane was late so I missed my connecting flight, so I am spending another night in Berlin."
etc.
>People didn't die of boredom before. Read a book, magazine, work on something on your laptop if you must. Also people seem to lose the ability to just take a short timeout from everything, just to think about your life for a bit, remember some good old times with friends or family you might have lost, and so on.
I actually agree with you totally here, but a counterpoint would be that I can get mundane stuff done while doing mundane stuff (riding a bus, taxi, etc.) so that when I get home I get more family time instead of "not now, I have to see why Comcast/Verizon/Etc. screwed up our bill again."
And they conveniently let you keep your 1000$ iPhone ;). But these are all situations where I could just make a regular call with my dumb phone as well. Sure roaming costs will kick in, but that's even worse for data. My current provider charges 2€/min for calls outside the EU and 1€ per 50kb (yes that's not a typo). In all seriousness though, sure, there's always situations where having a smartphone is beneficial, I won't deny that. Especially working in tech it might even be that suddenly shit hits the fan at your company and you'd desperately take a wonky ssh connection on a bus ride since every seconds counts.
And if you really have that level of self control, as the OP of this discussion suggests, that you won't distract yourself more than you actually benefit than that's fine. I found myself barely managing to do that and switched to a dumb phone again in 2015ish. On trains and buses I'd mindlessly skim through HN or reddit or random tech sites, I eventually configured my work mail on my phone since sometimes it's more convenient, but then found myself reading mails in the evening during family time etc. Most colleagues confirm that they have similar patterns, but they're almost all single or childless so they probably don't care that much.
I still use it occasionally on the go and frequently at home as a laptop replacement when I'm just about to catch up on the news or post on HN. But I pretty much wiped all apps except the browser. I could not manage to do that when I used it as my main phone for almost 2 years.
Since this drifted somewhat away from the original topic let me add that I'm quite curious about KaiOS devices as it seems it might offer a suiting compromise for my needs. It got most popular messenger apps so I could take advantage of improved connectivity with people but the experience is still limited enough to prevent information overload and playing around with it too much. The selection of devices is just too limited at the moment.
..millions of man years wasted waiting.
>zoning out of the real world people around you to doodle on your phone that’s sad.
..humoring pointless gossip so people will like you, that's sad.
My point is that these seem very subjective and judgmental.
... to you.
My phone doesn't always have to be solving a problem or completing a task. The other day I was waiting for something and happened to look up the weather. I ended up going down a rabbit hole and re-discovering https://earth.nullschool.net - it was fascinating! It enriched my life, to no particular end. That sort of stuff happens all the time and immensely valuable to me.
Except. Now I only carry one device. vOv
And what does it even mean to say something is subjective? Contrary to what? And what does judgemental mean? That you can be whatever you want, and think of yourself however you want, but others may not see you how they see you? What's wrong with judgement?
semantics. you feel like you can only be critical of action, while inaction gets a pass? 'thinking' quietly is not inherently more valuable than being entertained. And while we are at it, nobody is just 'entertained' we learn, process, and yes 'think' at the same time
>to say something is subjective
In this context subjective means only applies to you Contrary to something that is a universal truth, something koolba seemed to be claiming.
>What's wrong with judgement[al]?
Its a weak argument, to say someone has 'failed' by your standards is to say they have failed by an arbitrary measure that may not have anything to do with their goals.
It has been present around the globe for ages, if you could find an internet cafe on holiday. Reading email on your phone also needs a smartphone.
> Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either.
You must be one of the blessed multitudes that live in a country with a public transport system that works well. If you have frequent, long-term delays it is fairly essential for your sanity to be able to know which routes are not currently completely fucked.
Nokia 6310 could both read and send emails, and I'm sure the functionality arrived slightly earlier too.
>>second point
I mean, if I'm in some 3rd world country without a reliable public transport system, then I'm not sure how internet access or a smartphone for that matter helps at all. In my experience in those places the bus/train just turns up when it does, no website would help you here.
Do you honestly think it's a binary choice? Either the public transport system is reliable, or it's a 3rd world country? This seems disingenuous.
Just to take an example: Southern Rail in the UK. It's notoriously unreliable, and journeys get cancelled or delayed all the time for various reasons, including strikes, weather, staff shortages and leaves on the tracks. I've saved countless hours from going to waste by keeping up to date on the schedule in real time. For this I need a smart phone. Is the UK a 3rd world country?
You have some valid points but it's like you feel compelled to reject all possible benefits put forward by OP. On this one you are objectively wrong.
There are numerous first world countries that have unreliable public transport. This is the US and also in the EU, I can't imagine you've never encountered what I mean unless you don't travel very much (there is nothing wrong with that, but then why do you discuss it like this). Sure in the situations that you talk about a smartphone would not matter, but in the ones I talk about (and that I actually meant originally) a smartphone will tell you why there is a delay (suddenly, generally) and what you can do to mitigate it. Something no PA system will tell you with any amount of reliability.
Outside of major towns, smart phone won't help you much to get most accurate time table. Paper timetable in the station is the only source of true information. You may find multiple contradicting timetables on the web and just hope they haven't been changed since then. Nobody cares to post emergency updates on the web. Sticker in the station it is. GPS live tracking is non existent.
We do have live tracking for public transit in 2 (maybe 3?) major towns. But that came before the era of smartphones - it was displayed in displays in stops. It's kinda cool to see your bus stuck in traffic one stop from you :)
I'm in Canada, my internet on my phone is more than good enough, yet it's not rare to see bus 10 minutes late and it happens often to need a second bus that may be 10 minutes after the first one. Traffic is not exclusive to third world country. Our bus have real time tracking so I can know 10 minutes earlier if taking another route is the right thing to do.
Blackberries were smartphones. They had enumerable apps shoved into that tiny display, and keyboard model, but they still looked like flip-phones and lacked touch displays.
To me, the 'flip' is just a mechanical implementation detail. The real divide is smart phones versus dumb phones.
A phone that comes with its own apps (like old flip-phones) but doesn’t offer any other extensibility, usually only has apps written by the manufacturer to support standard protocols like email and SMS, and no support for any company’s walled-garden social superstimulus factory. Even WAP was okay, since WAP only worked to deliver information, not interactive “experiences.”
(Admittedly, one of those apps could have been an IRC client, which would have been quite immersing. Luckily we never saw such from the manufacturers—they left that sort of thing to the J2ME sideloading ecosystem.)
Oh Simulation Creator, shudder I just remembered when Sears installed an internet cafe haha.
And I need to inform the person that I'm meeting with that I will arrive later (if I didn't have slack in my transit time).
Really having a smartphone does not mean you need to use it for much. IMO, the jump to cellphone vs not having one is a bigger downside as someone can call ar any time interrupting your thoughts. But even you can just turn them off, while still benefiting in an emergency.
IMNSHO, the parent is simply behaving reactively to the threat of new paradigms.
Email does not convey the emotion of a phone call, let alone a video call.
Easy access to information fosters discussion - by ending pointless, heated debates over nothing.
Only teenagers, and I now presume, older people, fuddle with their phones instead of talking to the person in front of them.
One hit on google and that's you! Nice!
Certainly does not, and it's a nice bonus, but when on earth do people use video calls? Since they are even better at conveying emotions, by your logic everybody carrying a smartphone should be making video calls at all times. But it's the contrary, people even prefer texting on Whatsapp over phone calls or even voice messages.
> Easy access to information fosters discussion - by ending pointless, heated debates over nothing.
They are the opposite of pointless. I feel the current/younger generation has completely lost the ability to have civilized, structured debates. If you can't solve a disagreement by a google search people freak out pretty quickly. And then we need safe spaces left and right and everybody is a victim and it's all society's fault. Those pointless debates over trifles serve a purpose, like kitten playfully fighting all day.
> Only teenagers, and I now presume, older people, fuddle with their phones instead of talking to the person in front of them.
Mostly teenagers yes, but them being the next generation of adults I doubt they'll just stop once they're into their twens. It'll just become the norm.
I actually see people using facetime in public all the time -- I think its one of those things if you aren't looking for it you won't notice. I've actually used google hangouts on my phone a few times -- recently I was in the airport w/o my computer on my Dad's birthday so we did a video call and other scenarios like that one. Also, I lived abroad for a few years and I used video chat extensively with my parents and other friends back in the states. (TBF though a majority of the time it was on my laptop -- but sometimes I did use my phone!)
> Mostly teenagers yes, but them being the next generation of adults I doubt they'll just stop once they're into their twens. It'll just become the norm.
That one is potentially true although I'll say based off of our interns they seem to be pretty good about not being on their phones all the time when the situation calls for it. I think like most things its super individual because of my coworkers the person who is on their phone the most is actually a middle aged guy.
I'd argue that email (and video calls, etc) have killed our ability to convey emotion via written word. What used to take time and thought has been reduced to quick blurbs given with little effort.
Get off my lawn! <shakes cane>
When they seemingly replace a phone call, its usually because the institution would have liked to use only letter writing but couldn't for some non-technical reason.
Like a company processing refunds and cancelations by phone in order to have the opportunity to convince clients not to cancel (i.e. non-technical reason), now uses email or chat systems to accomplish the same thing.
FaceTime / video calls always available at your fingertips while you are waiting somewhere is also something I wouldn’t want to miss.
I agree about WhatsApp issue.
smartphones enable you to channel a lot of your time to other things instead of "having to download podcasts in advance" or "check posted transit schedules".
You counterpoints all seem to distill down to some variation of being opposed to people having options or embracing convenience.
But at what cost? The software and OS is a locked-down ecosystem for most consumers. The hardware even more so. Such mass adoption forces one to conform in order to participate, meaning even for the privacy-conscious, consumer trends dictate all. Just a couple months ago US carriers were found to be selling realtime customer location data. Whether or not they're selling, they can track your phone via cellular triangulation. The baseband is a proprietary black box that runs its own privileges OS, can read memory and disk, and basically transmits at all times (mandated by law in some countries, for emergency network connectivity) to whoever picks up the signal, and this includes a unique IMEI. No removable batteries, and no hardware switches means masses of phones are being tracked at all times from point A to B, whether or not for nefarious purposes. Add the ever-growing trend of cashless transactions, OS-level third-party GPS tracking, and the reality becomes a slippery slope nightmare.
I feel that sentiments like yours, one's where "life" and "phone" are nearly synonymous, are fostering a dangerous future where one is obligated to own a phone else be left in the dust. This is already nearly the case socially, and in some careers also. Literature classics warn of mass surveillance and control, of chip implants under the scalp, but why go there when the populace already wear a tracking device willingly of their own accord, and grow to depend on it ever more?
Also, PTSN can be easily eavesdropped as well, and paying by the minute isn't attractive. The phone companies squeezed us long enough.
We're discussing mostly location tracking here (GPS etc), but we also shouldn't neglect the impact of cameras or mics. Nor the way GPS coordinates are embedded in pictures we ourselves take and we ourselves share on Instagram.
Yesterday on TV there was a talkshow about the decline on Facebook due to privacy reasons (with which they seemingly agreed), and someone went how Instagram was the next hottest thing (owned by the same parent company). I wanted to bash my head...
Right now I'm watching Tour de France and the 24/7 in-ears/mics and cameras make it a vastly different game than how it was before the TV era and during the TV but not yet everyone having ears.
* vote into power people that actually care about privacy
* or to only buy products that protect their privacy
what makes you think all this matters?
The average person has decided that life is better for him like this...
The most dystopian tools ever imagined can be perfectly harmless if the people using them don't want to use them for dystopian purposes.
It's only moving towards a dystopy because people don't care or know enough. That's what has to be fixed.
Indeed, I do. You want to track the stores I drive by and what websites I visit? In exchange I can have real-time commnuication with friends all over the world without having to align scheduled to make phone calls of varying connection quality, I can get step by step directions on how to do just about anything including get from point A to B, I can take photos and share them, I can read, I can consume video and audio, I can track my macros, I can get immediate weather alerts, track ODB-II data for my car, get curated news, get raw news, augment my memory with drive/dropbox/evernote, I can track my finances? DEAL!
Boredom is good. Waiting is good. Not having what you want every second of the day is good.
Life before phones was in many ways totally different than life now. But in others ways, we're still the same people, doing the same things, with newer tools. Everyone can make their own decisions on what tools they want to use, but I'm just not buying the argument that life is better or worse. It is different.
I had a dumb phone for a year or so until maybe half a year ago. The ways I found to waste my time without smartphone were refreshingly different. Most importantly, thinking and wandering in my own mind without the urgent need to check every new thought from the internet. Long story short, there is now nokia 8110 with 4G and wifi available, I am likely going to get one of those soon and turn my smartphone off until I really need it.
Bought one yesterday, I have to say that KaiOS is still veeeery immature, so far very far behind series 40/60 nokias. If you can find a Nokia 208 or 515 which are the last they made with 3G+ you might be better off.
Phone game apps are the most addictive but if you never download them you won't get into it. Games have 4 caracteristics that makes them addictive: winnable, it has goals, novel challenge that keep you in state of flow, feedback. These things could also be used in reading books and that becomes addictive in a good way.
Tl;Dr phone apps are the best thing to aquaire skills in the future. If you block or hide notification and not download addictive apps you will be fine.
In that case, why not communicate via Twitter or the Blockchain (tm)? Do you post pictures of yourself naked on Instagram as well?
Every person and every company has significant secrets.
I can also easily take my smartphone with me when I think there is a real need. The 4g dumbphone can share the internet to my smartphone.
Exactly right. I hear more and more people complaining about the internet, their smartphones or tech in general. If you listen to those people long enough you realize what they are actually talking about is social media and to a lesser degree gaming. I just don't get it. If you don't like those services, don't use them. Have some self restraint, for crying out loud.
- Have some self restraint for crying out loud.
Might be a good idea to read a bit on psychology. Your experience != everyone else's experience.
This is perhaps just one use case but it's hardly surprising that people now want to go back to way it was before. I still use my smart phone because it makes my life a lot more convenient in many other ways but I definitely understand if someone would find it compelling enough to stop using a smart phone.
But, it does make me think, if I just want to connect to the internet, play music/podcasts, click a pic once a while etc. do I really need a device that's GPS enabled, bluetooth enabled, has NFC, accelorometers, face recognition, multicore processors etc. and costs a fortune ;)
So this is not a reason not to have a smartphone it's only a matter of setting up the phone properly, so notifications reach me only when they should be checked.
I check my mail a couple times a day during work hours, usually when I arrive in the morning, after our standup, after my lunch break, sometime during the afternoon and before I leave (but not right when I want to leave, at least a couple of minutes beforehand).
I always pay close attention to immediately deal with all mail I receive, i.e. complete the task immediately (usually if less than five to ten minutes are required), write a to-do item or (my favorite option) archive the mail. The important part is to get it out of your brain and besides archiving or doing it, the best other way is to write it down.
This obviously only works if real time critical information is not usually sent via email (unexpected, action required immediately and minutes to hours required, depending on the complexity) and if no one expects email to be used for time critical information. Luckily we have policies in place to both ensure that email is used for non time-critical information and other more direct channels (Slack, phone, coming over in person) are used for actual time critical information.
I know that this culture part is often the actual hard one. If people expect you to immediately react to email then there is not much you can do inside the expectations and you probably have to turn notifications on.
Even if you leave notifications on, dealing with email immediately (picking doing it immediately, writing a to-do, archiving it) is still a time-management basic and extremely helpful, but it doesn’t work very well if you have that notification gnawing your nerves somewhere in your brain. Dealing with email immediately actually has to mean dealing with it immediately, i.e. the first time you take notice of it.
(This is a very German perspective, though. My probably biased and also very limited experience in communicating with people in the US was one of general hyperactivity and I had the impression that many treated email sort of like a real time communications channel with weird expectations about response times.)
Granted, I don't know how much the "Betriebsrat" was prompting that, but I doubt that people themselves are that much different, despite German Gemütlichkeit.
I found that both IT workers and MBAs are IT/MBA first, nationals second.
I’ve been dying for gmail and workplace (fb for work) to add a feature so I can stop work related notifications after 17. Having this at iOS level would be great also.
The work phone gets left in a locker at work along with my work laptop, I refuse to bring it home with me until I have agreed in advance to work from home for some specific task. I know a lot of employers expect their employees to be available at odd hours, but I refuse to participate in that.
I made this decision after suffering under a boss who would call and email at 22:00 and expect results to be ready on his table next morning by 8:00.
Only a very select trusted few of my colleagues have my private phone number, and they will only ever use it in a dire emergency.
My circle of friends is entirely separate from work, there is no overlap, which is just fine by me. I prefer keeping work and my personal life separate.
That way you don't have to carry two phones, be tied to a dual-sim phone or have troubles when you leave the company (in case you use the company phone number for private calls too).
Now that I'm becoming more comfortable with the new hobby, I've started listening to audiobooks or streaming music while I knit - it seems to strike a nice balance.
Certainly the phone has enriched my life - it enables me to stream music and listen to audiobooks easily, but in my experience it's a dangerous tool as well, since it enables you to check social media more than is healthy. Everything in moderation I suppose.
Or, as someone below puts it
> I'm mystified by the number of people who think that they've solved the fundamental problem by getting rid of their phone: being that unable to control one's immediate impulses, is worthy of attention.
Maybe getting rid of a smart phone means "lack of impulse control", okay. The cited study claims the average American looking at their phone every six minutes on average, so it's not exactly cool to ignore that bit and berate the person who took the time writing an article citing that study.
And maybe it's not even a lack of impulse control, but a singular act of will? Would people also be "concerned" for someone who stops smoking but doesn't keep cigarettes around the house? Or hey, what if someone were to say that Linters are for people who don't get it right the first place, and that itself deserves attention? We know humans are imperfect, and find it sensible to guard ourselves against making mistakes in all sorts of ways. Why are smartphones different to you?
A portable mini computer with internet access is useful for a lot of cool things, no doubt. Though to the usefulness on the internet it's like putting a low table on a huge mountain, makes no overall difference to me. None of the upsides you mentioned seem smartphone specific, and you address none of the smartphone specific issues mentioned in the article, other than with a sweeping "I'm not going back".
> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Partly (or depending on where you are, rather) that's because thanks to smartphones, they don't display it in many places where they used to. Just like you can't buy a ticket from a person anymore. This cam be a huge problem for elderly people or those with disabilities. If a smartphone saves one so much time, that time should also be used to help one's fellow citizens by noticing and criticzing such things, to help remove barriers even though they are no barriers to you.
Smartphones were ceded their initial social acceptance solely on being optional. If this turned out to be a lie, the acceptance should likewise be withdrawn, and we can save the the discussion about the mass surveillance and marketing aspects I see completely not mentioned here as a bonus, too.
> I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
This probably sounds more rude to me as you are in practice, but it conjure up nothing good in my mind, honestly. The first thing that comes to mind is a Mitchell and Webb sketch about a guy in a pub interrupting the others because their conversation isn't good enough for them, but also not contributing to make it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKJ5w-HQ9b0
As if everyone was expected to pretend they are super perfect in totally everything and admission of some completely normal fault that needs to be worked around or fixed deserved punishment and shame.
Sometimes people get compulsive habit and if buying flip phone or whatever helps them, it is legit to talk about it.
By all means, speak for everyone.
I happen to agree with the principle though. But I think, ultimately, you therefore have to take a stand on what true meaning is.
I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail). I can have a fiancee who's in another country. When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me. When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform. If I'm having a discussion with friends I can call up the information I'm missing. I can listen to music and podcasts while I go for a walk or a ride. I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations. I can take nice photos when I didn't expect it.
I'm not going back to life without a phone. If you're not valuing your priorities with a phone, you won't value them without it. It might make a difference for a few weeks, but then you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one.