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Re:Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you'... by shantly on Friday October 25, 2019 @10:07PM (#21361181)
I feel really relaxed and not bored at all when I go on vacation somewhere my phone gets little or no reception. It's amazing. There's so much to do without the Internet! Books are a thing, and there's more than enough top-notch fiction to last a lifetime, without re-reading. Writing is a thing. Sketching. Hell offline video games are a thing, for that matter, and you can mine the back catalogs of older consoles for (mostly) less money than something new, and have about the same amount of fun. You can keep yourself in more excellent video material than you can reasonably watch with a Netflix DVD subscription and a trip to the library every week, no Internet required (aside from managing your Netflix queue, I guess—do that on your library trips, when you pay your bills). Board games & tabletop games & card games rule. Inventing any of those is fun. Lawn games. Sports. Playing music. Listening to music. Building stuff in the garage. Programming in any language/ecosystem with decent offline documentation. Hardware stuff.

I only, only have Internet service because it lets me work from home and keeps my wife from having to stay at school until 7:00 4 nights a week for 9ish months a year (teacher) since friggin' everything they do is online now (Google, mostly). I mean I have a couple streaming services and such since we have to pay for Internet service anyway, but aside from those two (admittedly great) things that require it I wouldn't bother to pay for it.

Re:Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you'... by zonidjan on Friday October 25, 2019 @11:03PM (#21361426)
That's the thing. That's never changed. Vacations have always been more fun. The change is that now, when you're doing boring mundane things, you can pull out your phone and have at least some modicum of entertainment.
Re:Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you'... by shantly on Saturday October 26, 2019 @12:03AM (#21361642)
I mean chillin’ in an Airbnb, not hiking or seeing the sights or whatever. Even that part’s better, without the Internet.

[EDIT] and yes I get the irony that AirBnB requires the Internet. Occasional Internet is handy to take care of necessities and create convenience. Constant Internet? I'm a skeptic.