What made you compulsively use your phone, but not your tablet?

I appreciate that you mentioned you still have the LTE tablet - one of my biggest concerns was traveling and the HUGE convenience apps have on my life then.

I haven't gone all the way and actually gotten rid of my phone, but I personally operate in three "modes:"

- Mode 1 where I'm going to need it for a task like navigation, or I'm OK with killing time and letting my mind wander. I keep it near me, always silent/no vibrate, and check it fairly often.

- Mode 2 where there's a remote chance I may need it because I might need to take a phone call or deal with an OTP. It sits out of sight, preferably in another room entirely.

- Mode 3, the phone is physically powered off. This is pretty much always the case after 8pm, it's frequently the case when I'm working, sometimes the case when I'm out with friends.

In practice I'm almost always in Mode 1 or Mode 3. I accept that it's OK/necessary to submit to distractions (though I do keep it on silent), or I just say screw it and turn it off.

In my experience if you develop a habit like always just powering it off after 8pm, after a few weeks the phone starts to lose its hold on you. You start having moments during the day where you're fiddling with it and your brain just goes "screw this, I would rather be relaxed, happy, and living life." That's the moment where Google, Apple etc. have lost the war they're waging against you, your brain is no longer hijacked, and it all gets better from there.

The biggest switch for me would be losing music streaming. What do you use for music on-the-go (at the gym, commuting, walking around, etc.)?

While my musical taste is eclectic (i.e. from classic over techno to glitch) I mostly prefer to either listen to music or do other things, instead of mixing those activities. I do listen to music on commutes, and sometimes while doing certain chores in the kitchen though. But otherwise either or, not both.

I wonder what gyms looked like in earlier generations (I'm only 27). Did people talk more?

Yes. Especially before the televisions arrived.

Gyms were well-known social hubs. You'd meet people, sometimes even work out business deals, at the gym.

The isolation that technology has brought us has reduced the number of serendipitous human connections we used to make as a species. It has also turned us into an us-verus-them society because we no longer have large circles of friends with varying opinions.

Personal music at the gym is not new or anything specific to phones

I gave that up too, replaced with live music venues where I could interact with the musicians.

Although depending on the venue musicians and even patrons will occasionally be wearing hearing protection earbuds for isolation.

Without earbuds it can only be better for personal interaction at the gym, etc. too.

When the Sony Walkman came out, those who took it to the gym were more keenly aware they were signaling that they didn't want any interaction there.

Solo commuting I'm just fine with news & talk now. Driving passengers or being one I can better appreciate anybody's channel selction. Nonmusic is too boring for most people anyway.

I get plenty of live music and that's all I really need.

If you already have to be on a computer a bit to begin with, might as well make the most of it.

When you do close the laptop and revert to normal in-person interaction, you can always walk away from the PC with mere cellular voice, if you really need that, for the duration.

Twenty years ago smartphones didn't have touchscreens. But they would take messages.

When that was the only thing you were carrying around, all you could really do was talk & text like anyone else.

But when you had your laptop, the built-in IR or USB interface to a top smart phone was what made it smart to begin with.

As a virtual COM port device, the analog modem in your phone was then accessible to Windows no differently than the analog hardware modem the laptop used when hardwired to a phone jack having a dial tone.

Even laptops without built in modems back then still had hardware COM port connectors just like desktops, which could be used with external hardwired phone modems (or used for local hardwired RS-232/TTY within the generous cable length limitation without need for modulation/demodulation).

But the cellphone was about twice the speeds the office was getting with 56K hardware modems.

From anywhere you could get a cellular signal.

This was years before each cellular company began to slowly roll out data plans as the phones got _smarter_.

Which were geographically limited ridiculously by comparison for many more years before data coverage got to where it is today.

Anyway you could get to your office network directly by dialing in to (one of) your target server's phone number(s) (and tying up that landline as long as you are connected).

Without having to go on the internet, so security could be through the roof by comparison.

Alternatively you could dial in to any ISP's phone bank when you needed to get on the web.

This could even be simply done routinely from a different Windows partition, physically separating personal from business for instance.

Would that make it a sandcastle compared to a sandbox?

Even with only a common single bootvolume you could connect to two networks at the same time using two modems, using the built-in Dial-Up Networking in Windows 98. You could become a bridge this way and security could be not so good.

You just pointed & clicked your selection(s) and they negotiated or autodialed if necessary.

So many offices had internet that you would almost always be fine to just dial in to that one place, and with more than one modem using more than one phone line W98 could be configured to communicate much faster than 56K using modem sharing.

And with a laptop you had all the power and software for business & internet connection you needed without having to wait for phones to get more powerful on their own.

With progress phones are much more popular & stylish now.

Posing with a touchphone, one-handed at a characteristic near-45 degree angle as an interested observer, recognizable in silhouette, whether standing (walking) or sitting, is not something that was ever seen in the 20th century.

Likewise the accompanying silhouette with the other hand on the touchscreen as an active operator.

Under laboratory conditions over a period of years, redirecting time otherwise spent in either pose toward actual scientific progress can have much more ideal outcomes when it comes to milestone accomplishments.

Anectdotal data, YMMV.

I do get the idea that more traditional poses such as yoga-style might be more preferable to a great many.

Rumour has it your cognitive capacity can be increased.

This Sony device [0] even offers Tidal integration. Not sure if Spotify is among the list of supported services.

[0] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1538890-REG/sony_nwzx...

I wonder if there is a way to accomplish many of these things while still carrying your phone? For example, what if your phone took 5 minutes to unlock? And didn’t give notifications until you unlocked it?

Just a thought.

i've started to just chuck it somewhere if I'm trying to focus

When I got a new phone about 6 months ago, I spent about a week horrified by the number of notifications that I was getting by default.

That, and keeping the charger in a remote corner, helps to park it and forget it.

Also, disable face/fingerprint/pin unlock, and use a longish password, so unlocking it isn't convenient.

A bit different, but good if you want a break.

1) The majority of people disable the feature after a short time (if they needed it in the first place, it's hard to maintain the self-control to keep it enabled, when it's presumably trivial to disable), and

2) Whether the cognitive effects remain, even when it's locked, because the mere presence of the phone makes you think about it, and it being locked makes you think about what you're missing.

(No affiliation, just a happy user)

Of course, on wifi, it can do everything that phone with a normal data plan can do. I just don't bother, because most of the time I'm on wifi, I have a laptop available. Especially these days.

Also, based on location, I automatically disable all notifications while at the gym or in a restaurant. If a had an urge to access it anyways, I might set the brightness to zero too.