Smartphones: C or D?

toss em in the ocean

Get a job

nb i am still using tinder on my old iphone on wifi. now i just wait until i get home to answer messages.

that can be your new line: "can I get your number? I would like to text/chat but have a flip phone"

oh man, texting on this thing is awful. have u noticed that now ppl text in full sentences and paragraphs? the evolution was so seamless, i didn't realize how reliant i was on the stupid touchscreen keyboard

my new phone is best equipped to type messages like "l8r" and "where r u?"

but u can't do that when ppl text you wanting to discuss articles they've written and stuff

still really happy with Freedom and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants to keep a smartphone but also wants to cut down on how much they use it.

― ryan, Tuesday, September 6, 2016 5:59 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark

real dudes go to system32/etc and set all their favorite websites to 127.0.0.1

^ fortunately that news does not crush my sense of self-esteem

yeah flip phone sounds like a nice idea until you think about texting on it

you shd make one of your tinder profile pics a picture of your flipphone, or you posing/talking on your flipphone w an expression of ecstasy

idk. i don't want to make the flip phone that central to my identity

http://diversitywoman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/MobilePhones_WallStreet-300x180.jpg

the irony being I've gone to minimalism with friends and tap three times to txt "hmm yes" or emoji and TS needs full sentences

just txt "gd article dude"

yeah, I learned the txting lesson last time I had to use an old flip phone during an in-between-smartphones period. It was such a pain in the ass when people would try to make plans with me via text.

http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mOYxdyjHUxJaz4vlJIQyqCA.jpg

they didn't have one like that. i would have taken it for the keyboard.

Thinking about going back to Windows 98

I remember how great it was around 2006/7 when you could finally store music on your phone. That was a huge deal

Slvr w/ iTunes

none of these things were ever great

the more you try to outrun boredom the less equipped you get at dealing with it. you end up weaker, lonelier and more afraid. (substituted "you" for "i" there to make the statement more contentious)

I'm kind of remembering now how much my phone usage went up just in the last two years, i.e. since I got the 6. That's pretty much the transition point for me from just using the phone when I needed it to constantly checking facebook, browsing, using random apps and games, etc.

I had a nice Nokia candybar phone less than six months before the iPhone existed that I was doing location-based check-in (no gps, some web services could approximate via cell tower), lots of predictive texting, twitter, and mobile web on. reading longer articles was a chore but there was decent paging. Read e-texts (lol) on devices before that.

the best part of that era was that the screen was low res enough you could pull a phone from your pocket and glance at it without raising it very far above hip level

now I want to design a text message app that somehow detects distance from your eye and scales text size accordingly

The future scares me

I remember twere all NFC around here

3 days in and i am ecstatically happy about my decision.

I broke my android phone and am now using an older android phone which struggles to run twitter. i don't/basically can't afford to buy a dece smartphone now, maybe i will go all neo-like like yer man trees

hav u herd of the neu iphone 7

xp

3 days in and i am ecstatically happy about my decision.

tell us more!

the main thing is that i feel like i can keep a train of thought more easily. even when i kept the smartphone off before, i was aware that it was there and that i was just a touch away from my digital life. it was just as distracting off as it was on.

Wondering if maybe just going to like an iPhone SE which has a smaller, less entertainment-prone screen, would cut down on my smartphone usage. I have really started to feel like it interferes with my brain function.

you could also turn the phone to grayscale, which makes it less alluring. i tried to do that but the thing that i was addicted to was text anyway.

I don't play games on my smartphone (so many of the popular ones are hard to use for me on a screen, give me a controller by God), maybe browse Facebook & Twitter too much when I'm bored but I wouldn't trade access to all the maps and knowledge and music and podcasts for that time back.

the access to knowledge is the biggest drawback. it wasn't so much that i was concerned about "wasting time." i felt like it made me into a cyborg. instead of being someone who used the internet too much, the internet and i became one.

getting lost is part of life. encountering a word you don't know and not being able to look it up is part of life too. god intended for people to listen to music while lying in bed in their rooms.

I feel you on that fusing with the internet sensation.

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html

andrew sullivan has obviously been lurking on this thread and ripped off some ilxors' insights and/or experienced some of the same things himself

yo treesh have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Comsumption/dp/1491933399

might be up your alley. I'm notably skeptical of prescriptive lifestyle books but liked it.

The only time I've regretted what technology has brought me is last 10 minutes I spent hate reading that Andrew Sullivan article.

thanks for the tip mh, that seems interesting.

having a dumb phone has been incredible. the only problem is that i just don't respond to messages now -- even fb messages, which i could do on my laptop -- and i think i might have angered people.

Sullivan is just experiencing his come-to-Jesus moment -- noticing that his unhealthy relationship with his smartphone and the web was reducing him to quivering jelly. He's right in describing his own experience as ultimately debilitating, but he betrays himself by saying his experience is "our" experience, his addiction is "our" addiction, and "we" now interact with "one another" in these grotesque ways.

Everyone whose experience matches Sully's will nod and feel deep kinship, while those who don't share his perspective will think, "what's with this "we" thing, buster?"

he tends to write in this sweeping, generalizing way that can be infuriating. i appreciate that he is exploring this topic though. it often feels like an elephant in the room, like no one remembers that just a few years ago people weren't on their smartphones all day

I very much remember that smartphones didn't used to exist. That's one advantage of being over 60 years old. You can remember how it once was and can compare it with how it is now.

The only time I've regretted what technology has brought me is last 10 minutes I spent hate reading that Andrew Sullivan article.

― Jeff, Tuesday, September 20, 2016 3:08 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You don't have to waste time posting either because we can fill in the blanks of your one opinion at this point.

Got a better smartphone life's good

Smartphones don't kill people, people do