Smartphones: C or D?

another one to add to the reading list

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/your-smartphone-is-making-you-stupid/article37511900/

https://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/1fb/news/national/article37511448.ece/BINARY/w780/punch-cartoon.jpg
A caption reads: "These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results."

Yes, people are always put off by the strange power of new technologies. Socrates thought writing would melt the brains of Athenian youths by undermining their ability to memorize. Erasmus cursed the "swarm of new books" plaguing post-Gutenberg Europe. In its infancy, TV was derided as a "vast wasteland."

But while previous generations may have cried wolf about new media, "it's different this time," Mr. Harris says. Unlike TVs and desktop computers, which are typically relegated to a den or home office, smartphones go with us everywhere. And they know us. The stories that pop up in your iPhone newsfeed and your social media apps are selected by algorithms to grab your eye.

Smartphones are "literally using the power of billion-dollar computers to figure out what to feed you," Mr. Harris said. That's why you can't look away.

Socrates was wrong about writing and Erasmus was wrong about books. But after all, the boy who cried wolf was eaten in the end. And in smartphones, our brains may have finally met their match.

"It's Homo sapiens minds against the most powerful supercomputers and billions of dollars …. It's like bringing a knife to a space laser fight," Mr. Harris said. "We're going to look back and say, 'Why on earth did we do this?'"

...

These companies have persuaded us to give over so much of our lives by exploiting a handful of human frailties. One of them is called novelty bias. It means our brains are suckers for the new. As the McGill neuroscientist Daniel Levitin explains, we're wired this way to survive. In the infancy of our species, novelty bias kept us alert to dubious red berries and the growls of sabre-toothed tigers. But now it makes us twig helplessly to Facebook notifications and the buzz of incoming e-mail. That's why social media apps nag you to turn notifications on. They know that once the icons start flashing onto your lock screen, you won't be able to ignore them. It's also why Facebook switched the colour of its notifications from a mild blue to attention-grabbing red.

App designers know that nagging works. In Persuasive Technology, one of the most quietly influential books to come out of Silicon Valley in the past two decades, the Stanford psychologist B.J. Fogg predicted that computers could and would take massive advantage of our susceptibility to prodding. "People get tired of saying no; everyone has a moment of weakness when it's easier to comply than to resist," he wrote. Published in 2002, Prof. Fogg's book now seems eerily prescient.

The makers of smartphone apps rightly believe that part of the reason we're so curious about those notifications is that people are desperately insecure and crave positive feedback with a kneejerk desperation. Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine Labs, says it's common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding "likes" from certain users. If the photo-sharing app decides you need to use the service more often, it'll show only a fraction of the likes you've received on a given post at first, hoping you'll be disappointed with your haul and check back again in a minute or two. "They're tying in to your greatest insecurities," Mr. Mayberry said.

Some of the mental quirks smartphones exploit are obvious, others counterintuitive. The principle of "variable rewards" falls into the second camp. Discovered by the psychologist B.F. Skinner and his acolytes in a series of experiments on rats and pigeons, it predicts that creatures are likelier to seek out a reward if they aren't sure how often it will be doled out. Pigeons, for example, were found to peck a button for food more frequently if the food was dispensed inconsistently rather than reliably each time, the Columbia University law professor Tim Wu recounts in his recent book The Attention Merchants. So it is with social media apps: Though four out of five Facebook posts may be inane, the "bottomless," automatically refreshing feed always promises a good quip or bit of telling gossip just below the threshold of the screen, accessible with the rhythmic flick of thumb on glass. Likewise the hungry need to check email with every inbox buzz.

...

In the smartphone era, that figure can only have grown. Our brains just aren't built for the geysers of information our devices train at them. Inevitably, we end up paying attention to all kinds of things that aren't valuable or interesting, just because they flash up on our iPhone screens.

"Our attentional systems evolved over tens of thousands of years when the world was much slower," Dr. Levitin explained in an interview.

All that distraction adds up to a loss of raw brain power. Workers at a British company who multitasked on electronic media – a decent proxy for frequent smartphone use – were found in a 2014 study to lose about the same quantity of IQ as people who had smoked cannabis or lost a night's sleep.

bad writing and overlong imo, but I think we can all agree by now that smartphones are very, very dud

it is too long actually

which is probably why the writing isn't very good

but there is some info on there that is worth highlighting

yeah, definitely

Socrates and Erasmus both otm as it goes.

And most negative prognistications about tv have been borne out as well.

that's something I find kinda weird about the "people were also afraid of shellac records and similar harmless technologies" arguments, because even if records did not have a decidedly negative impact on society they still had a huge impact, rendering tons of musicians unemployed, bringing about a decline in musicianship in general

tbh I don't see any reason to believe smartphones wouldn't have an impact on public health

We really shouldn't exist, civilization is harmful in general. Let's just wait for the big crunch.

I'm going to play Peggle until that happens.

no species will miss us

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/22/mobile-phones-french-school-ban

right on!

im actually for this

no species will miss us

definitely head lice will. dogs maybe, but they'd get over it.

just got my first smartphone, it's pretty good fun tbh. I got this Map My Walk app though, and walked 10.03 KM's this evening in just under 3 hours, and according this thing I have burnt 0 calories. It's obv not gauging all the hills involved, and how much I'm sweating like a bastard. Unless it's so smart it's been talking to my fridge today.

i've had a flip phone for the better of the last year after about 4 years with a smartphone. the lack of spotify/music streaming in the car does stink, and although my flip phone can play mp3s i just haven't been bothered to load more than a couple of albums on it. i thought i would miss having maps, but ive only been lost going someplace once and i figured out where i was eventually. ive generally taken to looking up directions before hand and either memorizing them or jotting them down if it's someplace totally out of the way (caveat: my wife still has her iphone, so this only applies when i'm driving by myself.)

there is a camera and it's not as bad as you might think (2MP i think) but it pales in comparison to what smartphones can do now.

the flip phone i have does have a basic browser, 4G, and can be a mobile hotspot. this came in handy when i had my laptop with me but no wifi on a couple of occasions. i check ilx on the broswer every so often when im out. more graphically-intensive sites are harder to use but are accessible in a pinch. the inconvenience is nice because im way less likely to mindlessly browse which was the primary impetus for downgrading (that and denying Alphabet my sweet sweet personal data).

tl;dr i got rid of my smartphone and i listen to streaming less, take fewer pictures, and do way less impulsive interneting. now i play more with my son and play guitar more and read more books so it's probably for the best.

Phones are clothes

I’m back on the kick of thinking these little gadgets are evil

They work great if you almost never turn them on.

would ye stop ffs

everyone needs a hobby

Smartphones have been a gamechanger for me. The local taxi company app prioritises people that order with it over phone bookings and the bus app tells me when the next bus is due from wherever the nearest bus stops are - within 20 metres or so. This stuff is amazing when you have an autistic travelling companion.

I am watching the movie eighth grade right now. Gotta say, it is not making smartphones look great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4r9-AmfaDs

the questioners at the end are people my age and they're such assholes. they think he is attacking millennials for some reason.

younger than me i guess-- they're like college kids but this was recorded several years ago.

probly shoulda put this here

"[Someone] leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.

An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.

The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office for a minor procedure. It followed her hiking with her dog and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing. . . .

The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html

if someone can extract a transcript of that Mark Fisher talk I'd be interested in reading it

presumably you have to have your 'location' setting switched on for this?

Ms. Lee had given apps on her iPhone access to her location only for certain purposes — helping her find parking spaces, sending her weather alerts — and only if they did not indicate that the information would be used for anything else, she said. Ms. Magrin had allowed about a dozen apps on her Android phone access to her whereabouts for services like traffic notifications.

But it is easy to share information without realizing it. Of the 17 apps that The Times saw sending precise location data, just three on iOS and one on Android told users in a prompt during the permission process that the information could be used for advertising. Only one app, GasBuddy, which identifies nearby gas stations, indicated that data could also be shared to “analyze industry trends.”

More typical was theScore, a sports app: When prompting users to grant access to their location, it said the data would help “recommend local teams and players that are relevant to you.” The app passed precise coordinates to 16 advertising and location companies.

A spokesman for theScore said that the language in the prompt was intended only as a “quick introduction to certain key product features” and that the full uses of the data were described in the app’s privacy policy.

The Weather Channel app, owned by an IBM subsidiary, told users that sharing their locations would let them get personalized local weather reports. IBM said the subsidiary, the Weather Company, discussed other uses in its privacy policy and in a separate “privacy settings” section of the app. Information on advertising was included there, but a part of the app called “location settings” made no mention of it.

she should fix those settings eh

It’s amazing this data hasn’t been abused more than it has. The tech companies could basically blackmail anyone if they wanted to, right?

Ms Magrin could tell her phone to only allow those apps access to her location when she has the app open, like anyone who doesn't want their location tracked 24-7 by anonymous tech companies. It seems she didn't find the notion alarming until the Times told her it was happening?

actually strike that, I can't be bothered to read the article, so I don't deserve to have an opinion

yeah i read the article. I just never switch my location setting on unless I want something to actually access it. So I'm assuming the apps I've given permission to access my location can only do this when the location setting is switched on?

I'm amazed that ppl leave this switched on tbh

https://thebaffler.com/latest/busy-doing-nothing-marz?fbclid=IwAR2fzWOPshz96LHU7UODZMLpdbgomGIOyWBq8hNgnU8I6v2VzW9zjAfB21Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNRqswoCVcM

the relevance becomes clear in the second half of the talk. just ordered her book

she quotes something deleuze wrote in 1995:

…we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.

Like

On the other hand, don’t be bored, because it’s absolutely the most exciting time to be alive

deleuze: 'I think we'd all be better off if we were more silent, so I'd like you all to be quiet while I explain at length why I think this is true.'

yeah, we should just give ourselves over to an overwhelming flood of information that leaves us feeling scattered and lost.

what -- your worryposts?

if you feel like thats the human condition now then im not convinced that wouldnt have been your human condition whenever

"are we spending too long listening to bards?"

I need a new smartphone. my current one doesnt turn on anymore, and was a donation. I'm not sure what it is (definintely a Samsung, but i dont know the model, maybe a J4?). Anyway it was reasonably good. I have a crappy Alcatel PAYG as backup but its horrible to use!

Basically i dont want a piece of shit. I'll tether wifi to laptop so battery life is a consideration. Is 3GB ram suitable? is €150ish going to get me something that isn't a piece of shit?

There are some Samsung A6's for around €180 in the shop in the station. What i don't understand is there seem to be lots of different phones all called A6. This is far too irritating. They also have a Nokia 5.1 for around €150. Can i get anything cheaper than this or does it start to be a piece of shit again

moto g, xiaomi or huawei in or around that price point prob decent bets

Thanks, i saw some from the latter two brands. Is that a reasonable pricepoint? I'm worried the cheaper ones are just going to be garbage to use and I really want to avoid any irritation. Some are nearly €1000! unless it comes with more interesting callers I can't imagine what you're getting for that

everything available now

i tend to stay a few years behind cutting edge and unimaginative about what i need the phone to do.

android
decent processor
32gb internal storage
sd slot of at least that again
usb c, decent battery, quick charge a bonus

etc etc, ymmv

I think that describes exactly what I'm looking for! (and i totally forgot about usb-c, good shout). Only thing is i dont knonw what a good processor is (or how to know if it has decent battery / quick charge)

Got my first smartphone, a Huawei a couple of months ago and I really like it, and it was 200 quid