Smartphones: C or D?

Having the Internet/maps/books/music in my pocket at all times is the best.

I can see social media being draining and negative but the key there is to either not use them or use them peripherally. I have an Instagram account but I just browse chefs and food porn and travel stuff while I poop. Ditto Twitter, but with musicians instead of travel.

if you live in a big city and rely on public transportation then a smartphone is amazing, you can map your path to see what route is best, check on when the next bus will show up, see what track your train will be on, etc.

if you have a long commute on public transportation then a smartphone is amazing, you can goof around, deal with email, etc.

people who check phones while talking to people are jerks but imo so are people who look at watches or clocks during convos for the most part & we all do that sometimes so being a jerk = part of "modern "busy" life"

i was hoping to find more luddites on here tbh

jes' me

ipod touch + flip phone was actually not a bad combination for me a long while, but it got frustrating enough trying to find wifi w/ the touch that getting a smartphone became a much better option

people misunderstand my lifelong mobile-phone avoidance as some kind of Luddite-elitism. if i had a smartphone i'd have it out all the time; that's what i want to avoid.

I dont like cards, wallets, phones or looking at them, however I do like that smartphones exist, especially when people look at them instead of asking me questions or disrupting reverie in other ways

― saer, Thursday, March 31, 2016 6:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

Have no need for a smartphone but cool if other people do. Have no need for a pocket sized map/book/internet either.

but then again i don't live in the city or take public transport

You Luddites are an inspiration. I hate my smartphone.

But does anyone else see possession of it as a kind of evolutionary advantage over those who don't? Difficult to give concrete examples, but the mobile communication abilities + Google knowledge + personal assistant functions might equal something substantial.

i was hoping to find more luddites on here tbh

Im not a luddite, Im a developer and take my laptop with me most places to write code, I just think phones are an invasion of privacy and dislike the feelings of entitlement that people have about my time, and that I must somehow always be reachable. Its a concerted attack on reverie by the forces of capitalism and traditionalism, by people who don't understand the need for the dreamstate, and want to nail down every fleeting second of respite, and know where you are. The smartphone is an abomination, its only use to distract people and give them something to occupy themselves while i look out the window dreaming I was somewhere else

treeship this is the post you've been looking for ^

yeah, i was looking for some of that anger toward the modern world, some fire in the belly

Except you can turn all notifications off if you want and just use it when one feels the need to invade someone else's space...

yeah but i have no self control

the part that gets on my nerves about smartphone culture is everyone's immediate, reflexive googling at the first hint of ambiguity or confusion in conversation (from "who was that guy in that thing" to "when was the march on rome again")

otm ive pretty much stopped looking stuff up in face-to-face conversations because i feel like the uninterrupted flow of the conversation is infinitely more enjoyable than knowing for sure what that guy was in

i spent a lot of time as a kid worried sick about where my parents were if they were out, if they were late i always worried there had been an accident. it was such a relief when cell phones became ubiquitous and that anxiety of knowing your loved ones were safe just evaporated.

of *not knowing if

Smartphones & cell phones are classic if only for their function in emergencies & crises

just replaced by the anxiety of not getting a text back from a loved one even though you know they should have their phone on them

xp

yes save research for alonetime

i am too poor to afford the recharge on my smahtphone now so mostly i just let it lapse for months and then occasionally recharge it as little as possible when i need to have a normal-feeling conversation with someone (i sometimes make calls through my computer but that feels weird for personal conversation)

when i leave home is when i am away from the computer and after a brief investigation of phone lyfe i do not find that much is gained by having access to my digital life in my pocket. it's nicer when you're on the go a lot, or maybe occasionally feel like checking in on a break, but i am not, and i don't, so.

xp that's not nearly as bad though, i mean i remember feeling totally helpless with absolutely no way to reach someone.

i have a smartphone. it's prety good for things.

smartphones are duds. i only use mine for its gps functions and music

however getting rid of mine would mean people can't text me, and having no social media, my family and close friends would probably be very upset

i use yelp on occasions but i'm finding it to be increasingly unreliable

It's a hatefully privileged q imo shame on anyone blames incredible technology for anything ever

― Ecomigrant gnomics (darraghmac), Thursday, March 31, 2016 8:16 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

memories of travelling through south america and sketchy dudes just handing out mobile phones with prepaid plans as you walk out of the washroom

felt like even the homeless had one whilst over there

my smahtphone has a real keyboard and a few years ago i installed an ssh app on it so that i could log in to my remote, decades-old shell account, send proper emails, perform filesystem operations and whatnot, and doing that on a smahtphone is, i must say, extremely satisfying

after a brief investigation of phone lyfe i do not find that much is gained by having access to my digital life in my pocket.

― j., Thursday, March 31, 2016 4:16 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, not at all. it is the total triumph of the virtual. the end of the world.

http://www.mindful.org/addicted-to-your-phone-try-this-practice-phone-in-hand/

^^ have not tried that but it doesn't seem like a waste of time.

i am with Treeship pretty much. I feel profoundly troubled by my phone to a far greater degree than I am by the internet in general. on the other hand a meditation app has finally led to me having a regular daily meditation practice (which I now do on my own), and i am really grateful for that.

thing with smartphones is you are held accountable for every fb invitation, semi "important" social media goings-on, and texts. you can never said i don't know or escape anything. you either remain active on it or not; any middle-ground is treated with suspicion

say even

boomin' truth; what horror!

the whole "mindfulness" approach to technology kind of fascinates me since it mostly represents a doomed attempt to re-orient the reversal of means and ends that Weber observed in the workings of technology on society. Franco Berardi makes a kind of outlandish connection between the dinging of your smartphone and the whistle that used to call workers back to work. maybe it's not that extreme, but in some ways smartphones just seem to represent the ever more complete diffusion of the protestant ethic into every aspect of our lives.

well it's a good thing mine is always on mute

i think that's a good practice

a kind of outlandish connection between the dinging of your smartphone and the whistle that used to call workers back to work ... the ever more complete diffusion of the protestant ethic

the bolsheviks made a less outlandish connection between the factory whistle and the church bell

but otm wrt protestant ethic. throw in good old fashion remorse and you got yourself a slave

xp

xp but they were talking as much about communal division of time as anything else -- this is the sound that structures people's days, and it structures them all at once -- and this of course has fractured into the freelance piecework hyperindividualist ethic

all phones should be muted unless it's your birthday

Possibly the issues you guys have is with work calling u

Don't give work yr smartphone no youse tools

I've got a 4 year old Samsung C3350. The battery still lasts for days on one charge, it has a built in LED flashlight and is waterproof to an IP67 rating. Pretty fucking smart phone!

What meditation app do you use ryan?

it was called Headspace and i liked it because it was relatively simple--but i am sure there are tons of others out there as well.

Technology is awesome. My phone is great. And I will look at it while talking to you. And at dinner. It's ok if you do too, I don't mind.

Just friend me on Miitomo if you want to discuss further.

if i'm talking to you and i'm in the middle of a sentence and your phone buzzes, will you completely forget i exist and give priority to whatever is on the phone?

because that's the shit that drives me crazy. the hierarchy that places whatever is happening on the phone at the very top

I guess it large depends on the group of friends you hang around. Most people that I'm around frequently function in the same way.

I used to feel that way about landlines too, my parents would always run to answer the ringing phone when I was growing up no matter what they were doing.

i mean, imagine you have a friend that regularly stops listening to you mid-sentence and walks away to talk to someone else whenever anyone else enters the room. unless you have crazy levels of confidence, you would probably think "i guess i'm not very important"

the looking at the phone while talking thing i can handle, as long as they're making some sort of bare minimum effort to keep a conversation going. that's annoying but not the confidence destroying. but with some people, you could be talking to them about how crappy you've felt since someone close to you passed away, and how it's been especially tough to handle given the other things going on that ----**BZZZZ BZZZZ* *xylophone ditty* *BBZZZ BBZZZ* "hello? hiiiiiiiii wassssup!? no I'm not doing anything, what's going on with you?!"

I don't want yet another one! I want to unlock the one in my pocket!

switched to black and white.

deleted every inessential app, including email. i just have text and maps.

keep it in my bag.

so far so good. i missed a lot of calls and texts yesterday, but that is for the best.

good luck, I think about doing that all the time

hero