[HN Gopher] Life before smartphones
___________________________________________________________________
Life before smartphones
Author : evo_9
Score : 327 points
Date : 2021-08-02 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mattruby.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattruby.substack.com)
| swayvil wrote:
| Smartphones are a very powerful social glue. Better than tv,
| school or church. Phone says frog and the whole population hops.
|
| Propaganda like a drum, like in one of those movies with those
| slaves on the oars in the basement of a ship.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The thing that rings out for me in this essay: "Once plans were
| made, I showed up without any further contact to check whether we
| were, in fact, "still on for tonight,"" I miss that. Used to be
| that if you made plans to meet someone, they would come to that
| time and place. Amazing! And the difference is not even limited
| to your friends and dating. Now we can't even count on regularly
| scheduled activities to happen as planned. Public schools cancel
| classes with a voicemail and less than an hour's notice, under
| the assumption that everyone will get the message.
| r00fus wrote:
| (Pre cellphones, early 90s era) My problem with that is that my
| friend group were not exactly punctual (myself included). So
| that meant a lot of waiting around, and in some cases, your
| group may not show up. Being near a pay-phone or begging a
| phone call from an establishment helped some.
|
| Also - you remembered your friends phone numbers (or had a
| black book).
| mc32 wrote:
| Someone usually had a beeper to help coordinate things with
| the stragglers.
| r00fus wrote:
| None of my friends had beepers. LOL I assumed all folks
| with beepers were dealers.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Obviously! I _still_ remember my high school friends ' phone
| numbers and I haven't needed to dial any of them in thirty
| years.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Man, using a pay phone with a card instead of coins felt like
| the future, ha ha.
|
| Also, if you went out without telling your family where, you
| became unreachable for the whole day(s). Going dark that way
| nowadays is almost unthinkable.
| asdff wrote:
| Even in the 90s you'd be glued to the local weather report on
| TV and get maybe 30 minutes notice before the bell whether
| school was off or not. I remember them not even calling
| sometimes and having to see the anchor announce the closure.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Weather is one thing, but I never lived in a city that had
| weather. These days my daughter's classes and activities get
| canceled ad hoc on zero notice. Like they will just dismiss
| school at lunch without announcing it in advance.
| ladyattis wrote:
| >I assumed the police were telling the truth.
|
| I gotta laugh at this. Being someone that's from a working town
| and being from a working class family, cops weren't to be
| trusted. Cops lied even back then. Life wasn't better back then.
| The fact he seems to mock gender fluidity and polyamory really
| shows how much has changed for the better. People who didn't fit
| in with the gender constructs then were out of luck. Either you
| were forced to be lgb or if you were trans you had to fit the
| gendered mold; no androgyny unless you're doing it as part of a
| musical act.
| chadlavi wrote:
| See also "being elite was good" and "I wasn't polyamorous."
| It's a whole article of "I only knew how to be a vanilla white
| guy. And that was a good thing!"
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > And that was a good thing!
|
| The article literally questions that conclusion.
|
| "Were those the good old days? It's tough to say."
|
| It's as if there were advantages and disadvantages. It's easy
| to view the past as "good" but the reality, as presented in
| this article, was really a mixed bag.
| asoneth wrote:
| > And that was a good thing!"
|
| Interesting, I came away with the impression that the author
| was implying that some of these changes (i.e. better
| understanding of toxicity, therapy, wage gaps, redlining,
| gerrymandering) to be positive changes to provide more nuance
| in their post than just a list of raw nostalgia.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Why is polyamory good?
| ladyattis wrote:
| Why is polyamory bad?
| delecti wrote:
| Polyamory is neutral, the ability and freedom to practice it
| are good.
| lopis wrote:
| Because if multiple consenting adults love each other and
| want to form amorous relationships between then, that should
| be ok and accepted since it hurts nobody?
| seph-reed wrote:
| "Were these the good ol days"
|
| From what I've seen, there's not a lot of people who don't gain a
| fair bit of psychological wellness from turning off their phone
| for a week.
|
| I see smartphones as a trade off: productivity for happiness.
| didip wrote:
| Smartphones have truly improved my life beyond comparison. I
| still remembered the bad old days when I was young:
|
| * Too worried to take a picture because I might ran out of film.
|
| * Too worried about screwing up the flash light because I didn't
| have enough film.
|
| * Recording important things (like my class) was too big of a
| hassle and too expensive (Not enough tapes).
|
| * SMS was a cost that I always had to worry.
|
| * Books are much lighter now because they are now digital.
|
| * Podcast was such a hassle before because of carrying around
| tapes.
|
| * Laptop was a thing but nowhere as convenient as a smartphone to
| look up a reference.
| gopalv wrote:
| > Were those the good old days?
|
| I've heard this from several generations that the time when you
| were still under the protection of parents, but not their
| attention are the "good old days" of your life - like if your
| biggest worry if you flipped a car was "My dad will kill me!" and
| not "phew, not a scratch on me & my friends are all alive".
|
| Must be the youth and opportunity of that phase of life rather
| than the actual era in the world (just look at a "2007 was the
| best year in video games" for an equivalent for a late
| millenial).
|
| The music was better, the cereal crunched better, all your
| friends lived nearby & were always free to hang out, the TV shows
| were made for your eyes and talking about your dreams was the
| thing you did without any irony.
|
| Also there was a lot that affected you that you just didn't know
| yet. You weren't even aware of your ignorance & all knowledge was
| just within reach.
|
| > I didn't think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or
| the intricacies of romantic encounters.
|
| > Things weren't fluid and there was no spectrum. I assumed the
| police were telling the truth. I was unaware of how frequently
| powerful men answered the door wearing nothing but a towel.
|
| Oh, there was definitely a spectrum (Rain Man came out in the
| 80s). Rodney King was before the iPhone. LBJ was already showing
| people how everything in Texas was bigger (Doris Kearns Goodwin
| has a laugh about it, but we'll never know if she cringed).
|
| I'm too young to remember all this, because it was before my
| time, but I sort of went into the part 2 of "We didn't start the
| fire" here.
| pram wrote:
| It's practically nonsensical. I had a "dumbphone" up until
| 2011. I'm not even a luddite, I just did everything on my
| computer (and still pretty much do) because the general early
| phone OS experience was vastly inferior. 'Life before
| smartphones' was thus almost essentially the same going back to
| like 1996. I still spent all day on the internet, except now I
| can read it while I take a dump I guess.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Yeah, doesn't it seem natural that being around a persistent
| social group and spending the majority of the day hanging out
| made us happy? Seems like pretty much what we evolved for.
| chadlavi wrote:
| The part about cosmetic surgery seems gratuitous and
| unnecessary/off topic.
| websites2023 wrote:
| I think that was meant to call out the highly modified people
| that are shown on Instagram. I don't use Instagram, so that
| comment stuck out to me as well, but I see where the author is
| coming from.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Things I enjoy about my life now, after having ditched my
| smartphone:
|
| * Being fully into a stimulating conversation with friends for an
| hour or more, without constant interruptions for people to check
| their phones and then change the subject to something irrelevant
| and mildly infuriating.
|
| * Being able to go for random/spontaneous drives with my family
| in the car and negotiate where we're going next without having to
| pull over to update Google Maps or hear the phone bark "Make a
| U-Turn" a zillion times until I do.
|
| * Looking forward to social interactions being events where I
| enjoy doing things I like with people whose company I value,
| instead of a constant stream of bullshit, dueling ego trips, and
| disconnected conversations where both parties spend more time
| correcting the other person about what they meant than actually
| saying something.
|
| * Waking up in the morning earlier than planned, full of energy,
| then sipping my coffee slowly as the sun rises, because I got
| good, restful sleep last night.
|
| * Not having to face surprise criticism about something I said X
| days ago, because most of my statements are verbal, only reach
| the people they were intended to reach, and are not preserved
| after that.
|
| * Not having to spend more time taking pictures of an activity
| than actually doing the activity.
|
| * Not being in a constant state of annoyance all the time due to
| a distinct lack of time spent correcting typos, fat-fingering
| menus, waiting on things to load, and dismissing popups.
|
| * Tasting true solitude (not just alone time) once in a while.
|
| I could go on and on.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| That sort of ignores the rest of the article outside the
| headline though.
| paxys wrote:
| The second paragraph is funny to me:
|
| > I memorized phone numbers, jotted things down in notebooks, had
| conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at bars,
| wrote checks, went to the bank, and daydreamed.
|
| I did all of these (except the phone number one) in the last
| week.
|
| More than technological advancements or anything else, all of
| this nostalgia is really just about getting old.
|
| "The human civilization peaked when I turned 12 and started
| declining when I crossed 25. I pity today's youth." - every
| generation ever.
| p_j_w wrote:
| I don't get the sense that the author is trying to say that the
| past was better. Although I could be misreading you and you're
| not intending to say that he is. I suppose this is another
| consequence of getting old.
| freshdonut wrote:
| Have you been to a college campus in the last two or three
| years?
|
| There is a serious smartphone addiction problem. It is
| seriously worrying to see so many of my peers craning their
| necks, starting at their phone for hours on end. On the bus, in
| class, while hanging out, it is an observable fact that
| everyone is almost always on their phone.
|
| I personally believe we are in a watershed moment for human
| civilization. The harms of this smartphone addicted world will
| snowball down into later generations who have never known a
| life without every need catered for and every boring moment
| seized by entertainment.
| qwertox wrote:
| We don't really know how this turns out in the long run.
| These kids do have an IRL social life, even if they're
| constantly staring at a screen.
|
| I wonder how they will live their day by day when they are
| pensioners and their old friends which they haven't seen in
| decades still will be around inside their phones, asking how
| they're doing, how their day was.
|
| Then they'll make a trip and visit them because they are
| nearby. Not much different as it was in the past, but better
| connected.
| harperlee wrote:
| Have a look at this counterargument:
| https://www.sadanduseless.com/evil-iphones/
| MayeulC wrote:
| I was expecting to read that article from mid-1800s or
| early 1900s lamenting how everyone just sits there in
| trains, public transports, etc. Just reading their
| newspapers and not paying attention to their surroundings
| or socializing.
|
| Well, it was a visual version. But if anyone has a link to
| the article I remember, I would appreciate it.
| distances wrote:
| Not what you asked for, but a related XKCD:
| https://xkcd.com/1227/
| freshdonut wrote:
| The principal purpose of a newspaper in the olden days was
| not to seize your attention, trap you into scrolling onto
| endless feeds, or relieve one from every moment of boredem
| with YouTube.
|
| These are two completely different things.
| harperlee wrote:
| Also not the principal purpose of the iPhone.
| freshdonut wrote:
| But the principal usage for sure.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| As a one-time sub-editor, that was exactly the purpose.
| The medium has changed, but the aim hasn't, much.
| Newspapers used to provide information, opinions,
| diversions,a nd a guide to the TV listings for when you
| got home and were tired of reading your newspaper. I got
| in trouble occasionally for writing overly cynical
| descriptors of what was on TV that evening and generating
| upset letters to the editor.
| xtracto wrote:
| When I was an 8 year old kid (~ 1991) my dad bought a book (
| https://www.amazon.com/Video-Kids-Making-Sense-
| Nintendo/dp/0... ) to understand our "addiction" to
| Videogames... My dad seriously thought that it was going to
| doom our generation.
|
| Fast forward 30 years, and we are doing OK. Things are
| different, but OK for us. "Videogames" have been replaced by
| "games" and we take them for granted and don't pay that much
| attention.
|
| My take is that, for Generation Alpha kids, all the
| technology will be like bicycles or cars for us: It will be
| ubiquitous and they will all now how to use it. So there
| won't be any question about their use.
| paxys wrote:
| Is any of this backed by real facts or just your "kids these
| days" observations? Today's youth is better suited for
| dealing with smartphones and the overall connected world than
| we could ever be. All the people I know with real
| technological addiction problems (whether to smartphones,
| social media, scams, online radicalization or anything else)
| are like 45+.
| freshdonut wrote:
| > All the people I know with real technological addiction >
| problems (whether to smartphones, social media, scams,
| online radicalization or anything else) are like 45+.
|
| Exactly. No one is safe. Everyone I know in my age group
| (15-26) can not exist without opening up their smartphone
| every 5 seconds to check social media or watch YouTube.
|
| There was a good documentary about this topic called The
| Social Network. You may have heard of it. I think it is a
| good starting point to this way of thinking.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I like how you quoted the post without reading it.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > There was a good documentary about this topic called
| The Social Network.
|
| Are you talking about the movie about Mark Zuckerberg?
| Because this movie is not bad, but it's definitely not a
| documentary.
| bombela wrote:
| Maybe the GP was thinking of the documentary/drama: The
| Social Dilemma
| freshdonut wrote:
| Yeah sorry I meant the The Social Dilemma.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > More than technological advancements or anything else, all of
| this nostalgia is really just about getting old.
|
| The other side of this is that only people who are older can
| actually notice when things have changed. So, of course it's
| older people who talk about it the most.
| l33tbro wrote:
| "It used to be you'd go outside and nobody would know where the
| fuck you were. That's called freedom".
|
| - Tom Green.
|
| Taken from a rant [1] on this subject from a few years back
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/01Vq8_bWaTk?t=791
| qwertox wrote:
| I remember going to bed and thinking about coding problems and
| their solutions, instead of watching YouTube videos or reading on
| Reddit or HN. It's very addictive.
| sylens wrote:
| I think there is definitely something I miss from the pre-
| smartphone era, and that is that the Internet was something akin
| to an appointment activity. You 'signed on' in the morning and
| maybe again after school or work. Logging into AIM was like
| broadcasting to your social circle that you were home and free to
| chat. You welcomed the instant messages, the interruptions, the
| socialization - because you knew you could sign off and be
| unreachable again.
|
| I think that era of having widespread, but not ubiquitous, access
| to the internet is a time period I would like to have back. For
| every useful or Maps or food delivery application on my phone,
| there's three more that steal my attention with an unwanted
| notification
| Twixes wrote:
| Can't you uninstall or limit the apps that try to steal your
| attention?
| sylens wrote:
| You can, but it's a constant ongoing maintenance. It's
| another attack on attention and time
| dexterhaslem wrote:
| disabling notifications on apps goes a long way. and they all
| clearly hate it and bug you to turn em back on constantly
| JanMa wrote:
| About 2.5 years ago I struggled a bit with smartphone addiction.
| All the screen time limitation apps didn't work out for me and I
| decided the smartphone had to go. Instead I bought the then newly
| released Nokia 8110 4G, which is a so-called featurephone. This
| phone really worked out well for me.
|
| It had great battery life of up to a week, WiFi, 4G and supported
| Whatsapp. You could take an occasional snapshot with it's 2MP
| camera and if you really wanted to, browse the internet on a tiny
| 2.45" screen. Also you could connect it with you Google account
| to sync contacts and email.
|
| With these features it allowed me to do the beneficial things you
| use an internet connected phone for, like staying in touch with
| my peers and looking for directions. But I was no longer able to
| mindlessly scroll the internet for hours each day because it was
| just not possible.
|
| So if you're also not happy with your smartphone usage, I can
| really recommend you to give a featurephone a try. At ~60EUR it
| is cheap enough to try it for 2 weeks and put it in some drawer
| if it doesn't work out.
|
| Disclaimer: 1,5 years later I started using a smartphone again
| because I had a kid and wanted to be able to take better
| pictures.
|
| [0]: https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-8110-4g/specs
| krylon wrote:
| Now I feel old. I remember vividly running around with my first
| camera, looking for objects worthy of being photographed. The
| film cost money, so did developing it into pictures. I really had
| to weigh the pros and cons of taking a particular picture. And in
| a class of ~25 kids, I was one of three who owned a camera. Not
| that it was such a luxury item, but most people weren't into
| that.
|
| These days, (nearly) everyone carries a camera around all the
| time, and one that is quite probably much better than the one I
| had in 1992. They can take dozens, even hundreds of pictures
| without breaking a sweat, and it does not cost anything.
|
| Nostalgia is a very warped mirror. Back then, I did not miss the
| ability to take dozens of pictures at no cost, because the option
| did not exist. Was it better? Worse? Neither, I think. But this
| is the first time I feel old and appreciate it for the history I
| have lived through. Getting old is weird, but it sure is
| interesting. (For reference, I'm 40. "That's not _old_ ", I hear
| someone say, but I have never been this old before, so for me
| it's all new.)
| technological wrote:
| I wish my parents had smartphone camera when I was small
| because amount of pics/video I capture of my kid and feel so
| excited about the thought that he could view his entire
| childhood . I remember few things from my childhood but it
| would been really fascinating to view that
| xtracto wrote:
| Back in 1992 when I was 10 years old we went to Disney World
| with my family (as a middle class Mexican family, that was one
| of 2 out of the country trips in our childhood).
|
| My brother (2 years older) and I had a mechanical camera with
| rolls of I think 12 or 20 photos (with this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_film ) . We've got at most 30
| pictures of that trip in our family albums. I wish we had taken
| more pictures as my memory of the trip has faded away quite a
| bit.
| progman32 wrote:
| I remember back when I got my first digital camera, people
| would routinely ask me "ok but how do you look at the pictures?
| Do you just print them out?". Looking at them on a screen was
| almost unfathomable.
|
| Nowadays, a physical album seems to have taken the place of
| your camera in the 90s. Not quite a luxury item, but you'd have
| to be "into that" to go to the trouble of making a physical
| album.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I once sent a friend a photograph I had taken of them on
| black-and-white film (Olympus XA with Kodak Tri-X). They were
| flabbergasted when they asked for the full-color version and
| I told them it didn't exist.
| beamatronic wrote:
| The difference is that we spend all of our waking hours in
| front of screens of differing sizes
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Not all of us. I too grew up when screen time meant a few
| hours of TV a week, tops. And having a connection to
| another world of opinions or clubs or virtual activities is
| better than the past without them.
|
| My kids have limited screen time, not unlike my parents
| pushing me outside to play. Until they have mature impulse
| control and a variety of experience I'll continue to guide
| them. But without all the judgemental 'lessons' and talking
| down to that I experienced.
| 90ee0bde-06d1 wrote:
| There isn't any evidence that screen time negatively
| impacts teen's well being:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0506-1
| lordnacho wrote:
| Regarding photos:
|
| People our age only have a few childhood pictures, and they are
| warped by time on analog media. Those pictures of us as a kid
| look really old because they are naturally filtered. Soon
| people will wonder WTF old-pic filters are for, and some
| historian will have to explain why it's blurred and the colors
| are faded. Also why did people have clothes for each decade?
|
| Our kids, by contrast, have had pictures taken of them every
| week at least. With metadata so you know where you were. And
| they're digital images that won't fade. When our kids are 40,
| they can look at an archive of how they looked pretty much
| every week of their lives. Not only that, they can already
| search the archive for particular situations.
| theyellowkid wrote:
| Looking back, I wish everyone had taken pictures of everyday
| life (probably with an Instamatic). Christmas pictures,
| awards, meh. What I really want are pictures of the halls in
| high school, street racing, parties with giant bonfires and
| beer.
| handrous wrote:
| One thing I noticed when looking through my parents' (pre-
| digital) home videos and photos from my childhood is that
| 90% of the subjects are me, and 10% anyone else, while what
| _I_ want to see is the inverse of that. I want to see
| everyone else, mostly.
|
| I try to keep that in mind when snapping photos or taking
| videos of my kids, and pan over to the oldsters in the room
| from time to time, even if all _I_ want is to record the
| kids.
|
| > What I really want are pictures of the halls in high
| school, street racing, parties with giant bonfires and
| beer.
|
| Can confirm that a couple really, really long shots with
| the camera rolling for no particular purpose and capturing
| normal stuff happening (mostly just the audio) were among
| the best parts of the home videos, IMO.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Nobody ever takes pictures of normal things. If you just
| looked at photos you'd think all my male ancestors ever
| did was fell trees and pour concrete and all the women
| ever did was hang out together drinking coffee and
| smoking.
| Joeri wrote:
| This is a problem for historians as well. What you want to
| figure out is how average people lived, but all the
| historical texts that survived describe the feats and
| feasts of the 1%.
| ghaff wrote:
| As a high school yearbook editor and photo editor in
| college I think you got a lot of fairly day to day photos.
| You _don 't_ get that in the professional sphere as
| companies (probably even today) aren't that big on random
| photos of the workplace.
|
| I have a deliberately created Year in the Life type book
| from a company I used to work for that was made a couple of
| years before I joined the company. But it's a very atypical
| work.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I feel like the optimal living-documenting ratio was right
| before the advent of digital cameras: photography was
| accessible enough, but there was enough disconnect between
| the event and the record to be present. Now it's much
| easier to live through the phone's what-you-see-is-what-
| you-get viewfinder [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697921
| fud7r7rgtf wrote:
| This seems at least somewhat cultural. My family was big on
| photo albums so nearly everything had at least a cheap
| disposable camera picture taken. It wasn't to the extent it
| is now but you still got multiple pictures per year for
| birthdays, holidays, school awards, extracurriculars like
| ymca sports, etc.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yes, my grandmother has photo albums of all her
| grandchildren that she likes to bring out when we go to
| visit.
| memco wrote:
| > And they're digital images that won't fade.
|
| They might not fade, but they are augmented by noise
| filtering algorithms, HDR and other tech that still subtly
| affects the picture quality and perception.
| drorco wrote:
| > "Our kids, by contrast, have had pictures taken of them
| every week at least. With metadata so you know where you
| were. And they're digital images that won't fade"
|
| They might still wonder "Why only 8K resolution?! Why aren't
| they in 3D and interactive?!"
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| This is so true for me, only had yearlies and occasional
| family events. It's really cool to be able to look back
| through the years of pics I've taken of my kids.
| jl6 wrote:
| And because you only have a few rare childhood photos I
| expect you value them highly. The next generation, who will
| inherit thousands of photos of themselves and their lives,
| will feel no rarity or shortage, and probably won't value
| them as much.
| handrous wrote:
| It's already at the point where you have to spend lots of
| time to manually make them rare (pare them down to no more
| than a hundred or two per year, _max_ ) or rely on ML to
| generate highlights for you, for things like photos of
| kids.
| elwell wrote:
| > but I have never been this old before, so for me it's all new
|
| How poetic
| theyellowkid wrote:
| Old is owning a PlayTape Music Machine.
| jhgb wrote:
| > These days, (nearly) everyone carries a camera around all the
| time, and one that is quite probably much better than the one I
| had in 1992. They can take dozens, even hundreds of pictures
| without breaking a sweat, and it does not cost anything.
|
| ...and despite that, pictures of UFOs are as awful as ever. ;)
| container wrote:
| I tried taking a photo of the moon a while ago on my phone,
| and I couldn't really get it to look decent. I don't know if
| most smartphone users even know how to adjust the exposure
| setting even if any of that helped. And if they saw something
| as interesting as a UFO, I don't think they would figure it
| out on the spot either. I'm not sure if automatic settings
| would cut it on a fancier phone.
| Smashure wrote:
| I'll settle for bad video from tons of angles.
|
| Today if you hovered a UFO over any city over 1000 people
| you will get endless footage of the event.
|
| I'm waiting for said event.
| rapnie wrote:
| And he doesn't even mention that you could just be outside, and
| be unreachable and not able to reach other people too.
|
| As a kid I used to play outside a lot, and my mother had no
| clue where I was, nor could she easily find out. I could be
| outside all day without her worrying that I'd be abducted or
| involved in an accident.
|
| Now that all has _completely_ changed, and my mother has too.
| Some years ago when I walked into the hallway of my house I
| coincidentally noticed a lot of people in front of my door. So
| I opened it, and it was the police that was about to bust the
| door with a battering ram. As it happened I hadn 't answered my
| phone in a couple of hours. After multiple calls unanswered, my
| mom had called 911 on me. And my doorbell was broken, police
| didn't even knock.. they wanted the action, probably.
|
| I was just freaking programming with the deep-work-destroying
| phone thingy on silence (where it should be most of the time,
| imho).
| cryptoz wrote:
| That's terrifying, I'm sorry that happened to you.
|
| Something I have done (accidentally at first, now on purpose)
| is to not respond to messages (personal) quickly, most of the
| time. People adjust to that rather fast and stop worrying so
| much. People in my circles know now that I am rarely going to
| answer within a few hours and expectations are adjusted. So
| then going outside for a few hours with no phone is no longer
| a "thing" - you just do it and people will expect you to get
| back to them when you do.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Seconded. I made the step a few months ago, too; I turned
| off all "last seen" and "read"-notifications as well as
| uninstall my mail client from my phone [0]. I also
| intentionally did not respond as fast (at least on cold
| conversation starts). Once people get used to the fact that
| you might not respond in a few hours, they stop worrying so
| much about it when it happens.
|
| [0] I know I still have IMs, but mails tend to be things I
| need to do at a computer and seeing them only stresses me
| with things to do for later.
| rapnie wrote:
| I do that too. My phone is still on silent most of the
| time. It is funny the reactions you get when people aren't
| yet used to not getting a quick response. They are sort of
| outraged and questioning: "I called you, but you didn't
| answer??".
|
| Also I go outside without a phone on occasion. That feels
| like you leave a burden behind, and you are somehow more
| free. The phone is that easy thing you just grab to do a
| quick check of something on Wikipedia, or you happen to
| notice a notification. It is a distraction-device, keeping
| you busy. And among strangers, feeling less comfortable,
| well you can grab your phone and start staring at it. This
| behavior is like with smoking. Just like the relaxed
| cigarette cowboy in the ads, but now you casually light up
| the screen and be cool.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I like to run, but take the phone with me because it's my
| tracking device and music while running. I've been trying
| "do not disturb" mode, and it seems to be a positive. I
| don't get intermittent notifications that someone is
| trying to reach me - I don't want to be reached right
| now. The DND mode has probably been around for a while,
| I've just recently (last few months) gotten used to
| actually enabling it. What will be nicer is (eventually)
| have the device learn the times you don't want to be
| disturbed (beyond 'sleeping'). Or perhaps I'll just leave
| it on all the time....?
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| I'm getting a smartwatch with watch only runs, it has
| tracking, Bluetooth for headphones and can preload
| Spotify playlists.
|
| It has WiFi but no cell phone. Really looking forward to
| just being out for runs, with no possibility of contact
| or checking notifications etc.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I just got an Apple Watch, and am planning to experiment
| using it without the phone.
| distances wrote:
| Maybe at that point a sports watch would be a good
| alternative? Something like Suunto, Polar, Garmin
| ghaff wrote:
| There's been a complete shift in mindset. As a kid during the
| summer in a semi-rural area, I'd be away for hours. My
| grandmother had no idea where I was and my mother was at
| work. At one point, I had a fairly bad fall out of a tree but
| was able to get back to the house.
|
| In a similar vein, if you were in the wilderness you were on
| your own. If you were in a group, you could send someone for
| help. If you were on your own you self-rescued or hoped
| someone found you. Now, the default assumption is you can
| call for help--which isn't always the case. More likely with
| a personal locator beacon but even that isn't a guarantee in
| canyons or in bad weather.
|
| I was on a sea kayaking trip in Alaska in the early 90s. The
| guide had a VHF radio but, basically, had anything happened
| you'd have been waiting for the bush plane to return in a
| week.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I'm sorry man. I'm on silent 100% of the time (though I could
| imagine turning the ringer on for a specific phone call)
|
| Almost everyone texts or emails and I've never had anyone
| freak out if I didn't reply quickly.
| oceanghost wrote:
| I wanted to say this. I hate how small the world has become
| and how we're supposed to be "reachable" all the time.
|
| Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as
| little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to
| get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts
| within 10 minutes.
|
| I said "hard no" explaining that it meant that it meant that
| I could never watch a movie uninterrupted, read a book, take
| a nap, etc. Also, Driving. I don't answer texts while I'm
| driving because I _literally_ got in an accident texting (it
| was a freak circumstance, but these things do happen).
|
| I have purposefully started training my friends by being
| erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails.
|
| I have another friend who always calls on his commute home
| and gets offended when I don't answer. The idea alone that
| someone is obligated to answer the phone is insane. What if I
| don't want to spend an hour shooting the shit with you
| because I'm doing something else?
|
| I miss the days when I could just walk away from contact.
| hughrr wrote:
| My ex wife was like that. One reason she's an ex wife. I
| lost a job due to her once because she phoned the office
| after I didn't respond to an SMS while I was in a very
| tough meeting with a client.
|
| I now have my phone on do not disturb 24/7. I will choose
| when I participate in messaging. I also disable iMessage on
| my Mac. If someone comes up to me and talks to me, I may
| not even respond immediately.
|
| I took this to extremes and a couple of weekends back I
| actually went for a day long solo hike with zero technology
| with me at all past a torch, map, compass and alcohol
| stove. I didn't even have any way of telling the time with
| me. It was invigorating with the obligation to communicate
| and steal my attention removed. What was most surprising
| was the removal of a camera and watch. Rather than being
| focused on recording my journey and keeping to a schedule I
| was focused on enjoying it. This has led to considerably
| more vivid memories and a much higher level of
| satisfaction. A trip I will always remember.
| dwighttk wrote:
| The only reason I take my phone with me on hikes is for
| the camera. One day I'd like to get a dumbcamera and
| leave my phone behind more. I don't take a ton of
| pictures but do like to have the option.
| ghaff wrote:
| I admit I use the GPS although I don't typically depend
| on it. (At least for anything serious.)
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Once upon a time it was rude to look at your watch at
| certain events as it implied that you were bored or keen
| to get home.
| swayvil wrote:
| Soon they will replace the "phone ring" with an electric
| shock. Mark my words.
|
| Like in 1984. People who want to "spend time alone" are
| deviant, diseased and antisocial. And must be stopped.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You're missing the tree in the forest. No one is forced
| to look at their phone, the reality is that people have
| trained themselves to want it.
| swayvil wrote:
| There are 6 anecdotes in this thread where friends and
| family apply force to get a person to look at their
| phone. Social force, but still. Force.
|
| Consider the soft forces of marketing, distraction,
| conformity, attraction and temptation. They are as real
| as a twisted arm.
| solaceb wrote:
| Sure, I agree, it's all very coercive. But I think the
| point really is... physical force isn't even necessary.
| We're already addicted
| Sebb767 wrote:
| And there are quite a few anecdotes on how to prevent
| people from forcing you, some of them written by me :)
|
| My overall point, however, is that there will never be an
| external negative reinforcement to look on your phone. We
| all have it internalized already and that's far more
| compelling than any external pressure ever could be.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| >I don't answer texts while I'm driving because I literally
| got in an accident texting (it was a freak circumstance,
| but these things do happen)
|
| I'd like to address this in a non-judgemental way: not
| answering texts while driving should be the norm. It's not
| possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text
| simultaneously in a safe manner.
| kshacker wrote:
| > I have purposefully started training my friends by being
| erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails
|
| I would very much like to do what you say but with a
| million interrupts a day, it is now or never. If I neglect
| / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next
| week. Even for work. I do find time to focus 4 hours on
| some work activities but those are just the high priority
| visible stuff otherwise maybe if someone did not remind and
| make it a priority maybe it was anyways not a priority. But
| then things slip through the crack once in a while.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > I would very much like to do what you say but with a
| million interrupts a day, it is now or never.
|
| The secret is to not be interrupted. If you're already
| reading the text, you might as well go and answer.
|
| If you want to change something you will need to stop
| being interrupted (close the IM window, put your phone on
| silent, ...) and check once you have time. If you don't
| have time for a while, possibly give it a quick skim in
| case something important happened.
|
| Things will always slip through the cracks. If you attend
| every interruption, it will once in a while interrupt an
| interruption itself and you're at status quo. At worst,
| put things on a todo list.
|
| It's possible to do it.
| ngngngng wrote:
| > If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get
| back to it next week.
|
| As someone that lives life like this, yes, that's the
| point. If it's really important, they can ping me again
| and remind me to respond. Or when I have some downtime
| I'll peruse through my messages and emails again and
| stumble upon it and remember to reply.
| gms7777 wrote:
| I make heavy use of email scheduling (and more recently
| Slack message scheduling) and will often schedule
| messages to go out in a few hours or the next day. That
| way, I can get my thoughts down in the moment, but not
| get sucked into a back-and-forth when I don't have time
| for it. I work with students and have found that delaying
| my responses tends set their expectation that they're not
| going to get a quick answer and train them over time to
| spend a bit more time trying to find an answer themselves
| because they can't depend on me for an immediate
| response.
| megablast wrote:
| > Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in
| as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once
| tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her
| texts within 10 minutes.
|
| This is on you. Plenty of people manage it. Try turning
| your phone of.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| This is something I've been personally trying to get better
| at. As someone who did a lot of instant messaging in the
| 90s (think ICQ and IRC) I would think nothing of shooting
| off texts to people whenever I felt like it via SMS. There
| was never an expectation of immediately being answered back
| then and I always thought of messaging as 'write it while
| you remember and don't expect a response until whenever'.
| If something was truly urgent I'd call.
|
| Except that's not how other people would perceive it. I've
| since learned that it can be incredibly annoying to others,
| to the point where some people would actually get
| distressed thinking they would have to answer the texts.
| Couple that with a bad habit of sending many short texts
| (it's how you'd write on messaging in the old days) and you
| have one REALLY REALLY ANNOYING FRIEND (regrettably I was
| that annoying friend).
|
| So I guess I just want to apologize profusely from the
| other side of the fence. I'm trying to be much more mindful
| these days about whether that chit-chat message REALLY
| needs to be sent RIGHT NOW, or can it just wait for a
| conversation at a later time?
|
| I'm trying to be much more self-aware in this regard.
| sylens wrote:
| I am optimistic that I can use the upcoming Focus mode in
| iOS 15 to start broadcasting my unavailability to my
| contacts
| gnicholas wrote:
| Agreed. I've been missing this since AIM went bust.
|
| I also wish there were a way for me to send a low-
| priority message to my wife so that it didn't notify her
| regardless of her notification settings. We send each
| other news articles throughout the day but don't really
| want to interrupt each other. It would be great if there
| were a sender-side option that could enable this.
|
| I've thought about using a shared document in the Notes
| app, or just use a different messaging app for low-
| priority stuff, but it seems like too much overhead. Does
| anyone else have a way of handling this?
| ghaff wrote:
| Email?
|
| IMO, no one should have have email that sends
| notifications.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I feel like not replying is a simpler solution.
|
| Text messaging is asynchronous communication, if someone
| is expecting an immediate response, they should be
| calling.
| jzawodn wrote:
| What the actual...?
|
| One would hope the cops at least apologized for nearly
| destroying your front door all because you didn't answer the
| door. It's not like they had a warrant for your arrest or
| something!
| Osiris wrote:
| Except that law enforcement is explicitly immune from
| having to pay damages to property in the course of their
| duty.
|
| We had a SWAT team destroy a fence with an armored vehicle
| during a standoff and they were just like, "not my
| problem."
|
| Apparently they don't want to have to make decisions based
| on cost.
| Moru wrote:
| Depends on country I guess. In Sweden they usually pay
| for the door.
| galfarragem wrote:
| Maybe is just me but I read this as a satire of modern days and
| not as a satire of the old days. Most things the author hints as
| awkward in the past, the "optimized" version sounds frivolous.
|
| I'm not a zealot of old times but if we are honest with ourselves
| we realize that most new stuff is crap. 90% somebody said. Few
| changes are net improvements.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm pretty sure, on the whole, it was a satire of modern days.
|
| But I appreciate the balance of the author, reminding us that
| there were shortcomings: always trusting police comes to mind.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| I kind of love how this article neither glorifies nor bemoans how
| things used to be but instead just gives a detailed and artful
| description.
| kernoble wrote:
| The unmentioned thing here is why? Why does the world with a
| smartphone and today's hyper-connectivity seem so different now
| compared to what it used to?
|
| Did people feel the same way when the railroad and other forms of
| rapid transport showed up?
|
| What makes things feel so different? Is it more competition, and
| for what? Is it that things are just faster, and the certainties
| have changed? Has it fundamentally changed how we experience
| relationships with people?
|
| Are our standards now higher, and is that a good thing?
| [deleted]
| mojuba wrote:
| Something I've been wondering about lately:
|
| In the pre-Internet era, rumors, incidents, conspiracies, book
| and movie opinions were passed on verbally. I saw an article
| nobody else in my circle ever read; a friend watched a movie
| nobody else is going to see any time soon, etc. There were
| endless opportunities to get together and talk.
|
| We were each other's Internets.
|
| Do people talk less these days? I certainly do but that might
| be due to my age. But I'm genuinely curious if the topics of
| conversations are as intellectually fulfilling as they used to
| be.
| travbrack wrote:
| Because we went from living in a world where information about
| the world around us was hidden, to suddenly having access to
| all of it. It's surprising, jarring and overwhelming and it's
| probably going to take multiple generations for people to
| figure out how to use it effectively, ignore the noise, and
| deal with the social issues created by it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, but also, as the author points out in several places, we
| lived in a world of serendipity, patience, boredom (in a good
| way ... something that might lead to a kind of forced
| contemplation?).
|
| One wonders the degree to which our mental health actually
| thrived better with that extra time, accidental rather than
| deliberate discovery.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I still occasionally marvel that I can wake up at 4:30am in
| Denver and be in Very Rural Virginia by 5pm...and that's with
| stopping over in Atlanta first.
|
| It's not the travel, or the time, it's the 'it's more efficient
| to go thousands of miles out of the way due to logistics.'
|
| This has not been particularly new, but I can still marvel at
| it.
|
| Having fixed plumbing, I'm reminded that the current iteration
| is as a result of 2000 years of refinement.
|
| I have a lathe, manufactured in 1966, it still holds
| tolerances, and I refer to a book (how to run a lathe) that's
| first printing was at the turn of the 20th century (1912 or
| thereabouts)
|
| Old stuff is remarkable, too.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Did people feel the same way when the railroad and other
| forms of rapid transport showed up?
|
| To some extend yes. When I was a kid, we'd rarely go to the
| only major city in our part of the country. Maybe two times a
| year. Now I live in that area, but I can easily go visit my
| parents for dinner, just because someone decided that a
| motorway was a great idea. It cut somewhere like 40 minutes to
| an hour of the drive.
|
| It still boggles my mind that 30 years ago we considered it a
| day trip, but with a shorter distance, faster speeds, in a
| better car, it's just a quick drive, allowing my daughter to
| see her grandparents way more often than I saw mine.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I have never truly known a period of time without a smart device.
| The last watch I had was when I was a small child and it was only
| a few years ago I found a street "atlas". I have a feeling that
| I've missed a building block of the digital age by not
| experiencing an evolutionary phase.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| You can always go back, any time! Get a dumb phone.
|
| It's great. Engage with others more authentically, more
| meaningfully, and more consistently.
| lubujackson wrote:
| You can't go back though, not really. Like if you got lost
| pre-smartphones you would find a gas station and the person
| there would rattle off a series of turns you had to memorize
| on the spot or would pull out an atlas and walk you through
| directions - this was normal. Now, they would look at you
| like an alien.
|
| There was a culture of nudging people along to the right
| place. Even as a kid you would be asked for directions from
| time to time and have to sort out how many blocks to go
| before the next turn and all that, often without ever having
| seen an actual map of your own town.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| As a side effect of being a big city, I'm constantly asked
| for directions that could easily be found by opening a
| smartphone. Hell, I do it myself sometimes, especially
| about things like bus or subway lines I'm not familiar
| with.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Yes, you can. I did. I do fine. I'm happy with my choice :)
| varrock wrote:
| This is great from a social aspect, but society favors having
| a smart phone to get things done. The cons might outweigh the
| pros from my perspective.
| whynotminot wrote:
| You can go back, but you're going back alone.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| Nothing wrong about that :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I for one will go with them. :-)
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Who's alone? I've got people around me all the time who
| understand and support my decision.
|
| It may be hard for some people, but if you really want to
| do it, keep at it and don't give up. Seven generations from
| now, do you think smartphones will still have this hold on
| humanity? We just can't continue this way; it's an
| unsustainable form of society. Even movies made in 2021 do
| not depict smartphone usage anywhere close to the frequency
| and intensity they are used now. People will wake up from
| this collective dream one day; I'd rather wake up now and
| get started early on building something that works,
| wouldn't you?
| ahofmann wrote:
| Tried it, hated it. Everyone is using WhatsApp, Telegram,
| whatever. Try typing a sms with those tiny buttons, it sucks.
| There is a reason why some people have a smartphone but not a
| computer.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| SMS is a drag, but all the apps you mentioned have desktop
| versions.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Pretty sure the person you are responding to was not
| suggesting continuing to use WhatsApp, Telegram, whatever.
| Getting off those was kind of the point.
| quenix wrote:
| Yes, that's why the OP laments that "everyone else is
| using WhatsApp, Telegram, etc".
| jacquesm wrote:
| I find that the quality of the communications increases
| with the resistance to communicate.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| That last sentence is the most confusing thing I've read
| today, and I still don't know what you mean by it.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| >> There is a reason why some people have a smartphone
| but not a computer.
|
| > That last sentence is the most confusing thing I've
| read today, and I still don't know what you mean by it.
|
| I think ahofmann is referring to people who have a
| smartphone but not a desktop / laptop or similar.
| floren wrote:
| I think they mean you can mostly get along without a
| computer if you have a smartphone, but not vice versa,
| because the modern world assumes you've got a smartphone
| in your pocket at all times.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Unfortunately you can't; society has changed too, in many
| ways. Even some government services now require either an iOS
| or Android device to access (like vaccination records here in
| BC).
|
| A dumb phone does less for you now than it did in 2005, just
| like a horse does less for you now than it did in 1895. Even
| if you really like horses, you can't ride them on the same
| streets you once could.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Great example: in 2005 you could text 466-45 (Google) for
| weather and directions, but that service got canned by 2012
| or so.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I have a friend who did that. It's pretty irritating trying
| to remember his unique constraints on communication that I
| need to know in order to reach him.
|
| Some people conflate authenticity for interactions with
| others who are willing to go way out of their way to spend
| time with you.
| quartesixte wrote:
| The pre-LTE era was quite the experience as a teenager, and it
| wasn't until the iPhone 5 when smartphones became a ubiquitous
| and affordable thing (or justifiable) for many of my friends. I
| didn't have a smartphone until my junior year of high school!
|
| SMS feature phones like the sidekick, with physical keyboards,
| ruled the day and many of my classmates actually disliked
| smartphones because of the lack of physical keys!
| letitbeirie wrote:
| > The pre-LTE era was quite the experience as a teenager
|
| You all had it made. I'm sure any younger person can vouch
| for the social issues that come along with every teenager
| having a smartphone, but your cohort also missed out on
| family-shared landlines and all of the issues attendant with
| them. Calling your date and finding yourself forced to make
| small talk with her dad the phone bouncer, for example.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Aligning the infrared ports of two phones until max speed was
| achieved and being extremely careful to not move them for
| minutes which felt like ages to just send over a polyphonic
| ringtone..
|
| And if the bell rung, well, you were out of luck
| pugets wrote:
| What I miss more than anything else is having an attention span.
| Years of abusing social media has left my brain pinballing all
| over the place. I am a collection of unfinished thoughts. Even as
| I write this, I can feel my mind needing to latch onto something
| new.
| nanidin wrote:
| I've been suffering the same thing over the last few months. A
| helpful technique for me has been to swap out my smart watch
| for a dumb watch, and to put my phone in a drawer unless I
| intend to use it.
|
| I also heavily limited the types of things Facebook will send
| push notifications for. It used to be that if I got a
| notification, it was because one of my friends actually
| interacted with me in some way. Now I get a bunch of junk
| notifications that I feel are designed to pull me into the app
| and not really inform me of anything, to get me back to
| scrolling a feed. Like I'll get a notification that someone I
| don't know made a post in a group I've been in for years
| without ever getting a similar notification in the previous
| years. So I basically turned off everything that doesn't
| involve my actual friends doing something relevant to me.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I also heavily limited the types of things Facebook will
| send push notifications for.
|
| That answer for me would be everything. (Except messenger
| which basically one friend uses for me because of where she
| lives.)
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| I recently quit all social media. There was a bit of withdrawal
| but I can confirm that my attention span has started coming
| back.
| collaborative wrote:
| Apologies for asking the obvious, but then why are you here?
| :-P
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Haha good question. I wouldn't consider HN social media, as
| it's more nuanced discussion around topics, although the
| lines are somewhat blurry. I think of social media more
| like Twitter and Facebook.
| qwertox wrote:
| Do you visit Reddit?
| collaborative wrote:
| I know, I was half kidding
| Otek wrote:
| It's easy to quit, but how did you manage to fill empty time
| that you've suddenly gotten?
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| I'm learning how to play the banjo.
| tmjwid wrote:
| For me, the idea of needing to fill the time is one of the
| symptoms of the problem. Empty time is perfectly fine.
| Otek wrote:
| Yeah, mindfulness is promoted as a cure for that but I'm not
| sure. Right now I'm pretty mindful in random daily occasions
| but it just gives me more depression and overthinking. When I'm
| turning that off for some days I'm... more happy? But still
| miserable. I don't know what to do
| random_kris wrote:
| What to do to fix this?
| aalam wrote:
| I got mileage out of replacing habits of checking social
| media with reading longer-form articles. I picked up the idea
| from books on habits (Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, Atomic Habits
| by James Clear). To replace a habit, it helps to understand
| the prompt that causes it. When I feel tired, or worried
| about something, I found myself opening social media apps.
|
| Behaviour-wise, following the prompt, I've replaced checking
| Reddit with checking Hacker News (similar enough to work,
| without getting too engaged with the content). I've also
| replaced Twitter with curated Tweetdeck streams, and Facebook
| for the news feed with newspaper apps (a free one like AP
| could work, though I pay for newspaper subscriptions).
|
| Cognitive-wise, in terms of thoughts, I also recognize that
| social media is designed to hijack your attention and
| maximize engagement, so I've chosen to frame it as a negative
| (versus a neutral) habit for my own personal goals.
|
| In short, replacing the habits with similar ones with better
| consequences, and understanding why I'm doing this has
| helped.
| huge87 wrote:
| In general, you can train attention like it's a skill or
| exercise you practice. Stuff like mindfulness meditation is
| training of attention.
|
| If we're talking about how social media shortens our
| attention span then it may be prudent to reduce usage.
| bovermyer wrote:
| There's something to be said for leaving your phone at home,
| driving to a park, and just walking around for a few hours.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| As a parent, I've been watching this play out in real time
| among other peoples' children.
|
| Most parents I know are deliberate about limiting screen time
| and ensuring their children don't substitute screen time for
| other activities. It's actually not that difficult to do so as
| kids are really good at finding entertainment in their
| environment even without electronics.
|
| However, some parents give their kids all the tablet, TV, and
| phone time they want. As they grow up I can see them failing to
| learn how to play with others their own age because they'd
| rather reach for a screen than make an effort to _do_
| something. They can be frighteningly grumpy when separated from
| their electronic devices and can even throw tantrums until
| their parents cave in and give them more screen time.
|
| FWIW, I've also watched parents reverse this trend by slowing
| weaning their kids off of screen time and substituting other
| entertaining activities. It doesn't take a whole lot to nudge
| people in the right direction, but putting that phone down and
| doing literally anything other than stare at a screen can be a
| difficult first step to take.
| woko wrote:
| I'd argue that I've been watching this play out in real time
| among other... parents. It is actually sad when you go
| outside and start noticing that people are glued to their
| phone screens, including parents who would rather look at
| their smartphones rather than their kids. I can tell you that
| little kids notice that they lost the attention war to their
| parents' smartphones.
| deckard1 wrote:
| I've made this argument before, but in relation to dating.
|
| You'll never be more interesting than a smartphone. It's
| virtually impossible. You're a single human, and that
| device contains the entire world. If you meet a woman, she
| has her friends on there. She has her instagram account.
| Snapchat, TikTok, whatever. You are instantly contrasted
| against the entire world (against only the highlight reel)
| and you don't match up. And you never will. You're dull and
| uninteresting. Just wait until you find yourself swiping on
| Tinder while your date is in the restroom. No one is
| immune.
|
| The same is true for children. I'll never be as interesting
| at a Twitch stream or a flashy YouTube channel. Because no
| one is "on" at all times. Even at my most interesting, I'm
| not edited down.
|
| I'm glad to have experienced life before the internet and
| cell phones. We'll never be back to that point and we may
| not be fully aware of what was lost for some time yet.
| hobs wrote:
| I met my girlfriend of one year on bumble, she seems to
| think I am more interesting than TikTok (which she
| enjoys) or Youtube or Instagram (where she has a decent
| size following.)
|
| Honestly I think if you are feeling this way then you
| might want to traverse deeper into your relationships, if
| someone is looking for an entirely shallow relationship
| than this could certainly apply.
| travisr wrote:
| I agree this is sad. However, as a child of the 90s, I lost
| the attention war to my parents' TV. Maybe I just had
| absent parents, but I feel like most parents haven't been
| interested in their children for a while now.
| robohoe wrote:
| This one is a tough one and I can relate. I haven't been able
| to finish a book or work on any labs or FOSS work in years now.
| I reach for the phone even when I get a moment of downtime. The
| addiction is strong and now I as learn to be more mindful I
| realize how common place it is for everyone.
| zz865 wrote:
| Me too, congrats on completing that second sentence. :)
| theyellowkid wrote:
| > What I miss more than anything else is having an attention
| span.
|
| I need to look for more examples of the art of the future. The
| one paragraph short story (4chan greentexts I guess), the 20
| second hit single.
| kota2 wrote:
| Was a time I long to go back to. I would certainly only own a
| landline if other factors didn't require me maintaining a mobile
| phone.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > had conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at
| bars,
|
| Returning to these kinds of adhoc social interactions has be
| instrumental in helping breaking my isolation and depression.
| Friendly chit chat with a barista, say hello to anyone who isn't
| obviously avoidant, asking to pet their dog etc.
|
| Not wearing headphones has also been an important thing because
| it means I'm instantly available for interaction if someone
| should say something, or if I want to.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Curiously, almost everybody on the hiking trail I bike has the
| telltale white lozenges in their ears now. Pre-Covid it was
| something like 25%.
|
| So trail talk has been reduced to nearly zero. I call out "On
| your left!" as I pass, but still folks can be startled as I
| drift past. And forget saying "Good morning!" and getting a
| response.
|
| It will take years to undo the changes done by this past year.
| tqi wrote:
| Strangers don't owe you a response, and not being expected to
| give one is not a regression.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Don't know where you live, but a year ago they did respond.
| Now they don't. That's a change, and it seems clearly to be
| in the 'not as social as before' category.
|
| I take that remark as part of the regression itself - "I'm
| not as social as before and that's ok because reasons!"
| It's sad.
| jokoon wrote:
| I bought a smartphone something like 2 years ago and only started
| paying for wireless data 1 year ago, because I was tired of being
| stubborn about it, I really felt I was excluded from many things.
|
| I have to admit I often go on reddit when I have some time, but I
| don't go on instagram or facebook.
|
| Sharing videos on whatsapp when you're in rural areas is crazy,
| and to me it's really pointless, even though I like technologies.
|
| It's hard to say if people are less social because of
| smartphones, since social networks are not so social after all.
|
| Although I'm really curious if avoiding digital social networks
| would result in an amputated real social life. Online dating
| really really allowed me to get out more, and I don't feel like
| there is a good enough equivalent for friendships and activities.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I've owned a smartphone since late high school (~2010) but
| didn't get a data plan until some five or six years later. I
| actually miss having to be more intentional about where and
| when and what I was doing; data feels like an invisible
| umbilical cable that I can't cut off.
| tester756 wrote:
| kinda awkward, but I don't use one, ama I guess?
|
| > I didn't think about wage gaps,
|
| I think that this and other similar examples are confusing the
| Internet and smartphone
| legrande wrote:
| You can still live like what's described in this article. Get
| yourself a dumbphone and a paper atlas, only pay with cash, avoid
| loyalty cards, read paper books, newspapers, etc
|
| Now and then I do that, just to switch off from our hyper-
| connected world. Switching off is the new peace of mind.
| xwdv wrote:
| You can't really. People think it's simply a matter of getting
| rid of all the new tech.
|
| It isn't. You'll just be an anachronism. If the entire world
| isn't living the same way then you are only getting a
| superficial experience. Instead of living a genuine life, you
| are merely pretending for a while.
| xook wrote:
| Each individual experiences life in a different way. Who is
| to say that leaving modern technology at the door isn't
| genuine.
| bee_rider wrote:
| And the world knows that everybody has a smartphone. The last
| restaurant I went to had QR codes on the tables rather than
| paper menus. Of course, I could have asked for a paper menu
| but they didn't provide one by default and it would have
| added a new extra step. It isn't a big deal of course, just
| slightly slower restaurant service, but a million little
| deals like that add up to a hassle.
| sneak wrote:
| Chat up a pretty girl and she's likely to ask for your
| Instagram username.
|
| That's usually the point where I go into my "facebook is
| spyware" spiel, with predictable results.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm very happy to have gotten into a committed
| relationship right before online dating apparently became
| mandatory, although also vaguely curious what the
| experience is like. It seems like such a personal thing
| was suddenly connected to the internet, which is
| fascinating. Although also terrifying. I'm glad I don't
| have to actually deal with it.
| theyellowkid wrote:
| That's pretty much me, except for reading a couple of websites
| (like this) , online banking, and pirating e-books for my
| Kindle.
|
| I'll fire up a machine for video or photo editing once in a
| while or sheet music work, but otherwise they're not much use.
|
| One problem is being too old to care about video games. When
| Space Invaders came out I couldn't imagine that people would
| choose that over pinball or foosball. My loss I guess.
| sneak wrote:
| You can't complete required procedures for international travel
| right now without a portable web browser and mobile internet.
|
| Ditto for most restaurant menus in a lot of places: they are QR
| codes now, that point to URLs.
|
| Airlines will only let you book with cards, no cash.
| adam12 wrote:
| Your friend won't wait an hour for you, though.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I wouldn't expect them to, I arrive on time.
| Gunax wrote:
| The thing about technology is that even if you don't change
| everyone else will.
|
| Sure, it might still be technically legal to ride a horse down
| the street. But soon enough, people started putting in multi-
| lane highways. Also, stores took out their hitching posts. Then
| we started designing cities around the car, so what used to be
| a mile away is now 10. And half of that distance is consumed by
| parking lots.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Honestly, if you hitched your horse to the side of where they
| have the shopping carts, or even a lamp post, not only would
| most not mind, most would think it was cool, and if they
| really hated it, wouldn't know who was responsible for/had
| had the right to remove the horse.
|
| I haven't ridden a horse since I was 3 or so, but I rode a
| steam train through town last Sunday, which would be period
| accurate with your horse, and people smiled. They waved and
| took photos and thought it was really cool. Which it was.
|
| It isn't practical, as you say, but it is pretty awesome. And
| because of that people will accommodate you.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| What are the mechanics of switching between these modes? Do you
| just swap SIM cards from the smartphone to the dumb phone?
| gilbetron wrote:
| You can sell your car, get a horse, and travel around like it
| is the 19th century. Of course, nothing around you will be like
| the 19th century. Not that it isn't worth doing for other
| reasons, but moving your tech backwards doesn't move the world
| around you backwards.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Cars are better than horses for a lot of reasons.
|
| But smartphones are delivering no benefit to mankind. At all.
| The only compelling reason to use them is social pressure.
| theyellowkid wrote:
| > But smartphones are delivering no benefit to mankind. At
| all. The only compelling reason to use them is social
| pressure.
|
| Benefit? Probably not. Social Pressure? I'd say it's mostly
| the same addictive behavior that's built into slot
| machines.
|
| There's been a lot of high speed evolution that has gone
| into modern products. Fast food, social media, the
| perfection of pop music production. The unsuccessful die
| off.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| > But smartphones are delivering no benefit to mankind. At
| all.
|
| You know better than that. You don't have to lie to try and
| make a point.
| tharne wrote:
| > But smartphones are delivering no benefit to mankind.
| At all.
|
| This statement may be hyperbolic, but at its core is not
| wrong. Smartphones are very easily a net negative in
| terms of cost/benefit to society. They're ubiquitous
| because they're addictive, not because they're so
| wonderful. Everyone used to smoke too, then we came to
| see the massive damage cigarettes were doing. Smartphones
| are just cigarettes for the brain.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| You're welcome to your opinions but they're not facts.
| hypefi wrote:
| Not only that, but smartphones are also bad for health,
| EMFs radiation all day long are no fun for the body...
| Retric wrote:
| Smartphones are simply tools. I use mine as a flashlight,
| notebook, calculator, camera, phone, book, and compass
| even without access to the internet. People would have
| lined up to buy an affordable device that did all of that
| in 1990.
|
| The internet is also more than just mindless
| entertainment and social media. GPS isn't necessary, but
| they do more than just find stuff they also route you
| around traffic accidents and locate the closest drug
| store on a trip. Downloading an instructional YouTube
| video really helps with home repair, etc.
|
| In app purchases are toxic, but you can also just
| download a free chess app no gamification required.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Likewise; you don't have to accuse me of lying to make a
| point. Almost all of the arguments in favor of
| smartphones in this thread are based on caving to social
| pressure. Cell phones and texting are sufficient. And by
| the way, it's called hyperbole.
| enriquto wrote:
| > moving your tech backwards doesn't move the world around
| you backwards.
|
| The OP point doesn't seem to be about moving anything
| backwards, but moving yourself forward by selectively
| disengaging from certain things.
|
| My PhD advisor once went to a beach resort with his family.
| Fifteen days in a remote venue without wifi nor cellphone
| network. He was the kind of person who replies a saturday
| midnight mail with an absurdly technical and detailed answer,
| within less than one hour. I thought it would be torture to
| him. When he came back he told me that it was the most
| productive two weeks on his life. He wrote two nearly
| complete paper drafts and proved several theorems. Some
| things that he couldn't check on the literature were
| carefully noted.
|
| After that he realised how absurd and unproductive it is to
| spend your whole life connected to the email and subject to
| excessive social pressure. I guess having email-free days, or
| even mornings, would be a productivity boost to many
| intellectual jobs (unless your job consists in actually
| replying to mails).
| tharne wrote:
| > You can still live like what's described in this article. Get
| yourself a dumbphone and a paper atlas, only pay with cash,
| avoid loyalty cards, read paper books, newspapers, etc
|
| I've been doing this a fair amount lately, particularly when I
| go on vacation. It's glorious.
|
| There are some inconveniences, for sure, but the good outweighs
| the bad. Most of what drives my tech use these days is 1) My
| job, and 2) The social expectations of others. On balance
| smartphones and ubiquitous internet have benefits, but the bad
| far outweighs the good. Unfortunately, once a technology is
| embraced by enough people, you're more or less forced to use it
| if you want to live in mainstream society.
| beamatronic wrote:
| Instead of a paper atlas, get a Garmin device with a built-in
| map
| sneak wrote:
| No, get the $60 Chinese alternative with built-in maps that
| doesn't have any wi-fi.
| don-code wrote:
| Much like living outside the Matrix, would you really want to
| go back, knowing what you know?
|
| Yes, you can use a paper atlas. I have an 8-year-old car with
| GPS, and a 34-year-old car without. I bought a map book for the
| 34-year-old car, thinking it'd be a "period accurate" way of
| driving it; it's anachronistic at best, and frustrating at
| worst - can you read the street signs, and did you drop your
| compass under the seat? In the 8-year-old car, I can hit a
| button, say "Navigate to (an address)" _while driving_, and it
| figures it out.
|
| Some of these I do on principle (only pay with cash, avoid
| loyalty cards, etc.), and I accept a compromised UX as a
| result. Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you get
| out of these things, but the immediate impact of them seem
| generally negative.
| com2kid wrote:
| > and did you drop your compass under the seat?
|
| You can get battery powered compasses that you stick on your
| dash. :)
|
| My car's review mirror has a compass in it and I use it for
| navigation quite often.
|
| Places I had to drive to before GPS are places I have a
| better understanding of how to get to. I have a friend who
| refuses to use GPS and his knowledge of the city is far far
| ahead of mine.
|
| Of course I am lucky to live in a place built on a true x-y
| coordinate grid system where given any address you can
| navigate to it w/o issue using, well, just a compass. :)
|
| I wouldn't try that trick in London! :) (There is a cool
| documentary about London cab drivers and what they have/had
| to go through to memorize the entire city)
| cwyptocuwency wrote:
| Is it not "rear view" mirror, not "review" mirror? Or is
| that some regional term?
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| I've been working my way through Seinfeld, and I realized most of
| the plot lines couldn't have happened if cell phones were
| commonplace back then.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Also 'Romeo and Juliet' (tragedy occurs because a message isn't
| delivered), 'Assault on Precinct 13' (gang cuts the phoneline
| to a besieged police station) and the opening credits of Terry
| and June (couple can't find each other in a shopping centre)
| jeffbee wrote:
| You know, that's another thing that has changed a lot. Modern
| TV writer just can't stop himself from using the mobile phone
| as a device to advance the story. We have to watch some guy in
| a TV show sending iMessages. That is so boring, and as a
| caveman from the pre-cellular era it takes me out of the show
| and makes me want to turn it off. A recent offender in this
| regard was the Amazon show "Bosch". If you made a supercut of
| the titular detective answering his iPhone, it would be almost
| as long as the series itself. This is particularly irritating
| since the Bosch novels were written in the 90s, before the
| smartphone era, in the car-phone era at the latest.
| asdff wrote:
| Just as obnoxious is the character seen constantly vaping
| with a huge lightsaber of a vape. "I care a lot" was
| especially bad with this. What did that add to the plot?
| dunnevens wrote:
| Whats interesting to me is the transition period in
| screenwriting. From the early 2000s to the early 2010s,
| characters would be shown carrying phones but would still get
| into situations which could be solved easily with their
| mobile. But they'd act as if they didn't have it. I found
| interesting watching the writers adjust their tropes over
| time.
|
| It's also interesting to me that this problem, of
| storytelling in a world of instant communication, was first
| addressed in the original Star Trek. Various adventure story
| tropes had to be adjusted for communicators and transporters.
| Roddenberry et al admitted it was a headache sometimes.
| munificent wrote:
| I love how every horror movie in the past ten years has an
| obligatory scene to establish some flimsy reason why their cell
| phone doesn't work.
| dTal wrote:
| To the modern net-addict human, a non-functional cell phone
| is a horror all by itself.
| mateo411 wrote:
| There's a modern Seinfeld twitter account, which has a bunch of
| zany plot lines that are only possible in the smart phone era.
| austinl wrote:
| Wanted to share the link just because I love this account as
| well: https://twitter.com/SeinfeldToday
|
| A recent example:
|
| _George 's GF wants a "no phones at dinner" rule. G: "We had
| a good thing going, Jerry! Now we're supposed to talk? That
| can only end badly!_
| CPLX wrote:
| This one is still current, and hilarious:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/seinfeld2000
| codersteve wrote:
| I think a lot of movies now take place in the past to remove
| the mobile-phone problem.
| stonekyx wrote:
| Very nicely written. Made me feel nostalgic of the faint memories
| when I was a kid.
|
| Not really the main theme of this article, but I guess I do lack
| the courage of approaching a woman for her number and asking her
| out these days. Can't imagine how hard that is in real life.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Ignorance is bliss...but is a double edged fork.
| figers wrote:
| Early college, pre-phones (only calling cards), Flight into
| Europe, told my cousin what time it was landing, to meet me at
| the airport station at such and such a time. I landed, walked to
| the train platform, waited on the bench, read a travel book while
| I waited. He showed up and we were on our way around Europe by
| train for two weeks. Looking back how did we pull that off pre-
| cellphones. Had my flight been delayed on the runway for hours or
| we just missed each other on wrong train platforms I had no way
| to get in touch, he wasn't staying in the last hotel any
| longer...
| derefr wrote:
| > I was not archived, nor was I searchable; things I said just
| disappeared forever.
|
| > I had no influence and never disrupted anything. Strangers did
| not wish me a happy birthday or "Like" me. My personal brand was
| invisible.
|
| > I did not take photos of myself, was not filtered
|
| These things have always been happening; society just previously
| only had enough resources to set its scorching eye on
| politicians, nobles, and celebrities, in such a way as to force
| these thoughts and behaviors as reaction. Now there's enough
| attention for everybody, whether they like it or not.
|
| > There was no surveillance of the streets.
|
| Sure there was. It was just the unreliable and biased eye-witness
| kind of surveillance. One of the main purpose of the "city guard"
| was patrolling and noting down suspicious behavior.
|
| Pre-globalization, many large cities would by default have border
| walls and border checks, where you'd have to state your purpose
| of visit and get your entry/exit recorded in a logbook.
|
| Also, there were a lot of curfews. Curfew laws used to be pretty
| common, enabling city guards to treat anyone who _is_ out at
| night as a de-facto criminal, enabling immediate search-and-
| seizure.
|
| > News was not breaking
|
| Sure it was. There was less space to fill, and so "breaking news"
| was limited to things of wider relevance, but it still happened,
| and still spread quickly. Even pre radio, there was "breaking
| news" in newspapers, pushed into the edition at the last minute.
| The whole value-prop of the telegraph was to spread "breaking
| news."
|
| > The only content users generated was letters to the editor.
|
| Depending on the era, you're forgetting about:
|
| * Usenet
|
| * Public-access television
|
| * Call-in radio shows
|
| * Open-participation scientific journals and "societies of
| letters"
|
| Also, people could just sit down and write a book. Or, more
| likely, a memoir. The interesting ones _would_ eventually get
| discovered and published, if perhaps post-humously.
|
| > I rarely got to feel outraged by the words of people I'd never
| met.
|
| They were there, in books/memoirs. People who read a lot of this
| generally made a career (in Literary Criticism) out of it.
|
| > The only bingeing I did involved alcohol. I'd wait an entire
| week to watch the next episode.
|
| You could have been binging serial novels!
|
| > acquaintances never asked me to finance their ... back surgery
|
| Sure they did; they likely did it through by presenting their
| problem to the local church, who then asked you to donate on
| their behalf. They're still doing that, in fact. GoFundMe is
| communal charity for non-religious people.
|
| > I didn't think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or
| the intricacies of romantic encounters.
|
| People have been talking about all of these things (perhaps under
| different names) for centuries. They're hard to avoid, in fact,
| if you read the writings of "statesmen" of previous eras.
|
| > My desk's height did not adjust; I just sat in a chair and took
| it.
|
| You could have just had one short desk and one tall one. Or a
| writing desk. Most people didn't, though. The real modern
| difference is a self-interested motivation to have good
| ergonomics.
|
| > butts that were incapable of functioning as shelves.
|
| Such butts certainly existed; they were just not evenly
| distributed. :)
| random_walker wrote:
| There will _always_ be good old days.
| bambam24 wrote:
| I remember I waited a friend 8hours on a bench, because I told
| him so, I will wait there. Didn't move at all, I sit and stair at
| bosporus.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| A couple of things not mentioned:
|
| * Half of the population watching the same episodes of the same
| programme simultaneously. If you missed an episode, it was gone
| forever
|
| * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly
| googled.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be
| instantly googled.
|
| I don't miss those. Before the Internet, if it wasn't on an
| encyclopedia and you weren't at the library, you had no way of
| corroborating information.
|
| On the other hand, since facts are so accessible right now,
| those arguments have shifted to voicing their feelings and
| wishes because those can't be falsified.
| jsight wrote:
| You aren't kidding, I'm also seeing a trend of people
| claiming that any information that doesn't match their
| viewpoint must be faked or dishonest.
| johncessna wrote:
| The issue isn't that people are just huffing, crossing
| their arms, and crying fake news. The issue is that they
| are able to bring up 100 different sites supporting their
| claims. The person they are arguing with, obviously knows
| that the other is an idiot because they have 100 different
| sites supporting their claims!
|
| In a way, we've regressed back before we had the answer
| machine at our fingertips. You don't really know who's
| correct. It's just changed from 'Well, I heard xyz from my
| friend's aunt's sister, so I'm right. Oh yeah! Gary just
| said the opposite yesterday, so you're wrong' to something
| a little bit different.
| jsight wrote:
| I see that happening too, but tbh, I see it happening
| even without evidence. Its almost like some weird form of
| "thinking for yourself", but taken to the point of
| rejecting any evidence that doesn't match the
| preconceived notion. There doesn't even need to be
| evidence on the other side.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| It's like we're reaching the times when we should again
| start thinking more for ourselves, given the information
| at hand: make assumptions, try to prove them, try a
| reductio ad absurdum etc.
|
| But unfortunately people's brains are fried because of
| the constant social media bombardment.
| OJFord wrote:
| Perhaps 'inane arguments in pubs' isn't the best framing, but
| I do find the ability to ~instantly search for an answer
| online kills a lot of discussion.
|
| I find it quite irritating sometimes - _can we not just talk
| about it!_ - and it 's not like I have a long memory before
| it was possible. (I grew up with phones certainly, was in
| school when they became 'smart'.)
| munificent wrote:
| The fundamental way that humans begin bonding is through
| favor exchange. I give you something. You give me something.
| Back and forth until eventually we lose count and realize we
| have become fast friends.
|
| Information sharing is an extremely low barrier kind of favor
| because when I give you some information, I still have it
| too. When we no longer need each other to learn about that
| hole in the wall restaurant, that new band, how to fix a
| leaky sink, we have also lost important tools to forge
| connections with each other.
|
| I worry _a lot_ that the Internet and cheap consumer goods
| has essentially knocked the bottom rungs off the ladder of
| human relationships. I don 't need others to find a place to
| eat or live, or to learn a new skill or hobby. But I do still
| need them to share my feelings and worries with. But it's
| _really hard_ to jump straight to the level of relationship
| where you can talk about those things without going through
| several rounds of "Hey, can I borrow your drill?" and "Do
| you remember who voiced Fred Flintstone?"
| javajosh wrote:
| _> When we no longer need each other to learn about that
| hole in the wall restaurant, that new band_
|
| And yet the best information is still person-to-person, old
| school. It lives in the cracks that software misses and
| where review systems are gamed. Finding _good_ Indian food
| is hard - but the locals know. Who has an open mic night?
| Hard to say without connections. Maybe the ultimate example
| is real estate - deep knowledge of any given place comes
| after you 've lived there, and understand it's history, is
| life. And that's impossible to represent online.
|
| _> cheap consumer goods_
|
| Yes: making everything in Shenzen is a problem because now
| it's the only community _that knows how to make and fix
| things_. (Obviously its not 100% the case, but its mostly
| the case.) That lack of distributed ability has follow-on
| effects that we don 't understand yet -- most worryingly
| having to do with national security, but also about
| _agency_ and _curiosity_ and _self-determination_. Maybe we
| should have to pass a test before being allowed to use any
| particular object, showing that we at least know how its
| made and where it 's constituent parts come from.
| coding123 wrote:
| Often if you missed an episode you had one more chance usually
| either at 2 am or during the day time the next day.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Shows often repeated in the summer as well. Popular longer
| shows made it to syndication.
| mikestew wrote:
| Or, at least in the U. S., "summer reruns". The show would
| still be parked in the same time slot, but since production
| didn't run year-round, episodes from the last season would be
| rerun over the summer before the fall T. V. season started.
|
| But that was the last chance before you had to wait 25 years
| for the _Dukes of Hazzard_ DVD box set.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But that was the last chance before you had to wait 25
| years for the _Dukes of Hazzard_ DVD box set.
|
| You skipped right over syndication, which is what every
| series was aiming for (and _Dukes of Hazzard_ definitely
| attained.)
| kenjackson wrote:
| Another thing was regional music. I used to hear about GoGo
| music in DC, but I couldn't get access to it on the West Coast.
| People who had access to lots of different music were the music
| elites. I worked in college radio and set up the college's
| first Real Audio server and that was a game changer (we were
| admittedly late to the game, but the whole notion was a game
| changer).
|
| And now music really knows no bounds.
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is even worse across language boundaries. Everyone
| everywhere seems to listen to the same Anglophone bands these
| days. In most European countries there used to be different
| sound you could get coming from local acts. They still exist,
| but their airtime is much reduced. Also a lot of them play
| songs in English, I guess to satisfy the customers and just
| in case they manage to break into the big time.
| ectopod wrote:
| My local had the Dunlop Book of Facts as an inane argument
| ender. Although some people considering it cheating.
| theyellowkid wrote:
| Something like that has the value of leading everyone down an
| interesting path while looking up something else.
|
| I'd probably just veer off by mentioning that Sissy Spacek is
| Rip Torn's cousin (wait! who is Rip Torn? who is Sissy
| Spacek?)
| jon-wood wrote:
| I have a rule when in pubs - no Googling answers to the inane
| argument. Inane arguments in pubs aren't about getting the
| right answer, they're about the tangents you end up going down
| from them, something that's lost if you can just immediately
| get the answer.
| [deleted]
| imhoguy wrote:
| > If you missed an episode, it was gone forever
|
| I set VHS recorder just in case.
| runjake wrote:
| There was a time when we didn't have VHS to record. I
| remember that time well.
|
| It was really a bummer to miss something. It was probably
| going to be years, or at least seasons, until you got to see
| it again.
| sosuke wrote:
| Just a random thought you inspired. If any "collective
| consciousness" ideas are grounded at all in reality does
| missing the shared episode experience negatively change it?
|
| I remember that the Game of Thrones red wedding event still
| seemed to happen at the same time even though it was re-
| watchable on demand.
| [deleted]
| another-dave wrote:
| Ironically ends with a "Share' button and a paid subscription
| link -- we never used to have them either! :)
| paulvs wrote:
| This is eerily similar to videos forwarded on WhatsApp about
| "things you'd only understand if you were born in the <insert
| decade here>" :)
|
| I did relate to it though. It would be apt for a video about
| things you'd only understand if you're a millennial.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I could see it being a pretty nifty series on the History
| Channel. "If you were 120 years old, this is what you'd
| remember from when you were 20"
| WillEngler wrote:
| Contrary to the author's claim, the photo booth at Rainbo Club is
| still there.
| asimpletune wrote:
| This brought back a memory of a point in time where my family had
| a cellphone for everyone to share. If you were going to go out
| then it was your responsibility to take the family cellphone with
| you.
| ksec wrote:
| Not really to do with Smartphone, but before the Smartphone era,
| having a phone call is pretty damn nice. Now it is all robocalls.
| I dont even remember the last time I had a real person calling
| me. The people I know, or even those I dont such as job agents,
| will leave a whatsapp message.
|
| I also used to think having a decent digital Camera on a phone
| would be insanely great. It turns out not so, at least not any
| more. Every single god damn digital photo are now either some
| stupid "computational" photography enhanced, some are enhanced
| with AI or whatever Machine Learning. Apple used to be on the
| realistic camp but now even they are joining the profile of
| instagram generation. ( I have been told customer want these sort
| of features as they think it is better photo, and sell better )
| And if that is not enough most of them are posted with some
| editing or filters. To the point nothing in the photo I saw is
| real.
|
| I remember dreaming about online MMO on a phone. That was UO /
| World of Warcraft era. May be in ten to fifteen years time a
| Pocket Computer with Wireless Network. That would be so much fun.
| But gaming now has becomes a casino with lots of gambling options
| to win the game. It is also time sink for many of us to escape
| into the "metaverse". ( Metaverse is _the_ new VC hype of 2021 ).
| They are no longer the same.
|
| I remember I really really wanted IRC, ICQ and later MSN on a
| Smartphone. It didn't work. I have to hack an O2 Atom ( made by
| HTC before they become a brand of itself they used to be a ODM
| like Foxconn ) and it was a battery drain. Now it is largely
| replaced by all sort of instant messenger. But we dont give ICQ
| numbers or your MSN handle to anyone anymore. It is all "phone"
| numbers. So it is more of a "real world" connection rather than
| some "Internet identity" we used to have.
|
| Speaking of O2 Atom, I have been looking for a smartphone, or a
| pocket computer that uses 2G GPRS as Data Connection and slowly
| browse the Internet on the street. So I could sit in a Cafe and
| use some remote server that will send me the .MHT version of a
| website so I only use one connection. ( Multiple connection on
| GPRS are bound to fail ). iPhone was everything I wanted I
| remember vividly how Apple _nailed_ it. From capacitive Touch
| Screen to all the small UX. Most people didn 't get it. As it
| wasn't the first "Smartphone", you have Nokia Symbian and
| something like the Sony Ericsson P900 at the time. Most people
| were like Steve Ballmer and laughing at it. But for those who
| were looking for it for so long. iPhone was "it".
|
| I would have thought with Smartphone, people would listen to even
| more music, as it replaces mp3, or MiniDisc. Where we curate our
| own collection very carefully to try and fit in how tiny amount
| of storage we had. Turns out people are consuming more Video and
| other forms of Media. Music isn't "dead", but it certainly didn't
| bloom like many expected. From a high level prospective, all
| forms of media are competing for your attention and time.
| quenix wrote:
| Computational photography (what you call "some are enhanced
| with AI or whatever Machine Learning") is a perfectly
| legitimate evolution in the field of consumer photography. I'm
| not sure why you are so critical of it.
| narrator wrote:
| I didn't see it mentioned, so I'll add it for completeness. One
| of the differences between pre-smartphone and the post-smartphone
| world is the pervasive and unlimited availability of adult
| content. Pornography used to be really hard to get. Now it is
| unlimited and free. There are now more than 1 million content
| creators on OnlyFans. The democratization, if you want to call it
| that, of adult content to me seems to me like something out of
| gonzo sci-fi
|
| Music is also now almost free and unlimited. Local music died in
| the early 90s when the telecommunications act was passed and all
| the local stations got bought and consolidated into national
| syndicates. Local DJs didn't find bands anymore. There was a real
| rough spot when the mainstream was dull and it was very hard to
| find out about alternative music. Later, the internet and Youtube
| leveled the playing field between the mainstream and everything
| else and things got better.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'd say pre-internet, not pre-smartphone. Wide availability of
| free porn has been there since the start of the internet. It
| precedes smartphones by more than a decade.
|
| Or so I've been told.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| krupan wrote:
| I grew up in Washington and I remember biting into a red
| delicious apple was like biting into a water balloon they were so
| juicy. They were always super crisp and crunchy too, big chunks
| would break off as you bit them. Now when I get them (I don't
| live in WA anymore) they are always mushy and gross. Is this what
| we are talking about?
| abxytg wrote:
| IIRC some huge percentage of apples are produced in WA. The
| ones I get in SW WA from Yakima are still like that.
| [deleted]
| laurieg wrote:
| A couple of stand-out memories from the olden days (and I don't
| consider myself particularly old):
|
| Getting a call in a restaurant. Only happened to me once but I
| certainly felt like a VIP.
|
| Carrying a tiny map book of London around with me while cycling
| around. Missing turn after turn until finding there was a canal
| which basically took me from the center to my uncle's house.
|
| Arranging to meet a friend and then being late. Really late. 1
| hour late. He was still there, waiting for me.
| varjag wrote:
| I (legally) smoked on a plane!
| dilap wrote:
| smoking on a plane sounds like simultaneously the most
| wonderful and most terrible thing ever
|
| similarly it was amazing to smoke in bars, but it's great to
| not have smoke filled bars
| tnolet wrote:
| Oh boy. Was on a school trip to Greece in the mid nineties.
| ~35 teenagers and some teachers as guides and chaperones.
|
| We were 16+ so basically drinking free booze on the plane
| while smoking our hearts out. We actually drank all the
| beer on the plane. It looked like a smoke bomb went off.
|
| It must have been the flight from hell for other
| passengers. Completely unimaginable right now. Thank you
| Sabena Airlines for this core memory of my youth and not
| having us arrested in Athens.
| kodablah wrote:
| Smoking in bars still exists in many places in the US.
| Granted in Texas for example, in jurisdictions where it's
| still legal, seems like at least 90% choose not to allow it
| by choice of the business owner.
| varjag wrote:
| I mean it does sound crazy to me now. But back then it was
| just a fact of life that both smokers and non-smokers
| didn't spend much thought on. I flew before I picked up
| smoking myself, and it didn't really feel something
| unusual, precisely because it was common everywhere.
|
| There have to be other daily habits now that going to be
| seen as disgusting in a few decades too. Maybe things like
| eating non-cloned meat.
| conductr wrote:
| It was interesting especially juxtaposed on current
| reality. I hated smoking (ok I hated 2nd hand smoke as a
| non-smoker). But somehow, it was the _right_ of the
| individual to smoke; when, where, and how they pleased.
| It didn 't matter that other people in the space shared
| the air. Compared to present when the world is looking to
| bend over backwards to avoid putting smoke in someone
| else's air on a plethora of different topics. Many, that
| I've never contemplated. Like, for instance, I never
| thought I could get yelled at for using what I thought to
| be the correct pronoun while saying "yes sir, thank you".
| I'd think they'd just recognize my attempt canned
| politeness and say "you're welcome" and recognize why
| people think of them as a "sir" during casual brief
| interactions (because they were wearing men's clothes &
| had facial hair).
| FroshKiller wrote:
| I assure you non-smokers spent plenty of thought on it.
| varjag wrote:
| You don't need to assure me, I had a chance to experience
| it first hand both as a non-smoker and as a smoker.
| don-code wrote:
| Common in restaurants as well. It's downright bizarre to
| think about now, but I remember as a child, at family
| restaurants like Friendly's and Howard Johnson's (which
| itself is an anachronism), being asked by a cheery-faced
| hostess whether we wanted "smoking or non-smoking".
| xwolfi wrote:
| Yeah I remember waiting for people - I got a smartphone at 16,
| in 2004, something like that, so it's hard to really imagine
| how it was for adults...
|
| My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth
| talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient
| compared to my grandparents sending letters :D
|
| But I think it's better anyway - we sample mating candidates
| more, we cycle through faster, we can stop and try anew nearly
| any time until 50, and with some difficulty above.
|
| I mean my aunt had a crushing divorce when she had 3 young
| children and stayed alone working with all 3 until the internet
| arrived and she could find a partner much faster...
| coldtea wrote:
| > _But I think it 's better anyway - we sample mating
| candidates more, we cycle through faster, we can stop and try
| anew nearly any time until 50, and with some difficulty
| above._
|
| On the other side, we self report more isolated, depressed,
| friendless and dissatisfied than ever in the past decades,
| have record levels of depression prescriptions and opioids,
| and people get discovered dead after a month or so when
| somebody complains about the smell...
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| How reliable are self reported results across years or even
| generations of confounding changes?
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth
| talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient
| compared to my grandparents sending letters :D
|
| No need to get to the grandparents' generation, I was the
| letter writer of my family :) I wrote letters to
| uncles/aunts/grandpa - mostly at the command of my mum or
| grandma and sometimes for myself. I remember rushing to the
| window when the postman yelled and dropped letters through
| the grill - sometimes there would be more than one! The
| excitement was palpable - now we sigh with annoyance at the
| barrage of nonsense and spam that flows into our inbox. Truly
| a case of quantity over quality.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I remember feeling that way when I got an email back in the
| day, because it was a pretty rare event.
|
| These days, I feel like that when I get a physical letter
| that isn't sent by a machine.
| downut wrote:
| In 1989 I wrote a letter (i.e., mailed) to a friend from grad
| school (ASU) pursuing her studies at a Northern UK university.
| I sez we will meet you at the center of Piccadilly Circus at
| such and such a time, on such and such date. She wrote back,
| "of course." This took a month or so. We flew over, and showed
| up. So did she. I still remember meeting up: it was no big
| deal.
|
| We had also written to Czech friends from grad school (U FL)
| that we would show up in Olomouc on such and such date (Jun
| 1989, interesting times). They were visiting relatives and we
| showed up. And were whisked off to 5 days of whirlwind touring
| the soon to be de-Sovietized Czechoslovakia.
|
| We hosted quite few Eastern Europeans in the '90s, all arranged
| over snail mail. There was a sense of responsibility that we
| don't really experience today when dropping in on travels. All
| the modernity in the world, and nowadays we occasionally get
| ghosted, even after making repeated prior arrangements using
| the latest hottest smart phone technology.
|
| I will say this: google translate + maps are the two great
| inventions we appreciate most. The rest is a solid meh. We have
| a theory that maximized immediate convenience has an
| unanticipated effect of atomizing and devaluing some
| relationships.
|
| Per the parent, I too remember those paper maps while cycling.
| As in, riding from the Portland Airport to Arcadia and down to
| LA, using a tour guide, quite tattered at the end. Most of the
| times before an extended trip (100+ miles) I would memorize the
| route the night before. This worked fine for 25 years.
| paxys wrote:
| Smartphones or not, being very late for planned meetups
| definitely hasn't changed as a concept.
| distances wrote:
| Nobody waits for an hour though. With no contact I think I'd
| leave in about 20 minutes now.
| lordnacho wrote:
| IMO the big thing is not being bored. Someone is late for a
| meeting? Doesn't matter, you've got HN to read. On the back seat
| for a long drive? Doesn't matter, you can answer emails. Or play
| a game.
|
| The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and
| waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have
| vanished.
|
| I'm not sure what people prefer more though. Say you're waiting
| for a date, do you feel best breaking off directly from your
| reading of the dragon book, or would you feel best just doing
| nothing until they showed up?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I've been intentionally cutting things like TV or internet out
| of my life at certain times, and can definitively say I'd
| rather be bored. All these things I tell myself I want to do
| are actually not that hard when I'm bored. Writing, drawing,
| having more conversations with loved ones. It's a lot easier
| when I can't say "let's watch the new episode while we eat" or
| "I'll surf HN for a bit." The boredom builds until it finds
| release, eventually being high enough to do the things I
| actually want to spend my time on.
|
| If all I can do is watch paint dry, I'll find something else,
| whether it's rewarding or just mindless dopamine.
|
| That said, I'm totally addicted and cutting out the internet is
| extremely hard when I sit in front of it for work and my
| computer and phone are where a lot of the rewarding things are
| too (e.g. cell phone drains time, but you need it to text
| friends). I feel like an alcoholic working as a bartender also
| required to take just a teeny sip of whiskey every time I talk
| to someone.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I miss being bored. I used to go out of character and explore
| things when I got bored, now I don't remember the last time
| when I was bored for prolonged time.
|
| I mean I get bored of a game or an article etc. but I would
| immediately seek refuge in something else that is easy to
| reach.
|
| Before constant connectivity, I would have attempt to cure my
| boredom in much more hardcore ways.
| klyrs wrote:
| > The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and
| waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have
| vanished.
|
| I dunno. Infinite scrolling sure feels like watching paint dry
| to me... but as a teenager my idea of a good time was finding
| an isolated bit of woods, and sitting still enough for the
| fauna to ignore me. Actually, that's still my idea of a good
| time, but I'm too busy and the woods anywhere nearby are too
| crowded.
| mrweasel wrote:
| After getting vaccinated I was sitting in the waiting area, for
| the 15 minutes our suppose to stay, in case you get an allergic
| reaction and I noticed that most people where NOT looking at
| their phones. They where just sitting, doing nothing. I did the
| same, and honestly, it was absolutely wonderful just to have 15
| minutes where you did nothing.
|
| I'm not saying I wouldn't get bored just waiting for extended
| periods of time, but sometimes it's nice to know that for the
| next 10 - 20 minutes, you just have to exist in this spot, and
| that's all that's really expected of you.
| jwond wrote:
| When I go to the gym I don't bring my phone with me, and when
| I am resting in-between sets I just sit there. Sometimes my
| mind will wander, but often I just sit there and my mind is
| pretty much blank. I find it very relaxing.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I do like having a timer and gym log built in my phone. But
| +1 to not always having content streaming. Turning off
| music + youtube gives my mind a break.
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| "Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime" - Welcome to the
| Internet by Bo Burnham[1]
|
| This new song from Bo's covid-lockdown inspired special
| "Inside" hits this right on head. The Internet, particularly
| when paired with mobile devices just tries to suck up so much
| attention, because that's exactly what we made it do.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
| tester756 wrote:
| You can always rethink your life :P
|
| Sometimes it's good to sit down 15min and rethink stuff
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > not being bored
|
| People weren't necessarily "bored"-- remember that the boredom
| one feels when not hyper stimulated is due, at least in part,
| to adaptation to their peak/typical stimulus.
|
| People probably got sufficient dopamine, from "less exciting"
| things such as small talk, looking at the clouds, contemplating
| the meaning of their life while waiting for an interview to
| begin etc.
| hateful wrote:
| As someone with ADHD, this has been the most advantageous
| change for me. Another things I can do now is play a game on my
| phone during meetings - it may be counter-intuitive to others,
| but occupying my visual cortex and hands with a simple game
| allows me to pay attention to what someone is saying without
| having my mind wander.
| jVinc wrote:
| > "hmm I'm here and waiting, and all I can do is watch paint
| dry" seems to have vanished.
|
| Theres several influencers whose whole bit is centered around
| mixing paint, and I don't know how many channels on youtube
| dedicated to the sound it makes when you cut sand with a knife.
| So don't despair, I'm absolutely certain there is a channel out
| there dedicated to watching paint dry, on demand in byte size
| vids with tons of userengagement, for those long drives when
| you just want to pull the plug and watch paint dry.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| This reminded me of Sitting and Smiling [0]. It's just a dude
| sitting there for hours and smiling. Once a burglar actually
| entered his home and was scared of by, well, nothing, so I
| guess it checks the user engagement part, too ;)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_and_Smiling
| rubymatt wrote:
| Hey, I'm Matt Ruby (author of this essay).
|
| If you dig it, please consider signing up for my newsletter where
| I published it. You'll get my jokes, videos, & essays in your
| inbox weekly: https://mattruby.substack.com/
|
| Also, I've got a new standup special/album that you can watch on
| YouTube or stream as an album: https://800PGR.lnk.to/RubyTW
|
| And you can watch a video version of this essay here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30ja0d3qXv4
|
| Thanks for reading! Hit me up at mattruby@hey.com with any
| questions/feedback.
| exaltation wrote:
| This article was featured on Thinking About Things [0] today,
| which is likely how it got to the front page of Hacker News.
|
| http://thinking-about-things.com/
| [deleted]
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