[HN Gopher] Dumb Phone
___________________________________________________________________
Dumb Phone
Author : dredmorbius
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-08-20 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (joindiaspora.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (joindiaspora.com)
| Causality1 wrote:
| _The frequency with which I need my email and a notebook while I
| 'm on the phone makes integrated devices foolish._
|
| If that's actually a common problem for this person then they
| should start carrying a bluetooth headset. Personally I always
| have my bluetooth earbuds in my pocket so I'll pop one of them in
| if a phone conversation lasts more than a minute. The complaint
| is incredibly silly because no one is stopping you from carrying
| your phone and a headset and a notepad and all the other things
| or even a second phone. You can totally go back to doing the way
| it used to be done. This is like whining that your evening walks
| are ruined because the light on your phone isn't as good as the
| flashlight you used to carry. If you don't like it then use the
| damn flashlight instead.
| jjice wrote:
| > They aren't available whilst a call is in process > They have
| vastly less capability or flexibility than the systems they
| replaced
|
| I don't understand the first point because I can access my
| calendar, email, contact, etc all during a call on my phone
| without problem (Android 10).
|
| The second makes sense if you look at it from the lens of you not
| having infinite markup possibilities in your digital calendar
| compared to writing whatever you want on a desk calendar, but my
| calendar is with me everywhere. You can get a lot done with plain
| text notes and the 'description' section of a calendar event.
|
| I consider my phone an all in one productivity machine, not an
| entertainment machine, and I think that works well for me.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I don 't understand the first point because I can access my
| calendar, email, contact, etc all during a call on my phone
| without problem (Android 10)._
|
| Not all phones could. Verizon in particular had a lot of phones
| in the previous decade which couldn't access voice and data
| services at the same time.
| throw3849 wrote:
| That is problem of low end GSM modules.
| ianburrell wrote:
| It is a problem with CDMA that Verizon and Sprint use. CDMA
| can't do voice and data at the same time. Both Verizon and
| Sprint have mostly migrated to LTE and VoLTE and are
| retiring their CDMA networks next year.
| acmdas wrote:
| It's a poor person's problem, doesn't apply here...right?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The larger thrust of my essay is that simple feature checklist
| marketing and product specification fails to consider a larger
| ecosystem and workflow of usage. The fact that much of the
| intelligence of the system was "women's work" (e.g., provided
| by secretarial and switchboard staff), made it all the more
| invisible.
|
| Regarding the limitations of the post-1980s "smart phone"
| ecosystem (both desk and mobile devices), the limitations and
| UI/UX failures:
|
| 1. Apply to a number of different devices. Not merely flagship
| smartphones, but several other variations on featureful
| telephony equipment, including a number of generations of
| office phone systems (typically Rolm desksets), VOIP systems,
| and consumer landline / wireless handsets, etc., with which
| I've had direct experience. These tend to exhibit a range of
| UI/UX failures, to a greater or lesser extent.
|
| 2. The opening quote was from an aquaintance, who's more than
| slightly technologically literate.
|
| 3. The statement isn't absolute, but conditional. _Frequently_
| implies "not always".
|
| Comments so far seem to miss both the focus on overall
| workflow, and the nuance on feature completeness and/or
| suitability.
|
| Perhaps I'm a less effective communicator than I'd hoped.
|
| Perhaps the technological blinders are more formidable than I'd
| feared.
| gambler wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that most poster here don't understand
| and _don 't want_ to understand your article. Most of them
| are invested in software. Pretty bad software, probably. It
| seems the only way they can feel good about what they use or
| develop (often not by any real choice) is by constructing an
| imaginary past where everything was absolutely awful and
| comparing the current tools to such imaginary past. Anything
| that undermines that meta-narrative must be immediately
| responded to with shallow off-point comments to reduce the
| cognitive dissonance.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Part of the entire project is to see what the response is,
| and how it responds (if at all) to different communications
| methods.
|
| Challenging assumptions, let alone slaying sacred cows, is
| a fraught task.
|
| And to correct a misapprehension: it's _not_ that the
| 1970s-era office phone ecosystem was _better_. It 's that
| it was _different_ than the set of affordances and features
| of present comms devices and systems embody and the
| underlying design understanding evidences.
|
| In the earlier Reddit piece the article references, the
| immediately preceeding concept addressed was Chesterton's
| Fence. Many here are eager to move it.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > I don't understand the first point because I can access my
| calendar, email, contact, etc all during a call on my phone
| without problem (Android 10).
|
| This might be a weird question but are you always connected to
| WiFi?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I think you're alluding to the Verizon (IIRC) problem of data
| and voice access not working simultaneously. So on a call,
| you could use the device locally but not access anything via
| data (aside from being on wifi). This was unique to them and
| carriers using similar technology, since I don't use them I
| don't know if it's still an issue (but suspect not).
| jjice wrote:
| When I'm not, I likely have mobile data service, and even if
| I don't, my calendar and contacts are available offline and
| sync once I'm online. Email won't be accessible, but I can
| draft one and set a calendar reminder to send it later.
|
| Not familiar with any issues with using data while on a call
| as some comments have alluded to. I have Google Fi as a
| provider and haven't experienced any issues with them, or
| Verizon before.
| ugjka wrote:
| If you have VoLTE you can do data and voice at the same time.
| But many networks and phones don't have that yet
| deeblering4 wrote:
| Well, the computer at the front of the desk does all of the tasks
| listed and more, and it works independently from the phone.
|
| The 1970s desktop was not portable. But when working away from
| the office using only a phone, it's quite easy to switch
| applications while on a call, just connect a headset or switch to
| speakerphone. Laptop is an easy option for portability as well.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The PC + freestanding desk phone was an interesting variant. It
| went through a few iterations, from sneakernet to dumb terminal
| to (locally) networked, to fully globally interconnected. I've
| lived through virtually all of that, and worked through much of
| it.
|
| The O'Reilly book _UNIX Power Tools_ gives a number of examples
| of (mostly terminal-based) tools that could be used for office
| productivity. I went through a number of grep-based (or
| similar) phonelist iterations myself.
|
| There's a critical difference between the disconnected, and
| fully integrated system. The ability to look up a number on
| your desktop (either directly or as a terminal), and manually
| enter the number on a phone, is useful. It's not fully
| automated (so no call-centre automation), but it also means
| that the phone itself cannot exfiltrate data.
|
| Note that phone numbers themselves are typically short and a
| relatively dense namespace. The US 10-digit number allows a
| theoretical maximum of 10 billion numbers ... actually somewhat
| fewer given technical limitations. That's only about 30x the
| current population of the US, meaning that if each person has
| an assigned number randomly dialing digits will connect 1 time
| in 30. That's a tractable search.
|
| If the phone-number length were doubled, then wardialing would
| connect only about 1 time in 10 billion. Exhaustive search for
| active numbers would be infeasible.
|
| But we'd all have to dial 20-digit numbers.
|
| Or you could shorten the sequence by switching to lowercase
| alphabet (14 characters), alphanumeric (12), or mixed-case
| alphanumeric (11). If you used an 8,000 word dictionary
| (roughly the length of EFF's Diceware passphrase generator long
| wordlist), you'd need five words to provide a similar
| namespace.
|
| That is: there's a trade-off between the conciseness of the
| namespace and the ability to abuse it for unsolicited calls.
|
| (This is assuming that all phone spammers dial randomly, which
| of course isn't the case, but it's the start of one approach to
| addressing the problem.)
| mortenjorck wrote:
| The post isn't really comparing apples-to-apples, with the 1970s
| workspace being a fixed place in an office, and the smartphone
| being a mobile device that may be used in the field.
|
| No productive office has replaced all those rolodexes and
| notebooks with _just_ a phone; most have had them replaced for
| the past 20 years with a desktop computer which has long
| satisfied the "components operated simultaneously and
| independently of the phone" requirement.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Diaspora still exists?
| leovander wrote:
| That was the more important headline.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Isn't that the whole point of folding phones? Also android has
| had side split windows for ever, and on modern phones that have
| large tall screens, it works fairly decently.
| throw3849 wrote:
| I think author needs tablet. Some have 4g connectivity and can
| make regular phone calls. Basically 10" phone.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd go with a laptop first.
|
| Then an e-book reader. With WiFi but no SIM.
|
| Then a very function-limited dumb-phone, with tethering
| capability.
|
| "The Case Against Tablets":
| https://joindiaspora.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e...
|
| (Most of the meat is in comments to that post.)
| DeadBeatDad wrote:
| I used an iPod 5th generation for a few years as a phone (it's
| basically an iPhone 5 without a baseband chip). I used the Skype
| app to ring people and send messages.
|
| Whatsapp is not compatible with iPods which I always found
| annoying. This is because Whatsapp requires a SIM, which iPods
| don't support.
|
| Skype nagged me to update, which I couldn't since 5th generation
| iPods are tied to iOS 9.3.5 _forever_ and can 't update. The 7th
| generation iPods however have a later version of iOS and support
| more apps.
|
| Currently I have two phones. One is a dumbphone for normal calls
| and SMS (You would be surprised at how much business is conducted
| with SMS and calls). Then a smartphone which I NEVER use for
| calls, just use it as a mini 'tablet' for surfing the web and
| using Maps etc
| ghostly_s wrote:
| On a smart phone one can do any of these things while on a phone
| call. I'm not seeing the point.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Yeah, at least on Android I know that it works that way. It's
| not convenient, you either gotta use earphones or put the other
| side on speaker but it works.
| jowsie wrote:
| It's only an issue if you're dead against using a
| headset/earphones, or speaker phone.
| glxxyz wrote:
| Author of TFA seems to have never heard of using headphones
| while on a smartphone call. It's like having the 1970s office
| in my pocket.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| I don't know about the author but for me it's not about
| headphones/being handsfree, it's the fact that the majority
| of phones and networks right now cannot handle both a voice
| and a data connection at the same time.
|
| There's few things more quietly annoying than having
| something (internet-reliant) that I was doing be interrupted
| by a non-VoIP call, especially when it's someone I wasn't
| expecting a call from.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| A lot of modern handsets are multi-mode and can switch
| between CDMA and GSM once unlocked. But yeah ultimately
| comes down to needing to select a GSM carrier.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| I own a Pixel 3. Is that now considered an ancient
| handset?
| glxxyz wrote:
| Interesting- I haven't experienced that issue for about 10
| years- I've no idea if 'the majority of phones and
| networks' still have that problem though.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| I own a Pixel 3. Take from that information what you
| will.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's a lot of both and then some:
|
| - Phone-to-head maps poorly to using-phone-as-reference
| (addresses, maps, calendar, notes)
|
| - Even with speaker, headphones, earbuds, earpiece, etc.,
| toggling between various apps is fraught.
|
| - The mapping of functionality between digital and paper
| formats ... varies. Digital most definitely does some
| things far better (search most especially). Others ... not
| so much. Arguing that digital is an unambiguous advance ...
| is simply false.
|
| . The device OS may decide it wants to kill specific
| applications at any time, without notice, or apparent
| consideration as to significance.
|
| - My office desk phone never stole my contacts, or personal
| diary, from my rolodex / paper notebook, either while I was
| on a call or when it was left unattended. (I'm rather
| surprised nobody's picked up on this particular element of
| the piece and discussion.)
|
| - Paper gives _working area_. A desktop is 30 or so times
| the size of a sheet of A4. My 9 " tablet is larger than
| even today's "phablet" phones ... but has only the display
| area of two 4x6 index cards. Paper stacks, shuffles, and
| turns right-angles (e.g., cross-stack sheets portrait then
| landscape to create divisions) in ways that digital docs
| don't. If I sort paper in a given order, it doesn't
| periodically go off and decide it would rather be sorted
| differently. Yes, the _total data density_ is low. But the
| real access, input, output, and processing bottleneck isn
| 't the paper, it's the human interacting with it.
|
| I may have heard of headphones at some point. I'm checking
| my notes.
| chess_buster wrote:
| When someone rings my phone, I put my airpods in and tap to
| accept call.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > It's almost as if putting your filing system, personal diary,
| correspondence, photo album, and directory on a surveillance and
| exfiltration device was a Bad Idea.
|
| I hate that tone and way of arguing.
|
| It is as if the author is accusing everyone of buying a
| surveillance device and _then_ coming up with other uses than
| being surveyed.
| acmdas wrote:
| It almost sounds ironic...and not everyone likes irony.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| No, it sounds sarcastic and condescending.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| The author assumes that everyone(including our parents and less
| than technical peers) _knew_ it was a surveillance device.
| Saying like "1984 is not a manual.." were considered by the
| masses to be nothing more than a pessimistic saying. At some
| level...myself and [likely] others really didn't expect it to
| turn evil so quickly and so effectively. Meanwhile... the
| devices got sticky - they are packed with ways to cause
| addiction and enjoyment; filled with bread and circuses.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| If I may speak on behalf of the author:
|
| There's a great deal of frustration and fatigue in that
| comment.
|
| The expectation isn't that the general public would have been
| aware of that risk. The general public is not sophisticated,
| and has been greatly misinformed.
|
| The technical world, the firms offering and provisioning
| devices, the carriers, the financiers and banks behind this,
| especially, are.
|
| Technology is the art of balancing desired and undesired
| effects.
|
| For-profit business is the art of externalising risk.
|
| And the heart of finance itself _is_ risk.
|
| There's a very long record of cautions and warnings. They were
| ignored, largely because in the short term and with suffient
| levels of externalisation and arabitrage, those risks were
| profitable.
|
| https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I used a dumb phone for a few months last year. Ultimately it was
| actually the difficulty of using iMessage on my other devices
| conflicting with texting on my dumb phone that made it nonviable
| for me and forced me to switch back to the iPhone.
|
| There is a difficulty (at least in the states) of finding decent
| flip phones with the exact level of dumbness that you need. And
| they are all quite expensive too, due to the nicheness of the
| product. I eventually found one reasonably priced on eBay
| secondhand, which seems to be a common story with a lot of dumb
| phone users.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Months ago I've purchased a Nokia 8110 4G which does exactly
| what I need: calls, receiving confirmation text codes from the
| bank or other services, occasional photos on the fly (quality
| is not on par with most smartphones, but acceptable for some
| uses), and 4G hot spot for the laptop. Never been happier. I
| don't use it for texting though; coming from a qwerty
| blackberry-like one, going back to the numerical keypad for
| texts would be a nightmare. I paid it new EUR50 delivered
| locally, but noticed the price skyrocketed recently and some
| sellers ask over EUR400, which is absolutely insane. The price
| inflation might be related to chips shortage, therefore waiting
| a bit might be worth.
|
| There is also community dedicated to replacing the factory OS
| (KaiOS, a fork of Firefox OS) with a more free one.
|
| https://gerda.tech/
|
| https://sites.google.com/view/bananahackers/home
| rjsw wrote:
| Nokia HMD dumb phones are inexpensive in Europe.
| CTOSian wrote:
| and full of nasty bugs, visit the reddit.com/r/KaiOS/ for
| more info
| rjsw wrote:
| Their really dumb phones run Series 30+ [1], not KaiOS. A
| $20 phone can still have good call quality.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_30%2B
| swiley wrote:
| The crap Apple does with iMessage really should be illegal.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| What does Apple do with iMessage? I don't have an iPhone and
| always assumed it's just glorified SMS.
| andrewla wrote:
| When people with iPhones reply to someone who has switched
| away from Apple, and they use "Messages" (which does both
| iMessage and SMS) then there's a reasonable chance that the
| message will go into a black hole, where it will be
| delivered to iMessage and never appear on the other party's
| new phone.
|
| This is doubly true if they have ever used an Apple PC to
| receive iMessages; in that case it will almost certainly
| never reach the new phone via SMS.
|
| I don't believe there is a fix to this; sometimes you can
| repair it on the other party's phone by munging the
| contact, but most messages will just be blackholed.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042
|
| Two solutions. The first requires an iPhone (to disable
| iMessages on your account with) and the other does not.
| This has been around for years now.
| ratww wrote:
| iMessage is exclusive to iPhones and works in the same
| application that does SMS, seamlessly.
|
| The problem OP is alluding to is that some people avoid
| talking with people who don't have iMessage, because SMS
| costs money. So there is a bit of peer pressure to use it,
| and a lot of people are stuck in iOS because of that.
|
| It's not that different from Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp,
| those apps are also closed and rely on network effects. But
| they are free and work on other OSs, while iMessage
| requires a relatively expensive phone.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| OP here. The problem I had was actually more referring to
| the fact that Apple does not offer fine grained control
| over how messages are delivered or sent on a per device
| basis. I can't easily say, for instance, that I want
| outgoing messages on all my non phone devices (Mac, iPad,
| etc) to use iMessage but inbound messages sent from
| phones should be received via SMS. I also can't say that
| I want all messages from certain users to be received via
| SMS (like my wife, who I should always want to receive on
| my phone so I can respond quickly).
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| Text messages between iPhones are also invisibly shunted
| to iMessage
| prionassembly wrote:
| Should SMS cost money? (Or at least, more than ~10X the
| bandwidth bill so there's nice monopoly rent for the
| operator... I can't imagine the actual cost being over ~1
| USD/1000 messages.)
| williamtwild wrote:
| This is a comment that should be kept to the annals of
| reddit. You can say this about any company who does thing out
| of spec and to create and ecosystem to drive profits. Google,
| twitter, Ford, IBM.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > You can say this about any company who does thing out of
| spec and to create and ecosystem to drive profits. Google,
| twitter, Ford, IBM.
|
| The fact that abuse of standards and customer lock-in is
| ubiquitous doesn't make it any less abusive.
| kbenson wrote:
| Apple's only slightly worse than all the others in that they
| severely limit what you can use iMessage on, but I'll always
| be a lot more pissed at them because they kicked off this
| whole mess.
|
| I really miss the days of when I could load all my accounts
| into Pidgin (Gaim!) and have almost everything centralized.
| Now I have a teams window (which doesn't bother me too much
| since it's a work app), a tab for slack, a tab for the
| umpteenth iteration of whatever Google has decided to call
| their chat platform, a tab to get SMS messages through google
| messenger (a welcome change), a window for signal on the
| desktop, and tabs for Facebook and LinkedIn (both or which I
| try to never visit, but would like to know if someone
| contacts my on, and I refuse to load on my phone). I just
| realized I've apparently abandoned my ICQ/AIM accounts to the
| past.
|
| That's the desktop. I have almost all those as separate apps
| on my phone, with separate ways to use them, separate
| notification preferences, etc.
|
| The instant messaging ecosystem has gone to complete shit,
| and I doubt anyone that used it seriously before this
| happened will disagree. And what we got in exchange for every
| company walling off their own IM system? Honestly, I'm not
| sure anything that couldn't be recreated fairly easily in a
| client with a couple months work if someone had extended
| their protocol to do more.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...I really miss the days of when I could load all my
| accounts into Pidgin (Gaim!) and have almost everything
| centralized...
|
| Me too! I'm very much hoping that matrix - the protocol -
| continues its steady climb (both popularity and adoption),
| because that is what i see as the future for that kind of
| experience where if not everything at least lots/most of my
| comms interactions will be managed on my side by a single
| "interface". I'm an admitted fanboy of the matrix protocol
| (as well as matrix apps like Element, FluffyChat,
| Quaternion, etc.)...so maybe i'm biased, but have you tried
| playing around with matrix, and its associated apps, to see
| if it gets you closer to that older Pidgin/Gaim/Adium-like
| experience?
|
| (I'm not affiliated with the matrix org. nor any app/client
| builder, as noted i'm just a fanboy.)
| kbenson wrote:
| I haven't, but I have seen discussions of it here. I'm
| not sure how it could make the situation any better
| really unless it can actually interoperate with closed
| protocols (how?) or actually takes over a significant
| enough portion of the market that people choose to use it
| in lieu of hangouts or iMessage or facebook, etc, and
| there are lots of incentives those use to make that
| unlikely.
|
| In any other case, it's just the XKCD standards meme[1]
| all over again, in that it might be better in many ways,
| but I doubt it will actually help market fragmentation.
|
| 1: https://xkcd.com/927/ which actually specifically
| mentions instant messaging.
| jrootabega wrote:
| They're also just bad at being phones! Recently Android has taken
| to popping up the keypad when it thinks it hears the other end
| ask for a PIN. And that is exactly before my finger hits the
| button to open the keypad, resulting in pressing one of the
| buttons, invalidating my PIN. (This is part of the broader
| phenomenon of hyperactively rearranging interactive elements of
| the UI, being unresponsive, but not protecting you from
| accidentally tapping something you could not have reasonably
| avoided. UIs should not be able to do unexpected things while
| also being interactive.)
|
| And I think many of us have probably hung up calls with our faces
| at least once.
| el-salvador wrote:
| Didn't know about this. How does it work technically? Does it
| convert the call from speech to text internally, and opens the
| keyboard when it hears PIN?
| jrootabega wrote:
| I don't know about the implementation, but I would imagine
| it's like the "Now Playing" feature, where the phone has
| local hashes or ML models for current popular music, or
| common phrases you might hear on the phone. It could also
| just be that my phone knows when it's calling voicemail, and
| maybe there is out of band info telling the phone app that it
| wants a PIN.
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| I have been using Android for a very long time and have never
| had this issue with the phone "popping up the keypad when it
| thinks it hears the other end ask for a PIN". Occasionally a
| webpage will be coded such that the cursor is in a text box and
| so the keyboard will pop up, but this is not an Android problem
| per se. Maybe my experience is unique but I can't tell you the
| last time I've hung up a phone with my face or had issues like
| you describe. I have been using Pixel phones of late and Nexus
| phones before that. All in all they have been pretty solid for
| me.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Interesting...I've also been using it a long time but only
| noticed it in roughly the last year. Pixel user as well in
| the US. If I hold 1 to dial voicemail (which calls carrier
| voicemail via cellular service), when the lady says "Please
| enter your password," my keypad pops up. If I call somewhere
| else, it doesn't pop up. I'll have to call someone who can
| play that clip back to me and see if it's responding to it.
| shawnz wrote:
| The author's arguments kind of remind me of those of the
| interviewer in this 1979 clip with Ted Nelson:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVU62CQTXFI
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Great interview, one of my faves.
|
| It's also appropriate, though possibly not for the reasons
| you'd chosen it.
|
| Max Allen, Nelson's interviewer, struggled to be able to think
| far enough forward to comprehend how a tool he thought of as a
| glorified calculator might possibly be of use to the average
| person. The problem of course was that he was mis-categorising
| the tool, and greatly underestimating its capabilities and
| applications.
|
| The issue I'm seeing in this thread, and amongst communications
| device and software designers, is a similar failure of
| comprehension and imagination, of being unable to look _back_
| in time and understand how a glorified bit of papyrus and leaky
| grease tube (pen and paper) could possibly serve the functions
| modern smartphones do. Again, it 's a misunderstanding of the
| capabilities, workflow, possibilities, and affordances.
|
| Thanks for illustrating the point so clearly!
| juancn wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but I barely use my phone as a phone. I think
| it's dumb to call them phones, it an artifact of their origin.
|
| I could just as well not have any phone functionality if it has
| internet.
|
| At this point I even don't pick up calls from numbers that I
| don't recognize or weren't scheduled beforehand.
|
| It's now rude to just call someone on the phone without asking
| permission first.
|
| It's the equivalent of dropping unannounced at their place.
| bityard wrote:
| > It's now rude to just call someone on the phone without
| asking permission first.
|
| I've literally never heard of this. So much of my day-to-day
| work and personal communication would pretty much never happen
| if I had to ask for permission every time before I called
| someone. Is it a millennial thing?
|
| Phones (telephones, that is) and phone numbers are exactly for
| spontaneous voice communication. If someone doesn't want to be
| called out of the blue, they can choose to not give their
| number out to people. Or for texting say, hey, here's my number
| but I'm so busy that texting is usually better for me. And with
| today's smartphones that tell you who is calling (or at least,
| whether or not it's someone you know), it's _way_ easier to
| decide whether or not to answer a call than it was two or three
| decades ago where the phone just rang and that was all you got.
| mLuby wrote:
| > they can choose to not give their number out to people
|
| I assure you, I did _not_ give my number (or email) to the
| spammers who contact me multiple times a day.
|
| I'm sure they got it from some combination of public
| databases and data breaches. Like a fingerprint, I can't
| easily change my contact info, so here we are.
|
| I want the smartphone without the phone. Signal audio is
| often better quality anyway.
|
| Aside: I want callers who aren't explicitly in my phone's
| contacts to _solve an audio CAPTCHA_ before my phone accepts
| their text /call/voicemail. This would not affect family or
| friends, would provide a path for important calls like
| medical, financial, or government calls, and would
| significantly increase the cost of spam.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I hate to tell you, but you may be one of those people we
| wish just texted every time we have to stop what we are doing
| and pick up a call.
|
| 99% of the time it could be handled better via a text or
| email, which allows both parties to answer when they can.
|
| It is infuriating when I have to spend 30 minutes of my day
| trying to phone people back and getting voice mail so that
| they can tell me something that was best put in a simple
| text.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> I hate to tell you, but you may be one of those people
| we wish just texted every time we have to stop what we are
| doing and pick up a call.
|
| >> 99% of the time it could be handled better via a text or
| email, which allows both parties to answer when they can.
|
| I think it depends very much on your relationship with the
| person with whom you are communicating and the conversation
| itself.
|
| The "bandwidth" of communication of a voice call is much
| higher than a text or email because of voice inflection,
| voice tone, and other audible factors.
|
| For example, you might be able to immediately tell that the
| person you called is sick and adjust your plans or request,
| but a text or email would not tell you that.
|
| A voice call also allows for quick clarifications that
| could take several rounds of texts or emails. This means
| that a 30 second phone call could be faster than several
| rounds of texts or emails spaced over several hours.
|
| A voice call is also better for more sensitive or urgent
| communication. Urgent or sensitive news conveyed over text
| or email can feel impersonal or even uncaring.
|
| For asynchronous one-way messages, I agree that texts or
| emails are better since they do not interfere and allow
| each side to handle responses asynchronously.
|
| >> It is infuriating when I have to spend 30 minutes of my
| day trying to phone people back and getting voice mail so
| that they can tell me something that was best put in a
| simple text.
|
| I completely agree. I HATE voice mail and have actually
| turned it off. People who know me and need a voice call can
| call back or try reaching me by text or email.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| > I completely agree. I HATE voice mail and have actually
| turned it off. People who know me and need a voice call
| can call back or try reaching me by text or email.
|
| Yeah... You're the kind of person people wish would just
| text us.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Different solutions for different situations and people.
|
| I don't see the 99%, more frequently it's meetings that can
| be replaced by emails. Some of my customers are fine
| sending an email or creating a ticket, and are able to tell
| me in writing what they want. Others, I'd say around half,
| can't clearly tell me what they want. Maybe they don't
| know, or they don't fully understand the problem
|
| Either you send a few emails back and forth for a few days,
| trying to figure out what people want, wasting hours.
| Instead you can call the same people, and in less than 30
| minutes have the job clearly defined. Then you still need
| to follow up via an email, so you have the clients OK in
| writing.
|
| It's not a generational thing, it's down to how different
| people best communicate, and what situation you're
| currently facing. The clean and clear dismissal of phone
| call as a means of communication isn't productive. My
| dismissal of texts in professional settings might also not
| be super productive, but that's would mean that I have to
| give out my cellphone number to clients, and that's not
| really happening.
| handrous wrote:
| > Is it a millennial thing?
|
| "Elder millennial" here. Didn't have a cell phone until
| college, and then it was a dumb phone.
|
| Phone calls are my least favorite form of communication.
| Oddly enough, I'm fine with them in a business context, but
| personal? Don't call me unless someone's dying or I'm
| expecting a call from you. I _will_ be annoyed otherwise.
| Either the person you 're calling is ignoring _all_ calls
| (phone silent and out of sight), or you 're about to set off
| a blaring DEAL WITH THIS RIGHT THIS SECOND, DROP WHAT YOU'RE
| DOING alarm for them (even if it's on vibrate, still, that's
| what it is). It's like _yelling_ "I need your attention this
| second!". So it should be important enough to warrant
| abruptly interrupting someone who may be in the middle of
| who-knows-what.
|
| I felt very differently about this before cell phones. Yay!
| Someone called me! Now it's like, damnit, why are you being
| such a jerk by calling me when there's not something super-
| important and urgent going on? I think part of it's that home
| phones couldn't interrupt you _everywhere_ at _all times_.
| Mostly just indoors, in your house.
| [deleted]
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's a maker vs manager/sales thing.
| tbihl wrote:
| No, I don't think it's a millenial thing.
|
| I agree with you completely.
| version_five wrote:
| There seems to be some odd resentment to your point- the
| person implying that "makers" don't like taking calls,
| really? FWIW, I like the phone, it often let's things get
| resolved faster and avoid misunderstanding and promotes
| diplomacy.
| ddoolin wrote:
| I get where they're coming from though. To me it's more of
| a personality trait than generational, and our industries
| do lend themselves to often extreme introversion. I agree
| with you, it's way faster to get through conversations on
| the phone. People forget that social norms also apply to
| texting and that can make them drawn out, before even
| thinking about how some people only respond in very wide
| intervals.
| shawnz wrote:
| Of course it's more convenient for the caller. But what
| about the receiver of the call? They might be in the
| middle of other tasks, and perhaps they want to have some
| time to plan their side of the conversation, as the
| caller did.
|
| I don't think the argument is that voice communication is
| not useful. The only issue is _unsolicited_ calls.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Is it a millennial thing?
|
| It may be more of a millennial thing but I've heard this from
| both younger (Gen Z) and older (Gen X) people as well. It
| does depend on the type of call. If I run a business then I'm
| not expecting my vendors/clients to pre-schedule a call but
| if a friend calls I assume it's an emergency or extremely
| time-sensitive. I regularly send and receive "Are you free to
| talk?" SMS/iMessage/Discord/etc messages and only initiate
| calls without first asking if it's something that just can't
| wait (or in the case where we are about to meet up, like
| calling to say I'm almost there or calling to find someone at
| an event we are both attending). The only exception to this
| "rule" is my parents who regularly call me out of the blue (I
| get a text ~20% of the time max to ask if I'm free).
| dasyatidprime wrote:
| I tend to term such a device a 'handset' for that among other
| reasons.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I think it's dumb to call them phones
|
| Circa early 2000s we used to call them PDAs. I remember with
| fond memories my pocketPCs well before the iPhone was even a
| thing.
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's a shame that the concept is gone. I liked PalmPilots.
| The iPod Touch is the remaining relic of the non-phone
| smartphone.
| pomian wrote:
| Except in the country. (Country side) Where cell phones hardly
| ever work, and usually everyone is working outside, so they
| don't answer a land line phone. In which case you stop by,
| everyone takes a break over coffee, and a good visit is had by
| all. Just not, every day.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I've been working towards calling mine a "Pewter" like
| Com"puter" for Pocket Computer.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > It's now rude to just call someone on the phone without
| asking permission first.
|
| I really wish we could rewind the time for this one. It was so
| amazing to call people spontaneously.
| version_five wrote:
| Now spontaneous calls have been replaced with slack messages,
| often with the expectation (and I'm guilty of this too) that
| the recipient will drop everything and reply. At least with a
| phone call, if they didn't answer you know they are bust.
|
| Personally, I'd prefer a call to at least 50% of slack
| messages - any time a back and forth is required that could
| be addressed in a 30 second call but instead takes a slack
| chat spanning 10 min where you can't really do anything else
| because of the distraction.
|
| I've tried to encourage people to phone me, including leaving
| my phone number is my slack status and asking people to
| consider phoning, but it wasnt really successful
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| Just start doing it, be the change and all that. I do it.
| Sometimes they answer, sometimes they don't. Everyone here is
| overthinking it.
| bityard wrote:
| I don't know if it's just an introvert tendency or what. I
| mean I get it, being so deep whatever project your working
| on that a phone call--even from someone you like--can seem
| like a burdensome interruption.
|
| But it does sometimes feel like something bigger has
| changed.
|
| When I was a kid, the house phone was almost _always_ in
| use at night and on the weekends. Various family members
| and friends called just to chat and catch up and BS about
| whatever was on the news. Birthday calls were placed and
| gratefully received. The teenagers in the house got in
| trouble for tying up the line all evening to talk with
| their friends even after having spent all day with them at
| school. Today that's all been replaced with texts and
| tweets and facebook likes and it makes me sad.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > The teenagers in the house got in trouble for tying up
| the line all evening to talk with their friends even
| after having spent all day with them at school.
|
| They still do this, it's just over
| FaceTime/Discord/Zoom/etc. Also I don't see the
| voice->text move as something really that terrible. I
| have a discord with my close friends and we've
| essentially left FB groups for this instead. We can all
| share stuff and consume it on our own timetables instead
| of having to drop everything and engage at the exact
| moment someone wants to share. We can always drop into
| voice/video/screen-share if needed, it's really ideal for
| me and my friends.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Oh man, I am getting nostalgic about this. It was
| _amazing_ to socialize without any formalities.
|
| Analog life is quite the thing. The funny thing is my dad
| used to complain how phones have ruined physical
| interaction. He used to have friends just literally show
| up at the house and see if he is available to hang. He
| thought phones ended that lifestyle and now he is _glued_
| to FB. God help us all...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But not amazing to be called spontaneously.
| Causality1 wrote:
| What was amazing about it? In my experience phone calls are
| composed of ten percent the reason you made the call, ninety
| percent time-wasting greetings, farewells, and pointless
| smalltalk.
| tarr11 wrote:
| I think OP was referring to calling someone for the sole
| purpose of socializing, which is often a lot of "pointless
| smalltalk"
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I still call my buddies and they call me - spontaneously
| - I pick up if I am available. No formality. No
| scheduling. Just pick up the damn phone and chat!
|
| Slack added huddles recently to cut the friction to call
| someone. Phone lines before cell phones used to be like
| that - just call! Instant voice communication. So much
| better than text.
|
| I feel like I am showing my age now :-)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I love this and I have been practicing the art of no-phone
| calls for quite a while. My phone don't even 'ring' except for
| the selected group that I had specifically set to bypass my
| 24/7 DND.
|
| I created a tiny website to give out to people asking why -
| https://no.phone.wtf
| bitwize wrote:
| To us nerds/lizard people, a computer is a programmable
| information processing device, generally with one or more CPUs,
| memory, etc. It can be put to a multitude of purposes. A
| smartphone certainly qualifies (as does a dumbphone, actually).
|
| But normies don't work like that. To normies, a device is
| defined by the role it fills in your life. In this view, a
| computer is a device used for work: preparing documents,
| emails, spreadsheets, and presentations. Maybe programming or
| data analysis for scientific, engineering, or BI purposes. A
| _phone_ is a social link: it connects you to the people you
| care about most. This has been true since before smartphones or
| even cellphones became commonplace: teenagers in the 80s craved
| their own landlines and their own phones, and even ordered
| custom phones like the ones with transparent cases, etc.
|
| So inasmuch as smartphones serve the primary social function
| they continue to serve, which is to connect you with your
| social circles and facilitate communication with them, they
| will continue to be marketed as phones, not computers and not
| anything else -- even if they completely lose PSTN
| connectivity.
| ddoolin wrote:
| People, for a while: I need to remember to reach out to all my
| friends and family during this terrible period!
|
| A few months later: Stop calling me! And make sure to slip a
| note in my mailbox before you even think about texting me!
|
| I REALLY do not like this isolationist culture we're slowly
| building up to, at least in the U.S. Calling someone is the
| equivalent of showing up unannounced? I find that notion absurd
| on its face. Maybe there are some parallels but it stops pretty
| short.
| timw4mail wrote:
| I think the biggest backlash is against the spam calls. IF I
| know the number, I'll be a lot less irritated by a phone call
| than if I don't.
| hn8788 wrote:
| > It's the equivalent of dropping unannounced at their place.
|
| I started to feel the same way once texting and messaging
| became common. Having someone call you unexpectedly feels like
| the equivalent of someone saying "I don't care what it is that
| you're doing, talk to me right now." I know that's not actually
| what's going through people's minds, but it feels that way.
| It's like when someone asks you something over IM instead of
| over email, even though it isn't time sensitive.
| Kevin_S wrote:
| Outside of a few select people (mostly my parents and
| grandparents), if someone calls me I assume it is an
| emergency or something very important.
|
| I actually get a surge of anxiety because of this lol.
| joshstrange wrote:
| In the rare case I make a call without first asking/warning
| someone I always follow up with a text (even if I leave a
| VM) saying "Everything is ok, just let me know when you are
| free to talk" or something similar.
|
| I absolutely love the transcription service for voicemails
| on iPhone because it means I can easily scan the contents
| of the messages of people who don't just text after a
| failed call.
| randallsquared wrote:
| Messaging is to email as texting is to physical mail: you
| send physical mail or email when what you want to send isn't
| quickly dashed off or replied to, but you also take a large
| risk that the recipient will never see it (spam filtered), or
| never bother to read it (left in the inbox with tens of
| thousands of other emails, hundreds of which are from that
| very morning), or never reply. Also, you never know if
| someone turned off read receipts, so you can't even assume
| they didn't see it and start the escalation message with
| "Hey, I know you haven't gotten to this yet, but..."
|
| So, for a number of years now texting, Slack, or Messenger
| was the way to be clearer about the intention of only taking
| a moment of someone's time, which makes it more likely that
| they'll pay attention. I've been dismayed, as recently as
| this week, to see on shared screens a red Slack badge that
| has numbers in the hundreds.
|
| What we really need is much, much better prioritization
| systems.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| If a friend calls me unexpectedly, most of the time I do care
| more about them than whatever I was doing, because I can just
| resume what I was doing a few minutes later. Most stuff can
| be interrupted and resumed without a problem. If this was
| really important and more important than the thing my friend
| calls to me with I politely refuse to talk and offer a
| callback later. Maybe we have a different culture, but
| calling people on a phone is normal here (Poland).
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _It 's like when someone asks you something over IM instead
| of over email, even though it isn't time sensitive._
|
| That's an interesting perspective. I think that explains some
| people's behavior. I tend to think of IM as in please reply
| in the next day or so, and email as in please reply in the
| next week or two.
|
| I'm always telling people to not say hi in an IM and then
| wait for me to reply, because if I'm busy I'm not going to
| reply until later, but then you might not be there, and if
| you had asked whatever you needed in the first message I
| could be answering it now
| chefandy wrote:
| The expectations I've most commonly encountered are less
| than two hours for a business IM, or less than 36 hours for
| an individual-to-individual business email.
| aethertron wrote:
| > It's now rude to just call someone on the phone without
| asking permission first.
|
| Is it? I think that norm varies a lot with different sections
| of culture. If it was universally rude, then it'd be damn silly
| that phones are all set up to be able to receive calls
| unsolicited, by default.
|
| "Do not disturb" could be the default.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "It's the equivalent of dropping unannounced at their place"
|
| Which used to be a normal thing - at least where I live and
| especially if you were young. At the same time, politely
| telling someone you're busy, it's not a good time, etc was also
| acceptable and normal.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Key statement there is 'used to be'. Now that phones are
| ubiquitous, it makes no sense to just go over someone's place
| or even call them, when you can just send a text that lets
| someone respond asynchronously. I also just have a policy of
| not picking up calls from unknown numbers except if they
| leave a voicemail or call several times.
|
| Most people that I know only use calls for time
| sensitive/urgent needs. Most other things, aside from
| chatting with family etc, are really best handled with a
| text. For whatever reason the culture around phones has
| shifted to "don't force people to drop whatever they're doing
| and respond to a call unless it is actually necessary".
| city41 wrote:
| And even then I'd argue kick off the urgent communication
| need with a text. They can call back if they realize
| synchronous communication is needed for the circumstance.
| They are more likely to receive the text than a phone call.
| If they are in a meeting or whatever, they would likely let
| the call go to voicemail, but a text they can discretely
| read.
| milkytron wrote:
| What I do is call if it's urgent and time sensitive (SO
| is out shopping and I need to add something to the list).
| If no response and more urgent (actual emergency or needs
| immediate attention and is high priority), I call again.
| If not an emergency, I send a text with the necessary
| information and they can call back or respond via text.
|
| Seems to work out well and fairly straightforward, I'd
| imagine I'm not the only one that follows this flow.
| jfk13 wrote:
| It depends on the other party's phone habits. We don't
| all carry them everywhere or check them constantly.
|
| If you call me, I'll probably hear the phone ring, and
| can either answer it or check for a message, whereas if
| you send me a text, there's a decent chance I won't even
| notice its existence for some hours. Better hope that
| "urgent communication need" isn't _too_ urgent...
| mrfusion wrote:
| > Most people that I know only use calls for time
| sensitive/urgent needs. Most other things, aside from
| chatting with family etc, are really best handled with a
| text. For whatever reason the culture around phones has
| shifted to "don't force people to drop whatever they're
| doing and respond to a call unless it is actually
| necessary".
|
| Anyone feel like businesses small and large aren't getting
| this? If I need a plumber or want to apply for a mortgage
| the first step is always a phone call. I don't get it.
|
| I've tried texting local businesses but it only
| occasionally works.
| [deleted]
| el-salvador wrote:
| In Central America most businesses have switched to
| WhatsApp or Facebook messenger. They still keep the
| normal phones though. Texting wouldn't work here though.
|
| At first it was only small businesses like the nearby
| cafeteria sending the lunch menu, then it was fast food
| deliveries, some banks. Last year some state institutions
| made the switch.
|
| I'm not sure about a mortgage, since that requires more
| paperwork. But most of a car insurance, car loan,
| personal loan, new internet phone line, can be done via
| WhatsApp.
|
| The local digital signature law still doesn't work
| though, so at certain point of the process, the company
| sends an official or someone from a private post company
| to get the real signatures on paper and confirm that the
| ID card matches the application.
| juancn wrote:
| Yeah, but for close friends and family only. If I'm being
| honest, it was mostly tolerated rather than encouraged. Once
| everyone had phones, you called before dropping. Now everyone
| has some form of async communication, so you use that
| instead, before calling.
|
| The issue is imposing yourself on somebody else's attention.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| For a technologist, I'm definitely fairly anti-technology. The
| height of human invention was the written word. And pencil and
| paper is still impossible to beat. Unless you're decked out with
| a keyboard, no smart device is going to beat it. Even then,
| markup is really hard. You'll then need a stylus, and some great
| software to match what you had at the start with pencil and
| paper. And with the paper I can rip the page out and hand it to
| someone. Or I could scan it. Whatever, pretty flexible. That
| pretty much amounts to a joke that a comedian will be telling for
| at least another century.
|
| I use an iPhone 12 mini, but I'm not a heavy user of a phone. As
| a Xennial, I lived through and was cognizant the last 20 years of
| the analog age, roughly capping off with the Blackberry at the
| end of the millennium (and took a few years to take off).
|
| The smart devices haven't really helped anything. Laptops and
| desktops have. Smart devices really were just tethers for you to
| your work/life/consumer distractions. It has its uses, and that's
| why I carry mine, but primarily just basic communication is why I
| keep it. I can live without the secure Wake On Lan to my desktop,
| internet banking and whatever relatively useless features it has.
|
| Pencil, paper, laptop. Still can't beat it, smart devices are
| largely just pieces of trash or new ball and chain at worst.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > For a technologist, I'm definitely fairly anti-technology.
|
| Same here. I have built many cellular networks from the ground
| up in the early 90's, then I worked in R&D for cellular devices
| and today I do various cloud things. When I am not at work, I
| seldom carry a phone, nor even mess around with technology.
| (Other than the random hobbyist project I'll mess around with
| on the weekends every now and then).
|
| I find it fascinating when I am out and about, only to watch
| people living 18 inches in front of their nose, while there is
| a great big world of activity all around them, and they are not
| even aware.
| swiley wrote:
| I wonder when Apple will "invent" having an overlapping window
| manager on a smartphone like what many people are doing on the
| Pinephone.
| cody8295 wrote:
| You mean Picture in Picture or split app screen?
| JadeNB wrote:
| > You mean Picture in Picture or split app screen?
|
| Please not their implementation of split screen brought to
| the iPhone. Years of working on an iPad Pro, and I still
| trigger it accidentally when I don't want it, can never
| trigger it when I do want it or get rid of it, and always
| wind up having to Google it again.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| I can't say which distro grandparent is using on their
| Pinephone, but when they say split-screen they could very
| well mean, literally, what one would find on a desktop.
|
| While personally, this sounds cumbersome to me, some people
| have very unusual ways of using their Pinephones. To me,
| that's awesome - we've settled on "how one uses a mobile
| phone" based on what Google and Apple have designed. Having
| new, off-the-wall ideas will lead to some people doing
| slightly insane things, and I say that in the most positive
| way possible.
|
| Finally, as long as we're straying firmly off-topic: What
| some people are doing with their mobile Linux devices always
| reminds me of an Apple ad [0], from when "Think Different"
| was still the motto of an underdog.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg
| powersnail wrote:
| > A modern business, software, or smartphone system may offer
| some, or even all, of these functions, but frequently:
|
| > They aren't available whilst a call is in process
|
| > They have vastly less capability or flexibility than the
| systems they replaced
|
| What function isn't available during a call on a smartphone?
| Playing music?
|
| And when the author says "capability or flexibility", this is
| what the author is comparing a smart phone with:
|
| > The user
|
| > The phone itself
|
| > A Rolodex or addressbook / contacts list
|
| > The local PBX - the business's dedicated internal phone switch.
|
| > A secretary or switchboard operator, serving also as a message-
| taking (voice-to-text), screening, redirect, directory,
| interactive voice response, and/or calendaring service
|
| > A desk calendar
|
| > A phone book
|
| > A diary or organiser
|
| > Scratch paper
|
| Yes, having a dedicated secretary is more flexible and capable
| than a smartphone. But modern businesses still have secretaries
| don't they? I don't understand how this is a viable comparison.
|
| ---
|
| In 2021, a functional phone is no longer functional for my use.
| It hasn't been so for years. My university account required a Duo
| app (2 factor) to login. My family relies on chat programs to
| talk, because we live in different countries and SMS is
| expensive. And so many other things......
|
| I know that some people find themselves wasting time on smart
| phones. But others have been several times more productive on
| smart phones. It all comes down to choosing what works best for
| you, and how you use the device.
|
| (Edit: format)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| From a follow-up comment to the original essay:
|
| _I strongly suspect that much of the reason for the lack of
| awareness and consideration of these methods, tools, and
| concepts is that this was "secretarial work", that is, women's
| work. It was conceived of specifically to free the minds of
| executives and administrators from having to deal with these
| problems. Further, as secretarial and administrative positions
| were eliminated from organisation, the knowledge, context, and
| even the culture in which they were embodied, was lost._
| troyvit wrote:
| To me it's a pain while I'm on a call to pull the phone from my
| face, switch apps to contacts, read or otherwise ingest the
| data, then put my face back to the phone to relay what I
| learned.
|
| Compared holding the phone with one hand and flipping through
| an address book with the other it's much less flexible to me.
| silisili wrote:
| Am I the only one who typically just uses speakerphone at a
| low volume? Most calls I receive are at home, and I hate
| holding my phone to my head anyways. That or a headset solves
| the issue...
| powersnail wrote:
| > Compared holding the phone with one hand and flipping
| through an address book with the other it's much less
| flexible to me
|
| My point was that we didn't replace address books with just
| smartphones. As address books disappeared from our desks,
| computers showed up. Emails showed up. It was a strange
| comparison between a single phone and a whole ecosystem of
| doing business.
|
| "I'll send/email/fax all the information to you in a second."
| largely replaced "I'm going to read this to you from this
| piece of paper." especially in a business setting. More
| efficient, formal, traceable methods have been invented and
| adopted.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Headphones. Often there is a pair in the box with a mic, if
| not even if there is no headphone jack a pair of okay
| Bluetooth buds are $30. Except for the shortest of calls it's
| easier than holding the phone to your face. Then you can
| easily do whatever on the phone.
| ghaff wrote:
| >But modern businesses still have secretaries don't they
|
| Well, they have admins/assistants for seniorish execs but, no,
| they mostly don't even have a shared admin for anyone below
| that level
| lorey wrote:
| I thought I had heard that term before. Found the following
| article in my bookmarks describing how to make your phone more
| boring and less usable on purpose. Not the same topic, still
| highly recommended. https://nomasters.io/posts/dumber-phone/
|
| Also, I really like to use this minimalist launcher from time to
| time: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.jkuester.unlauncher/
| _def wrote:
| Thanks for suggesting Unlauncher! I'm giving it a try now.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| Seconded!
| oftenwrong wrote:
| I use a similar launcher:
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/fr.neamar.kiss/
|
| I have a lot of the features tweaked or disabled. The way it is
| configured, it basically acts as a static list of a few apps I
| use most, with a search bar to access anything else.
|
| I find this setup to be more straightforward than the normal
| icons+folders type of launcher. I have handed my phone to other
| people who have never used it, and they have no problem finding
| things because you can just search.
| nikodunk wrote:
| Haha wow this is an excellent point. I'd never thought about it
| this way before.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It is a fair point that if you aren't using a hands-free headset
| or the speaker then accessing other features on your phone while
| in a call is problematic. However, if you are on a hands free
| headset then the author's point kind of falls apart. That said, I
| wish I could buy a palm phone (small mostly just a phone) because
| I do all the other stuff (calendaring, looking up dates, Etc.) on
| my iPad that I use with my phone.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-20 23:01 UTC)