[HN Gopher] Taking Flight Without a Smart Phone
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Taking Flight Without a Smart Phone
Author : devtailz
Score : 22 points
Date : 2022-04-10 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (devtails.xyz)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| A half-measure I've considered is dropping my iPhone in favor of
| (only) a cellular Apple Watch. This would allow me to call Uber,
| check my email, and do most of the other things expected by
| modern society, but harder to loose hours to the device.
| causality0 wrote:
| _it 's hard to imagine such as small screen consuming more than
| a few minutes of my life at most._
|
| As someone who's spent twenty hours over the last two weeks
| playing a Funkey S, I wouldn't bet on that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Okay, well, sure, I suppose humanity can find a way to be
| distracted by anything. But I think it would be a lot easier
| to ignore. Even the Nokia in the article is capable of
| playing Snake.
| midasuni wrote:
| Tamagotchi called and laughs
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| A very honest account by Adam that captures the anxiety of
| addiction, especially those moments of panic that cause us to
| fall back into smartphone dependency or use "just this last one
| time".
|
| This article will resonate with everyone working to take back
| tech in their lives, but succumbing to the (false but emotionally
| very real) sense of isolation and disconnection from the so-
| called "expectations of society".
|
| In Digital Vegan [1] I tried to re-word and make more accessible
| ideas from a book that I found life changing. It is called
| "Missing Out" by Adam Phillips [2]. It is written in quite dense,
| psychotherapeutic language that gives me pause to recommend it.
|
| If there's just one idea I'd love to get across it is within the
| subtitle "In Praise of the Unlived Life", which is not about
| Stoicism, abstinence as a virtue or any shallow "self-help"
| themes. It's deeper and darker, and about dealing with the loss
| that comes with being a real (true to yourself) person.
|
| People talk about FOMO, a "fear of missing out". And of a fear of
| being "left behind". But if the person next to you has their head
| blown off by a bullet, or everyone else is swept away by a
| tsunami wave, being the one who "missed out" or was "left behind"
| feels like survivor guilt. It means dealing with a kind of grief
| about the life you so nearly had, or chose to walk away from. The
| fact that you got the better deal, even though you know that to
| be profoundly true, sometimes still doesn't feel like enough.
| Cult escapees feel this too.
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13369538-missing-out
|
| [2] https://digitalvegan.net
| system2 wrote:
| It is not the smartphones. It is the user.
|
| I am using my phone to control my entire house: Cameras, door
| alarms, motion detectors, laundry machines, dishwasher, smart
| door bell, sprinkler system, smart lights, thermostat, smart
| plugs for fans and other utilities, garage door, solar panel,
| backyard garden controllers as well as their logging system.
|
| This is only for the house, I also check my finances (banking,
| stocks, credit), all client communications (slack, skype,
| whatsapp, ringcentral, keepass). My health applications for smart
| stuff like garmin watch and garmin heart rate, bicycle sensors,
| weight scale, for work: office apps including microsoft and
| google. My dog greatly benefits from the apps I use including
| ordering his food with two taps, his schedules for vet visits
| with direct vet contact thru the app, training schedules, etc. I
| can listen to music in my car the way I want thanks to Spotify,
| or listen to great podcast like this american life directly thru
| their app. I can identify songs with shazam. The list can go
| forever.
|
| Just no social. I tried not using it for a day after these random
| people posts; it just made things inconvenient and I missed my
| schedules. I feel like I am maximizing my tool.
|
| Users who are "scrolling" all day can also abuse drugs, alcohol,
| coffee, or other things. It is the character. Don't blame the
| tool.
| nukemaster wrote:
| Smartphone OSes are clearly designed for abuse though.
|
| The whole UI is practically built around full screen modal apps
| where the user scrolls through content. Installing community
| made software and maintaining things yourself is artificially
| made extremely difficult.
|
| I could go on, but there is a legitimate problem with mobile
| OSes that previous PDA OSes didn't have.
| rtb wrote:
| What a horrible comment; totally without compassion or empathy;
| totally self-congratulating.
|
| What do you propose people who find themselves unhappily
| addicted to smartphones do? Just feel bad about their lack of
| "character" and wish they were you?
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| Peak HN: "I use my phone too much" -> "Life is inconvenient
| without my phone" -> "I must design my own phone from scratch"
| jen729w wrote:
| I empathise. You can get a quick win just by using a Focus mode.
| Just make sure that it hides notifications on the home screen,
| and I've set it to dim the home screen so that it's visually
| different.
|
| The habit of walking past your phone - which, needless to say
| should not just be in your pocket all day - and hitting the
| screen to see what's come in is neatly broken. Because now you
| can't see what's come in, you have to stop, bend over, unlock it.
| Now that's an actual _thing_ that you have to do.
|
| That's enough to cause my brain to say, no, you don't need to do
| that. And I've found the needless-check-of-notifications cycle
| breaks itself quite naturally.
|
| This assumes you can just leave your phone somewhere. I'm working
| from home so it can just sit in a corner of the office. Bonus
| points if you hide it in a drawer.
|
| Edit: also, this lets anyone messaging you know that you're in a
| DND-like mode. When I see this, I think, okay cool, don't expect
| an immediate response. All good.
| rsync wrote:
| It's frustrating how very, very large dumbphones are.
|
| Dimensions on this device are 131mm x 53mm @ 13.7mm thick ... and
| that 13.7mm thick is almost comically thick. This is for a device
| that does a very small subset of what a smartphone does _and_
| does not benefit from screen real estate.
|
| The tradeoff we _should_ be making is smarts vs. size ... but in
| this case, you get the lack of a smartphone but also weirdly
| large and ... comically large in one dimension.
|
| If you're wondering what should be possible in this product
| space, look at the MOTO F3 (FONE)[1] which is 16 years old and
| had dimensions of 114mm / 47mm / 9mm.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone
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