[HN Gopher] Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home sho...
___________________________________________________________________
Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be
normal
Author : apson
Score : 186 points
Date : 2022-05-08 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vaidik.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (vaidik.bearblog.dev)
| dboreham wrote:
| My solution to this problem (anxiety at potentially missing some
| very important incoming message) is to wear a watch that has wide
| area connectivity and syncs with the important message streams
| (voice, signal, work slack, sms, email, not social media). The
| watch has a good enough UX to receive and act upon messages, but
| sufficiently crappy that you want to ignore it unless it's
| indicating some hair-on-fire situation.
| MrJohz wrote:
| I'm unconvinced by this.
|
| I keep all my "on the go" stuff (keys, money, water, some
| important documents, etc) in a bag, and I almost always keep that
| bag on me, wherever I go, even if I don't think I'm actually
| going to need all that stuff. For example, if I go to a friend's
| house, and we go for a walk, I don't really need that stuff, but
| my instinct is to take the bag anyway. At this point, it's such
| an ingrained habit that I feel uncomfortable going somewhere
| without the bag (something my wife mocks me for occasionally).
|
| Is that bad? I don't think so. It's a tactic that I've cultivated
| because otherwise I know I'm going forget something that I need.
| I might not need everything in that bag, but if I'm out of the
| house, I'm probably going to need at least something in there.
| And taking the stuff I don't need has also paid off when I end up
| changing my plans or something.
|
| For me, it's the same with my phone. My phone is my main point of
| contact to my wife and family, it handles navigation and public
| transport, it answers questions I have while out and about, and
| it's also an entertainment system on the way. Not having it makes
| my life worse and harder. As a result, it's another thing that I
| always try and keep on me.
|
| Obviously there are some situations where it makes sense for me
| for leave my bag or my phone at home. But in those situations,
| I'm going to feel slightly uncomfortable because it's
| interrupting my routine, and that routine is there for very good
| reason.
| _uy6i wrote:
| I think there is a difference between being thrown off by your
| routine (I have the same feeling if I'm not carrying my wallet
| or keys with me) and being "addicted" (for lack of a better
| word) to your phone and going into withdrawal - the number of
| situations I'm constantly in where people are incapable of
| being "present" because they are on their phones is depressing
| and astonishing
| MrJohz wrote:
| Sure, I guess it ultimately comes down to what specifically
| the author finds uncomfortable about not having their phone.
| But I think this narrative of addiction (and the implication
| that people should be comfortable leaving possibly the most
| powerful tool that have at their disposal at home) largely
| feels like fear-mongering.
|
| For example, you talk about people being incapable of being
| present - this seems very far from my experience. I know a
| couple of people who might check their phone obsessively, or
| will get distracted looking something up, but generally most
| people that I hang out with show no signs of difficulty
| engaging with something - work, a game, a conversation - for
| long periods of time. That's not to say that carrying around
| a portable endorphin generator doesn't have its own risks and
| complexities, but overall, this techno-nihilistic narrative
| of addiction and incapability rings quite false to me.
| antiterra wrote:
| There's a whole subculture of people who put together 'Get Home
| Bags' in case their car breaks down or some other unforeseen
| event requires they hoof it. It's probably not a bad idea.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My compromise is a smartwatch. I can use it to make emergency
| calls if I need to, but the availability of easy stimulation is
| considerably reduced compared to a smartphone.
| vmception wrote:
| my friend's phone died last year and he
|
| 1) couldn't get inside anywhere to charge it because he didn't
| have his covid vaccine card anywhere
|
| 2) couldn't scan a menu to order at the outdoor cafe we found in
| the mean time
|
| it was amusing, it stopped being fun very quickly, but we figured
| it out. these two scenarios are obviously not as relevant any
| more
|
| but its way beyond "addiction"
| Areyouabot8 wrote:
| Are people not terrified at the 50% chance the entire society
| and environment we live in is being engineered to require us to
| carry tracking and surveillance devices on us 24/7 for sinister
| purposes down the road ?? I'd argue its even more than a 50%
| chance after what happened with Australia and Canada recently
| vmception wrote:
| I would say mildly disappointed, personally.
| steelframe wrote:
| I've never put anything work-related on my personal devices[1].
| If anyone sends me a Slack message or an email on Friday night, I
| won't see it until Monday morning. If you need to reach me
| outside of work hours, you can give me a phone call and talk to
| me personally about what's so urgent that you feel the need to
| impinge on my personal time.
|
| [1] Well okay, except 2FA, because I couldn't make it through new
| hire orientation without doing that. But now all the auth uses
| security elements integrated into or attached to the laptop
| itself, so maybe it's time to uninstall the work 2FA stuff.
| procarch2019 wrote:
| In my...not too old, but not young years I am finding that I will
| quite often forget my phone at home. I find this to be of almost
| no consequence. I still carry a "wallet", which is really just a
| stack of few cards. I live in a city, so if I really needed some
| info or had to make an emergency call I would just ask a neighbor
| (most people in my neighborhood are super nice). Most
| importantly, when I stop for a drink at a bar or I am at the
| playground with the kids I am forced, and this is a good thing,
| to not be checking social media/news aggregators/email.
|
| I don't think I could do without it during business hours because
| of the nature of my work, but it's certainly fine for me to go
| without off hours.
|
| Side note, I recently had a bunch of cash on hand for some
| reason. It is super convenient to grab a beer and just throw down
| a bill instead of waiting for a check. Digital pay services are
| great when splitting a check and are nsuper helpful when you are
| out of cash, but remember that cash, almost always*, works.
| webmaven wrote:
| I held off getting a smartphone until 2011. But I certainly
| experienced this sort of discomfort without my dumb phone and
| various other bits of paraphernalia like a bus route map, bus
| schedules, a Thomas Guide map book (or AAA map once I moved to
| NM), lists of emergency and nonemergency contacts, medical info,
| todo and shopping lists, and probably a few things I'm
| forgetting. Most of this has been subsumed by the smartphone, in
| a smaller, more convenient package with better ergonomics.
| Battery life has improved to the point that I no longer bother
| with an external battery pack, unless there is overnight travel
| involved.
|
| I'm pretty draconian about controlling notifications, and try to
| use the smartphone as a tool rather than a content consumption
| device (an eink ebook reader has replaced my habitual paperback
| book, both at home and on the go).
|
| But _as_ a tool, an occasion for the smartphone 's absence is
| definitely cause for discomfort. OTOH, there are physical tools I
| don't bother to carry anymore (eg. a swiss army knife) that
| haven't been replaced with anything.
| benbristow wrote:
| I was on holiday once with my friends in Amsterdam. After a few
| too many drinks and committing a sin and having a wee in the
| canal (sorry! When a man's gotta go he's gotta go - as an aside
| what's it with bars, clubs & fast food chains there etc. charging
| to use the toilet?!) a guy came up to me and started talking to
| me, can't really remember what he said to me, all I remember is
| checking my pocket and my new OnePlus 3t phone had disappeared.
| Karma I suppose.
|
| We had another leg of the holiday in Finland (Helsinki) and then
| back to Amsterdam again for another day before returning to the
| UK. It was painful where all my friends had their phones and
| could take pictures etc. and I couldn't.
|
| I couldn't even borrow a friend's phone to check emails/Facebook
| etc. as I'm security conscious and have 2FA enabled on all my
| accounts, and use a password manager with generated passwords
| also. My less technically inclined friends called me an idiot.
|
| Thankfully when I got back to the UK I was able to get a
| replacement SIM card the next day from the network provider's
| store and I had an older Android phone to use for the time being
| and was able to go through the Authy SMS recovery process to get
| my 2FA codes back.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| I've taken to trying to have a spare blank SIM and old phone
| with me. The last time I activated a phone I was dumb and left
| the old one at home on an hour trip. I went through all my
| accounts and just barely got my stuff to activate on my new
| phone without my old one. Also pointed out flaws in my 2fa
| setup, but hey.
| panaffa wrote:
| I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am
| obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's
| bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of
| magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's
| no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access
| to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally
| a god like power.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Trust me, there are also plenty millennials, gen-x and boomers
| hooked on the internet and their phones as well. Plenty.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I said the same thing as someone who just turned 30 and was one
| of the first generations born with the internet. Although I
| don't mean to discourage your obsession with it, one of the
| most beautiful things in the world you can do is learn to think
| for yourself. Unplugging yourself from others opinions,
| thoughts, and picking up a book or two can help you start that
| journey.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I really desire the feeling that I'm disconnected from the
| matrix for a little while.
|
| Leaving my phone at home, and foregoing all my other digital
| tools really makes me feel like it's just me and my immediate
| surroundings I'm paying attention to.
| lupire wrote:
| What kind of god, though? What are you missing that only exists
| in meat space?
|
| When you get older you might grow bored of the virtual
| stimulation trapped inside a screen.
| alar44 wrote:
| Literally all of human knowledge.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| And all human misinformation.
| JADev62096 wrote:
| Isn't it possible that someone has discovered something and
| not uploaded it to the internet?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Sure, but it seems aspirational at best to say "I love
| having my phone on me at all times because with it, I can
| access all of human knowledge" while really using your
| phone all day to procrastinate your goals, waste time on
| TikTok, and never actually tap into that knowledge except
| for the rare Wikipedia search.
|
| Kind of a "...but I always can if I want to!" cope.
|
| That said, I was similar to the thread OP in my early 20s
| when it came to my computer time. I spent all day on the
| computer which was totally cool because of all the things I
| _could_ do on it, even though I was addicted to Warcraft or
| Diablo or whatever. And it took 10 years to admit it and
| find a healthier relationship with it.
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| In this community we tend to overestimate just how much
| knowledge is found on the internet because essentially
| everything to do with _tech_ happens here. In the bigger
| picture, even if you restrict yourself to only intellectual
| knowledge, there are entire fields that are extremely
| poorly documented on the internet. Either information isn
| 't there at all, or the information that _is_ readily
| accessible is plain wrong.
|
| Further, if you consider human _experience_ to be part and
| parcel with human knowledge, the internet starts to look
| like a rather hollow shell. Just because you can _read_
| huge portions of the body of human literature doesn 't mean
| you're in a position to _understand_ what those authors
| were saying, and the more you isolate yourself from the
| physical world the more detached you 'll be from their
| experiences.
|
| This isn't to downplay how much knowledge there _is_ to be
| found here. It 's just that to say that it has "literally
| all" knowledge or conveys "literally god-like powers" is
| over the top. I'd normally leave such hyperbole alone, but
| in a thread that is glorifying smartphones as the savior of
| mankind I feel it's important to point out that what we
| have in a smartphone isn't all that it's being made out to
| be.
| hooande wrote:
| if you gave someone the equivalent of wikipedia 1,000
| years ago (and the ability to read and understand it),
| they would seem to have god like knowledge.
| [deleted]
| alar44 wrote:
| I'm almost 40 and I agree.
|
| Phones being addictive or whatever is being massively
| overstated. Too many people projecting their own issues with
| social media and lack of impulse control onto others.
|
| If you can't handle it, figure it out. But I'm sick and tired
| of people saying Facebook should be shut down or YouTube should
| be nationalized. I don't hear anyone saying M&Ms or cookies
| should be regulated.
|
| To all of those who think cellphones r bad: You're an adult,
| start acting like one.
| sidpatil wrote:
| > I don't hear anyone saying M&Ms or cookies should be
| regulated.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_food#Anti-
| junk_food_measu...
| lmarcos wrote:
| That's called addiction. Not as bad as other kind of
| addictions, sure, but still.
| dmd wrote:
| Poe's Law at work.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I agree, I mean I was born quite a long time earlier but in my
| career training I was taught to look for tools people can use
| for restoring energy, comfort, courage, and maintaining contact
| with long-term values via their interests.
|
| This can also be especially important if you have other
| sensitivities that can lead to unwanted outcomes, which can be
| ameliorated more easily with a device nearby.
|
| Also, IMO using "addiction" where "typically need to have this
| with me for different reasons" would work just fine is pretty
| inappropriate. The term projects quite a bit of subjective
| negative & clinical interpretation onto others which is a
| common ethical mistake, among other things.
| lavoiems wrote:
| It is an interesting perspective. My personal opinion is that
| this constant stimulation is costing me focus when I need to do
| work and ultimately hurts my capacity to do things. While the
| internet and computing is a strong power, it does not yet
| replaces our cognitive capabilities to solve problem and
| interact with others. I hope it never will!
| hooande wrote:
| I don't blame my phone or the internet for this. Before smart
| phones the joke was that people would procrastinate by
| cleaning their room or organizing their desk. It's not about
| the technology. When it's time to focus, focus.
| travisporter wrote:
| Yeah but now it's like organize millions of desks worth of
| distraction
| blitz_skull wrote:
| There will always be diversity of opinion, which is a beautiful
| thing. However, I reject the idea of it being a god-like power,
| unless it's "unlimited cosmic power, itty-bitty living space"
| power.
|
| There's so much research already pointing towards our always-
| stimulated culture being a provably bad thing.
|
| I think obsession with anything runs a very thin line towards
| being a bad thing.
| exolymph wrote:
| You won't give your own mind space to be creative or think
| deeply if you're constantly getting microhits of novelty every
| 30 seconds.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is why you put it in silent mode and check every couple
| hours. That has been my compromise on the issue.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I recall a time, many years ago, when you could be at a pub
| with a couple of friends and some really obscure question like
| whether it's a duck who has a corkscrew willie or a woodchuck,
| and nobody would know the answer and there was no way to find
| out, barring going down to the threadbare and underfunded local
| library to look it up in the encyclopedia, which itself was
| terse on facts and probably omitted ones like that for
| morality's sake. Now I could just whip out the black mirror and
| Google it.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| And which conversation was more fun? Heh. I still laugh with
| friends from college about the arguments we would get into
| about crazy facts.
| 13of40 wrote:
| Yep, that's exactly the question. All of this stuff is
| awesome when I'm trying to get a job done, but it peels a
| lot of the magic away from the world.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It is indeed unhealthy, and if you haven't experienced _not_
| being away from technology for some defined period of time, you
| won 't realize it.
|
| Age: 33. I use the phone compulsively, like the person in the
| article. I reach for it instinctively when standing still in
| line, or waiting for anything, or while eating, etc. I have
| done this increasingly in the past three years.
|
| Two weeks ago I went to play trivia at a bar, hosted by a
| friend. I left my phone at home intentionally. For the first
| few minutes it was odd, just sitting there with a beer waiting
| for the game to start. And in between, I would watch other
| people, or doodle on my answer sheet, or just think about life.
|
| Today, I went and got breakfast and coffee and read a book for
| about an hour at the cafe. There was a place for people to put
| sticky notes about how they're feeling - it made me think about
| that, and make a submission. I read literature and history
| around migration and people. I listened to the espresso
| machine. I watched the homeless man sitting on the corner and
| thought about it.
|
| There is so _much_ for the mind to do, so many thoughts and
| experiences to process in the downtime without a device. For
| me, that often requires not just turning a phone on silent, but
| leaving it in the car or at home entirely. And it is truly
| freeing.
|
| If you aren't joking about your opinion, as someone who has
| lived in both columns, please do an experiment like the OP
| article. Leave the phone at home for an hour or two a day, for
| several days within a month. Maybe just a weekday evening after
| work, or for a walk/drive/brunch one weekend.
|
| The billions of thoughts and pictures and memes, if you are not
| joking, is useless when you wake up after a decade of
| accomplishing nothing of value to your own development or
| happiness or meatspace[1] interaction with the world.
|
| [1]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/meats
| ...
| aeturnum wrote:
| I generally agree, but I would put it a little more neutrally:
|
| I've setup my life so that I expect the people I care about to
| be able to reach me at any moment. It's something I desire. I
| don't want them to hold back telling me something important (or
| even something trivial). I've invested in the ability to be
| present (even in a limited way) at nearly all times. It's an
| enormous benefit to me and to the people I care about and I
| feel very strongly it's a valid way to live.
|
| At the same time, I experience no discomfort with choosing to
| leave my phone at home. It's fine to have periods of focus on
| the circumstances that physically surround you. The same
| systems of contact I generally surround myself with make it
| easy for me to arrange periods of isolation.
|
| The problems comes up when I am forced (by circumstance or by
| authority) to isolate myself in a way I don't consent to. That
| does feel uncomfortable and it should feel uncomfortable - not
| because humans should "naturally" live in some particular way -
| but because I am being stopped from living in a way that I want
| and causes no harm to any other being.
|
| Edit: neutrally in the sense that I think this way of living
| was introduced to me by the era in which I live, but I don't
| think our era forces it on us. You can still live other ways,
| but I don't think we need to fall back on circumstance to
| justify it.
| feanaro wrote:
| Are you really being honest when you say you don't see this as
| bad? I couldn't help but peer into your comment history and
| notice you also talk about emptiness and loneliness. This, I
| think, is the price to pay for constant access to billions of
| possible thoughts, pictures and memes at all times.
|
| Why is it that you think you need that?
| svnpenn wrote:
| That seems really unhealthy. By your own admission, you are
| obsessed with it.
| vecter wrote:
| There is a cost to this, and that is your ability to do deep
| thinking and deep work. You can't do that if you need a
| dopamine spike every 30s. Boredom has value and letting your
| mind wander is important for problem solving and the creative
| process.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You sound serious.
|
| > have access to billions of ... memes
|
| But this is where I think maybe I'm getting trolled.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I think the definition "an element of a culture or system of
| behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation
| or other non-genetic means" can be taken, instead of "an
| image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in
| nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users,
| often with slight variations".
| travisporter wrote:
| I think the younger generations may actually be able to pull
| off sarcasm on the internet.
| juanani wrote:
| me_smith wrote:
| I've gotten used to having my phone on silent and most
| notifications turned off. I leave text and phone notifications on
| so I can see them on the lock screen when I decide to look at the
| phone.
|
| For moments when I actually need to be aware of any
| communications or be in sync with family and friends, I can turn
| on the ringer or turn on specific notifications.
|
| I think this has helped me get away from the constant distraction
| but keeps the utility of the phone near. It annoys me when,
| during conversations, people constantly check their phone and
| smart watch every few minutes because of the buzz in their pocket
| or their wrist.
|
| I have also found going on weekend backpacking trips has weaned
| me off of the phone and technology in general. I would recommend
| it for those looking to take a break.
| ericlewis wrote:
| I'll read the article but I'll admit that my first reaction to
| this was... do they know how folks use their phone? My phone is
| my entire wallet now, in every way. Wether flying the country
| (boarding passes, I have clear), or purchasing something (I
| nearly exclusively use Apple Pay) I've long left behind needing
| to carry a proper wallet. I do make sure to carry a couple of
| $20s just in case there is some oddball reason my situation
| wouldn't work. I also have no reason to carry an ID, but that's
| also about to live in your phone.
|
| Maybe the title just comment baited me though.
|
| Edit: read it and this speaks more to the unhealthy obsession
| with the perceived importance of instant communication. You
| should delete or turn these apps off whenever you can. Turning
| off notifications can also be empowering.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| What country does not require you to carry an id at all times
| where outside your house? Most countries do and most don't even
| accept alternate id's like driver's license.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| The UK doesn't even have a national ID, The US would be at
| war if that was the requirement and here in Denmark I can
| have my drivers license as an app.
| dagw wrote:
| _What country does not require you to carry an id at all
| times where outside your house?_
|
| Sweden doesn't for one.
| vollmond wrote:
| The US has no requirement to carry your ID. I'm not sure
| there's any base requirement to _have_ ID.
|
| You only need your driver's license if you're driving, and ID
| in general is only required for certain activities that
| directly require identification or use the ID to confirm
| other information (eg age when buying alcohol).
| Chilko wrote:
| New Zealand for one. You don't need to carry an ID at all
| times, only if you're driving do you need your driver's
| license. However, if you're detained by the police you are
| required to identify yourself, but this does not need involve
| your physical ID.
|
| Is it really common in other countries that you legally need
| your ID on you at all times?
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| In the US there is no such requirement. An ID is only needed
| to buy restricted products/substances (alcohol, certain
| medications, guns), to drive, to vote, or similar: cases
| where you either need to prove who you are or prove how old
| you are.
|
| The Wikipedia article on the subject[0] is incomplete, but
| the only countries whose laws it specifically describes
| (Germany & Sweden) do _not_ require carrying the ID with you.
| Rather than it being the norm to require ID, I 'm having a
| very hard time finding out any countries that _do_ require
| it.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obligation_of_identification
| ericlewis wrote:
| The United States I guess. If I were to be buying alcohol
| it's reasonable for them to ask. But that's not something I
| often do anymore and generally there isn't a reason anyone
| would ask for my id otherwise. Perhaps if I'm in a different
| state (I do still travel with a form of ID, but not on my
| person) it could be important. My limited experience with
| cops where I live have also indicated it isn't important.
|
| I don't drive either which is a much bigger drive as to why I
| don't feel the need to constantly have official
| identification.
|
| Edit: I suppose it is important if anything "went wrong" and
| I needed my body to be identified, but again, that would be a
| case where people are wondering where I'm at quite quickly
| and the cops likely putting something out to identify such a
| person.
|
| Edit 2: I also did try to get a state ID but they make the
| process so laughably difficult that getting a passport was
| easier - further, they don't accept a passport as a main
| source of identification. I instead needed to also have a
| physical copy of my social security card (despite the other
| mountain of evidence I brought about my existence and
| propriety living in the state) and I never quite understood
| that. They do gladly accept the taxes I pay though. No
| questions asked!
| tester756 wrote:
| is it even enforced?
|
| my country "requires" it, but I never have my id with me
| unless I need it e.g going to gov office
| ericlewis wrote:
| I've heard tales in my state it is "required" but only ever
| seen people slapped with that charge when the cops weren't
| quite able to pin the original charges they'd pulled them
| over for.
| gatgeagent wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card.
| .. Lots of countries don't even require citizens to own some
| special id card.
|
| In my case (Austria, EU), when the police is required to
| check your identity, and if you aren't carrying some allowed
| form of identification (id card [most people don't have one
| around here, no one needs it but it costs as much as renewing
| your passport], passport [who carries their passport around,
| might even be expired], drivers license [you might not have
| one]) they have to follow you home or wherever an recognized
| identity document of yours may be (e.g. some people store
| them at a safe deposit box at a bank).
| dangus wrote:
| I think it's fine to be uncomfortable without your phone. It's
| understandable: they do so many useful things.
|
| However, it turns out what this post is really about is work
| communication, not about the functionality of phones that enhance
| our lives.
|
| When you're trying to get friends together, find a nice place to
| eat, and get directions to meet up, having a phone is far better
| than not having one. I wouldn't want to be without a phone during
| a car crash or medical emergency, either.
|
| In contrast, when it comes to your employer's demands on you, the
| phone isn't so nice to have around, is it?
|
| My suggestion is to set notification boundaries for work-based
| communication and always be looking for opportunities to leave
| employers that violate the boundaries in your life.
| summm wrote:
| Just have a separate work phone and leave _that_ at home. It 's
| better for a lot of other reasons too regarding you controlling
| your phone instead of your employer.
| amelius wrote:
| > I think it's fine to be uncomfortable without your phone.
| It's understandable: they do so many useful things.
|
| The problem is that you can't take what's in your phone and
| have it somewhere else: for example a web-browser in a public
| space like a library or an internet cafe. If that were
| possible, then it would be less of a problem to leave your
| phone at home.
| bbarnett wrote:
| To everyone in this thread, wanting work and home separation.
|
| If you're doing well in tech, then you have cash to enable
| options. One is, a dual sim phone, and your work sim goes off
| at 5pm.
|
| The same goes for fetching work email. Off at 5pm.
|
| Loads of apps to help with this.
|
| Without dual sim, there are voip forwarders, a second phone,
| loads of options.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yes, you should shun electricity too. If you need to communicate
| with someone, just ride your horse over to them, or send them a
| carrier pigeon. It's not hard.
| Lapsa wrote:
| wat? what ya talkin about?
| dougmccune wrote:
| I recently got my first Apple Watch with a cellular plan
| specifically so I can leave my phone at home and still be
| reachable via phone and text message. Mostly it's great. The
| watch barely works well enough as a phone, I can play Spotify,
| Apple Maps kind of works for directions (not nearly as well as
| Google maps on the phone IMO), and that's basically all that's
| usable, which is nice.
|
| However, when dropping off my kid at school they require a Covid
| screening app (phone only) that you have to show every morning. I
| got half way to Whole Foods before turning back realizing I
| needed my phone to scan the Amazon Prime code to get better
| prices.
|
| I expect more and more everyday activities will require
| smartphones sadly.
| dnndev wrote:
| After reading the title to my wife she quickly said most likely a
| man wrote this article, possibly an older gentleman.
|
| As a female having a phone at all times makes her feel more
| comfortable for emergency use.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| My wife has, off and on for decades, called me and said she was
| waking somewhere she didn't feel safe or was being watched and
| wanted to be on the phone. All you said sounded familiar.
| However, the "phone for safety" trope is a sad thing.
| apson wrote:
| I wrote the article. I am 19. Trust me I really love to do
| things like these which have chances to promote a good
| behavior. For the same reasons, I am off of Instagram for a
| year now (believe it or not, I think this would be really
| difficult for the current generation).
| dnndev wrote:
| Sounds like we got the gender right but I am the older
| gentleman in this case.
|
| I completely agree with you about social media doing more
| harm than good. Keep up the good habits young man.
|
| That said I also believe having a phone with you at all times
| is a good thing for emergency use or crushing on the candies
| apson wrote:
| Yes, that's true as well. Thank you, sir!
| Giorgi wrote:
| It's all fun and games till you need to call ER real quick.
| mwint wrote:
| Carry a ye olden flip phone for this; they tend to work even
| without a SIM for 911.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The phone is now an extension of the self. It's hard to just
| leave it without becoming an anxious mess. The only way I was
| able to break that addiction was when I bought a new Google Pixel
| that had a battery defect that forced it to drain itself each
| day. I got so used to the phone doing this that at a certain
| point I just carried around a dead phone. After awhile enough, I
| just left the phone at home.
|
| Soon much of my life started to feel more full. I'd get lost in a
| big city like Montreal and have to ask for directions in a
| language I don't know. I'd lose touch with coworkers who wanted
| to go out at night and I'd randomly stumble into them. So much
| serendipity happens because I didn't have my phone. Although I
| only have anecdotes of my experience, I think Nick Carr talks
| about these challenges in depth with his book "The Shallows".
| dale_glass wrote:
| Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating.
|
| When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful
| thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the
| train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the
| darn things didn't announce stops at all).
|
| The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers
| including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a
| country you've never been before and without having a good
| command of the local language is stressful.
|
| With modern tech? It's all a breeze. I can find a route to
| anywhere, check if the place I'm going to is open, call for help
| if needed, find a bar/restaurant/hotel if something unplanned
| happens, talk to the people I'm going to meet, check on the
| status of my flight...
|
| Yeah, I don't feel very comfortable without my phone precisely
| because it provides so much useful stuff that I don't have
| otherwise. And no, it's not because I've grown addicted to it,
| but because the discomfort that I already had before smartphones
| were a thing returns.
| s0rce wrote:
| I moved to the SF Bay area and it was great being able to use
| the GPS + map app to see where you are on the BART. Its
| impossible to understand the announcements if they are even
| made at all.
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| Some of what you described I believe to be very healthy
| discomfort. The type that is needed for growth. The type that
| can often lead to unexpected adventures. The type that you
| become thankful for years down the road. "It's all a breeze" is
| my biggest fear re: how society seems to be optimizing itself
| right now. Truth be told, a breezy life doesn't feel that
| interesting to me.
| gambiting wrote:
| I went to Canada on a work trip some years back, and there was
| basically no way for me to get mobile internet in any way -
| roaming would have been absurdly expensive, like several euro
| per MB expensive, I couldn't get a local sim card that would
| work with my phone(and even if I could all offers were weirdly
| expensive and not worth it for just a week long visit) - and
| yeah, I felt super uncomfortable travelling anywhere. It was
| difficult finding places to go or even calling a taxi.
|
| But then I went just before the pandemic hit and I managed to
| get a card with like 2GB of data on it, and oh my god it
| transformed the experience entirely, for the extact reasons you
| said - it was just liberating. I could suddenly summon an uber,
| find places to eat, look up opening times at nearest
| attractions....my stay was about 100x more enjoable thanks to
| that.
| scandox wrote:
| I traveled (as did many at the time) quite extensively in
| countries around the world with minimal planning and/or
| knowledge and no phone and it was absolutely fine.
|
| Secure personal storage of documents and cash is the only must.
| Politeness and respect for local people was also very helpful.
|
| The big upside is that you have genuinely unexpected
| experiences.
| delusional wrote:
| I want to just dive into a little bit of a tangent.
|
| It's interesting to me that you're liberated by having access
| to everything all the time. Personally I find it pretty
| constraining. It makes me feel like there's nothing to
| discover, no mystery, no journey. If I wanted to find the best
| restaurant, I wouldn't have to go out and explore the local
| options or discuss it with friends. The more efficient and
| correct way would be to just search for it in the database.
| There's no excuse for going someplace without knowing anything
| about it, since all the information is so easily accessible.
|
| While yes, google maps has allowed me to always know where I
| am, it does so at the cost of defining a "correct" path to any
| destination. Any deviation from the "correct" way is no longer
| happenstance, but a deliberate inefficiency that demands
| explanation.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Having information doesn't constrain you, it's your choice
| what to do with it.
|
| You don't have to follow the GPS' directions. You could just
| use it to find which way to walk, then take whatever path you
| want. You can get a list of restaurants and then ignore the
| ratings.
| rglullis wrote:
| I agree. You are describing the concept of _flaneuring_ ,
| which is something that is getting lost on this
| hyperconnected culture.
|
| My worry is that by removing all chance of variability in our
| lives, _we_ become automatons.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| You don't need an excuse to explore blindly. I agree that you
| no longer have one, but I think that is simply a fact of the
| modern world that requires adaptation. We have to be more
| honest with ourselves about why we explore.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| Agreed 100%. Something I enjoyed doing a lot during the
| height of the pandemic was getting in my car and simply
| driving around, looking specifically for places I haven't
| been before. I'd drive up and down mountain roads, through
| small towns I'd passed through before but never paid
| attention to, and then when I was eventually unavoidably
| hopelessly lost, I'd pull out my phone and Waze my way back
| home.
|
| For me, having that power to find my way home no matter how
| lost I'd get gave me the freedom to get out and explore.
| throwntoday wrote:
| Agreed. Years ago I decided to stop texting people as the
| primary form of contact and instead call them. Now everyone I
| know calls me cause they know I don't text. This cut down my
| phone usage by a lot.
|
| I also don't pull it out to pass time, instead I just try to
| think about my schedule and sort out thoughts. I remember
| reading someones comment on HN where they said it's ok to be
| bored, that down time is the best for organizing things in your
| head, and I've stuck to that ever since.
|
| And although I hardly use my phone I still feel some anxiety
| not having it when I leave the house.
| Wistar wrote:
| > And although I hardly use my phone I still feel some
| anxiety not having it when I leave the house.
|
| Edge case anxiety?
| throwntoday wrote:
| I feel the same anxiety if I don't have my wristwatch so
| maybe it's more like the dread of missing something
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Of things I used to need to carry, interface with, or reference
| the iphone is: a gps/atlas, camera, camcorder, dictionary,
| calculator, encyclopedia, checkbook, pager, e-mail terminal,
| yellow pages, on and on, and a phone. It's easy to pretend that
| it's just a doom-scrolling distraction but that's not true. To
| give up all those other things would make life much more
| difficult.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Well said. It is disappointing to see such black and white
| thinking in discussion of the role of technology in daily life.
|
| Do I think there is a real problem with how social media brings
| out the worst in society? Very much so. But that is almost
| entirely orthogonal to how I use the (frankly amazing) pocket
| supercomputer I now carry with me every day.
|
| When I was a kid, mail back home when we lived overseas was a
| three-month round trip. A 15-minute phone call on Christmas was
| only possible by pulling a lot of strings. Nowadays? I can pull
| up a half-dozen webcams in the same neighborhood from literally
| across the globe.
|
| We may be coming to grips as a world in how to talk to each
| other effectively, but I don't miss being cut off.
| Communication _matters_.
| evocatus wrote:
| Would you make the same argument for amphetamines? Wonder
| what Erdos would have to say about this.
|
| As far as communication goes, frankly, I regard large swaths
| of the internet as hostile and cognitohazardous. I'd rather
| be cut off. Though, fortunately the choice has already been
| made for me - there is no escaping assimilation.
|
| The psychological dependence is already taking root; the
| societal dependence is next to come. Cash is dirty. There are
| no taxis to hail on the road. You require a COVID app to gain
| entry to this venue.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| abyssin wrote:
| I agree with the feeling of liberation, but I've also known a
| time when I had to navigate the world without a phone, and
| there was a solution: ask for help. It was stressful to
| interact with stranger, at least the initial contact, but also
| very enjoyable to get advice and simply an answer to my
| question. I never get a feeling of gratitude for my phone and I
| miss it.
| bparsons wrote:
| That is because you were a child. Not because you didn't have a
| phone.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I don't think that's true at all. There's a lot of sources of
| anxiety (while on the go) that having a phone with you
| mitigates.
|
| - If I miss my turn (gps will renavigate)
|
| - If I can't find the place (I can call them and ask)
|
| - If there's something else I need to get while I'm out (my
| spouse can call me and tell me)
|
| - My tween, who stayed at home while I ran to the store, has
| a problem (she can call me)
|
| These are all things (except for the last one) that I
| experienced without a phone, as a grown adult. And I don't
| really experience anymore because I have a cell phone on me.
| _uy6i wrote:
| How did humanity manage?! /s
|
| Don't get me wrong, smartphones are great conveniences, I
| can land in a foreign country and book a hotel, a car from
| the airport, find a place for lunch, etc. all
| (surreptitiously) while waiting at passport control. That
| being said I making a plan with someone (and not flaking),
| and doing a little research/looking at a map, asking
| friends for recommendations, was never that hard)
| dale_glass wrote:
| Humanity also managed without computers for a very long
| time.
|
| But look at that, we're both here. Guess the tech must be
| good for something, and it's better than not having it.
| teekert wrote:
| I remember this life well, I guess the trick is to use
| only the time saving feature of the smart phone (the are
| enormous), and skip the time sinks... They are equally
| enormous :)
| yibg wrote:
| We also managed without telephones, airplanes,
| automobiles and a bunch of other things we take for
| granted in modern life. I still find them useful and want
| them around.
| whathappenedto wrote:
| Not only that, but a phone solves the "where am I" problem,
| which was such a pain when I was younger. Having to look
| for the nearest street signs while driving around, barely
| being able to read them and guessing its suffix, then
| searching the map index for which coordinate that street is
| in. Basically all problems solved by GPS. The directions
| feature you pointed out is basically a whole other
| application (replacing printing mapquest or written
| directions).
| teawrecks wrote:
| Never traveled to a country where you didn't speak the
| language, I'm guessing?
| golergka wrote:
| I had to leave my country a couple of months ago because of the
| war. If not for the modern technology, I would become a poor
| refugee, locked out of my money, without any income and social
| connections and would be relying on finding benevolent
| strangers.
|
| But with it, I almost painfully transitioned to digital nomad
| lifestyle. My remote job didn't suffer except for a single week
| long absence, I have access to all of my savings, I'm in
| contact with everybody I know, and I just go from living in
| Hilton to the next airbnb.
|
| Finding yourself in a new country where you don't know a single
| soul used to be terrifying. Now I it's the most natural thing.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| I recently started intentionally leaving my phone behind
| precisely to get those uncomfortable feelings back again,
| albeit to some controlled degree. I enjoy having to problem
| solve, I enjoy navigating novel situations, I enjoy feeling
| real accomplishment after solving problems rather than just
| having the answers given to me.
|
| Of course there's other ways to get those feelings in life, but
| I was in general just finding myself getting way too
| comfortable in daily life. It felt abnormal, unnatural, in a
| way. There's also the added benefit of not being able to
| retreat into your phone for entertainment, it forces you to
| engage with the world around you.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I find the value of a smart phone irreplacable, it allows me
| to do all kinds of things and live all kinds of ways that
| were impossible before.
|
| Yet I also love leaving my smart phone at home, or in my
| pocket, and trying to get lost and then get home.
| whathappenedto wrote:
| Not only that, but having a camera with you at all times is
| fantastic. Besides the typical selfies with friends and random
| shots, it's a way to capture some proof that you gave someone
| money, or that your car was hit from the side. Then there's the
| ability to take notes without worrying about losing a pen and
| paper. Basically, it's a "digital recording device" that we've
| taken for granted.
| ghaff wrote:
| It took me a while to internalize "Just take a picture." And
| arguably it's still not an automatic reaction. Sure, most of
| the time you don't need it but it's essentially free.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This must be like when in threads about Uber, people describe
| taxis as a traumatizing hellscape. When I was a child, I
| figured out how my city was shaped, and figured out how to get
| around. Knowing how to get around one's own city is a skill
| worth learning, and is less of a time investment than fishing
| around for a phone to spend minutes futzing around with for the
| rest of your life.
|
| > The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of
| papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel
| in a country you've never been before and without having a good
| command of the local language is stressful.
|
| Not a problem most people have often. For the pretty well-
| traveled, maybe a few times a year.
| helmholtz wrote:
| There are some of us who will never learn 'how to get around'
| one's city. We lack a head for sense of direction, for
| memorising landmarks etc. We can try all our life, and we'll
| only cope, but never be comfy.
|
| Of course, if I'm just going to commute to the office and
| come back, I could do it blindfolded, and those days it's
| easy to be without the phone. It's _exactly_ when you 're
| doing something unusual that the phone is so handy.
| manicdee wrote:
| Just because you don't have the problem doesn't mean you
| should trivialise someone else's experience. How rude.
|
| Try listening more, and hold back from telling people how to
| solve problems they didn't ask for help solving.
| Crabber wrote:
| And yet you are trivialising the experience of the person
| you are replying to.
|
| How rude.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > When I was a child, I figured out how my city was shaped,
| and figured out how to get around.
|
| You either live in a pretty small city, or an exceptionally
| well-laid one. I have lived in the same city all my life, and
| while I have a pretty good idea of where major points of
| interest are, and can probably walk or drive home from
| anywhere in the city, I definitely don't have any chance of
| finding a random address someone gave me, or finding a
| bus&tram route there.
| teekert wrote:
| I like this perspective, and indeed, I recently had a physical
| job interview and it went like this: I bike to the train
| station, check when the next train will arrive and as I walk
| into the station (phone knows where I am, I just enter where I
| want to go), then prep for the interview on the train, Apple
| pay for a sandwich at a transfer station, check email for exact
| address, use navigation to walk to the final destination. I had
| a Teams call with colleagues on the train even.
|
| It's all doable without smartphone, but the prep time and the
| notes and cash (or passes) I'd have to take...
| [deleted]
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| This pretty much nails it, though in my case I wasn't a child.
|
| In my early 20s I lived in Japan for a few years. Early on,
| before I had a phone of any type (let alone a smartphone), it
| was incredibly stressful - even though I had studied the
| language prior to arriving, it wasn't enough to handle more
| than the most basic situations and trying to meet and
| coordinate with others was a nightmare. If anything deviated
| from the plan, including me getting lost somewhere along the
| way, it all fell apart.
|
| After having been there for a couple of months I got an iPhone
| 3GS and it was transformative, even though things like map apps
| were nowhere near as good as they are now (for example, all the
| location names were still in Japanese even in the English
| version of the app, and couldn't handle transit instructions).
| With it I felt much more confident in going places and doing
| things. Being able to text or be texted, "hey I'm going to be
| late" or see where I am on a map instantly such a huge thing.
|
| This effect isn't going to be strong in one's own country of
| course, but it's still going to be there whenever visiting an
| unfamiliar area.
| jader201 wrote:
| To put it another way, consider if you have a significant other
| (where you share bank accounts, for example):
|
| Are you uncomfortable without your phone even if they have
| theirs?
|
| I've been in this situation and it's not a problem at all. In
| some situations, it may be an inconvenience, but I wouldn't
| call it "uncomfortable".
|
| But with my SO having her phone, we have all emergency
| situations covered (directions, contacting others, money,
| etc.), and that doesn't -- and _shouldn't_ -- bother me.
| rglullis wrote:
| Unless your day-to-day is so extraordinary that you don't have
| any kind of routine, it seems that you are using the
| exceptional cases to justify the rule?
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Before working from home I had a routine that would be pretty
| regular till end of workday, but evenings were often as not
| totally spontaneous affairs, especially in summer. Without a
| smartphone a lot of that wouldn't have happened since we
| wouldn't realistically have planned those things in advance,
| and I'd have been lost in parts of the city I don't know well
| quite a few times, late at night and all. With my smartphone,
| I can just rent a bike (can't do that here without an app)
| and have the phone navigate me home. I'm old enough to
| remember quite well how difficult and frustrating these
| situations could get before smartphones.
|
| I used to carry a real camera around (and I got tons of super
| spontaneous shots out of it that I'm very fond of), now the
| iPhone will do that too. It's become a bit like the small
| pocket knife I always carry, a minimal one with just blade,
| bottle/can opener, screwdriver, I feel naked without it
| because it's been so very handy hundreds of times. Same with
| my smartphone, I use it so much for things that would be a
| hassle otherwise that not having it on me is a real
| impediment.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You describe basically google maps. It may surprise you, but
| there are few million other apps for it, some more addictive,
| some just functional, many creating this cozy sweet little trap
| of comfort, security, instantness (for the lack of better
| word).
|
| What it gives to you, me, anybody, is 2-faced gift. The
| positives are really nice, the negative is utter dependence ie
| in way you describe. If somebody would blast all mobile
| antennas in your city, you would be screwed, desperate,
| possibly depressed. The term liberating may have different
| meaning to different people.
|
| I would be screwed too, but rather due to losing instant
| contact with my closest family and instant way to manage my
| property via airbnb/vrbo - this is the reason I started using
| my phone on vacations. Before, I would just keep roaming turned
| off, not log into wifis and spend 2 weeks (or 3 months) of
| proper disconnect. Simple, wonderful, magical times they were.
| gnuj3 wrote:
| I dont mind leaving my phone as long as I'm with my kids. I cant
| imagine something happening to them and I didnt know for x-amount
| of time because I decided to leave my phone.
| anotherevan wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if better management of notifications would
| improve people's lives.
|
| I don't have any audible notification for email and a range of
| other things. I'm pretty ruthless about turning off notifications
| that come with some games and other apps that I just don't care
| about.
|
| > I realized how our phone has become a real integral part of our
| bodies.
|
| Counter-example. Having only just recently had the ability to do
| payments with my phone, I now often go out without my wallet in
| my pocket. The feeling of not having my wallet made me realise
| how my wallet was an integral part of my body - so to speak.
| detcader wrote:
| This is what meditation is about, but replace "phones" with
| "everything"!
| bifftastic wrote:
| Underrated comment
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Haven't had a mobile phone in years as I value my privacy because
| a number of online services exist which will geolocate any mobile
| phone number from anywhere in the world and its a completely
| legal form of stalking! Besides I noticed I get brain fog if I
| use a mobile so I need to keep my wits about me as there is alot
| of organised crime in the world especially those running
| countries!
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I don't think it's healthy or normal to feel uncomfortable
| without a communications device. It's a sign of dependency. One
| should be able to put it out of mind and focus on deep tasks,
| leisure, interpersonal commitments and general real-life living
| without a neurotic impulse to check and inhabit a digital world.
|
| I don't have a smartphone (prefer a landline but keep an old
| Nokia around too), so my life is more organised around emails and
| desktop based communication. I recognised back in the 90s that it
| used to take me hours to "decompress" from tech immersion. I
| would ruminate on what messages I might be missing, and think
| through communications in my mind in a quite obsessive way.
|
| That was over 20 years ago. These days I'll go for a couple of
| days without thinking about the internet. I can happily live
| without a phone for a week or more no worries, and frequently do.
|
| It's a long journey and there are constant pressures and
| temptations to over-use again. I wrote a book about coping with
| that.
|
| It probably sounds as if I'm talking like a cognitive behavioural
| therapist. That's because I truly believe that smartphone use is
| fully congruent with addictive behaviours - not just for a few
| people, as was common thinking a few years ago, but for
| everybody, and as mounting scientific evidence supports there are
| numerous genuine harms both individual and societal [1]. In 2022
| I no longer feel alone or unusual in this regard, because I see
| the world is waking up to it.
|
| The question then is how we raise awareness of this emerging
| threat to mental wellbeing, and how we deal with it. Mobile
| technology certainly has its uses, but we must balance that with
| social/technological structures that give people ample space to
| control their own technology, make space and abstain from it as
| desired. A truly advanced technological society would meet this
| need. At present the gushing convergence on smartphones as
| "necessary" panacea is pathological in the extreme, and I am
| sure, simply fuelled by the profits of the tech industry rather
| than any underlying "need". Technology is becoming _what is being
| _done_ to us_.
|
| [1] No I won't. Please have the good manners to Google for
| yourself (or go back through my many well refernced posts here).
| com2kid wrote:
| That's nice and all, but when I travel overseas having a
| universal translator with me is _super cool_.
|
| Being able to order a safe reliable taxi in most major cities,
| also super cool.
|
| If you don't want email on your phone, don't set it up. But
| having a map that redirects me around traffic accidents in real
| time saves me a lot of time.
|
| I'm not going to argue against smartphones being horrible
| little dopamine boxes, because they are, but you can get a
| smartphone and set it up as a purely utilitarian device rather
| easily.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > purely utilitarian device
|
| You're absolutely right kid. Sincerely. I look forward to the
| day when the real utility shines through again. And I come
| from a time (as a now well bearded computer nerd) when it was
| all utility and coolness.
|
| But we're in some weird in-between days [1] where motivations
| have gotten distorted, ideals have got lost, and the utility
| just isn't enough any more to stave of the wrongness.
|
| FWIW I'm an optimist and beleieve we'll make it through and
| take back tech, but right now we need to take a long look at
| this.
|
| [1] The fancy word is "interregnum" - a period "caught
| between two times, one world that is already dead, and the
| other waiting to be born."
| sidpatil wrote:
| I think this encapsulates your point:
| https://pics.onsizzle.com/born-too-late-to-explore-the-
| earth...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Yes , wre're in the gold^H^H^H^H nicotine-yellow stained
| age of dankness :)
| mikewarot wrote:
| My phone is how my family reaches me in an emergency. How can I
| help them if they can't reach me? It would be irresponsible to
| leave home without it.
|
| Internet on the phone is nice to have, but it's phone calls and
| texts that need to work for me. (I prefer actual phone calls,
| because that's what I grew up with)
| CommanderData wrote:
| Being forced to pay for council parking in the UK using a mobile
| app is completely astonishing to me, and leaving home without
| your mobile, or no data or a broken phone can cause you a world
| of difficulties.
|
| I didn't agree to wanting to normalise the removal of parking
| meters and mandatory app usage just to park your car in a park or
| highsteet. I'm not sure where this motivation started.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| If you have to have a phone to pay for things like parking or
| for proof of vaccination status, then you have to carry a
| locator beacon that can be tracked, and your movements can be
| recorded. Who records them (Google, Apple, someone else) is
| irrelevant; the record can be requisitioned by your government
| or a Five Eyes partner at the touch of a few buttons. Your
| locator beacon comes with handy built-in cameras and
| microphones, and it probably has speech-to-text capability on
| chip if you have a recent model. Also it's reading your mail
| and texts and encrypted chats, and you browse the web on it, so
| it potentially knows a lot about you. Good thing you can trust
| it not to spy on you.
| nijave wrote:
| You can carry a phone and leave it turned off most of the
| time. Unless you're paying only in cash, your electronic
| payments can be traced anyway
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Turning off a spy-phone does nothing to prevent them from
| tracking you. You need to either take the battery out
| (impossible with most spy-phones) or use a faraday bag.
| userbinator wrote:
| Does Airplane Mode not do anything? AFAIK it could be a
| violation of FCC regulations if it was still transmitting
| or receiving with that enabled.
| Izkata wrote:
| Airplane mode is only a convenience switch. My phone lets
| me turn wifi back on with airplane mode still active, for
| example.
| ectopod wrote:
| Was there literally no alternative? Round these parts you can
| pay in cash (with no change given). I've heard people complain
| they were forced to use the app when they just didn't have any
| cash.
|
| (I have to be aware of the alternatives because I don't have a
| smartphone. It's not been an insurmountable problem yet.)
| CommanderData wrote:
| No alternatives and here's the Councils announcement: https:/
| /www.richmond.gov.uk/services/parking/parking_machine...
|
| Some have extended to non-residential areas. One of the
| biggest parking apps says this:
|
| Q: "I have no network coverage and need to park?"
|
| A: "Move quickly to an area with better network coverage and
| complete your parking transaction with PayByPhone... Pay for
| your parking via other methods such as PayPoint or via the
| Pay & Display machine where available"
|
| Reference: https://support.paybyphone.co.uk/hc/en-
| gb/articles/360010478...
|
| FYI 'Pay and Display' are the parking meters being removed,
| 'PayPoint' might be in SOME convenience stores/shops. But if
| you know London these can be 20-30 mins walk or none there
| are all at your parking destination. Good luck attending an
| appointment during work lunch times!
| [deleted]
| _uy6i wrote:
| Lol - "move quickly"
|
| Tangentially - I'm always astonished at the lack of self-
| awareness of many municipal/utility service providers -
| they pretend like I've sought out their service and WANT to
| engage with them, when in fact I just want them to provide
| me the thing I need (or am obligated to do) with as little
| hassle as possible...
| Adraghast wrote:
| Similarly, I went out to dinner Friday and could not scan the
| QR code to view the menu because I decided to leave my phone in
| the car. I asked for a a physical menu and was told they
| literally do not have them anymore. Had to hunch over my
| friend's phone instead.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is mostly regional in my experience in Atlanta: everyone
| moved back to paper/laminated menus ASAP, as soon as any
| concerns for covid on objects were alleviated. Only a few
| businesses took it as an opportunity to save the manager the
| workflow of needing to print out and prepare physical menus.
| hedora wrote:
| In the US, you already need a phone to charge an EV (of course,
| the EV has a cell modem anyway, and license plate tracking
| cameras are becoming ubiquitous too...)
| alar44 wrote:
| It's way more efficient on a number of levels.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| at least individual spot meters were reduced to block meters so
| that there was less physical infrastructure to maintain.
|
| in my city part of the motivation is data collection; rates are
| adjusted block by block based on the last quarter's occupancy
| relative to targets, and among other things the app nudges
| people towards slightly less optimal parking spots that are
| either cheaper or more available.
| bbarnett wrote:
| This data collection doesn't require a smartphone to pay,
| though.
| hedora wrote:
| How would you sell the result to marketers, or
| warrantlessly track people after the fact without the app?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| you can put a QR code on a metal sheet nailed to a post and
| call it a day. And at least where I live the app option is
| also accompanied by an SMS number to text payments to.
|
| An actual payment terminal requires electricity, a network
| connection and maintenance. And it has to be rugged to deal
| with the outdoors environment. If it takes cash, it also
| needs to be fairly rugged to prevent people from making off
| with the cash, and the cash receiving bits need a fair bit
| of maintenance as well.
| Vladimof wrote:
| I've been doing this on purpose lately...
| isoprophlex wrote:
| My phone screen was cracked, I had to leave it with the repair
| place for an hour or two. It was glorious.
|
| I leisurely strolled past shops, sat down to eat something
| without being distracted, and generally enjoyed being outside. I
| had to ask someone for the time.
|
| I resolved to go without phones more often, as it made me feel
| connected to me environment more, with less stress and reduced
| absentmindedness.
|
| Of course I never did and promptly returned to my 4+ hrs/day of
| phone time. I am not ashamed to admit I feel somewhat
| uncomfortable pooping without my phone.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| pooping with phone now. now and then i try pooping without it
| just in the interest of time. and saving my legs from falling
| asleep. not often though. bad habit.
| silisili wrote:
| My advice: get a watch. A nice Seiko, Citizen, etc dumb watch.
|
| I found myself always pulling my phone out to check the time,
| then getting sucked in by notifications.
|
| Now, I only use my watch to check the time, and find myself
| pulling my phone out way, way less in public.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I pretty much just know what time it is within about a
| quarter-hour. I stopped wearing a watch when I realized that.
| silisili wrote:
| You know, outdoors or near a window I'm pretty good at
| that. But I easily lose track of time when indoors, or at
| night. Especially if for some reason I wake up hours
| earlier than normal, I'll think it must be 12 or 1AM, only
| to see that it's barely 10.
| Izkata wrote:
| Nah, let's go further and start a ring sundial fad:
| https://www.amazon.com/Retroworks-Sundial-Ring-Silver-
| Finish...
| tester756 wrote:
| I'll provide counter example
|
| I didn't use smartphone till very late 2021
|
| now I enjoy going for 1-2h walks waaay more cuz I can just
| listen to music and disconnect myself from the people around
| and focus on thinking about various stuff
|
| Sure sitting at train and thinking about your life instead of
| spamming on HN is likely a good thing, but sometimes it's just
| awkward - depends who you sit with
| everyone wrote:
| I think it's interesting how everyone is addicted to their phones
| nowadays. I'm a computer guy but I am 100% not addicted to my
| phone, I really don't get the appeal. I do have an Android phone,
| but I mainly use it as mp3-player/GPS/phone, it clearly beats
| carrying / charging separate phone, mp3 player, gps device etc.
|
| But aside from that I have always thought that smartphones
| utterly suck, the awful OS and proprietary nature of the
| hardware, also the core design is fundamentally flawed, using a
| touchscreen for both input and display means the interface has no
| texture or haptic feedback, and also your fingers are covering
| the display. They are extremely awkward and slow to use. Theyre
| not even a good shape to fit in a human hand for crying out loud!
| So I just use my smartphone as much I would have used those
| devices it has replaced. I just really dont want to use it any
| more than necessary as it's so awful.
|
| Smartphones are like those "leatherman" tools, I call them do-
| everything-badly-devices. Its handy to carry a leatherman rather
| than always carry seperate pliers/screwdrivers/knife etc. but you
| _really_ dont want to be using it if a real tool is available.
| noasaservice wrote:
| The energy behind this line of complaint about cellphone/pocket
| internet connected computers has the same feel as people loudly
| proclaiming that they "do not watch TV" from the 2000's.
|
| I'm going to chalk it up to neo-ludditeism without the actual
| labor component that Ned Ludd was fighting against. (protip: he
| too was antiwork)
| shrimpx wrote:
| The key concern with my phone is losing my 2FA access. I have
| backup codes, but leaving my phone _and_ my backup codes at home
| is not great, in case something happens to my home. In general I
| try to maintain a sense of redundancy wrt my data and access.
| ratsmack wrote:
| It used to be that pay phones were everywhere, but because of the
| plethora of cell phones, they have all been removed. So yes, it's
| a little unnerving to forget my phone at home.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I feel uncomfortable leaving without my phone, for one simple
| reason: I'm typically leaving with my pup, and if anything
| happens to either of us I want to be able to call for help. Pay
| phones are basically non-existent, people understandably don't
| like to let strangers use their phone. It's just a basic
| precaution.
| beefee wrote:
| The loss of pay phones over the last 20 years is a loss to
| society. We used to have widespread access to cheap and
| anonymous emergency calling.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I lived to my mid-30s before I ever carried a mobile phone.
| In that time I do not recall ever needing to call 911 on a
| pay phone. How often has a mobile phone helped you in an
| emergency? For me, never. I think this is one of those easy-
| to-imagine-but-in-reality-rarely-happens justifications.
|
| The local university here has these emergency call-for-help
| stations all over campus. They have a blue light on top so
| they are easy to find especially at night. A couple of years
| ago there was a little feature story in the newspaper about
| how they had never--not once--been used in a real emergency.
| But the university did not want to take them down because
| they provided a feeling of security.
| sidpatil wrote:
| > A couple of years ago there was a little feature story in
| the newspaper about how they had never--not once--been used
| in a real emergency. But the university did not want to
| take them down because they provided a feeling of security.
|
| How many real emergencies occurred near one of these boxes?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Probably none, if they were never used. Again supporting
| the idea that they are better at creating a feeling of
| security than actually making any difference.
| sidpatil wrote:
| Maybe no emergencies occurred _because_ of the presence
| of these emergency call stations. (At least those
| perpetrated by other people, i.e. assaults, thefts, etc.
| --I presume potential perpetrators would be discouraged
| by the presence of these call stations.)
|
| Creating a feeling of security is as important as
| creating security--you need both.
| mdoms wrote:
| No one used pay phones for anything other than a public
| toilet for half a decade. Good riddance.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > people understandably don't like to let strangers use their
| phone
|
| Sounds like you're projecting here. What's your data for this?
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Only anecdata, but I've experienced it directly, and I've
| also helped other people out when I saw them experiencing the
| same. I'm a little surprised by this response to be honest?
| cercatrova wrote:
| I've definitely had this problem. There were times I lost my
| phone and had to get back home. No one would let me use their
| phone. It was not until I begged a gas station attendant to
| let me call someone I knew who could pick me up, that I was
| able to get home.
| axg11 wrote:
| I have had this same thought in the past. I came to the
| conclusions that it's a psychological trick we're playing on
| ourselves. The mitigation against such a low risk event is not
| worth the price we're paying.
|
| - sent from my iPhone
| apson wrote:
| This is so true!
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I mean, what price? It's just a little extra weight in my
| pocket. I'm not _using it_ while I walk my pup. It's always
| on silent and I seldom notice the occasional buzz.
|
| - Sent from my iPhone, on my porch
| k__ wrote:
| We shouldn't call it phone.
|
| Who uses it as a phone these days anyway?
|
| For many people it's their life's central information nexus and
| it's absolutely normal to get uncomfortable when leaving THAT at
| home.
| ipaddr wrote:
| In this day and age of openly tracking everyone's movement by
| government departments I'm surprised anyone brings there
| cellphone with them when they travel.
|
| Unless you accept creating a forever digital footprint of
| everyplace you go leave your cellphone at home. We know better
| but we pretend it doesn't matter because it's easier.
| datadata wrote:
| If you don't take your phone everyplace and leave it at home
| often, you'll probably also end up in some list of suspicion
| people at some point in the future. Absence of data together
| with an identity is also a footprint.
| standardUser wrote:
| I wouldn't leave the house without my wallet and my phone is
| vastly more useful and important than my wallet in most cases. I
| would rightly feel uncomfortable without either and be glad that
| I did! That way I'd notice and go back and get them (or decide
| consciously I don't need them at the moment).
|
| As for feeling "uncomfortable" without something on your body
| that is almost always on your body, the same is true of an almost
| endless list of items. Jewelry, clothes, lotion, facial hair,
| piercings, makeup, keys, watch, wallet. I recall the feeling I'd
| get when a car would vibrate just the right way and make me think
| my pager was going off, years past when I had last owned a pager.
| DantesKite wrote:
| If I left the greatest tool civilization has ever developed at
| home, I would feel very uncomfortable. I'm closer to a demi-god
| than a man when I have one.
| Salgat wrote:
| It's for emergencies too. I've had to call 911 before. I also
| want to immediately know if my wife or kids are in trouble. This
| is not unreasonable.
| croes wrote:
| Why are they still called phones?
|
| I think the phone function is one of the lesser used ones. More
| appropriate would be Smartcamera, if you don't want to call it a
| computer
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I use my phone as a mobile phone 90% of the time when I am away
| from home. The other 10% is tracking my cycling with Strava, I
| can easily live without that.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| My theory has been because they are still largely used as a
| communication device, which was the primary function of a
| phone. Text messaging/messaging apps in general are a core
| feature literally 100% of users need.
|
| Also because these devices started as phones of course.
| antiterra wrote:
| I think phones calls still serve as infrastructure of last
| resort. It's main downside is also it's benefit, the pressure
| for immediate interactive response and attention.
|
| It's preferred to call a restaurant to see if they have the
| wallet or card you lost. Your flight got canceled? Best call to
| get the quickest list of other flight options. Typing while
| driving is right out, but calling is not, even if a voice call
| is arguably still distracting.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I disagree with the premise. I understand people wanting to break
| bad habits with their phone, but it's like saying "feeling
| anxiety about not having a refrigerator at home shouldn't be
| normal." When a tool gets invented that makes our lives easier,
| what we didn't know we needed before becomes indispensable. These
| things, problems though they may bring, are extremely empowering,
| and we take it for granted.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I went without a phone or social media for like half a year and
| people legitimately thought I died or something
|
| Haha
| Bud wrote:
| I agree; this is not normal at all! After all, that's why Apple
| Watch was invented! ;)
| oliwarner wrote:
| But it's not just my phone, it's a hotline to all my friends, my
| camera, my main payment method, my map, my schedule, my parking
| apps, an answer to any question I could possibly think of, and
| twenty kinds of entertainment within a couple of taps.
|
| It's not the 90s anymore. Rightly or wrongly, we've integrated
| with these devices. Leaving it behind is like leaving a lobe at
| home.
|
| Staying on top of your notifications in your downtime is a job,
| but it's possible.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| Well not that I live in a bad neighborhood or anything like that,
| but you really don't know _what_ could happen at any given
| moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not
| paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn 't work
| retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid.
|
| If you're concerned about privacy buy one of those cheap Nokia
| dumbphones that old people use. Keep your smartphone at home, and
| swap out the SIM from the dumbphone to your smartphone if your
| threat model requires you to.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I'm not really blaming you here, this attidue is very normal
| these days, but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell
| phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a
| result.
|
| (Inconvenience is not what I call a mishap)
|
| I grew up in the country, and a few times had to walk 20 miles
| home, due to a dead car. Being a rural area, after 10pm, I
| might see 1 or 2 cars the entire walk home (4 hours and a bit).
|
| During the day, there were times my car broke down, or I ran
| out of gas, so knocking on doors (a mile or so usually awake)
| was a better choice.
|
| Often, a kind person would have some gas.
|
| Compare this to ... the city. If you can yell loudly, literally
| thousands of people can hear you.
| cnelsenmilt wrote:
| 25 years ago there was a pay phone in every gas station, and
| in denser areas in every corner market, bus terminal, grocery
| store, hotel, ..., not mentioning those installed directly
| along the street.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| People also didn't live under the expectation of being
| reachable 24/7.
|
| Similarly, people used paper maps while driving which were
| cumbersome, but didn't live under the expectation or the
| opportunity of traveling to new locations regularly.
| alar44 wrote:
| Stop. Projecting.
|
| I don't know anyone who expects me to be available 24/7.
|
| Most people I know text don't text back immediately
| either.
|
| It's a you problem, not a societal one.
|
| Set some fucking boundaries and start acting like an
| adult.
| status200 wrote:
| Dude, go touch grass. Being a jerk on YC does not make
| you look cool, smart, or savvy.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| You are the one projecting here. I don't feel like I'm
| personally under those expectations, but I definitely see
| that in other people's lives. Try to use less
| inflammatory language on this forum.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I find it nicer to look at a huge map, when visiting a
| city.
|
| Maybe a 100" TV would be about the same.
|
| But sadly, it is harder to get paper maps now, for
| obvious reasons.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| By traveling to new places, I even just mean that Yelp
| and Google, coupled with GPS navigation, allow people to
| more regularly patronize new businesses in the localities
| they reside in. So it's much more frequent to be driving
| to somewhere unfamiliar.
| robonerd wrote:
| Now instead of pay phones in gas stations, if you have an
| emergency virtually every other person you might meet can
| call 911 for you on the spot, without having to run off to
| find a pay phone.
| bbarnett wrote:
| In the city, yes.
|
| But my point was, there are _other people_ around. Yell,
| bang on a house 's door, go into the gas station, etc etc.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Nobody is unhappy for not having what he doesn't know that he
| can have.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes I don't not disagree also, not with this.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Try to reformulate the phrase avoiding negatives. It
| doesn't mean the same.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I was poking at the comment I replied to.
| dylan604 wrote:
| No no, life is much better with FOMO. Keeping up with the
| Jones used to be a local thing. Now its global, and that's
| so much better. /s
| Sebb767 wrote:
| 25 years ago, the cars also didn't have much crash safety
| compared to today and they did survive without seatbelts and
| airbags in metal cages without crumple zones, too!*
|
| Hell, 80 years ago planes took off without any electronics
| and with high explosives on board, were shot at and even
| returned!*
|
| * except for those who did not
|
| Sure, most people didn't die because of lacking safety nets.
| But some did and I don't think "it worked for most without"
| is a sufficient argument to ditch them.
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| Survivorship bias, it is totally a thing!
|
| There are mountain tops that have cell service now days
| (great line of sight!). People get lost in the woods pretty
| often.
|
| Heck just having a compass + map that works offline can get
| people unstuck. How many lost person stories used to end with
| "and he died just a few miles from the nearest town"?
|
| Of course that sentence is now relegated to history because
| because almost everyone has a GPS in their pocket!
| dylan604 wrote:
| > the city. If you can yell loudly, literally thousands of
| people can hear you.
|
| and roughly 1/3 of them will yell at you to shut up, half of
| the remaining will just silently wish it, with the remaining
| not noticing
| fao_ wrote:
| > most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never,
| ever suffered mishap as a result.
|
| _never???_
|
| How do you _possibly_ have enough information to know that?!
| xoa wrote:
| > _but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no
| mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result._
|
| But that just isn't true. Being able to use a mobile radio to
| summon emergency services earlier has statistically
| significant association with improved outcomes [0]. It isn't
| just about what happens to you, it's about what you can do
| for others you come across in emergencies. 25 years ago, I'd
| need to drive a minimum of 15-30 minutes to the nearest house
| and hope I was able to use their landline (or break in I
| guess?), or maybe there would be an open service station
| within that distance (often not). People died (still do) or
| suffer serious injury getting lost in the woods very close to
| home. _I_ nearly did once in the 90s, cross country skiing
| and being foolish. I went out in the afternoon on a gray,
| gray overcast day, zero shadows, fresh snow, and as a skier
| since a child I felt overly confident and didn 't take a
| normal fanny pack even with light (back then of course lamps
| were a lot crappier pre-LED), water or whatever. It got dark
| fast, by this point about 15degF, and I got completely,
| utterly confused. I knew I should be close and indeed
| reconstructing afterwards (finding my own tracks later in the
| week) I was within 1/2 mile or so. But it was a half mile
| through old forest without that clear trails. Fortunately I
| had had some outdoor training and recognized this was genuine
| trouble, I didn't try to go back in the woods but crossed a
| frozen swamp and broke for a farm field, and then from there
| to an actual house whose light I could see and use as a guide
| about a mile and a half away. Even if no one was home there'd
| at least be a road I could follow, fortunately there was
| someone and I could beg to use their landline and call a
| friend. But there were directions of travel I could have gone
| there with no one, and no road, for 6+ miles of mountainy
| forest. And if one succumbs to panic, it's easy to end up
| spending hours going in circles, or even without because
| sense of direction is hard with zero markers, no stars or the
| like. Or are fine, but fall and break a leg or something.
| This happens. People die. I and friends worked as First
| Responders and later mountain rescue volunteers of various
| levels. It's all well and good to say "well you should never
| do that" but humans are imperfect, even experienced ones.
| Having access to quite accurate near term weather forecasts
| alone is just massive, a boon a lot of us don't stop to
| appreciate.
|
| Obviously, as tools cell phones have other risks. It's
| possible to get overconfident with them and take risks that
| negate the benefits. People have died due to silly things
| like literally stepping backwards over a cliff trying to get
| the perfect selfie. And there are other negative effects as
| this article talks about. Nevertheless, it's wrong to claim
| everything was fine back in "the good old days" when life
| expectancy was significantly lower [1]. You don't have to
| have a fancy smart phone to have a basic comms, GPS and map,
| but that doesn't negate how valuable those can be.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22142669/
|
| 1: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/life...
| bbarnett wrote:
| "most people", was in my comment. Many of your examples are
| non-common, special, too.
|
| For example, this thread is about someone in the city,
| taking a walk (eg, to the corner store or some such), and
| not feeling safe.
|
| It's all about stats, likelyhood, etc.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| What do you imagine people 30 years ago did, during a time when
| crime was a lot worse?
| deergomoo wrote:
| A lot of them died, or suffered some horrible attack,
| unnecessarily. I don't understand what the argument is here.
| We survived without antibiotics, but I sure wouldn't like to
| have been seriously ill in a time without them.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's a radio I can use to summon help. Why would I _ever_ want
| to be without that?
|
| Turn the notifications off, or get something like Tasker that
| can turn them off and on for you on a schedule. Otherwise, keep
| it in your pocket. This device has no control over you that you
| don't allow it to have.
| beefield wrote:
| > It's a radio I can use to summon help. Why would I _ever_
| want to be without that?
|
| I think it's good for you to occasionally to _know_ that you
| are on your own. Completely responsible on what you do. Be it
| on the nearby forest or in some more extreme situation. I am
| not sure the direction of (illusion of) ultrasafety where our
| society has been going is all good. Occasionally it 's good
| to have the red pill instead of the blue. Keeps your mind
| clear.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| > but you really don't know what could happen at any given
| moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not
| paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn't work
| retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid.
|
| It would be nice to not live that way sometimes you know? There
| are places where people aren't conditioned to feel that way.
| karencarits wrote:
| You could read his post as him living with constant threats
| of victimization (this is how I read your comment) but it
| applies equally well to medical emergencies. I happened to be
| in such a situation once and it was stressful enough with
| medical guidance on the phone and assurances that the
| ambulance was on its way
|
| I will not risk to have to face such a situation alone or
| have to leave a person in distress just to call for help
| hooande wrote:
| I always bring my phone in case I'm in a traffic accident and
| need to call someone to pick me up or let them know I'm going
| to the hospital
| evilduck wrote:
| You make it sound sinister like you're expecting to be
| mugged, but I've called 911 on behalf of others by being the
| first to come across their roadside accident 2 different
| times in my life, and the first one wouldn't have been able
| to call themselves due to injuries. Not having a phone would
| have meant leaving the scenes, driving to the next exit and
| finding a gas station or house, explaining there was an
| accident and pleading to use the phone, drawing out their
| time sitting injured on the roadside by several minutes
| before emergency services were even notified.
|
| I've also been the first to report tree limbs blocking roads
| and a water main that burst to non-emergency lines, again
| expediting services to fix them and reducing inconvenience
| overall.
|
| I've never felt like this was some conditioning of paranoia,
| only that I was enabled to help in ways that I wasn't able to
| 20 years ago.
| id wrote:
| You know, medical emergencies are a thing. You could always
| come across someone that needs help.
| varjag wrote:
| Freak attacks are a thing too. Dumb to go out without
| concealed gun.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| That's about as relevant as claiming you should carry
| rattlesnake antivenom because you might come across
| someone recently bit.
| quantified wrote:
| Pre-phones, it just wasn't something you thought about. If you
| came up with a phone, you just may not be able to get it.
| mlyle wrote:
| Pre-phones, you had functional payphones, etc, around to
| summon help with. People were more likely to be understanding
| and to make a call for you if you knocked on their door.
|
| I had to hike to a payphone a couple of times when I was
| stranded. That wouldn't work anymore.
|
| To reach the level of security that I had as a teenager, I
| need a mobile phone.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| There's places where a phone won't help you at all. On the
| other hand, just screaming will. Screaming, like not yelling,
| screaming. Helped me out exactly three weeks ago today, when I
| was getting coercively shepherded by supermarket guards, into
| the supermarket, because the cashier accused me of not paying.
| But they weren't interested in seeing my receipt. Just in
| harassing me. Fortunately Jessica at the Farmacias Manriquez
| (near Merced and Jose Miguel de la Barra in downtown Santiago)
| across the street heard me scream "I want you to call the real
| cops! You have no right to do this! Look at my receipt!" (in
| Spanish of course) and called my people, whom I couldn't reach
| because I left my phone at home. And they showed up, asked what
| the fuck, and I talked to the lawyer extensively about it, he
| agreed it was harassment and coercive threats.
|
| Who knew, screaming calls attention? And I couldn't use a phone
| because my hands were full, I was carrying glass bottles home
| that way because I didn't want to pay for a plastic bag. If I
| dropped them, they would say since they accused me of stealing
| them that I destroyed the merchandise and was a thief for sure.
| And then taken me to the ground and beat me up, that's their
| job basically.
|
| Thanks Jessica of Farmacias Manriquez!
|
| So phones? Not always a big help.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| This story is baffling.
|
| > Fortunately Jessica at the Farmacias Manriquez (near Merced
| and Jose Miguel de la Barra in downtown Santiago) across the
| street heard me scream "I want you to call the real cops! You
| have no right to do this! Look at my receipt!" (in Spanish of
| course) and called my people
|
| Maybe social circles in south america are orders of magnitude
| bigger than the ones I have, but in an urban area it seems
| unlikely that there's going to be a random passer by that
| would know you well enough that they can "call your people"
|
| > And I couldn't use a phone because my hands were full, I
| was carrying glass bottles home that way because I didn't
| want to pay for a plastic bag. If I dropped them, they would
| say since they accused me of stealing them that I destroyed
| the merchandise and was a thief for sure.
|
| Why was slowly putting the bottles down and then getting out
| your phone not an option?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| So in reply to the posters who said I could still have used a
| phone: I could not. I had an Apple iPhone of exactly the kind
| covered in the class-action lawsuit, of which there was one
| in Chile, and I was eligible for the payout, still am in
| fact, it's like 170 dollars. But I haven't.
|
| So I left that one at home, and in fact one of the people who
| came grilled me over and over as we walked down Victoria
| Subercaseaux "why didn't you bring your phone?" "WHY DIDN'T
| YOU BRING YOUR PHONE?"
|
| Well I told him I had a similar phone, just no radio, and was
| connecting to the Walmart subsidiary's wifi with it,
| explicitly ordering the guards for the password after the
| cashier, CE NEWEN according to the receipt, made her
| premeditated apology. But surprise, screaming worked. It
| actually worked better! It was much better for someone else
| to call on my behalf than for me to call myself. And
| secondly, too predictable, they can tear the phone out of
| your hands, these guards were in gang-up beating mode, so
| they would not have tolerated a phone, the obvious choice.
| Very impatient and there were six of them, apparently armed.
|
| When I got home and received a call, the phone I was supposed
| to take, its battery died. So battery would have died calling
| people on my own behalf, when the battery dies unexpectedly,
| the battery meter acts weird, it's not like getting locked
| out, when it dies it's a brick, you can't call emergency
| services.
|
| I couldn't slowly put anything on the ground, these guards
| were in Fuck the Law mode. Evidently, because they never had
| any interest in my receipt, or my testimony. Six, 6 guards,
| shepherding me coercively back to the Walmart subsidiary
| where they controlled all the cameras and knew the terrain,
| could make up any shit they wanted. And a lawyer that came,
| called Nacho, told me exactly that, these guys don't like
| calling police because they want that power for themselves.
|
| The uniforms say SWAT on them, S-W-A-T, supposedly it's SWAT-
| branded private security apparel, nothing to do with American
| Special Weapons And Tactics like in the movies. Like Apple
| computer having nothing to do with apples, just a brandname,
| "nombre de fantasia", it's not like actual fruit. So they're
| trying to intimidate people with the power of the law,
| precisely so people don't dare defend themselves, to imply
| their victim will get accused resisting arrest.
| blindmute wrote:
| Areyouabot8 wrote:
| I think this guy is a bot. Is it possible this comment was
| created using ML?
| Adraghast wrote:
| > And I couldn't use a phone because my hands were full
|
| Sorry, but you could have used a phone.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _So phones? Not always a big help._
|
| I don't understand how you came to this conclusion when you
| simultaneously say
|
| > _[Jessica] called my people, whom I couldn 't reach because
| I left my phone at home_
|
| If you had a phone, you could've just...called them yourself.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Except no because the whole hands full and bottles thing.
| Did you even bother reading the comment?
| cercatrova wrote:
| Yes but I disagree that they'd have broken the bottles
| had they put down a bag. I've had bottles in bags and not
| once did I break them by setting them down. They could've
| easily put the bottles down and called the police on
| their phone, if they brought it with them.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Great to see you again, cercatrova![1]
|
| I didn't have a bag, that's what started it all. You
| don't get bags anymore in Chile[2]. The cashier, CE.
| NEWEN according to the receipt, accused me of not paying
| apparently in retaliation for my saying the plastic bag
| she offered was not worth the 57 cents the Walmart
| subsidiary charged for it (490 Chilean pesos)[1]. I
| decided to go without. Until her accusation that I didn't
| pay, I was carrying everything carefully in my arms.
|
| So I was carrying two pint-sized cans of beer, a glass
| jar of olives, and a glass jar of anchovies all in my
| arms. Needed a surface if I was to set them down, in fact
| after being shepherded I set them down in an empty
| shopping cart before I could take out the receipt in my
| pocket, so my turn to make demands began.
|
| [1] So this was the event that changed my attitude and
| just divulge on Hacker News.
|
| [2] It's always minimal shit, one time it was over 1 cent
| in electricity, for which I offered to pay a dollar on
| the spot. Always minimal shit. Those plastic bags cost
| like 1.3 cents apiece, to make. Pure profit.
|
| [3] And since this, I bring my own, which was the
| government's idea in not supplying bags any longer.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > But as time passed, I realized how our phone has become a real
| integral part of our bodies. It was a strange feeling.
|
| I'm hardly a luddite and yet I don't give a crap about my phone.
|
| I hardly ever take my phone with me: no need. Yesterday I had to
| drive to some unknown (to me) place (rural area) for a birthday
| party: wrote the address down, looked what the place looked like
| on google maps, then left the home and input the address in my
| car's navi system.
|
| My phone is so old I don't even know which model it is. I think
| it's a Samsung S7, not sure. Don't care.
|
| I have like two apps on it: google authenticator and some "scan
| to pdf" thing (where I take a picture of documents and it makes a
| PDF out of it).
|
| To me a phone is an inferior, mediocre, computing device. It's
| only a "computer" in that it's more powerful than, say, a SGI
| workstation from the late 90s (or whatever) but it's mostly a
| piece of crap made to _consume_ content.
|
| I'm always wondering this: how many chip engineers are actually
| designing chips from their smartphone? How many car designers are
| modelling cars and parts on their phone? How many sound engineers
| are, say, remastering some great song from their phone? How many
| people who worked on, say, "Fantastic Beasts" did model the 3D
| animals from their phone? It's not just the input that sucks, but
| the output too: tiny screen, shitty sound.
|
| In addition to being complete turds, phones are little
| surveillance devices tracking your every moves. Just screw that.
|
| Now, funnily enough, the only time I really need a phone the
| dumbphone, pre- Nokia Symbian and J2ME apps (these were still
| dumb but a bit less dumb), I had in the late nineties would do:
| actual phone calls and SMS. I hardly need anything more.
|
| I don't respect my phone: I treat it for the utter piece of junk
| and crap it is.
|
| I think it's a sane approach. YMMV.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I wish I could leave mine at home more often, but I need it on me
| pretty much all the time for my diabetes management.
| jfk13 wrote:
| How did diabetics manage before smartphones?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Less effectively.
| _benj wrote:
| I liked that reflection. I'm lucky enough that my manager is very
| intentional in actively avoiding and mitigating any possible work
| related anything during the weekends.
|
| When I get a call (as opposed to a slack message) it's only
| because something is REALLY on fire.
|
| This really allows me to disconnect completely from work with the
| assurance that in an extreme situation I could still be reached.
|
| It's also important to clarify what is considered important
| because honestly I get a call over the weekend to implement so
| "quick feature", that would be a clear signal that it might be
| time to part ways with such company culture.
|
| All I'm saying is, it starts with the individual marking the
| boundaries and then either talking the the manager or finding a
| place that respects those boundaries.
|
| (I'm aware of some violations of boundaries from bosses that if
| they'd happen to me I'd likely seek for a restraining order!)
| arkaic wrote:
| It shouldn't be normal....unless we live in a world where the
| feeling of our daily infrastructure of life is dependent upon
| smartphones.
|
| Which it is.
| rschachte wrote:
| I bought a lightphone. It's expensive and buggy, but it helped
| kill my phone addiction. Dumb phone with music and maps.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| bugs are a feature to make you hate it even more
| dsr_ wrote:
| "Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to
| start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving
| behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the
| equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age,
| or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another.
|
| A terminal, in the shape of a ring, button, bracelet or pen or
| whatever, was your link with everybody and everything else in the
| Culture. Without a terminal, you were never more than a question
| or a shout away from almost anything you wanted to know, or
| almost any help you could possibly need."
|
| --Iain M. Banks, in The Player of Games
| RealityVoid wrote:
| First thing I thought about as well. I really think The Culture
| is very special in its ability to "feel" the future.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| So I had a feeling "without a terminal" was a typo and I wanted
| to look up the exact quote. I googled the sentence and expected
| the right quote to be at the top, but all Google gave me was
| results for helping people with terminal cancer cope with their
| coming death.
|
| It was only after I appended "Ian M Banks" that I got the
| result I was looking for. I'm honestly surprised Google failed
| that search so hard.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| ..but it was a typo, yeah?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Yes, it should be "With a terminal".
| spullara wrote:
| People are constantly saying these things about google and
| when I search for:
|
| "Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended
| to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately
| leaving behind their terminal"
|
| I get the exact answer as a snippet at the top of the search.
| I am beginning to think everyone that has bad search results
| has some kind of malware installed on their computer since
| their searches always work for me.
| tyrfing wrote:
| It fails if you search for the incorrect quote; the last
| sentence should start "With" and not "Without". Checking
| competitors, Bing fails to find any variation of the quote,
| Yandex returns 5 results if you remove the incorrect word
| and quote it, but returns garbage otherwise. Considering
| the single-digit number of results for an apparently very
| obscure quote, _and_ that it was incorrect, this does seem
| reasonable.
|
| I'm starting to think that standards are simply rising over
| time. 10 years ago, would anyone complain that an incorrect
| quote from a 30-year-old book didn't return results?
| spullara wrote:
| Trying this:
|
| Without a terminal, you were never more than a question
| or a shout away from almost anything you wanted to know
|
| It suggests results that don't include terminal (but of
| course that is a critical word for this quote), selecting
| must include terminal, gives the quote as the top
| results.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Fascinating. Quoting individual words like "terminal" or
| "shout" also works as a nudge for both Google and Yandex,
| but not for Bing.
|
| And since our written observations modify the behavior,
| an update: quoting the whole sentence now returns a
| single result - this page.
| tomilola39 wrote:
| Parent likely searched without hard quotes; leading to the
| bad results.
| resfirestar wrote:
| (I misunderstood your comment initially so corrected this
| sentence) The problem is that the sentence is typo'd so
| searching for the exact quote (not keywords) doesn't work
| correctly. For the record the actual quote is:
|
| >With a terminal, you were never more than a question or a
| shout away from almost anything you wanted to know, or almost
| any help you could possibly need
|
| When you Google that in quotes you get actual results from
| Google Books and Goodreads, while Bing/DuckDuckGo only
| returns an archive from a random blog that quotes it halfway
| down the page, and the new hot search engine Brave finds
| nothing. I agree it's a little disappointing that one
| mistaken word throws Google so far off the trail.
| solveit wrote:
| > I agree it's a little disappointing that one mistaken
| word throws Google so far off the trail.
|
| But can you imagine the aggravation if Google chooses to do
| the opposite and 'helpfully' 'corrects' your quotes for
| you? Actually I am not sure I have to imagine...
| resfirestar wrote:
| Definitely hands off my quote searches, but one might
| hope that if you took out the quotation marks it would be
| able to pick up the correct quote. In fact it can if you
| change around certain words in the first sentence
| (Stories set in the Culture...). I think what's going on
| is that "without a terminal..." is not such a well known
| quote and has some pretty broadly applicable keywords
| (terminal...question...help), while combining the more
| unique set of keywords from "stories set in the
| culture...", which is a more well known quote, is more
| likely to lead the search engine to the quote even if
| you're missing one of the keywords in it due to a typo.
| [deleted]
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Google is optimized around showing ads, not returning
| relevant search results.
| manachar wrote:
| Google has become blinded by metrics focused on giving people
| what an algorithm things most people want.
|
| It's the digital equivalent of going to a restaurant and
| looking for vegetarian food only to be inundated with gluten-
| free and other health-fad foods.
|
| I suspect their algorithm is in a bit of a doom loop as it's
| being trained on people clicking worse and worse results of
| pages that seem clearly written to game the SEO.
|
| This is not unique to google. Amazon keeps including things I
| didn't search for because they want to be "helpful".
|
| Indeed, my experience at big box hardware stores is matching
| this as well. If you go for one simple thing that you know
| you want, you're presented with an entire aisle of absolute
| crap that sort of does it but for much more money while the
| one item you need is out of stock.
| carom wrote:
| Gluten free isn't a health fad. Please learn about celiacs.
| joebob42 wrote:
| The set of celiacs is _much_ smaller than the set of
| people who think eating gluten free food is a good idea.
| ashirviskas wrote:
| Afaik unhealthy diet increases gluten sensitivity. I have
| it and it sucks having your knees and elbows hurt for a
| week after eating a gluten rich pizza.
| kennywinker wrote:
| > Afaik unhealthy diet increases gluten sensitivity
|
| I don't want to argue with your overall point at all,
| because I assume that whatever this sentence specifically
| means to you is true for you - but given that there is no
| actually objective definition of what a healthy diet is -
| it's hard to agree with the statement in general. I would
| feel like I was eating unhealthily if I had a can of coke
| every day, but that doesn't actually mean it's unhealthy.
| It probably depends on everything else I'm eating, how
| much I'm burning off, maybe even something as fine-
| grained as how fast I drink it. You would almost
| definitely feel unhealthy if you were eating bread every
| day, but as long as it was whole-wheat and had some good
| sandwich fixins in it, I'd feel pretty good about that.
|
| Anyway, sorry if I'm being pedantic, but I feel like
| people toss around things like "healthy diet" as if we're
| all supposed to know and agree what that means.
| feanaro wrote:
| > You would almost definitely feel unhealthy if you were
| eating bread every day, but as long as it was whole-wheat
| and had some good sandwich fixins in it, I'd feel pretty
| good about that.
|
| Eating bread every day is actually pretty common in some
| cultures and people don't even stop to think it's
| unhealthy because it's so commonplace, so even that
| varies.
| tleilaxu wrote:
| It can be both...
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| It is a health fad for most. People with actual diagnosed
| celiac's disease are rare. Self diagnosed... that is
| another deal...
| kennywinker wrote:
| In addition to celiac disease, which is not actually so
| rare - only about 3 times as rare as red hair - there is
| also Wheat Allergy, which is very real and detectable by
| measuring immune responses - and Non-Celiac Gluten
| Sensitivity (NCGS).
|
| Most of the "health fad" people you're talking about
| would probably self-categorize themselves as NCGS, but
| that doesn't mean that everybody who is NCGS is part of a
| health fad. Double-blind "challenge" studies where people
| are unaware if what they are eating contains wheat/gluten
| have confirmed that for some people this is definitely
| real and not a made up fad.
|
| I'm not denying the existence of people going gluten free
| for fad or orthorexia reasons, but be careful when you
| lump everyone who is gluten free for non-celiac reasons
| into that category.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I work with a guy who is a real, fully diagnosed celiac
| sufferer. The gluten-free fad has had serious
| consequences for him. Some restaurants don't take him
| seriously, claim gluten-free food when it isn't, and he
| gets seriously ill when that happens. He doesn't eat out
| so much any more because it's not worth the risk.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| On the other hand, it has greatly increased the
| availability of pre-packaged gluten-free food options.
| The consequences aren't all bad.
|
| (I have a sibling with celiac disease).
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Did it increase the actual availability, or just the
| marketing?
|
| I've noticed things that never had glueten in it, labeled
| "glueten-free" after the craze a few years ago.
| kennywinker wrote:
| There are plenty of foods that have never had gluten-
| containing ingredients, but have always been made in
| factories or contexts where they come into contact with
| gluten. Celiacs, and people with NCGS who have strong
| reactions, when given the option will usually avoid
| anything that hasn't been actively tested and confirmed
| gluten free. For things like a bag of rice, or produce,
| there isn't an option with that label for re-assurance,
| and then it's a gamble... the odds of a bag of rice
| containing gluten may be low, but with such big
| consequences it's still a gamble. So the proliferation of
| the GF label is useful. There have also been a ton of new
| products launched that are gluten free, so it's
| definitely not just a labeling thing.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| It absolutely increased availability. When my sibling was
| first diagnosed things like gluten free bread had to be
| ordered and shipped and were extremely expensive. Now
| they're available in many (mostly up-market) grocery
| stores, and while still expensive have come down in price
| a lot.
| Xylakant wrote:
| I'm currently on vacation and the hotel breakfast buffet
| has a gluten free bread option. Granted, it's prepackaged
| toast, but I'd say it's better than hungry.
| pizza wrote:
| ironic. search engine optimization, rather than minimizing
| the entropy of search, maximized it..
| cassianoleal wrote:
| It's not like the people at Google didn't know about
| Goodhart's Law. Somehow I don't think SEO was ever meant
| to improve search results.
| pizza wrote:
| Honestly I'm just surprised it's so profitable to be so
| spammy that this stuff is persisting. That said, when I
| see shit results, I hardly ever bother to click on the
| second page any longer. Perhaps the seo spam taking up
| the near-but-not-top results are the biggest schmucks of
| all, since they are probably putting in at least a little
| money/effort to get there, I would imagine?
| DancesWTurtles wrote:
| Little nitpick: "the algorithm" does not even find the
| things "most people wants"; it finds the things some
| executive or other decided it was the most convenient to
| find taking into account the needs of the corporation only.
| Yes, there is theoretically some way to return, up to some
| degree, what people would find useful; but the decisions
| are not made by the people fiddling with the algorithms.
| Those people have their hands tied and must follow the
| interests of someone who most of the time knows nothing
| about algorithms or people or the end product.
| skybrian wrote:
| Even a little research would show that Google is far more
| sophisticated than that in tuning its search engine.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Not surprised. The way I see it, Google is trying so hard to
| monetize search that they have left behind any pretense of
| information retrieval.
| belltaco wrote:
| Google has become borderline unusable for finding something
| that's not popular that's more than a month or year old.
| Multiple times I have spent more than 5 to 10 minutes trying
| to find something I have read a few years or even a few
| months ago and it's next to impossible to find it, even with
| time gating the results Google just keeps returning popular
| search results over specificity. The long tail is just
| ignored in their current algo.
| hadlock wrote:
| Cell phone is how my daycare communicates with us. We've only had
| our daughter in daycare for 3 months now and already we've had
| (very)two minor medical issues they needed/wanted our input on.
| It's also the device I use to organize who is picking her up from
| daycare at the end of the day.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Interesting, of course I grew up in a time where you _couldn 't_
| have a phone with you (economically) while on a trip with the
| family. My concern was if something happened how would I reach
| help. Not what was going on with the world. Different perspective
| to be sure.
| [deleted]
| chx wrote:
| > I realized how our phone has become a real integral part of our
| bodies
|
| Almost: my phone shows my blood sugar level. Thus it's always in
| Bluetooth range.
|
| Here's a very short review of the Dexcom G6 doing the actual
| measurement: the medical device is absolutely awesome, the mobile
| app / website / APIs are the most god awful thing I had the bad
| luck to work with in my three decades of using the web.
| ryanchoi wrote:
| Yeah, I opted for a smaller phone this last upgrade (in what,
| four years) in hopes of using it less and being less noticeable
| in the pocket. Used to have this big screen phone with which I
| wouldn't have much issue watching or reading stuff on. Now with a
| much smaller one, "not" having a huge screen to consume media on,
| making it less attractive to do so, and it's been working pretty
| well I think. Couldn't bring myself to go full dumbphone, er,
| feature? phone.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I find it funny that the 13 mini (2.53"x5.18") is bigger than
| the iphone 4 (2.31"x4.5") of yesteryear.
| quitit wrote:
| This is why I like my smart watch. I can walk out of the house
| without my phone and still stay in touch if it's really needed
| (it usually isn't) - I also like that I can triage notifications
| without touching my phone, if I try doing that with my phone I
| usually end up messing around with a lot more than I had
| originally planned. Also using it for music and having the
| assistant available fills out the main uses of my watch.
|
| The only time I regret it is if there is something that i'd
| really like to photograph.
| Animats wrote:
| It's now abnormal to not have a phone handy. I was once reading a
| paperback book in a restaurant while waiting for my meal, and
| some woman approached me and started talking about ebooks. If
| you're sitting someplace in public and not looking at a phone,
| it's suspicious behavior.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| My grandparents don't wish things back to the good ole days. It's
| possible to have balance.
| ribs wrote:
| Mobile phones, particularly smartphones, are incredibly useful
| devices, particularly while mobile, and it doesn't seem weird to
| be uncomfortable when one doesn't have it.
| Crabber wrote:
| People in this thread are conflating "phone" and "smartphone".
|
| You can just carry a cheap dumbphone and it works for texting
| people or emergency calls just fine.
| id wrote:
| But then I need two phones. Why?
| Jhsto wrote:
| I have found smartwatches a good for this purposes. With cellular
| connectivity you have emergency services, calls, certain
| notifications, maps, and NFC payments. You cant procrastinate on
| it as easily as with a phone.
|
| Many in this thread suggest a feature phone. Anecdotally, a
| friend of mine went this route, but people became suspicious of
| him. Especially when meeting new people. His dates thought he was
| cheating on his (non-existent) wife, or that he was hiding
| something in more general sense. He returned to having a
| smartphone after a year or so with a feature phone.
| saurik wrote:
| This uncomfortable feeling though was just because it wasn't in
| your pants, providing a specific sensory input you are used to,
| not because "oh no! I need Twitter!". One has the same feeling
| about objects like wallets and keys.
|
| I have carried a shoulder bag since I was a kid, before I had
| ever even used the Internet. Recently, indirectly due to the
| pandemic, I have stopped using my shoulder bag very much... I am
| constantly freaked out by its lack.
|
| I haven't worn a watch in decades: I used to wear a watch _only_
| when I was a kid, and I stopped in college. And yet, to do this
| day--not often! maybe once a year, tops--I will suddenly have
| this visceral feeling "I lost my watch".
|
| I have worn the same jacket for the past four years. This jacket
| puts a bit of weight on the back of my neck. I recently went out
| for a whole day wearing a hoodie and I kept feeling confused as
| "I am not wearing my jacket".
|
| FWIW, I keep notifications off on my phone at all times. I think
| the entire idea that I can be randomly interrupted _insane_. I
| thereby often just _disappear_ from being able to be contacted by
| anyone for a day because "I was having fun".
|
| And yet, if I don't know where my phone is, I start freaking
| out... not because "I need my fix", but because it is an
| expensive object that has a lot of personal data on it and (as
| mine are old/jailbroken) might not even be replaceable.
|
| I thereby disagree with the idea here: your phone is simply a
| tool, and it is probably one of the most powerful tools you have
| ever owned. The feeling of making it part of yourself is
| extremely human: we love to build and use tools.
|
| What isn't reasonable is one way you have chosen to use that
| tool, but that's entirely unrelated to the very normal feelings
| you have when you suddenly don't have it in your pocket: move it
| to your other pocket and you will also feel bad.
|
| Just think: your phone is also a clock, a map (compete with GPS
| and compass), a camera (photo and video), a calculator, a
| tricorder, and _the hitchhicker 's guide to the galaxy_ all at
| once... what a shame to feel you can't carry one.
| gregoriol wrote:
| I feel uncomfortable when leaving my watch at home too
| (mechanical, not digital one).
| mjevans wrote:
| Disconnecting from work should be fine. That's a boundary most
| should have outside of high stakes life and death jobs. Even
| then, coverage by more than one person should be warranted, and
| paid for.
|
| Personal phone? That's my lifeline to civilization if something
| bad happens. Also an AV capture device.
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