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Comment by run4yourlives2 | Hacker News Reader

I look at this site and a part of me thinks that there is a segment of the population that is seemingly incapable of doing very basic things like sleeping, cooking or buying clothes without being handheld by the computer in their phone.

I'm being a little overboard of course, but I really wonder how dependent we will be on our machines to survive at all in a generation or two.

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I agree, and I find myself incapable of doing basic things myself, but not because I only use technology to solve problems. I'm skewing more and more towards old fashioned asking-people-for-help. Where's a good spot for lunch since Chipotle is out of the question? I know, I'll stop in and ask the bank tellers where they recommend! I had a delicious burrito that destroyed Chipotle in taste and quality, and was cheaper to boot!

I don't eschew technology at all, but I'm realizing how little most people appreciate the willingness and capability to help their fellow humans. People will surprise you if you wait long enough!

That's a fun idea for an app:

Post a question and only those geographically within one mile of you can answer. All questions and answers are anon and public.

Tag the questions and answers such that I can see all the questions regarding what to eat were within my vicinity.

Related idea: I can't find it, but there was an app that plotted Instagram locations visited by locals vs tourists.

Here's something similar but for tweets -- ex. Times Square https://www.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/#10/40.7591/....

Compared to your ancestors 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000 years ago, you're hopelessly dependent on machines and technology to survive. Fortunately you can harness the surplus energy and attention you aren't dedicating to just getting by in everyday life to do more productive and amazing things.

No, not really.

(I mean, I don't want to come off as a Luddite by any means, but...)

I'm 40, so perhaps things have changed a bit more than those younger than me, but I can still make most food from scratch ingredients, have no issues sleeping outside in the cold, and can iron and mend my own clothes. I don't really see that much of a difference between myself and a person 100 or 1000 years ago, spare electricity, and I certainly don't need that in any real meaningful way.

Perhaps it's a generational gap, perhaps it's my jaded old fart genes kicking in, but I look at this list and I see, for lack of a more fitting phase - a lot of useless shit.

I mean, who the heck justifies a smartphone controlled grill? Who's next purchase priority is a $250 blanket that you program with your smartphone to keep different areas of the bed warm? Is there really a demand for a gadget that helps with your mindfulness and tells you to calm down? Isn't that what a good friend is for? Granted, there are certainly a lot of items that do seem to have useful needs - and I love that many of them seem geared towards sustainability and such, but my god I don't think every single article on the planet needs to be "smart".

Then again, I'm a person that still doesn't see the use case behind the smart watch (that's dependent on the phone in your pocket, at least), so maybe I'm just completely out of touch. At any rate...don't read too much into my comment, I'm not as trite as I probably sound. Just getting a little put off by the trend that seems to be focused on using technology to power hyper-narcissism ("Your own shampoo flavour!") in the name of positive technological advances. :-/

> I mean, who the heck justifies a smartphone controlled grill?

Someone never properly taught to cook who panics at soft terms like "medium heat" and doesn't know what a given kind of steak should look like.

> Who's next purchase priority is a $250 blanket that you program with your smartphone to keep different areas of the bed warm?

A married couple that has regular arguments over what blankets to use and are ready to try a gimmick that might help.

> Is there really a demand for a gadget that helps with your mindfulness and tells you to calm down?

I've dealt with coworkers who absolutely could have used it, though of course the hard part would be convincing them they had a problem in the first place.

> I'm 40, so perhaps things have changed a bit more than those younger than me, but I can still make most food from scratch ingredients, have no issues sleeping outside in the cold, and can iron and mend my own clothes.

I'm only a few years younger than you, and I can do all those things too. I think you likely vastly underestimate the gulf between the old-timey things you know how to do, and the old-timey things you'd be forced to do in 1915 -- the Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns.

Well, you say from scratch but compared to lets say cooking a 100 years ago I guess you would find that a challenge. Of cause you could do it but it would be much harder than today.

I can cook, but I can't create a gourmet meal without guidance from someone well experienced in cooking. I can shop and look okay, but I can't look my absolute best without some stylist guidance. I get what you are saying, but I think these services go beyond a "basic understanding" and take it up a notch. And that, in my opinion, is what is worth the money.

It seems that "smart" devices mostly give some data brain crack to feed upon rather than improve the actual outcome of any activity. When I got the Muse headband for measuring brain activity during meditation, it was fun at first, but it didn't affect my meditation schedule. Before and after, my plan was always to just meditate more. I sold it shortly.

Similar with 23andme. Lots of personalized trivia about my genetics but nothing earth shattering or really actionable. It told me my race (whoa my parents weren't lying to me) and said I had slightly above/below average risk for many obscure diseases. Maybe it'll be more useful with gene tailored treatments some day.

How many decades ago could someone write your note but include hunting or making their own clothes?

I can still do both... so I'm not sure.

Because you can do both, you're not sure approximately when someone might have written your note observing that markets and then supermarkets became more convenient?

The difference I see with a lot of IoT devices is that they enhance something you could already do manually.

Having a fancy grill that automatically stops cooking my steak doesn't make me incapable of using a thermometer + timer + normal skillet + polling by hand myself. It does make it sound a lot less convenient though.

I think that sites like this and similar ones become a real culture. And it's a much more uniform culture than the world had known in previous centuries. So there's a great opportunity to share culturally relevant items like this -- here's something I think you can take advantage of during this season.

I have mixed feelings. I once had a roommate who literally could not drive 2 miles to work every day without her GPS. She turned it on every day and had been working there for over a year. Simultaneously, that bike that talks to my phone's GPS could be very useful when I'm trying to bike places I haven't been before. Of course, sometimes turning down the wrong street on my bike is where cool discoveries happen :)

ISTM the special capabilities of the special bike should be accessories that anyone can install on most any bike, rather than only available built into this one bike. A startup should specialize in those special capabilities, and leave the production of existing products to existing product companies. That is especially true for bicycles, which are both standardized enough that parts and accessories are largely interchangeable and differentiated enough that most cyclists already have their favorite bike(s) that this company can't hope to replace.

> I once had a roommate who literally could not drive 2 miles to work every day without her GPS. She turned it on every day and had been working there for over a year.

You might be confusing correlation and causation here. Did she have no sense of direction because of the GPS, or did she use the GPS as a self-correction for having no sense of direction?

> very basic things like sleeping, cooking or buying clothes

Thanks, you just made me feel like a Neanderthal.

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