Comment by mattowen_uk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattowen_uk | Hacker News Reader

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I've never been truly addicted to my phone, even though I've had a smartphone since before they were a thing (HP iPaq, running Windows CE). I've always been app-phobic on phones, only ever installing the minimum that I need. As such the notification problem has never been an issue. If my phone is flashing, it means I've missed a call, or there's a text message. That's it. Most people don't use SMS anymore for casual conversation, so I don't get pinged about those until I'm in front of a computer.

I do like having a web browser in my pocket though. I'm old, and I was there when dial-up BBS's gave way to basic dial-up internet. I used the internet as a resource, and I still mostly have that mindset. It's not an entertainment platform for me - I fire up a browser when I want to find something out, and then I close it again. However I do watch the odd fun YouTube video from time to time (not on my phone tho).

This switching away from being always-online seems to be picking up as a trend. I think it's a good thing. Like all things, the internet should only be used in moderation.

The internet is a tool, no different from a shovel or a paintbrush, and you don't spend all day carrying those around and looking at them, do you?

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Edit: s/spade/shovel

I disagree with the Internet is a tool... statement. The Internet is definitely not just a tool. It's a different type of consciousness; it's not completely mature yet as to approach the organic, human type, but it's definitely much bigger than a tool.

Your disconnection from it may help you rediscover your own consciousness and do things the old-fashioned way but it doesn't confer any superiority or higher levels of intelligence or higher information evaluation abilities on you.

What kind of higher information evaluation abilities are you talking about? The way I understand it is that if you're using the internet, is you're disconnecting from the pipeline, and evaluating information that you already have. Internet is for gathering, maybe filtering information. But the actual evaluation is usually separate from it.

You're looking at a very specific case. My point is more general.

Some people tend to believe that a return to the old ways of no invasion of the zeros and ones of the Internet would make their lives better by some significant margin. They see some less digitalized folk and wish they could have that life because they also believe the lives of these folks are much simpler, more triangular, etc.

Nassim Taleb and a few others have advocated a disconnect from news. This makes sense from a knowledge building POV as some folks actually only know stuff about the world through mainstream media, which I believe is particularly unhealthy and misleading.

Disconnecting from the entire Internet however is a different matter. My point is that such a recoiling into a zero Internet shell doesn't necessarily confer any superior analytical abilities on anybody. It may help your sanity/peace of mind/mental health (depending on what your obsessions are)/etc.

And to your point about actual evaluation being separate from the information processing pipeline, I also disagree. More often than not you still need the various resources available on the Internet to aid in the evaluation of the data/information you have collected.

There's such a thing as a responsible/profitable use of the Internet and the gains are probably much higher than whatever any sound minded individual would gain from a disconnection.

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