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Comment by DKnoll | Hacker News Reader

There isn't much else to do on public transportation. You either fumble around on your phone or stare blankly at the wall. When I took public transit regularly I would read sometimes but there was too much noise and movement around me to really focus. Clearly you find yourself bored as well since you're looking over people's shoulders.

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Or you could simply think. We live in an era where there is a nonstop stream of information and at times it seems that people have adjusted to this by becoming more and more passive consumers of it all. I mean if you just consider the headlines you've read in the past week you probably have enough to occupy your mind for many months! And this is still 'driven' thinking, as opposed to more creative thinking on whatever happens to interest you.

I am not picking you here. I think your view is increasingly common. In my opinion there do seem to be cognitive consequences to longterm 'smart' device usage. I would not be surprised if people in 50 years we look back on smartphones as we now look back on cigarettes. After all there was a time when most of everybody also just viewed cigarettes as a mostly harmless recreation and pleasure in times when you'd otherwise be doing nothing. That they were severely damaging your body over decades of use is probably something that did not really surprise that many people, but it was also something that was far from entirely certain. Similarly to today, I doubt many people would be especially surprised if there were indeed cognitive or other consequences from longterm 'smart' device usage, but it's still something that's far from entirely certain.

We think from the moment we're born to the moment we die, whether it is conscious or not. There is a false premise in this thread that states staring idly at a phone screen means there are no other thoughts going through your head.

Being deep in thought doesn't transport you into higher plane of existence. You still need somewhere to fix your eyes so you don't look like a lunatic on a packed commuter train where people are apparently judging your aptitude based upon where you're gazing.

There are a lot of different sizes and kinds of thoughts. With very few exceptions I find that my staring-at-the-phone thoughts are small, fast thoughts.

When you get into the habit of filling every bored moment with whatever you can find in the phone, you start to lose the ability to stare off into space - maybe out of the window, maybe close your eyes - and let your brain put together bigger thoughts.

It doesn’t help that there are a lot of things on your phone designed explicitly to try and addict you to them, either. It can be hard to put down the phone even when you know damn well you’ve gone through everything interesting in whatever apps you’re addicted to.

I hope I am not the only one who appreciates the irony of people posting statements in opposition of unproductive smartphone use from their own smartphone or PC into such a deeply nested comment thread that maybe 5 people will read it.

Sounds more like the habits of an anxious individual to think random observers know what you're idly gazing at or care.

This entire comment thread started with OP talking about watching what people do on their phones while they try to pass the time on public transit and making judgements about them based upon what he saw.

Try looking at another person on public transit for more than a few moments and see how uncomfortable they get. It's not a question of anxiety it's just etiquette.

It’s a miracle people suffered transit at all in the years before the invention of handheld networked devices.

Weren’t people reading books/newspapers before, or playing paper-based games (crossword, sudoku, etc)?

In most public transports the noise would make any conversation impossible anyway even if it would be considered acceptable and normal.

Boredom leads to inventions. Transit must've led to so many great ones.

> Clearly you find yourself bored as well since you're looking over people's shoulders

Observing people can be quite fascinating and illuminating.

In Europe the outdoor seating at cafes face the street so you can easily people watch without straining your neck.

Imagine if we could rework the public transportation culture to one that would generate spontaneous valuable interaction between the riders, things like topical discussions where multiple strangers could have a relaxed dialogue, impromptu games, and artistic performance and observation.

Before I was able to afford a car, I had a 2.5 hour commute to work involving 2 buses and a train and wait times. I can assure you that the last thing I wanted to add to my $50/week transit fee was an arbitrary seating system designed to encourage spontaneous interaction with others. Back then the magazines in my bag and Pro Evo 2008 on PSP were the only things keeping me going during those commutes.

Good luck with that. Women are too worried about getting hit on or even molested by men to want to do anything like that, and commuters are too tired to want to interact with others.

Wow.

There are also those rare moments when you can strike up a conversation with someone else on the train and those can be nice if that's your cup of tea

Depends on where you live. Doing this here would irritate most people a lot.

Thanks, I hated it.

Before there was the iphone people would read the newspaper. People having their attention glued to some 'thing' is nothing new.

But were people mindlessly flipping the pages the same way?..

Yes. You'd be surprised by how much time people used to spend mindlessly flipping through the glossy coupon sections in the pre-smartphone days. People also used to read shampoo bottles while they pooped before they had phones out of sheer boredom.

I used to look at it as a great time to get lost in a book.

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