IMO the real reason smartphones suck is that they are attention sucking, dopamine delivery systems. A logical evolution of a slot machine. I hate mine yet here I am yelling into the internet on it...
My POV and i guess the author's is from people who do not really use smartphones much (personally i never use any app, i only use twitter and other social sites from the desktop via the web browser and that sporadically, i never allow any site or app to push notifications and my only use for my smartphone outside being a phone to make and receive calls is to read websites and ebooks).
But i suspect if you consider smartphones an essential part of your life (i don't, i only carry it with me just in case something happens since i am in a foreign country, but at my home i could regularly forget it at my place - even forget to recharge it for days) then you can see other negative aspects past those mentioned in the article.
So essentially, it isn't really that "smartphones are shitty computers with too many limitations" vs "smartphones are sucking, dopamine delivery systems" but "smartphones are shitty computers with too many limitations and sucking, dopamine delivery systems". It is only your POV that changes which one you see as worse.
After all, my computer can't call a rideshare, it can't navigate, it can't call my mom, it can't connect to the Internet outside my home or a coffee shop, it can't take photos and videos, it can't fit in my pocket, it can't pay for things in a store, it can't deposit checks, it can't measure objects in my house, it doesn't know where north, south, east, west, up, or down are, and it can't stay in a useful standby mode all day without draining out the battery, it can't get wet without damaging it, it can't play music for me while I'm outside exercising, it can't scan QR codes, it can't be used as a boarding pass or show ticket, it can't tell my security system when I've left the house...
My original idea was to write a critique of the article going down each complaint, but I decided against it due to length/time. My thoughts briefly/not-so briefly:
- By the author's definition, an Arduino is an "unequal" device because you can't program it from itself. And yet it's a very popular fully open source embedded computer.
- A smartphone user might consider the fact that their laptop to "not be a real network device" since it can't connect to the Internet outside of WiFi range. The complaint about battery usage applies 100% to any sort of laptop computer - if you leave your IRC client running you will most certainly eventually run out of battery. There are plenty of IRC clients for iOS and Android.
- Centralization was happening without smartphones, because it's a convenience feature for non-technical users. It's fine to criticize someone like me for backing up my photos using iCloud, but it's also important to recognize that before these centralized services existed, non-technical users really didn't have options. And there was plenty of centralization in the years leading up to smartphones: AOL, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Flickr, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc.
- They have ruined web design, says the author with the webpage from 1995 with a giant obstructing background image.
- If there are no secure smartphones, is a PC with a proprietary BIOS really secure? Is a PC tricking non-technical users to install unsigned code, toolbars, and fake anti-virus programs secure compared to a centralized app store? There is no 100% secure system, is there? It's about mitigating and reducing risk.
The tl;dr of this is that, the real flaw of this article is the author's perspective. I respect the author for holding these idealogical viewpoints, but they'll only hold weight with a tiny, tiny subculture of computing purists. There are 3 billion smartphone users out there, and many of them will never own a computer. Most people never write a line of code. This is all OK.
I'm sure there's some kind of ideological win that refraining from smartphones rewards a person with, but to me it just feels like someone who's not using the new thing because they don't understand it and want to resist change. Like how my grandparents still drive to the bank, walk up to the teller, and withdraw cash from a human. I'm sure it's nice in some ways but it's also a massive waste of time, effort, and resources.
I think he did make this same argument, in point 1:
> Smartphones are unapologetically devices for consumption
Unfortunately KaiOS at this point is so buggy and partially so annoying that it's borderline unusable (for example, after a software udate it can't do umlauts, which is pretty bad for the German language region and there are literally dozens of such bugs and annoyances).
I'm still hanging in there, but the frustration level is so high that I'll probably need to switch phones. An idea, which I loath.
What I will do if there's just no other way I decided not to install any apps (except for the absolute minimum, i.e. banking), let alone games.
Another option would be to switch back to a seriously dumb phone, but the problem there is that I couldn't find any one that offers a 4G hot spot. And that would be a minimum requirement.
In addition to what you describe, and which I think is the most important reason to dislike smartphones, there's the privacy landmine to consider.
I've been siting here for five minutes, trying to think about something, anything, that is good and doesn't fit that description. Everything people like, from exercise to socializing, shopping to charity. Literally everything that i do and that i like can be summed up as some form of attention sucking, dopamine delivery system.
Yes, many pleasurable experiences deliver dopamine—it's a perfectly fine brain function. What's problematic are products that take advantage of this very specific bug in our psychology to trick us into performing a repetitive action for no long-term fulfillment.
So your problem is things that trick us into short term dopamine hits, and you want more things that trick us into long term dopamine hits.
I suppose i understand.
"I'll know it when I see it."
I realize that's a bit of a cop-out answer, but I also believe it's the correct one. It really isn't that difficult to figure out whether your product is exploitive.
What goals are you optimizing for? If the answer is: "I want people to spend as much time looking at my product as possible," that's going to lead you to bad places. If, however, you explicitly want to help people do X as efficiently as possible, as be done with it, you're probably on the right track.
If you're making an entertainment product, the calculous is a bit different, but still similar. Are you telling a compelling story that will teach us something about the world, or exercise our minds in new ways?
also, I'll know it when i see it is the same as saying I'll know it when i get a hit of dopamine -which was my substituted answer.
Edit; can't respond so will here..
>experiencing stories, learning new skills..doesn't take advantage of this very specific slot machine bug
But it does, it just does it in a way you approve of, which i think is fine, except when you think others should value what you value..
Dopamine is fine, it just isn't enough by itself. Playing a slot machine for days on end feels crappy in hindsight, even for the addicts who can't stop themselves from continuing to play. I'm concerned about how much of modern life is effectively becoming a normalized slot machine.
If you want to call experiencing stories, learning new skills, and forging new connections "long term dopamine", fine, maybe that's what it is. However, it doesn't take advantage of this very specific slot machine bug in our minds in order to become compulsive.
But have you considered that you may have failed the first criteria, something that you like? People who actually like these things tend to get a dopamine hit by doing them rather than just by finishing them...
First ever computer I used was a Sinclair ZX 80 - the computing power, storage and connectivity of current mobile devices seem like something out of a science fiction story compared to that.
Bonus is your battery should never be dead when you really need it.
In the end it's up to the person to practice self-control, passing the buck to the government just ends up in less freedom and more black markets.
It's a methodological error to overestimate the power of humans as animals to resist reward systems such as these.
Yes, it can be done, but it's difficult, and most will fail (and there are other factors making it even more difficult, e.g. people tired from work, depression, children that have less developed self control or sense of purpose, etc).
Instead of the user limiting time on their own phone, you want the government to? Or you want the government to restrict certain practices from certain app makers?
There are many many many things people abuse and many many many industries that make their products as addictive as possible, that's the world we live in.
Go after the caffeine and sugar industry if you want to rid the most humans of addiction.