Hacker News Reader

Comment by azangru | Hacker News Reader

I cannot imagine how it can be a good idea to reject the internet. Avoid social media all you want, but choosing not to have a search engine, dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and so on at your fingertips is just bonkers. Also, smartphone is great at being a digital watch with alarm clock, a audiobook reader, a radio set, etc. You can rebel against the mindless social media generation to your heart's content and still benefit greatly from this piece of technology.

View on HN

Or, you can buy a standalone alarm clock, a dead-tree book, a standalone radio receiver, etc. for a fraction of the price. Now, I love my smartphone for all the non-social features. But I kind of see how the new generation can see these things as a gateway drug to being sucked into social media and having their minds and hearts ruthlessly exploited for profit. On top of that, it's teenagers we're talking about; teenage rebellion isn't usually a paragon of restraint or rationality :).

How much do you think a phone costs?

Much more than a separare alarm clock, radio and a mp3 player together. These things are cheap now.

Can you really get separate devices for less than a feature phone ? My Nokia/HMD was only $20. I agree that a smartphone isn't the cheapest solution.

I can get a radio and an alarm clock for something like $10 to $15 total on a local flea market. It's probably not even the cheapest option. Not sure if I could find an MP3 player for $5-10 on that market, but I can find one for below $5 with free shipping on Aliexpress.

About $100-$200. How long do you think a phone lasts?

> teenage rebellion isn't usually a paragon of restraint or rationality

It's just that most of the comments in this thread were about rationality :-) They were about how refusing a smartphone is a _smart_ thing to do.

> Avoid social media all you want, but choosing not to have a search engine, dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and so on at your fingertips is just bonkers.

Recently our 9-year old wasn't sure how to spell a particular word, so I suggested we look it up in a (printed) dictionary. He didn't think it would be in there(!) He was surprised at my confidence it would be. Of course, we found it.

He hadn't even considered that almost all the words he uses every single day are sitting in a book on our bookshelf, listed in neat alphabetical order, just waiting for him.

This is a delightful anecdote.

"I cannot imagine how it can be a good idea to reject the internet. Avoid social media all you want, but choosing not to have a search engine, dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and so on at your fingertips is just bonkers.

But we had all that growing up 40 years ago. The internet has made people stupider, as a culture. People learn less because you can just look it up. Yes, you can. It's much easier to look stuff up, but that means people are retaining less themselves.

> It's much easier to look stuff up, but that means people are retaining less themselves.

It might be easier, but it's not easy. I see people giving up on searches because they are not able to formulate what they are looking for. Maybe that opens a whole different set of problems.

> I see people giving up on searches because they are not able to formulate what they are looking for

In fairness, a number of things I've read about here on HN and experiences have led me to believe the quality of search engine results has declined as well

Quietness. Slowness causing you to deliberately select what information you need enough to bother finding it.

you cannot imagine an 11 year old not having a smartphone?

Oh, I can. After all, I didn't have one when I was 11 :-) It's just that, given an option to have it, I cannot imagine a good reason not to. Unless, of course, you don't trust yourself to not use it in a way you disapprove of.

I could have got a cellphone in high school and didn't.

I didn't in university either. I was uncomfortable with the idea of my location being tracked, and the idea that I could be interrupted by a call at any time.

Oh. Maybe back then. But we don't use phones to make calls any more. Only robots actually call you out of nowhere, so you just turn the ringer for incoming calls off. If you actually need to communicate synchronously, you text the person you want to call first, so you know it's okay to call them, and they know to pick up when you do.

Every once in a while, leave your phone at home when you go somewhere. Every step you take, you can think to yourself "yeah, try to track me now, chumps". Pay cash for all your purchases. Refuse to give real information to anybody. You're a digital phantom now!

The only thing you can't get from a less-trackable non-phone device is cellular network connectivity. And you can sort of get around that with gratis wi-fi connections, if you're careful to de-fingerprint your device. I'm imagining a handheld qubes/tails. It would be nice to have a less-centralized mesh network that explicitly valued peer confidentiality, but apparently there's no profit in it yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com