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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

> People no longer think about their destination being 10 km away or 10 stops on the tube. They think about it being 50 per cent of their battery away," said the study's lead author, Dr. Thomas Robinson.

Are people really like this? If so, I think we need to pump the brakes on phone usage for children because this is out of control. People are literally slaves to their phone.

Imagine the absurdity of a 1960s equivalent:

> People no longer think about their destination being 10 km away or 10 stops on the tube. They think about it being 50 per cent of their book away," said the study's lead author

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I don't think the book analogy says anything interesting, it's a different sort of thing.

Maybe we just need some combination of bigger batteries, more efficient devices and easier charging.

Like, what does it say about me that I bought a car charger for my phone before a recent long drive? Am I hopelessly addicted to my battery meter or am I just vaguely prudent?

> Like, what does it say about me that I bought a car charger for my phone before a recent long drive? Am I hopelessly addicted to my battery meter or am I just vaguely prudent?

I would argue: unless you have a paper map and know how to use it, buying a car charger for your phone would be a symptom of you not knowing how to get there and/or expecting to call to ask for directions.

I mean, I didn't exactly know how to get there but the main thing was for a crowd sourced street level imagery app.

I think there's some truth to this. Back when I was just about to replace my phone, the battery on the previous one would survive about 2 hours of screen usage, so I would start to measure aspects of my day to make sure I don't run out of battery and therefore lose all of the functionality that comes with having a working phone.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that I would start using my battery as a unit of distance or time, but I definitely memorized the battery consumption of my evening commute more precisely than the distance.

Doesn't sound too bad. Sounds like "I'm able to read 50 pages on my trip to school."

I do the same kind of resource management with books when I travel. It's no fun to go on a trip with a mostly depleted fiction paperback and end up lugging around dead weight for 5 days out of 7.

Growing up in Iowa (wide spaces, no traffic) my primary unit of distance was and still is living far away from home, time.

Everywhere I would want to go would be 5,15,30,45,60 and further increments of 30 minutes after that.

Same for me growing up. The weird thing has been my time in NYC with mass transit. In my earlier days, driving 30 minutes to go to a specific restaurant in another town felt like such a lift.

Now? 30 minutes on the Subway, even standing room only seems normal, even though I've only gone a handful of miles, not 30 miles.

I wonder if someone has done a study about the differences between mental state or health when you're driving 30 min vs. on the subway for 30 min. In my experience, it's a different kind of interruption somehow. I wouldn't avoid the 30 minutes on the train as much as the 30 min driving, but I'm not sure why.

(In steady state, of course, I expect someone's first 30 minutes on the NYC subway to be a shock if they haven't experienced it already.)

Driving 30 minutes on 101 in the bay area at 5pm is much different than driving 30 minutes on a random journey in rural Iowa. You could easily encounter not a single other car on the latter trip which is a far different experience.

I find driving to be a relaxing almost meditative experience while not in traffic. My parents are just short of terrified of driving in normal-for-cities traffic.

Standing room only public transit is still like my own personal hell. Standing in a box that jerks me one way or another jammed between people going to a place where there will be no space which is "mine" and no escape nor self determination besides through a repeat reverse journey many hours later. Honestly I think I would prefer being locked in prison 14 hours a day than have to go back to commuting by public transit to a city center.

Even before having a phone I was thinking of being 2 songs away from sth

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